"And you did all that simply to tell me about my mother?" Virginia said.

"Why, she could have written."

"Yes, but seeing some one right from the spot is more satisfying," he said, with embarra.s.sed lightness. "I wanted to tell you how she was, and I'm glad, whether you are or not."

"I'm glad to hear from her," said Virginia. "It is only because I did not want to put you to so much trouble."

"Don't bother about that, Virginia. I'd gladly do it every night in the week to keep you from worrying. Do you remember the day, long ago, that I came to you down at the creek and told you I was dissatisfied with things here, and was going away off to begin the battle of life in earnest?"

"Yes, I remember," Virginia answered, almost oblivious of the clinging, invisible current which seemed to be sweeping them together.

He drew a deep breath, as if to take in courage for what he had to say, and then went on:

"You were only a little girl then, hardly thirteen, and yet to me, Virginia, you were a woman capable of the deepest feeling. I never shall forget how you rebuked me about leaving my mother in anger. You looked at me as straight and frank as starbeams, and told me you'd not desert your mother in her old age for all the world. I never forgot what you said and just the way you said it, and through all my turbulent life out West your lecture was constantly before me. I was angry at my mother, but finally I got to looking at her marriage differently, and then I began to want to see her and to do my filial duty as you were doing yours. That was one reason I came back here. The other was because-Virginia, it was because I wanted to see _you_."

"Oh, don't, don't begin-" but Virginia's protest died away in her pulsing throat. She lowered her head and covered her hot face with her hands.

"But I have begun, and I must go on," he said. "Out West I met hundreds of attractive women, but I could never look upon them as other men did because of the-the picture of you stamped on my brain. I was not hearing a word about you, but you were becoming exactly what I knew you would become; and when I saw you out there in the barn-yard that first day after I got back, my whole being caught fire, and it's blazing yet-it will blaze as long as there is a breath of my life left to fan it. For me there can be but one wife, little girl, and if she fails me I'll go unmarried to my grave."

"Oh, don't! don't!" Virginia sobbed, her tones m.u.f.fled by her hands pressed tightly over her face. "You don't know me. I'm not what you think I am. I'm only a poor, helpless, troubled-"

"Don't! don't!" he broke in, fearfully-"don't decide against me hastily!

I know-G.o.d knows I am unworthy of you, and if you don't feel as I do you will never link your young life to mine. Sometimes I fear that your shrinking from me as you often do is evidence against my hopes. Oh, dear, little girl, am I a fool? Am I a crazy idiot asking you for what you can't possibly give?"

A sob which she was trying to suppress shook her from head to foot, and she rose and stepped to the door and stood there looking out on the moonlit road, where his impatient horse was pawing the earth and neighing. There was silence. King leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his strong fingers locked like p.r.o.ngs of steel in front of him, his face deep cut with the chisel of anxiety. For several minutes he stared thus at her white profile struck into sharp clearness by the combined light from without and within.

"I see it all," he groaned. "I've lost. While I was away out there treasuring your memory and seeing your face night after night, day after day-holding you close, pulling these rugged old mountains about you for protection, you were not-you were not-I was simply not in your thoughts."

Then she turned towards him. She seemed to have grown older and stronger since he began speaking so earnestly.

"You must not think of me that way any longer," she sighed. "You mustn't neglect your work to come to see me, either."

"You will never be my wife, then, Virginia?"

"No, I could never be that, Luke-no, not that-never on earth."

He shrank together as if in sudden, sharp physical pain, and then he rose to his full height and reached for his hat, which she had placed on the table. His heavy-soled boots creaked on the rough floor; he tipped his chair over, and it would have fallen had he not awkwardly caught it and restored it to its place.

"You have a good reason, I am sure of that," he said, huskily.

"Yes, yes, I-I have a reason." Her stiff lips made answer. "We are not for each other, Luke. If you've been thinking so, so long, as you say, it is because you were trying to make me fit your ideal, but I am not that in reality. I tell you I'm only a poor, suffering girl, full of faults and weaknesses, at times not knowing which way to turn."

He had reached the door, and he stepped out into the moonlight, his ma.s.sive head still bare. He shook back his heavy hair in a determined gesture of supreme faith and denial and said: "I know you better than you know yourself, because I know better than you do how to compare you to other women. I want you, Virginia, just as you are, with every sweet fault about you. I want you with a soul that actually bleeds for you, but you say it must not be, and you know best."

"No, it can't possibly be," Virginia said, almost fiercely. "It can never be while life lasts. You and I are as wide apart as the farthest ends of the earth."

He bowed his head and stood silent for a moment, then he sighed as he looked at her again. "I've thought about life a good deal, Virginia," he said, "and I've almost come to the conclusion that a great tragedy must tear the soul of every person destined for spiritual growth. This may be my tragedy, Virginia; I know something of the tragedy that lifted Ann Boyd to the skies, but her neighbors don't see it. They are still beating the material husk from which her big soul has risen."

"I know what she is," Virginia declared. "I'm happy to be one who knows her as she is-the grandest woman in the world."

"I'm glad to hear you say that," King said. "I knew if anybody did her justice it would be you."

"If I don't know how to sympathize with her, no one does," said the girl, with a bitterness of tone he could not fathom. "She's wonderful; she's glorious. It would be worth while to suffer anything to reach what she has reached."

"Well, I didn't come to talk of her, good as she has been to me," King said, gloomily. "I must get back to the grind and whir of that big building. I shall not come up again for some time. I have an idea I know what your reason is, but it would drive me crazy even to think about it."

She started suddenly, and then stared steadily at him. In the white moonlight she looked like a drooping figure carved out of stone, even to every fold of her simple dress and wave of her glorious hair.

"You think you know!" she whispered.

"Yes, I think so, and the p.r.o.nunciation of a single name would prove it, but I shall not let it pa.s.s my lips to-night. It's my tragedy, Virginia."

"And mine," she said to herself, but to him it seemed that she made no response at all, and after a moment's pause he turned away.

"Good-bye," he said, from the gate.

"Good-bye, Luke," she said, impulsively.

But at the sound of his name he whirled and came back, his brow dyed with red, his tender eyes flashing. "I'll tell you one other thing, and then I'll go," he said, tremulously. "Out West, one night, after a big ball which had bored the life out of me-in fact, I had only gone because it was a coming-out affair of the daughter of a wealthy friend of mine.

In the smoking-room of the big hotel which had been rented for the occasion I had a long talk with a middle-aged bachelor, a man of the world, whom I knew well. He told me his story. In his younger days he had been in love with a girl back East, and his love was returned, but he wanted to see more of life and the world, and was not ready to settle down, and so he left her. After years spent in an exciting business and social life, and never meeting any one else that he could care for, a sudden longing came over him to hear from his old sweetheart. He had no sooner thought of it than his old desires came back like a storm, and he could not even wait to hear from her. He packed up hastily, took the train, and went back home. He got to the village only two days after she had married another man. The poor old chap almost cried when he told me about it. Then, in my sympathy for him, I told him of my feeling for a little girl back here, and he earnestly begged me not to wait another day. It was that talk with him that helped me to make up my mind to come home. But, you see, I am too late, as he was too late. Poor old Duncan!

He'd dislike to hear of my failure. But I've lost out, too. Now, I'll go sure. Good-bye, Virginia. I hope you will be happy. I'm going to pray for that."

Leaning against the door-jamb, she saw him pa.s.s through the gateway, unhitch his restive horse, and swing himself heavily into the saddle, still holding his hat in his hand. Then he galloped away-away in the still moonlight, the-to her-peaceful, mocking moonlight.

"He thinks he knows," she muttered, "but he doesn't dream the _whole_ truth. If he did he would no longer think that way of me. What am I, anyway? He was loving me with that great, infinite soul while I was listening to the idle simpering of a fool. Ah, Luke King shall never know the truth! I'd rather lie dead before him than to see that wondrous light die out of his great, trusting eyes."

She heard Sam coming down the road, and through the silvery gauze of night she saw the red flare of his pipe. She turned into her own room and sat down on the bed, her little, high-instepped feet on the floor, her hands clasped between her knees.

XXVII

The events which took place at Chesters' that adventurous night had a remarkable effect on the young master of the place. After Ann Boyd had left him he restlessly paced the floor of the long veranda. Blind fury and unsatisfied pa.s.sion held him in their clutch and drove him to and fro like a caged and angry lion. The vials of his first wrath were poured on the heads of his meddlesome guests, who had so unceremoniously thrust themselves upon him at such an inopportune moment, and from them his more poignant resentment was finally shifted to the woman whom for years he, with the rest of the community, had contemptuously regarded as the partner in his father's early indiscretions. That she-such a character-should suddenly rise to remind him of his duty to his manhood, and even enforce it under his own roof, was the most humiliating happening of his whole life.

These hot reflections and secret plans for revenge finally died away and were followed by a state of mind that, at its lowest ebb, amounted to a racking despair he had never known. Something told him that Ann Boyd had spoken grim truth when she had said that Virginia would never again fall under his influence, and certainly no woman had ever before so completely absorbed him. Up to this moment it had been chiefly her rare beauty and sweetness of nature that had charmed him, but now he began to realize the grandeur of her character and the depths to which her troubles had stirred his sympathies. As he recalled, word by word, all that had pa.s.sed between them in regard to her nocturnal visit, he was forced to acknowledge that it was only through her absorbing desire to save her mother that she, abetted by her very purity of mind, had been blindly led into danger. He flushed and shuddered under the lash of the thought that he, himself, had const.i.tuted that danger.

He went to bed, but scarcely closed his eyes during the remainder of the night, and the next morning was up before the cook had made the fires in the kitchen range. He hardly knew what he would do, but he determined to see Virginia at the earliest opportunity and make an honest and respectful attempt to regain her confidence. He would give her the money she so badly needed-give it to her without restrictions, and trust to her grat.i.tude to restore her faith in him. He spent all that morning, after eating a hasty breakfast, on a near-by wooded hill-side, from which elevation he had a fair view of Jane Hemingway's cottage. He saw Virginia come from the house in search of the cow, and with his heart in his mouth he was preparing to descend to meet her, when, to his consternation, he saw that she had joined Ann Boyd at the barn-yard of the latter, and then he saw the two go into Ann's house together. This augured ill for him, his fears whispered, and he remained at his post among the trees till the girl came out of the house and hastened homeward. For the next two days he hung about Jane Hemingway's cottage with no other thought in mind than seeing Virginia. Once from the hill-side he saw her as she was returning from Wilson's store, and he made all haste to descend, hoping to intercept her before she reached home, but he was just a moment too late. She was on the road a hundred yards ahead of him, and, seeing him, she quickened her step. He walked faster, calling out to her appealingly to stop, but she did not pause or look back again. Then he saw a wagon filled with men and women approaching on the way to market, and, knowing that such unseemly haste on his part and hers would excite comment, he paused at the roadside and allowed her to pursue her way unmolested. The next day being Sunday, he dressed himself with unusual care, keenly conscious, as he looked in the mirror, that his visage presented a haggard, careworn aspect that was anything but becoming. His eyes had the fixed, almost bloodshot stare of an habitual drunkard in the last nervous stages of downward progress.

His usually pliant hair, as if surcharged with electricity, seemed to defy comb and brush, and stood awry; his clothes hung awkwardly; his quivering fingers refused to put the deft touch to his tie which had been his pride. At the last moment he discovered that his boots had not been blacked by the negro boy who waited on him every morning. He did this himself very badly, and then started out to church, not riding, for the reason that he hoped Virginia would be there, and that he might have the excuse of being afoot to join her and walk homeward with her. But she was not there, and he sat through Bazemore's long-winded discourse, hardly conscious that the minister, flattered by his unwonted presence, glanced at him proudly all through the service.

So it was that one thing and another happened to prevent his seeing Virginia till one morning at Wilson's store he heard that Jane Hemingway had, in some mysterious way, gotten the money she needed and had already gone to Atlanta. He suffered a slight shock over the knowledge that Virginia would now not need the funds he had been keeping for her, but this was conquered by the thought that he could go straight to the cottage, now that the girl's grim-faced guardian was away. So he proceeded at once to do this. As he approached the gate, a thrill of gratification pa.s.sed over him, for he observed that Sam Hemingway was out at the barn, some distance from the house. As he was entering the gate and softly closing it after him, Virginia appeared in the doorway.

Their eyes met. He saw her turn pale and stand alert and undecided, her head up like that of a young deer startled in a quiet forest. It flashed upon him, to his satisfaction, that she would instinctively retreat into the house, and that he could follow and there, unmolested even by a chance pa.s.ser-by, say all he wanted to say, and say it, too, in the old fashion which had once so potently-if only temporarily-influenced her.

But with a flash of wisdom and precaution, for which he had not given her credit, she seemed to realize the barriers beyond her and quickly stepped out into the porch, where coldly and even sternly she waited for him to speak.

"Virginia," he said, taking off his hat and humbly sweeping it towards the ground, "I have been moving heaven and earth to get to see you alone." He glanced furtively down the road, and then added: "Let's go into the house. I've got something important to say to you."

Still staring straight at him, she moved forward till she leaned against the railing of the porch. "I sha'n't do it," she said, firmly. "If I've been silly once, that is no reason I'll be so always. There is nothing you can say to me that can't be spoken here in the open sunlight."