"Yeth, thir."

"I want a promise from you."

"Yeth, Mr. Rand."

"You've always been my good friend, ever since long ago when you came from the little house in Richmond to this little house in Charlottesville, and I was reading law with Mr. Henning. Why, I don't know what I should do without you and Tom!"

Vinie's eyes filled. "I couldn't--Tom and me couldn't--do without you, Mr. Rand. You're our best friend, and we'd die for you, and you know it.

I'll promise you anything, and I'll keep my promise."

"I know that you will. It's nothing more than this. Vinie, I don't want it known that I stopped here to-day, and I want you to forget--look at me, Vinie."

"Yeth, thir."

"I want you to forget what I asked you for, and what I did in Tom's room.

"Yeth, thir," said Vinie, with large eyes. "And that you cut yourself?"

"That, too. Everything, Vinie, except that, coming along the main road, I stopped a moment at the gate to say how d'ye do, and to tell you that Tom would be at home in two or three days. That is all, and my coming into the house and the rest of it never was. Do you understand?"

"I won't say anything at all, thir."

"It's a promise?"

"Yeth, thir. I promise."

They went out into the porch together. "Ithn't there anything else?"

Rand, studying in silence the clouds and the whirling dust, had started down the step or two to the path between the marigolds. He paused. "I can't think of anything, Vinie"; then, after a moment, and very oddly, "Would you give me, once more, a cup of cool water?"

Vinie brought it in her hand. "You always thaid this water washed the dust off clean."

Rand drank, and gave back the cup. "Thank you. I'll go on now. How your vine has borne this year!"

"Yeth. I'm going to make some wine this week. Good-bye."

Her visitor pa.s.sed through the little yard, between the vivid flowers.

At the gate he turned his head. "Tom is really coming, Vinie, in two or three days."

"Yeth, thir," said Vinie. "I'll be mighty glad to see him."

Rand mounted, and he and Young Isham rode away. Vinie stood upon the porch and watched them as far as the turn in the road. A gust of hot wind blew against her, ruffling her calico dress and lifting light tendrils of hair from her forehead and neck. In the southwest the lightning flashed fiercely and there came a crash of thunder. Vinie uttered a startled cry, clapped her hands to her ears, and ran into the house.

Rand rode through a portion of the main street of Charlottesville. He kept the pace of a man who wishes to be at home before the rain falls, but his manner of going showed no undue haste and no trepidation. Faces at doors and windows, men gathered before the Eagle and the post-office, greeted him. He answered each salute in kind, and at the Eagle drew rein long enough to reply to the inevitable questions as to Richmond and the trial, and to agree that the rain was needed, since the main road, from Bates's Mill on, was nothing but a trough of dust.

"That's so," chimed in one. "If it wasn't so rough, the river road would be pleasanter travelling. There's the first drop!"

Rand looked up at the clouds. "I'll gallop on, gentlemen. A rain is coming that will lay the dust."

Once upon the road to Roselands, neither horse nor mare was spared. Rand travelled at speed beneath an inky sky. At the turn to Greenwood he looked once toward the distant house, half hidden by mighty oaks. It was no more than once. He had a vision of a riderless horse, tearing away from a stream, through the woods, and he thought, "How soon?" He drew a difficult breath, and he put for a moment his hand before his eyes, then spurred Selim on, and in a little while came within sight of his own gates.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

HUSBAND AND WIFE

As he rode up the drive, he saw Jacqueline waiting for him, a gleam of white upon the grey doorstone, beyond the wind-tossed beech. He dismounted, sent Young Isham around with the horses, and walked across the burned gra.s.s. She met him with outstretched arms, beneath the beech tree. "Lewis, Lewis!"

He held her to him, bent back her face, kissed her brow and eyes and mouth. There was a wild energy in clasp and touch. "You love me still?"

he cried. "That's true--that's true, Jacqueline?"

"You know--you know it's true! I was born only to love you--and I thought that you would never come!"

The thunder crashed above them, and the advance of the rain was heard upon the beech leaves. "Come indoors--come out of the storm!" She drew his hand that she held to her and laid it on her bosom. "Oh, welcome home, my dear!"

They went together into the house and into their own chamber. The windows were dark with the now furious rain, but a light fire burned upon the hearth. Rand stood looking down upon it. His wife watched him, her arms resting upon the back of a great flowered chair. Suddenly she spoke. "Lewis, what is the matter?"

He half turned toward her. "I believed that you would see. And yet you were blind to that earlier course of mine."

"Something dreadful is the matter. Tell me at once."

After a moment he repeated sombrely, "'At once.' How can I tell you at once? There are things that are slowly brought about by all time, and to show them as they truly are would require all time again. How can I tell you at all? My G.o.d!"

"I feel," she answered, "years older than I did two weeks ago. If there was something then to forgive, I have forgiven it. Our souls did not come together to share only the lit paths, the honey in the cup. Tell me, Lewis."

"It is black and bitter--there is no light, and it will kill the sweetness. If I could live with you and you never know it, I would try to do so--try to keep it secret from you as I did that lesser thing. I cannot--even now, without a word, you know in part."

"Tell me all--_that lesser thing_."

Rand turned from the fire and, coming to the great chair against whose back she leaned, knelt in its flowered lap and bowed his forehead upon her hands. "I am glad," he said, in a voice so low that she bent to hear it,--"I am glad now that I have no son."

There was a silence while the rain dashed against the window-panes and the thunder rolled overhead; then Jacqueline pressed her cheek against his bowed head. "What have you done?" she whispered. "Tell me--oh, tell me!"

After a moment he told her. "I have killed a man."

"Killed--It was by accident!"

"No. It was not accident. I came upon him by accident--I'll claim no more than that. The black rage was there to blind me, make me deaf--mole and adder! But it was not accident, what I did. I'll not cheat you here, and I'll not cheat myself. The name of it is murder."

He felt her hands quiver beneath his forehead, and he put up his own and clasped her wrist. "Are you thinking, 'I should have left him in the tobacco-fields'? As for me, I know that I ought never to have spoken to you there beneath the apple tree."

"Lewis, who was the man?"

He made no answer, and after a moment or two, numbed and grey, had pa.s.sed, she needed none. The truth fell like a stroke from glowing iron.

With a cry she dragged her hands from Rand's, left the chair, and, crossing the room, flung herself down beside the chintz-covered couch and cowered there with a hidden face. Rand arose and, walking to the window, stared at the veil of rain and the stabbing lightning. The clock ticked, a log upon the hearth parted with a soft sound, from the back of the house came faintly the homely cheer of the servants' voices. How deadly, how solemnly still, how wet and cold, was now a rocky strand upon the river road! He left the window and, coming to the couch, looked down upon the crouching figure of his wife. His brain was not numbed; it was pitilessly awake, and he suffered. The name of his star was Wormwood.