"Never mind, ma, Admonia 'll do well enough," interposed Amanda. "She's a funny little thing, and I rather like her."
"Ex—actly!" Vivian observed, with an accent lately acquired. "I imagine Amanda training anybody."
We all have our secret pet vanities which undiscriminating persons, seeing only our surface beauties, are perpetually wounding. Amanda's vanity was a wish to be acknowledged sensible and practical. Beautiful, she knew herself to be, and to hear of that was an old story; but her executive ability was not yet proved, and she was very sensitive upon this point. And herein Vivian blundered. It did not occur to him that he hurt her feelings by depreciating her executive powers. He had been used to regarding her as a pretty play-thing, something to be petted and disciplined alternately. That she had an ambition to be something more was what he had not yet discovered.Perhaps the idea was one that he would have to blindly grope his way toward; for "we can only comprehend that of which we have the beginnings in ourselves," and in the handsome, suave, popular young Virginian the germ of common sense and good judgment was small; so very much smaller than his little world believed it to be.
"Mandy is a leetle apt to spoil the young niggers," said her peace-making mother. "But then she wuz always so powerful fond o' children."
Amanda patted her mother's shoulder, while a far-away look came into her eyes as she fixed them on a distant hill, where the newly plowed earth lay darkly red against the tender sky-tints, and the sun swept down upon one spot, covered with young wheat, and spread over it like the caressing touch of a golden hand.
She was passionately fond of children—this fiery, tender-hearted woman, who showed so many prickles to the grown people who approachedher incautiously. And Vivian was not. So much the more diplomatic, so much the more polished, so full of gentleness toward women and forbearance toward their troublesome little ones—was it possible that it was he who failed in patience and kindness, and the forward Amanda who must be credited with the possession of both, when helpless hands were stretched out toward her? Fauquier County would have shaken its head over such a question. Fauquier County said that Vivian Thomas was the mildest and best humored young man in the world except when things happened that he had a right to be angry about; but that Amanda Powell was rather too spunky and high-strung for any man except a saint to get along with peaceably. For her mother's sake—and also, a little in spite of its preternaturally wise judgment—for the sake of certain winning ways of her own, the county people liked her; but Vivian, they adored.
And so, overshadowed by this disadvantage,of which she was not quite unconscious, the young wife descended from the wagon, helped out as gracefully and tenderly as he had helped her out of another vehicle the day we first saw her, by her courteous husband, and entered the door of her new home.
The first person they laid eyes upon was the shock-headed, wild-eyed little creature called Admonia, who dropped a flower-pot she was carrying through the hall, and without stopping to pick up the pieces, raced to the kitchen, shouting:
"Mis' Mandy and Mr. Vivian done come home, fur shore! Whoopy! Ain't I glad! Now, we'uns gwine ter have times!"
Admonia was a prophet.
II.
"Admonia!"called a woman's voice, and in a twinkling the owner followed and stopped in the last one of the long row of outbuildings that spread beyond the dining-room of Benvenew.
It was a mere shed, enclosed on three sides and open at the end, the sky showing through holes in the roof. The rough boarding that answered for a floor was broken in many places, and dirt and confusion reigned everywhere. Upon a stool sat a shock-headed, wild-eyed darkey girl of twenty or so, plucking the feathers from a couple of fowls, and throwing them upon the floor. Her heavy under-lip fell and her eyes rolled as the imperative tones of her mistress smote upon her ear, and she arose quickly, a cloud of feathers falling from her unspeakably dirty dress, and stood dangling a half plucked fowl, her dark brown face so immersedin gloom that all the features seemed to have run together, the whites of her eyes and her broad yellow teeth giving her the appearance of a bank of much soiled and partly melted snow.
"Admonia," said her mistress, pausing in the doorway, "where is Nellie?"
"Laws, Mis' Mandy, I dunno. I hain't saw de chile sence Mr. Thomas tuk her."
"When was that?" Amanda's voice had a peculiar ring which the girl recognized, and knew the cause of. Her dusky face softened into an expression of sympathy, and with the fluency of her race she uttered the first consoling thought that came into her head.
"Now, Mis' Mandy, honey, don' yo' tak' on—li'le Nellie she all safe 'nuff; her pa done tak' her wid him up ter he room on'y lettle bit ago. She was pesterin' him ter show her de stuffed owl what he done brung home frum Ryburg, an' he jes tuk her wid him ter show her. He—he all right, Mis' Mandy."
The last sentence was spoken in a lowertone, and the harum-scarum girl, whom everyone except her mother and her mistress considered irreclaimably rough and wild, averted her eyes from Amanda's pale face, and sitting down again began industriously plucking her fowls.
Without another word, but with one sharply indrawn breath that left her lips white, Amanda entered the house and ascended the stairs. As she drew near a rear room on the second floor sounds reached her ear that brought a flaming color into her cheeks and made her hasten her steps. The frightened, sobbing tones of a little child came from behind the closed door of her husband's room, mingled with a half articulate but apparently angry growl of a deep masculine voice.
Amanda turned the handle of the door with an expression that boded ill for the person who had evoked it. The door resisted her pressure. It was locked. Then, in a second, all the smouldering anxiety of the mother's heart leaped into furious flame.
"Open this door!" she commanded. There was no answer. The sobbing ceased.
"Mother!" called the child.
Amanda shook the door and pushed against it with all her strength. "Open this door, or I'll break it down!" So her grandfather might have thundered out an order to some refractory sailor on board his own good ship. The only reply was an oath. The man in his sober senses addressed by any one, especially a woman, in such a manner, must have been mild indeed, had he refrained from swearing. But a mother, maddened by such fears as lacerated this woman's heart, takes nothing into account but her own feelings. With swift steps she turned into her own room, brought thence a large and heavy hammer and gave the door the strongest blow her arms were capable of throwing against it. Another—and another. The lock yielded, and Amanda, holding the hammer under her left arm, flew into the room.
Could anything excuse or justify such violencein a wife? Would not the man who had met force with force and turning upon her, knocked her down, have been not only cleared but applauded by any court in a Christian country? And in Virginia, of all other places, the laws are made for the protection of men; and public sentiment is in harmony with the State's code.
Vivian Thomas must then either be despised by those of us who see him leaning against the wardrobe in a passive attitude, while the woman who had vowed to love, honor, and obey him, ten years before, effected this headlong entrance into his own sacred stronghold, or he must be considered a saint, enduring with superhuman patience the tantrums of a domineering wife. The critic may take his choice of opinions; only, let us note that the handsome man now averting his eyes from Amanda's scorching glance is not exactly the frank, fresh-looking fellow who brought his young bride to Benvenew. All the graceful bearing, the nobility of outline, and thatindescribable beauty Nature confers upon her favorite sons, are still here. The silky brown mustache droops over sensitive red lips with tender, downward curves; the white brow is placid, and the nostrils delicate and fine. But the entire effect is different. A slight alteration of a few details has changed everything. The dark eyes have faded to a dull hazel, and the whites have taken on a yellowish tinge. The cheeks have rather too much color, the flush extending to the nose. In a word, Vivian's countenance, while retaining the refinement that seems a part of the very flesh of some organisms and independent of those shaping forces that ennoble or mar the faces of most people, betrayed some deterioration of the whole man.
He seemed rather embarrassed than enraged as Amanda, panting from her exertions and trembling from the terrible tension of her nerves, swept past him and picked up a little girl cowering in the corner.
Without staying for another look or wordshe clasped the child in her arms and left the room; the very atmosphere charged with the contempt that emanated from her haughty spirit and which Vivian felt, even in his dulled condition, to the core of his being.
She carried the little girl to her own room, and with hurried motions bathed her face, changed her dress, and put on her hat and cloak, all the while uttering low, endearing words, and pressing tender kisses on the little upturned face which was lovely as an angel's, with great, dark eyes looking out from a thicket of golden-brown curls.
"Are we going to grandma's, mother?" Nellie asked, as Amanda changed her wrapper for a black silk dress and took up her bonnet and gloves. Once before, about a year ago, after a scene between father and mother, which had deeply impressed itself upon the child's memory, she had been taken in the carriage to her grandmother's, and had remained there a week, her mother with her. It had been a week of rare delight, shadowedonly by two things: her grandmother's remarkable gravity, and the indisposition of her adored mother.
"Yes, darling," Amanda answered hastily, as she threw some things into a satchel and arising from her kneeling posture before a chest of drawers, left the room with her child, locking the door behind her.
They went straight to the barn, where Amanda hitched up old Queenie, her own horse, to a rickety old phaeton, and drove out into the yard, Admonia holding the gate open and sniffling audibly as she muttered:
"Goo'bye, Mis' Mandy; goo'bye, li'le Nellie. Wish't I wuz gwine wif ye, so I does."
"Be a good girl, Admonia," said her mistress, bending down and giving the black hand a cordial shake. "Look after things as well as you can. You and your mother are all I have to depend on now, you know, since Pete is gone."
"Good-bye, Admonia!" called Nellie's liquid tones. "Please take care of my Bantam hen!"
With the blessed elasticity of childhood she had already partly recovered from the distress of the morning, and was able to entertain charming visions of the pleasure before her. But although there is in a child a superficial light-heartedness, so that we are led to flatter ourselves that its woes are soon over, it is certain that injuries inflicted in the spirit of injustice, sink deeply into the soul, and not through inability to forgive, but through inability to forget, the young heart once wounded in the tender spot of confidence, never again can put forth vigorous shoots of affection toward the person who has affronted it. Strange as it seemed to the world that in after years Vivian Thomas' fondness for his daughter never evoked in her any corresponding demonstration, valid reason might have been found by one acquainted with the experience of this and other mornings, why Nellie always listened to the praises bestowed upon her popular parent with a pensive smile, and why, in her dutiful attention to him, there was areserve and hesitancy widely different from the cordiality of a relation free from doubt and fear.
Mrs. Powell met them on the front porch. She had on her sun-bonnet and gardening-gloves, and behind her stalked Alex, armed with her rake and hoe, his features expressing the contempt of his stronger nature for the woman's tools he carried, tempered with a respectful sort of indulgence toward the fancies of the best woman in the world.
Ten years had passed lightly over Mrs. Powell's fair countenance. At sixty she was a handsome and vigorous old lady, the wear and tear of life, felt only through sympathy with the troubles of others, showing mainly in a thinning of the silver curls over her temples, and a few lines about her true, mild, blue eyes.
Her first look told her that something was wrong with Amanda, and without any great strain upon her reasoning powers she understoodthat the trouble had reference to little Nellie. Nothing else brought that tense expression to the mouth of her beautiful daughter, nor kindled deep in her black eyes the glare that told of unendurable suffering and unquenchable resentment.
"I wuz jes' goin' to pot a few roses afore frost gits 'em," she said, after affectionate greetings had been exchanged. "Will ye set out hyar on the bench awhile, honey, an' we kin talk whilst I wurk?"
She hoped that in the course of a little quiet talk Amanda's fierce mood would give way to soothing influences, and that the injudicious things the impulsive woman was apt to utter when excited might remain upon this occasion unsaid. But now, as always, the conservative policy of the good woman only modified, but could not repress the burning indignation of a spirit that could easier pardon great injuries to itself, than the slightest wrong done to one who was incapable of self-defense.
Leaning her head back against the trunkof the ancient magnolia tree her grandfather had planted here, Amanda watched her mother dig and fuss among the roses and listened with slight response to her cheerful sentences, biding her time.
Nellie flitted about like a humming bird, coming every now and then to lay her little head against her mother's arm with a caressing touch that spoke well for the relation between the two. She stayed to carry water in her own tiny watering pot, when at last her grandmother could no longer make excuse to stop out of doors, and with a secret sigh, led her daughter into the house.
"Well, honey," she said, with an attempt at treating matters lightly. "You're not feeling jes' right to-day. Now, try to forgit all about whatever's been plaguin' you, and res' yo'self on the sofa, whilst I go an' see about somethin' nice fur dinner."
"No, no, mother. You know well enough Aunt Liza don't need any suggestions about her dinner. And I want to talk to you. Imust. You'll be sorry if you don't listen to me."
"Don't I always listen to you, Mandy?"
"Yes, mother, but you don't always listen willingly. You seem to think that if things are not spoken about that it's the same as if they didn't exist. You think I'll stand things better if I'm quiet about them."
"No, my dear child; dear knows I'm ready an' willin' to hyar all you want to say if it eases yo' mind any. But, honey, I do hate to hyar yo' say sech hard things about yo' husband as you've said to me before when you wuz put out."
"Put out!" repeated Amanda, with scornful emphasis. "Oh, mother, why won't you see the thing as it is? A wife may bear with her husband and not let anybody know what she goes through, but a mother with a helpless little child to defend, will be up in arms against a brute, and if anybody says she is wrong to take her child away from a father that abuses her, why, they cansayit. I knowin my own heart what's right, and I'll not take it out in talk. I'll act."
"Mandy, darlin'," pleaded her mother. "Shorely you're exaggeratin'. Vivian's got his faults, and fur be it frum me to defend 'em. I said to Jane Thomas, only last week, at the Bush Meetin', that if Vivian could only be persuaded to come up to the bench then an' thar an' promise to leave off it'd make me happier'n I've been since you wuz married. And she said—I ain't tellin' you to rile you 'gainst Vivian's ma; yo' know she feels fur him, same's I feel most fur you—says Jane; 'If Mandy'd ashow'd a leetle more fondness Vivian he'd a been different. He always wuz dependent on affection, an' a lovin' woman could hev done anythin' with him. Mandy's been cold as a stun, an' it's no wonder'—I mean t'say she said it wuz a wonder 't hedidn'tgo after other women."
A hot color rushed into Amanda's cheeks, and she spread her hands widely, with a gesture of repulsion. "Don't take the trouble totry to hide it," she said in a low tone. "Do you think I don't know what he races down to Richmond for every month or two—and where all the money goes to? Benvenew falling to pieces, Nellie and I with no clothes excepting what you give us, and he—gambler and libertine!"
"Mandy, Mandy, hush!" begged Mrs. Powell, alarmed at a much more forcible expression than Amanda had ever yet permitted herself.
"You know it's true, mother," Amanda answered in a softer manner. "You and I and his mother know all about it. Of course Mrs. Thomas blames me, and upholds him. If it hadn't been for her interference and continually taking his part, I might have made him behave himself better. I know all Fauquier County believes he's the injured innocent. I'm outspoken and he's deceitful. With his soft, smooth manner outside it's not surprising people think as they do; that my temper drove him to drink. And then he nevergets so far gone in public as he does at home."
"Honey, that's somethin' to be thankful fur, shorely?"
"Oh, yes," said Amanda with a strange look. "Appearances are so much. Why, even our own minister took it upon himself, not long ago, to read me a sort of veiled lecture about the beauty of meekness in a woman. I'm tired—tired, tired of being eternally misunderstood, and of this sort of 'devil and angel' game—such as the children play—where he's the angel and I'm the devil."
Mrs. Powell rocked back and forth softly, her placid face expressing more concern than had ever appeared there before. There was a sustained earnestness about Amanda's bitter outpouring different from the hysterical anger she was used to show upon the occasions when she and her child appeared with their traveling bag at the Powell homestead.
"Dearie," she said hesitatingly, "do you pray about it?"
"We had better let that subject alone," Amanda answered quietly. "I might hurt your feelings, and I don't want to do that, mother dear. Poor ma! It isn't your fault. You didn't want me to have him."
"No, honey, but now you're married thar ain't nothin' else to do but to b'ar it. Fur the child's sake, Mandy, live as peaceable as you kin. Think how dretful it is fur her to see you two on bad terms with one another."
"The child! Yes, I should think—for her sake," cried Amanda, her wrath flashing forth again. "It is ofherI'm thinking more than anything. Vivian Thomas hasn't any more love for his child than he has for anything outside of his own pleasure. He even abuses her!" And then she told of the scene of the morning.
"Poor little thing—poor little darling," said the grandmother indignantly; but adding in a soothing tone: "After all, Mandy, you know he is the child's father, and he maybe didn't hurt her much."
"What right had he to even go near her when he was in that condition? But, mother, I tell you, it's not only when he's the worse for liquor. I've known him strike her at other times. He's cruel. There was always a streak of cruelty in his nature. You won't believe it—nobody'd think it to see him, but I tell you he is born to impose on weaker people. Nellie is afraid of him, and he makes her little life miserable. I can't stand it. People have no right to bring a child into this world and make it miserable. It's my duty to take her away from such a father."
"Yo' can't do that," said Mrs. Powell.
"I can. I can go away and take her with me."
"Dearie, now yo're talkin' wild. Leave yo' husband?"
"Yes," said Amanda, vehemently. She got up and began to pace the floor. It was almost impossible for her to sit still, when excited, and her mother had long since accustomed herself to seeing her daughter movingback and forth with hurried yet measured steps, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, while she talked in tones always growing lower and clearer as her mind became more energetic.
"I've been thinking of this for a long time. I took a resolution last time it—it happened, that the next time he did anything to Nellie, I'd shake the dust of his place from my feet. It's not so much his drinking, mother—though I believe any woman has a right to leave a man that drinks, and that if there's danger of having children by him, it's herdutyto leave him—but it's what he is altogether. I despise Vivian Thomas."
"I wish I knowed what to say to you. I know you ain't right, Mandy. It's a woman's place to stay by the man she marries, through thick and thin. 'Fur better or worse,' reck'lect."
"That was the old idea—the idea of people who made up the form for the marriage ceremony. It's a dead letter in our law to-day, and it's a dead letter in society, too. Does anybodyexpect men and women to stay tied all their lives to what's horrible? These are modern times, mother."
"I'm afeared this comes o' that visit o' yo'n to Chicago, to Cousin Lois' folks," lamented her good mother. "I dunno nothin' 'bout sech notions. But I do know somethin' 'bout what people think in Fauquier County. A woman that leaves her husband puts herself in the wrong, and no matter if she's innocent as the driven snow there's always a shadow hangin' to her. Jes' stop and think what folks'd say, my dear!"
"Aye," assented Amanda, bitterly. "I know what they'd say well enough. But Fauquier County isn't the world. Why, mother, out beyond these narrow boundaries of Virginia there's free territory where women own their own souls, and can think for themselves. They can even obey their own conscience if it leads them to go against the minister and the church."
Mrs. Powell raised a hand that trembled andput it up to her temple with a despairing gesture. Tears, almost strangers to her gentle, serene eyes, gathered and rolled down her cheeks.
"Pore Mandy," she said in a choking voice. "You's fur and away from any ground whar I kin meet up with you. I've knowed fur a spell back you ain't took no interest in the church, and I'm gre'tly afeared that's at the bottom o' your troubles. If you desert the Lord He'll desert you, honey. It's shore as I'm settin' hyar."
Amanda had kneeled down and pressed her mother's head against her shoulder; but as the good woman regarded her sadly, somewhat as she might have regarded a sinner about to be prayed for in her congregation, a melancholy, half-mocking smile succeeded to the concern on the worn, handsome face upon a level with her own.
"Do you think if I had worked for the fair last month, and had gone regularly to the sewing society all this while that it mighthave helped to make a different man of Vivian?"
"Maybe not, dearie; though the Lord wurks by means, an' we can't tell," answered her mother, naïvely.
"Well, mother," Amanda said, "we can't think just alike about some things. You're good. You'd be good whether you were in the Second Baptist Church or in Egypt squatting before a hideous image. And I must be myself. I must do what I think right, no matter what other people think or say. And I think it right to take my child away from a father that ill-treats her, and who sets her a frightful example in every way."
"Why, you wouldn't want to cast such a slur as that on yo' daughter. People'd throw it up to her always—that her father an' mother didn't live together!"
"But if she was so much happier in other ways that she could afford to stand the talk, mother?"
"No, Mandy, no. Thar ain't no womanthat's come uv a good family and been raised proper, an' to feel like a nice woman nat'rally does feel, but what'd ruther suffer anything else'n creation than to hev the finger o' scorn pointed at her an' know she or any o' her family'd done anything to desarve it."
Mrs. Powell had been wrought up to a point where her feelings demanded expression, and she continued with an earnestness and sincerity that had the effect of the finest eloquence.
"Even if thar air what yo' call 'extenuatin' circumstances,' you couldn't do this thing without bringin' 'pon yo'self the very hardest trial you could be set to endure. You couldn't be in any company without thinkin' uneasily, 'Would these people be willin' I sh'd be amongst 'em if they knowed how 'twas with me?' In church you'd fancy every wurd the preacher utters p'inted straight at you. And let alone yo'self, what wouldn't you go through thinkin' people wuz slightin' Nellie because o' you?"
"Mother, mother!" Amanda cried, "you mistake me. You're exaggerating the thing. I—I didn't meandivorce!"
"No, you don't mean it now, but it'd come to that. I feel it in my bones," said Mrs. Powell, solemnly.
"Well, now, dear, dear mother, listen to me," her daughter pleaded. "Suppose that—finally, that was the only way to save myself—to—to protect myself from—suppose we were in another place, in a northern city, where nobody knows me?"
"Thar ain't no place on the face of the 'arth so remote but what talk'd find you out."
"Shall we be martyrs, then, to a few old women's tongues? Am I to take the risk of"—Amanda bent and finished her sentence in her mother's ear.
"Honey, shorely ye kin leavethatin the good Lord's hands!"
"I'd have been in a nice fix if I'd have left it in his hands all these years," said Amanda Thomas, with a look so skeptical and full ofaccusation against something seen only in her mind's eye, that her mother's pink color faded and left her pretty cheeks white. "That's where our creeds differ, mother. I believe in not leaving things to chance."
"I said leavin' 'em to the Lord," the old lady amended.
"It's the same thing," said Amanda, recklessly.
"Oh, Mandy, Mandy, it gives me a cold chill fur to hear you talk so."
"I won't talk so, then. Heaven knows I don't want to worry you any more than can be helped. But let's look at this thing reasonably. First, about Nellie. The child must and shall have a chance for a happy, peaceful life. She mustn't be tyrannized over, and hampered, and kept down; she ought to be well educated and have a fair chance in the world. And for that she must be away from here—and away from her father."
"Why, I sh'd think her pa wuz the ve'y one to help her to an eddication. Vivian'ssmart enough, an' ain't he been to college?"
"Yes, he's been to college, and he can sing sweetly, the girls say, and play the flute, and read Horace's odes in the original, and dance better than any other man in the county," said Amanda, despairingly. "But does all that make him a good father, or fit him to supervise Nellie's education?"
"I dunno what more you kin want, dear," answered her perplexed parent.
"Well! There are certain moral qualities. We needn't go into it. To come to myself. I'm a young woman yet, mother, only twenty-eight. Is my whole life to be ruined for this one mistake, made when I was a mere child, and ignorant of the world as a baby?"
"You forgit. A woman's life's sp'iled if she leaves her husband. Thar ain't no sech thing as takin' a fresh start with a livin' husband in the background o' your life. He'd be croppin' up yar an' thar an' ev'ywhar, wors'n a field o' nettles. Do you reckon Vivian's goin' tolose sight o' you? And, moreover, Mandy, if you sh'd go to the dretful pass o' seekin' a divorce, wouldn't the law give him the child?"
Amanda started, and bent her black brows fiercely. This was the first argument her mother had used that she was unable to answer.
"Of course the laws are all in favor of the men. Yes, they would give my innocent darling—my baby that is part of my own flesh and blood, that I've nourished at my breast, that I've suffered for and lived for these nine years—to a besotted, selfish, immoral man who would never fulfill one duty toward her, and who doesn't care for her the worth of his little finger. The only thing is that I don't believe he'd want her."
Mrs. Powell shook her head. "You can't depend on that. Men always want the last thing you might s'pose'd be any use to 'em. They want their own way, you see."
"Then the only thing I can do is to keep it a secret where I go. There are places enough."
"An' how'd ye git along, poor child? How'd ye do cooped up'n some mean leetle place without no run fur Nellie, an' without horses, nor anybody to do a han's turn fur ye? And, dearie, you know, even though I'd ruther you'd stay hyar by yo' duty, wharever you go my lov'd foller you, an' I'd always do all in my power. But money's the one thing we don't hev. If you're somewhar 't you hev to put yo' han' in yo' pocket fur ev'y livin' thing, even to an egg, or a slip o' parsley, how 'pon 'arth'll you do?"
"I mean to work, dear mother. I can sew, and embroider, and do lots of things," said Amanda, spreading her white hands and looking at them meditatively; not dreaming, poor, thing, of the thousands and thousands of other defter and more experienced hands stretched forth in the localities she thought abounding in lucrative work, for the merest shadow of employment, and the paltriest sort of recompense.
In Mrs. Powell's imagination Amanda was a rarely talented and capable woman, able toperform wonders, yet her shrewd common sense suggested difficulties that Amanda could not but recognize when they were pointed out, averse as she was to consider any details made against her plan.
They talked over the matter from every point of view, the elder woman reiterating the same arguments she had used already, and the younger one meeting them continually with that free, liberal interpretation of the gospel of individuality which youth has always flourished in the face of age and conservatism.
Mrs. Powell held out as stanchly as only a good, bigoted Christian woman, devoutly living up to the public opinion of an insular, mountain village, can hold out against modern heresies striking at the very foundation of her social system, and her religious beliefs. But Amanda had been for a very long time working herself up to her present resolution, and she stuck to her purpose with unflinching steadfastness, and had by supper-time succeeded in convincing her mother that she was in deadlyearnest and not to be dissuaded. And after she had put Nellie into the great old-fashioned bed and tucked the coverlet about her soft, warm little throat, she only stayed by her long enough to be sure that the child was sound asleep, then kissing the curls floating out over the pillow, with a fervent affection such as no man had ever known from this woman with a genius for motherhood, she stole away softly, leaving the door ajar, and went back to the sitting-room to talk to her mother more definitely about the plans she had formed for the future.
But hardly had the two settled down before the fire when, with a rattle and a bang, very unlike her old-time timidity, Jane Thomas flung herself into the room.
"Sh—h!" said Amanda, as the heavy door slammed shut. "You'll wake Nellie!" She got up and set the door partly open again, then resumed her seat, pushing the chair away from the hearth to make room for her mother-in-law, but saying no word of welcome, for she feltthat this visit was made with some special disciplinary intention toward herself.
If ever a woman's face and mien conveyed indignation and resentment of the splenetic sort, Mrs. Thomas' meager visage and thin figure manifested these sentiments as she fell into the chair drawn forward for her, and turned her watery-blue eyes upon her son's wife.
"Nellie!—to be shore!" she uttered in a spiteful whimper. "Pity but what yo'd hev a leetle consideration for other folks 'sides that child. Hyar yo've done pitched onter Vivian and attackted him with hammers an' druv him out'n his own house, an' made a scandal that'll ring through Fauquier County, and the saints above knows what it's all about. I thank the Lord I ain't got yo' disposition!"
"You've a great deal to be thankful for in the way of disposition," observed Amanda. She had closed her lips tightly, resolving to maintain absolute silence; but what womancan suppress the witty retort when her antagonist exposes a vulnerable point?
"Seems ter me I'd be a leetle mo' humble, consider'n' what yo've done. It'd become you ter be thankful 't yo' awful temper didn't do no mo' harm 'n it done. Not but what it done 'nuff an' mo'n I shu'd like ter hev 'pon my conscience."
"If you'd take a few of your son's sins upon your conscience it might give you something to do."
"Oh, I don't look fur nothin' but sass from you, 'Mandy Powell. Yo've a tongue the devil hisself 'd fly frum."
"If Vivian Thomas has run from it you must be right," answered Amanda.
Mrs. Thomas rocked back and forth till her chair creaked with a spiteful sound that seemed to her hearers to be an echo of her whining voice. She expatiated upon the deplorable effects of her daughter-in-law's fearful outbreak of the morning, and warned her that no man on earth was called on to put up with suchtantrums, and that if she was locked up in the lunatic asylum it would be no more than she had a right to expect.
Amanda put a severe break upon her imperious spirit and said no more words in reply until at last Mrs. Thomas brought out her final taunt, that she had only run away for the purpose of getting Vivian to come after her and bring her back; and for this time she was mistaken. She would have to stay away a mighty long while if she waited for him to fetch her, and she'd be glad to creep home again by the time everybody cried shame upon her.
Then Amanda arose and stood before her adversary, tall and majestic, with her arms folded across her swelling chest, and her black brows bent in such a frown as made Jane Thomas' cowardly heart flutter, until she thought of the impossibility of a personal encounter with this woman, whom she would have given half her possessions to conquer and humiliate.
"I say to you here and now," said Amanda, using unconsciously an orotund quality of voice that, together with her pose, rendered her delivery so forceful that her words stamped themselves upon the memory of both her hearers: "I have left Vivian Thomas' roof forever. Spread the fact as fast as you please; gloat upon the scandal it will create in this gossiping little place, and tear my reputation to pieces as fast as you want to. No power under Heaven can make me look upon that man's face again, or pass a moment in his company!"
For a few seconds there was a hush in the air, as if a missile had been thrown, and an effect was looked for. People often experience this momentary apprehension when some peculiarly definite and emphatic stand has been taken by anyone; as if definiteness, in this changing world, was a crime to bring down punishment.
But effects rarely follow so swiftly as those that came upon the heels of Amanda's declaration.Hardly had her voice died away when her mother arose hastily, crying:
"Hark, what's that?"
There were sounds of dogs barking, voices exclaiming, and the quick, irregular gallop of a horse's feet coming up to the front porch. The three women stood looking at each other, when a wild figure with eyes starting out of its head, wool standing on end, and gown half torn from its back, burst into the room, and Admonia cried out in a hoarse voice:
"Mis' Mandy, Mis' Mandy! Fur de Lawd's sake, Mis' Mandy—Mr. Vivian done fell off'n he's horse inter Mowbry Gulch an' b'oke he's neck!"
III.
Mowbray Gulchwas a danger-pit lying midway between Sampson's Tavern and Benvenew. The road narrowed after passing Bloomdale, and wound around the spur of the Blue Ridges known as Round Peak, in a manneronly a native could have understood. Vivian had traversed the narrow bridle-path thousands of times without a thought of danger, galloping past at night in that spirit of confidence characteristic of a Virginia boy, said to be "born on horseback."
The accident must have occurred early in the evening, for a passer-by on his way home to supper found a hat and whip on the road near the edge of the Gulch, and looking down, discovered a man's form on the rocks, twenty feet below, lying perfectly motionless, with a white face upturned to the sky.
At least three hours had intervened between that and Admonia's alarm, and when the three women arrived in Jane Thomas' wagon (she had wept, and abused her daughter-in-law all the way) they had found many neighbors upon the scene, and the doctor bending over something stretched out on a mattress by the road-side.
"He is living," were the words they heard as they came up, and Mrs. Thomas broke outinto wails of thankfulness, while Mrs. Powell breathed more quietly a prayer as grateful. Amanda said no word, but a deep sigh exhaled from her burdened chest, and she tried to draw nearer. A friendly hand held her back. Edgar Chamblin's blue eyes glimmered anxiously in the light of the lantern he was holding, and he said with kindly insistence:
"I wouldn't go nigh him jes' yet, Mis' Mandy. We're goin' ter tote him ovah t' cousin Evy Smith's. Her'n is the nighest house, an' Doctor Sowers says he must be taken ter the ve'y nighest place."
"Can't he be takenhome?" wailed Vivian's mother. "I mean tomyhouse whar he kin be taken cyar uv?" with a spiteful look at her daughter-in-law.
The doctor looked up anxiously. Vivian's closed lids had quivered for a second and a look of consciousness appeared, then faded away. With tender hands he was laid on the cot that now arrived and carried over the field to Miss Eva Smith's cottage, where the littlebedroom off the parlor had been made ready for him, and the best bed was spread with every dainty piece of linen the spinster could draw from her treasured store.
So it was upon a lace-trimmed, hemstitched pillow-slip that the beautiful head of the injured man reposed, and over him was spread a silk quilt that had long been the pride of Miss Evy's maiden heart, and which she now brought forth with a solemn sense of consecration.
Miss Evy was a thin, fragile woman, with a figure that had once been willowy, but was now angular; blue eyes that once were like forget-me-nots, contrasting with tender, coral lips and baby blond hair; but tears shed in secret had washed the blue from her eyes and the peachy bloom from her oval cheeks, until only a faint reminiscence remained of the beauty which had captivated Vivian Thomas' boyish fancy. One of the peculiarities of Vivian's fortune was that the women he had wooed and forsaken remained faithful to him till death, cherishingno resentment and seeking no retaliation; but, instead, biding the time when by some act of service they could prove the strength of an affection that always had in it an element of maternal fondness.
Why some men whose paths through life are marked by the broken hearts of women should experience from those they injure the tenderness and leniency seldom or never accorded to better but rougher men is something only to be explained by the waywardness of feminine nature. The majority of women like to be martyred, but resent frank abuse. The weakly child of the flock easily converts his mother into a slave, even though she perceives through the veil of feebleness the force of egotism. And in the same way the man of soft manners, winning voice, and insinuating tongue, may play the tyrant at his pleasure, and be admired and adored by women whose slavishness is a conscious concession to some imagined delicacy that appeals to their maternal instinct.
In the humble heart of Miss Evy her girlhood's hero had maintained his place, notwithstanding her conscientious efforts after Vivian's marriage to think of him as something entirely apart from her life. Thinking of him was a privilege she allowed herself under certain restrictions. She thought of him when she prayed, when she sang in the choir on Sunday and Wednesday nights, and when she worked in her flower-garden. Most of all then, for long ago he had been used to stop his horse and stand outside the low stone fence, with his arm through the bridle-rein, and talk with her in a playfully sentimental way that she had thought the prettiest sort of love-making. And so, to keep him out of her mind when she tended her spotted lilies and trained the purple wistaria, was as impossible as it would have been to avoid the connection between the sky and the gracious heaven lying beyond.
It was an innocent indulgence that did not infringe upon the rights of Vivian's wife, anddid no harm to the gentle woman herself; for it kept alive her faith in human nature and trust in the compensations Providence has in store for those who have been denied their heart's desire in this world. And these are feelings that die out in most of us under the scourge of disappointment and leave something worse than heartache in their room.
There had been days when the loneliness of her self-chosen, single lot had been too hard to be borne, and sometimes then Miss Evy would steal to the window of her little spare front room, and peep guiltily through a slit in the blue shade to watch for a sight of Vivian riding past, and when the longed-for vision appeared, she would start back with her hand on her heart and a hot color in her delicate cheek, but he never saw her, nor ever dreamed of her observation. If he had he would have dismounted and chatted with her for a few minutes at the gate; for Vivian was ever tender toward the women who worshiped him, andhe would have valued the eloquent if silent appreciation of this faithful heart, and taken comfort in the sympathy she would have expressed at least in looks; rumor having carried to her news of scenes at Benvenew, little to Amanda's credit.
As she stood back behind the door, and watched from this little distance hands that had a better right than her own minister to the man she loved, a pang of jealousy sent its jarring quiver through all her nerves; but the next instant it was succeeded by the thankful feeling that it was hers to extend hospitality, to furnish the means of comfort, and mayhap, her privilege, while others rested, to help nurse him back to health.
There was something for everyone to do that night, for the country doctor worked with the bustle that grows out of the necessity of finding occupation for the officious onlookers who must not be offended. Something for everybody excepting Jane Thomas, whose hysterical condition made her such a nuisancethat even Dr. Sowers could think of no more diplomatic suggestion than that she should go somewhere and lie down—and take some warm water and brandy.
"And me a Blue Ribboner!" she moaned resentfully.
Amanda was a born nurse; self-restrained, level-headed, tender and strong, she won golden laurels in the doctor's opinion as she quietly took her place at his side, and intelligently carried out his wishes without comment or question. Her mother went home at nine o'clock to take care of little Nellie, the doctor having stated his opinion that although there was concussion of the brain, Vivian's hurt would not necessarily prove fatal. The state of coma might be followed by brain fever, but with good nursing his fine constitution would bring him through.
"It's sartenly a special Providence," thought Mrs. Powell, when Amanda told her that she should stay at the cottage. "Don't you take a mite o' fear 'bout Nellie; you know she'd staywith me contented fur any length o' time," she said, as she left.
"But you'll bring her over to see me for a few minutes when you come to-morrow," Amanda urged, and her mother answered: "Uv coas, honey, we'll come over right 'arly. Don't you get wore out now; you and Miss Evy take tu'ns settin' up."
It had required considerable effort to induce Mrs. Thomas to see things in the light of her uselessness, and it was the doctor himself who finally carried her off and left the house to Miss Evy and Amanda. It was late when they found themselves alone in the little room where lay the still form of the man who was dearer than her heart's best blood to the one woman, and to the other—who shall say whether dear, or no?
Amanda had never been in love with the all-conquering hero of Fauquier County. At eighteen she had been in love with love; and Vivian was nearer the embodiment of her ideal than any other whom she knew. The highestpowers of our nature remain latent in most of us for lack of opportunity to develop. It may be a talent, it may be a virtue that stays in the germ throughout all the ups and downs of our career, and that we pass on to our children to come out in them as practical capacity.
Although Amanda had in her nature a rare power of wifely devotion, it was of the royal order; it could not stoop, and so it died away. And in its stead had grown to mighty proportions the mother-love that extends in women of a high type beyond the instinctive care of her own young, to an all-embracing tenderness toward feeble creatures of every degree. The little ones, the helpless, the sick appealed to this strong, self-poised woman in a way that called out every capacity for self-sacrifice that lay in her, and she would have wrestled with death and all the evil powers to save from harm anything which confided itself to her protection.
The vigorous, healthy Vivian, contemptuously setting at naught her standards of duty, and wounding her dignity in a hundred ways,was so repulsive to her moral sense that she was ready to fly from him as from a pestilence. But Vivian cast down from his height of graceful insolence and dependent upon her kind offices, had claims before which every critical faculty bowed itself. All she thought of now was how to help him.
"Do you think he'll come to in his right mind?" asked Miss Evy in a low murmur, after half an hour had passed in silence. She could not stand it any longer. She felt as if she must say something. That handsome, calm woman seated at the head of the bed awed her, and at the same time irritated her. In some vague way she felt that Amanda was to blame for Vivian's accident. Like Mrs. Thomas she felt that if the wife had fallen into spasms of self-reproach it would have been more fitting than this display of courage and energy. Yet she was glad, too, for his sake that there was some one at hand able to "take holt and do whatever wuz needed."
Amanda looked over at the gentle spinsterpleasantly, but replied only by a faint shake of the head. Her watch lay open upon the stand beside a glass of medicine, covered with a hymn book. Upon the book lay a thin silver spoon marked with the initials of Miss Evy's grandmother. It was one of six, and Miss Evy only used them upon rare occasions.
Amanda still wore her black silk, and over it she had tied one of her hostess' white aprons, made of fine nainsook and trimmed with a deep border of home-made lace. Aprons are the least neutral of garments, for they have the effect of bringing into view certain values in their wearer. By this touchstone some women are instantly proclaimed dowdies; others approved as domestic, and still others marked out as queens or fairies masquerading. The natural servant wears her apron smartly; the born chatelaine with an inimitable grace. Upon Amanda's magnificent figure the garment assumed the air of the imperial purple, and Miss Evy, watching her meekly, acknowledged in her successful rival some rare quality which shecould not name, but which seemed to account for and justify the ascendancy she was said to exercise over all her family.
At midnight Vivian opened his eyes. "Whoa, Sultan!" he uttered in feeble tones, and made a motion with his hand as if he pulled upon the reins. Miss Evy started, but Amanda laid her finger on her lips and bending over him, said softly:
"Drink this, Vivian," putting a glass to his lips. He drank all she gave him eagerly, then his head fell back upon the pillow, and he slept till dawn.
Miss Evy was persuaded to retire toward morning. She would have preferred to sit there and watch, but she could not say so, and she was compelled to steal away upstairs, and leave Vivian to his wife, who kept unwinking vigil until the first glimmer of light shot through the closed blinds of the east window. Then she arose and put out the lamp, and noiselessly raising the window let the pure, fresh mountain air into the little room. During her watchful nighther mind had been entirely occupied with Vivian's condition; she had not thought of herself. But now, as the sun touched the tip of Round Peak and crept downward till the whole valley was illumined with the light of a perfect October day, she became conscious, with a thrill of pain, of that feeling of personal life and identity which is so strong and vivid when, in some beautiful spot isolated from the whirl of cities, we open our eyes upon a new day.
There is no other joy so fine and none so fleeting, perhaps, as this stirring of our individual energies by the breath of that mighty living force that recreates us each morning after the apathy of night. At this instant of recognition the day belongs to us and the air resounds with a pæan of wonderful hopes and promises, as if our single personality were the only concern of nature. Soon the responsibilities of our relations to others crowd out this sense of individual life and the momentary Sabbath-peace of the soul is broken up by the work-a-day hum of jarring machinery. So, swift upon the exaltationaroused in Amanda by the influence of an unshared sunrise, came the disappointing sense of check and defeat to her own purposes and plans, which had been wrought within the last few hours. None of the reasons that led to her decision to go away and begin a new life remote from these surroundings had altered. Fauquier County was still limited, narrow, and hostile to Nellie's mental development; Benvenew was still poverty-stricken, and no new resources suggested themselves. And Vivian was still the old Vivian, with all his vices upon his head, and likely with the first hour of returning health to repel and disgust her, just as he had been doing all along. Every condition she had dwelt upon as urgent cause of flight was unchanged; and yet, with lightning swiftness was accomplished that resolution, paralleled in the experience of every one of us, by which the one whose offenses had banished him from her consideration, was made through sudden appeal to pity, the object of first importance to her.
As Amanda turned from the window and approached the bed where Vivian was now opening eyes in which the light of reason was absent, she turned her back upon all the rosy hopes that had been dwelling in her imagination, and took up the burden of a hard and painful duty. For she was aware through the prophetic insight that flashes through our acts into the region of remote consequences, that out of the immediate obligation of nursing her husband back to health and strength, would grow ties that would cramp and fetter all her future. Her only defense against whatever his will might impose upon her had been in her feeling of antagonism. For, strong and self-poised as she was, she had the woman's weak-point of an intense susceptibility, and if she had achieved the wish to be hard as nails, the first touch from a beseeching hand would inevitably break through the crust and betray the lurking softness beneath.
It was with a quiver of fright that she realized, as she raised Vivian's head upon herarm and felt him weakly recline against it, that the barriers would soon be broken down between them, and that there might enter into her heart, destitute of respect and esteem that pitiful substitute for true affection, a self-immolating tenderness that leads judgment into abysses where poisonous plants grow, exhaling odors detrimental to sanity and health. The flash of fear came and went, and no one, save her mother, ever knew what Amanda's concession meant to her, and what it involved.
Miss Evy had passed a sleepless night, and at six o'clock she crept softly down to the door of Vivian's bedroom and stood for a moment before she knocked, listening for sounds that she dreaded to hear, the sound of incoherent murmuring, in femininely sweet tones.
"Come in," Amanda called, and she entered, with a scared, anxious face and timid step.
"He's out of his mind, ain't he?" she queried pitifully, and Amanda made an assenting movement of the head.
Vivian's delirium was not violent at first,and he submitted to requirements with a gentleness that was like his ordinary courtesy. But he recognized no one for many days, showing a preference, however, for Amanda and her mother, over all the others who came in to offer their services. His wife seemed to have a peculiarly soothing effect upon him, and with another variation from his attitude when in health, he was impatient and fretful whenever his mother appeared. Mrs. Thomas took this hard, and in the parlor of the cottage, where she sat most of the time seeing callers, she bewailed the ingratitude of her son, and whispered dark sayings against Amanda—"who wuz tryin' now to throw dust in people's eyes by makin' out she was dreadful fond o' him, when if the truth wuz told—"
It seemed as if everybody within ten miles around came with offers of help and utterances of sympathy; the last delivered only to Mrs. Thomas and Miss Evy, for few persons saw Amanda. For ten days she watched by Vivian's bedside with a devotion that completelyrevolutionized all Miss Evy's ideas of her, and astonished even her mother. And when, from the very jaws of death, Vivian came slowly back to life, he had become to her like a dear child, whom it was her duty to shield and minister to, and treat with a tenderness unmingled with criticism. Whether this mental attitude would continue was a question. Mrs. Powell held counsel about it with herself, and made it a subject of prayer: "That Mandy would go on bein' forgivin' an' lovin' an' that all'd go well betwixt her an' her husband."
The exquisite season of Indian Summer, the fifth season of the year in the mountain region of Virginia, set in early, and one morning when the air was so soft that it brought to the surface all the gentle, kindly impulses of hearts that stiffen and congeal under the rough touch of frost, Amanda found herself curiously moved as she stepped lightly about Vivian's room, waiting for him to awake.
It often happens that a mental preparationunconsciously takes place in us for events about to happen. A letter is on its way to us, and we think of the writer, sometimes expressing a solicitude the letter's contents justify. A friend visits us and we meet him with the remark that we were at that moment longing for his presence. Some catastrophe takes place that we were anticipating, and if a pleasure is in the air its approach is heralded by a peculiar elation and excitement that our occupations cannot account for.
These are more tangible things, and easier to understand than the subtle atmospheric changes that pass along from heart to heart. How can we explain the power affection has to send its prophet before to prepare for its coming? In some unexpected hour a certain something tugs at our heart-strings and tunes them up so that when the right hand is extended a melody is evoked that we did not think of or intend.
Amanda was a practical woman, not an emotional one, but she was not therefore any theless alive to fine shades of feeling. She dusted the bedroom with a piece of dampened cheese-cloth, set carefully upon the stand the slender necked Bohemian vase of flowers that were Miss Evy's morning tribute, and laid out clean towels beside the basin of fresh water upon the chair by the bed, as methodically as usual. Yet she was conscious of being in a state of expectancy, as if she stood upon the eve of something.
Vivian opened his eyes, larger and clearer for his three weeks' illness, and looked in her face with that solemn expression that accompanies the return of consciousness after the delirium of fever, and she trembled under the rush of tenderness that his gaze awakened.
"Amanda!" he said feebly, "you in here! Aren't you up early?"
"Not so very early, dear," she responded, very gently. "It's you who have slept late."
"Strange I don't feel more like getting up," he remarked. Then his gaze wandered overthe room, and came back in perplexity to her face.
"Are you the genii?" he asked with a little smile.
"Am I what?" She thought his wits were wandering again.
"The genii. I must be Prince Camaralzaman. I went to sleep in my own room last night, and wake up in this, which I vow I never saw before."
"You were indeed brought here, but not from your own room. You have been here three weeks, Vivian. You fell from your horse into Mowbray Gulch and hurt your head, and you have had brain fever."
She spoke slowly, and he followed her words attentively, closing his eyes when she was through, and lying perfectly quiet for a minute. Then he said:
"Where is 'here?'"
"We are at Miss Evy Smith's. Her house was the nearest place, you know, and you had to be brought here."
"Evy Smith's!" he repeated, with a strange little laugh. "That's singular." After an interval, he added:
"Has she been nursing me?"
"She helped. She has been very, very kind. A sister could not have done more."
"She was always sweet and obliging," he observed. "But—Amanda, come sit down on the bed, won't you? My voice seems mighty weak, somehow."
"I mustn't let you talk," Amanda said. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and as she did so a flush settled upon her firm cheek and stayed there. Not for three years had she been so close to him. Perhaps he remembered, too. What he said was:
"So it is you who have been taking care of me? It was good of you, Amanda. I think you must have grown rather fond of me while I've been at your mercy here."
That unerring tact of his suggested exactly the right thing to say. Not a word to jar the delicate springs of feeling that had been set atwork in her, and not a sign that he meant to take advantage of her changed attitude.
He was too weak to think such matters out. He merely obeyed the keen instinct that belongs to natures like his, in emphasizing by this casual allusion the leniency and indulgence she must naturally feel toward him under the circumstances.
Some people have the faculty of making us feel grateful to them for permitting us to serve them. Vivian had it. Amanda was so delighted to see him recovering that she almost felt like thanking him for it. Perhaps one reason for this humility was that she had not been free throughout his illness from the sting of self-reproach. Outwardly she had ignored Jane Thomas' bitter charge that her violent conduct had indirectly caused Vivian's accident. But in secret her conscience had taken her to task again and again for her severity toward him. If it had led to this she felt that blame should rightly fall upon her.
No faculty of our nature brings to us keenersuffering than our sense of justice. Suppressed, it cries out continually; exercised, it leads to acts too positive to be endured in retrospect; and this relenting of a strong nature, this going back upon itself and its principles, is a common occurrence in daily life.
Great risk attends such changes of mental attitude, for character is built upon a belief in the correctness of our own judgment. If we ever come to a point where it appears probable that everything we have held to and believed in is a mistake, God help us!
Now, the strong point in Amanda's character was her unflinching uprightness. She had always dared tell the truth to herself, using no palliations. And in this way she felt certain of her ground. But now, for the first time, the demon of self-distrust had entered into her mind, and all her ideas and opinions became affected by it.
If she had been to blame in her attitude toward Vivian, how far was she to blame? In what respect was she right? Poor Amandawas now in a condition where Jane Thomas' stinging remarks could cause her discomfort. Strangely enough, her greatest consolation was in the attachment Miss Evy had formed for her.
"I don't know how I could ever have let myself think of you as I used to think, Mrs. Thomas," the gentle spinster had said once, when they were upon confidential terms. "I'm shore you're anything but unfeeling."
"Am I called that?" Amanda asked, not without a pang. She was no longer above caring what people said about her.
"Well, you know some people must have something to say about everybody," Miss Evy said, apologetically. "But since I know you, why, I think you're real good; even good enough for Mr. Thomas."
Amanda looked at her when she said that. Something occurred to her that she had heard a long time ago and forgotten.
"Thank you," she said, quite gently, and turned away.
Miss Evy's hospitality had not been worn out by the severe test made of it. As a convalescent Vivian had been endearing to the last degree. It was congenial to him to be waited upon, and the one severe and immitigable suffering incidental to his illness (and for which he secretly promised himself royal amends) was almost made up for by the knowledge that he had at last discovered Amanda's weak point, and could hereafter, at least in a measure, hold his own. Vivian did not put it just this way to himself. He had as great a genius for embroidering facts as Amanda had for truth. What he said was that he was glad to find that his wife was fond of him, after all. And in a beautiful spirit he forgave her, and took her to his heart.
This is what Fauquier County understood. But it did not forgive Amanda.
A year later the county might have forgiven her, if she had borne the misfortune that came to her more meekly. But revolutions of character are seldom permanent, and Amanda, aftercompromising with her own judgment because it found her consistently severe, entered into that debatable territory where we are swayed alternately by a desire to be gentle and an impulse to be sharp.
"I don't mean to reproach ye, honey," her mother said, one day when Amanda was spending the day with her; "but somehow, yo' temper ain't so even as it used to be. You wuz always high—wantin' things yo' own way. It ain't so much that now. But you's mo' easy upset than you used to be."
Amanda turned her dark eyes upon her mother. They were beautiful still. But that crisis of a woman's life when her beauty begins to fade had come to her early.
Upon her lap lay a three months' old baby. It had a look of vigor, and a certain weird beauty about its little face; but not for an instant during her almost passionate care of it had Amanda been able to forget something that the flowing robes concealed from casual glances. The child was hopelessly deformed.
"Yes, dearie, I know," said Mrs. Powell, her gaze following Amanda's as it was bent upon the sleeping infant. "I know it's a trial. And I'm ashamed I said anything. Nobody need t' wonder at yo' bein' a mite out o' gear. But trust the good Laud, Mandy, and He'll bring everything out right, yit."
"Will He straighten baby's back, do you think, mother? Or do you mean that He will make things right by letting it die?"
Mrs. Powell's color arose, and she did not venture to reply. Could any one but a mother wish the child to live?
"He will not die," said Amanda, laying her hand softly on the baby's thick golden hair. There was intense feeling in the low tone, but with her next words her voice took on a hard quality that Mrs. Powell had learned to associate with acute distress. "He will live," she cried, but not loudly; "live to reproach his father for a sin so dark that no one can name it. Aye, we must hush it up. This is a 'visitation of Providence,' in the opinion of ourgood friends. Well, I don't call it that. The truth is that it's a visitation ofliquor, of——"
"Hush, hush, Mandy!"
"Excuse my lack of delicacy," said Amanda, with biting scorn. Not scorn of her mother, but of the idea of the county as reflected in her mother. She leaned back and drew a fleecy white shawl carefully over the baby's shoulders, then resumed sadly: