He looked at them both. "The Princess and her waiting-maid," said Unity demurely, "will come very soon." She rose from the green bench. "The waiting-maid is going now to her harpsichord!" Her eyes rested upon the younger Cary. "Will you be so very good as to turn the leaves for me?"

Fairfax Cary embracing with alacrity the chance of goodness, the two went into the house. The dusk deepened; the odour of honeysuckle and syringa grew heavier, and white moths sailed by on their way to the lighted windows.

"Since love--since love is blissful sorrow, Then bid the lad--then bid the lad-- Then bid the lad a fair good morrow!"

flowed in soprano from the parlour.

Colonel Churchill laid down his pipe and lifted his burly figure from the great chair. "I forgot," he remarked to Jacqueline, "to tell your Aunt Nancy that Charles Carter is going to marry Miss Lewis," and he left the porch. The rose in the sky turned to pearl, the fireflies grew brilliant, and the wind brought the murmur of streams and the louder rustling of the poplar leaves. "It is too dark to see the cards," said Major Edward. "I'll go read what the Gazette has to say of Burr and the Ma.s.sachusetts secession fools. Don't move, Cary!" He deftly gathered up the cards, and went indoors.

"When I was green in years, and every month was May"--sang Unity.

"With Phyllis and with Chloe made I holiday!"

"It is dark night," said Jacqueline. "Shall we not go in?"

Cary put out an appealing hand. "Don't rise! May we not stay like this a little longer?--Miss Churchill, there is something that I ardently wish to say to you."

"Yes, Mr. Cary?"

"It is too soon to speak, I know,--it must seem too soon to you. But to-day I said, 'The spring is flying--I'll put my fortune to the touch!'

I think that you must guess the thing I wish to say--"

"Yes, I know. I wish that you would leave it unsaid."

"I love you. On the day, three months ago, when I saw you after my return and found the lovely child I remembered changed into the loveliest of all women, I loved you. If then, what now, when I have seen you, day by day?--I love you, and I shall never cease to love you."

"Oh, with all my heart I wish that you did not!"

"I ask you to be my wife. I beg you to let me prove throughout my life the depth of my love, of my solicitude for your happiness--"

"Ah, happiness!" cried Jacqueline sharply. "I do not see it in my life.

The best that you can do is to forget me quite."

"I will remember you when I draw my dying breath. And if we remember after death, I will remember you then. With all my strength I love you."

"I am sorry--I am sorry!" she cried. "Oh, I hoped 'twas but a fancy, and that you would not speak! I do not love you--"

"Let me wait," said Cary, after a pause. "I said that I was speaking too soon. Let me wait--let me prove to you. Your heart may turn."

She shook her head. "It will not change."

"Is there," asked Cary, in a low voice, "is there another before me?"

She looked at him strangely. "You have no right to question me. I do not think that I shall ever marry. For you, you will live long and be happy.

You deserve happiness. If I have wounded you, may it soon heal! Forget this night, and me."

"Forget!" said Cary. "I am not so lightly made! But neither will I despair. I will wait. If there is no man before me, I will win you yet!

There is little reason, G.o.d knows, why you should care for me, but I shall strive to make that reason greater!"

"There is reason," answered Jacqueline. "I think highly, highly of you!

You would make a woman happy;--all her life she would travel a sunny road! I prize your friendship--I am loth to lose it. But as for me,"--she locked her hands against her breast,--"there is that within me that cries, _The shadowed road!--the shadowed road!"_

She rose, and Cary rose with her. "Forgive me," she said. "Is it not cruel that we hurt each other so? Forgive--forget."

"I would forgive you," he answered, with emotion, "the suffering and the sorrow of a thousand lives. But forget you--never! I'll love you well and I'll love you long. Nor will I despair. To-night is dark, but the sun may shine to-morrow. Think of me as of one who will love you to the end." He took her hand and kissed it, then stood aside, saying, "I will not face the lights quite yet." She pa.s.sed into the hail and up the stairway, and he turned and went down the porch steps into the May night.

CHAPTER IX

EXPOSTULATION

The next morning Ludwell Cary rose early, ordered his horse, and opened the door of his brother's room. "Fair," he said, as the younger Cary sat up in bed, with a nightcap wonderfully askew upon his handsome head, "I am off for Greenwood. Make my excuses, will you, to Colonel Churchill and the ladies? I will not be back till supper-time." He turned to leave the room. "And Fair--if you have anything to say to Miss Dandridge, this is the shepherd's hour. We go home to-morrow."

"What the Devil?"--began the younger Cary.

"No, not the Devil," said the other, with a twist of the lip half humorous, half piteous. "Just woman."

He was gone. Fairfax Cary looked at his watch, then rose from his bed and looked out of the window at the rose and dew of the dawn. "What the Devil!" he said again to himself; and then, with a forehead of perplexity, "He was up late last night--out in the garden alone. He rides off to Greenwood with the dawn, and we go home to-morrow. She can't have refused him--that's not possible!" He went back to bed to study matters over. At last, "The jade!" he exclaimed with conviction, and two hours later, when he came down to breakfast, wished Miss Churchill good-morning with glacial courtesy.

Jacqueline, behind the coffee urn, had heavy-lidded eyes, and her smile was tremulous. Unity, brilliant and watchful, regarded the universe and the hauteur of young Mr. Cary with lifted brows. Major Churchill, when he appeared, shot one glance at the place that was Ludwell Cary's, another at his niece, then sat heavily down, and in a querulous voice demanded coffee. Colonel d.i.c.k wore a frown. Deb, who before breakfast had visited a new foal in the long pasture, kept for a time the ball of conversation rolling; but the dulness and the chill in the air presently enwrapped her also. The meal came to an end with only one hazard as to what could have taken Ludwell Cary to Greenwood for the entire day. That was Unity's, who remarked that pains must be bestowed upon the hanging of a drawing-room paper, else the shepherds and the shepherdesses would not match.

Fairfax Cary asked after Lewis Rand and his broken arm, and Colonel d.i.c.k responded with absent-mindedness that the arm did very well, and that its owner would soon be going about his business with all the rest of the d.a.m.ned Republican mischief-makers: then, "Scipio, did you take that julep and bird up to the blue room?"

"Yaas, marster," answered Scipio. "The gent'man say tell you 'Thank you.' He say he ain't gwine trouble you much longer, an' he cyarn never forgit what Fontenoy's done fer him."

"Deb!" said Uncle Edward, with great sharpness, "you are spilling that cup of milk. Look what you are doing, child!"

The uncomfortable meal came to an end. Outside the dining-room door Uncle d.i.c.k mentioned to Unity that her aunt wanted her in the chamber to cut off linsey gowns for the house servants, and Uncle Edward inquired if it would be troublesome to Fairfax Cary to ride over to Tom Wood's and take a look at that black stallion Tom bragged of. Unity went to her aunt's chamber; the younger Cary walked away somewhat stiffly to the stables; Uncle Edward sent Deb to her lessons, and Uncle d.i.c.k told Jacqueline to come in half an hour to the library. Edward and he wanted to speak to her.

Jacqueline gave her directions, or her aunt's directions, to Scipio, then crossed the paved way to the kitchen and talked of dinner and supper with the turbaned cook; opened with her keys the smokehouse door, and in the storeroom superintended the weighing of flour and sugar and the measuring of Java coffee, and finally saw that the drawing-room was properly darkened against the sunny morning, and that the water was fresh in the bowls of flowers. She leaned for a moment against her harp, one hand upon its strings, her forehead resting upon her bare arm; then she turned from the room and entered the library, where she found her uncles waiting for her, Uncle d.i.c.k upon the hearth rug and Uncle Edward at the table.

"Jacqueline," began the first, then, "Edward, I never could talk to a woman! Ask her what all this d.a.m.ned nonsense means!"

"Your uncle doesn't mean that it is all d.a.m.ned nonsense, Jacqueline,"

said Uncle Edward, with gentleness. "Not perhaps from your point of view, my dear. But both he and I are greatly grieved and disappointed--"

"It was all arranged ages ago!" broke in the elder brother. "Fauquier Cary and your dear father, my brother Henry, settled it when you were born and Fauquier's son was a lad at Maury's school! When Henry died, and Fauquier Cary died, my brother Edward here and I said to each other that we would see the matter out! So we will, by G.o.d!"

"Gently, d.i.c.k! Jacqueline, child, you know how dear you are to us, and how the future and the happiness of you and of Unity and of Deb is our jealous care--"

"Fauquier Cary was as n.o.ble a man as ever breathed," cried the other, "and his son's his image! There's no better blood in Virginia--and the land beside--"

"It does not matter about the land, Jacqueline," said Uncle Edward, "though G.o.d forbid that I should depreciate good land--"

"Land's land," quoth Colonel d.i.c.k, "and good blood's gospel truth!"