BENSON'. love for Virginia was the one unusual thing in his otherwise ordinary life. It gave him the joy of a great hope; and it held the fear of a proportionate disappointment. Time had brought only the most superficial changes in their relation; she was as far removed from him, as unapproachable, as she had ever been; speech was still a great distance off. But his silent worship had only grown more devout; with the passing of time it had become a dreamy ecstasy in which he dwelt in the splendid solitude of his perfect fancy.
Virginia treated him with charming friendliness, but beyond this he dared not push his fortunes; he must have infinite patience, infinite tact. Of the remote and greater possibilities of their friendship she had never been conscious, because to her these possibilities could not exist. She had forgotten nothing, could forget nothing, that had made up the sum and substance of her love for Stephen Landray. Benson in seeking to understand her always came back to this, time had not changed her here; and he appreciated that love might be a much greater thing, more sacred and more binding than the mere day to day evidences of its existence indicated. He wondered not a little what manner of man Stephen Landray had really been. He had known him only as a kindly tolerant fellow of apparently no unusual brilliancy, and possessing apparently no unusual delicacy of mind or feeling; who had always been too generous in his business dealings, with a taste, inborn and not to be eradicated, for a manner of life beyond his means; yet having an excellent moral courage which had always enabled him to speak his mind and hold his own opinions whether they were popular or not. Benson was aware that he himself had much of the close-mouthed conservatism of middle-class prosperity. His own convictions he held too tightly, but defended loosely, as if he were more than half ashamed of them. Virginia rarely mentioned the dead man now. When she did, it was without visible emotion beyond a certain tenderness that unconsciously stole into her voice and manner. In the face of her unending, unyielding devotion to Stephen's memory, Benson now and again gave way to a despair that was not far from abject in its hopelessness; and yet quite apart from his selfish interest in all that affected her, this devotion of hers was most pathetic to him. Was she going to waste her splendid youth in that great house out there beyond the town, away from people, and apart from all that was supposed to make living worth while? It would have hurt him to have thought of her as he did of Anna; but she was the younger, and her beauty was only now reaching the fullness of its perfection, and after a decent period had elapsed, then surely she might think of taking up life again. No worldly advantage could ever have any weight with her; but he knew that he was, as he was reputed to be, the richest man in Benson, that he had much to offer her, a way of life entirely suited to her tastes and traditions. He thought of these things, wondering if she could ever be brought to comprehend the value of all he had to give. In the absence of any closer tie he comforted himself with the thought that it was much gained to be her friend; yet on each occasion when they met, he sought to discover in her face that altered look which would bid him speak; but the change never came, and in her dark eyes there rested always the shadow of her sorrow.
He was still boy enough to wish that he might do some gallant deed, make some great heroic sacrifice for her sake, and so, splendidly, tell his love; but he knew that such opportunities were rare in the practical age into which he had been born. He owned almost sadly, that even had they existed, he was gifted with a thrifty shrewdness that would probably have stood in his way. No, his parts were not brilliant. By no stretch of imagination could he see himself the hero of a spectacular achievement of any sort.
He longed to be a poet with no theme but her, her beauty, her charm, and his love. But this wish was so absurd, that he found himself laughing at it, along with his other fancies, but with a certain joy and wonder that they had come to him; and with the wish that they might be something more than fancies. And so day after day, as he sat in his office, where he gave most excellent advice in a vast variety of cases, these thoughts filled his mind; they followed him out into the street when the cracked town bell summoned him to the dingy court-room, whither he walked with much deliberation and dignity; for he was aware that his youth, though beginning to be largely a matter of appearance only, was still not exactly in his favour.
He sometimes wondered what his clients—serious minded people for the most part, who were suing for judgments on bad debts, or involved in squabbles over line fences, or had foolishly acquired or rashly bestowed black eyes and broken noses—would have thought, if they could have known that under the mask of his professional interest in their affairs, he cherished such an array of dreams.
So he lived this double existence; Benson the lawyer, and Benson the lover, who dwelt removed and remote in a secret ecstasy all his own, and of which no man knew or guessed. It was the season of a generous enthusiasm, when he strove manfully toward a greater measure of worth, for his were the ideals that no man attains to but only desires; and only desires when he is young and generous; and this season, saw the passing of another season beyond the windows of his quiet house. The leaves on the maples, crimsoned at the touch of frost, faded and fell, clogging the open gutters with their faded heaps; the snow lay two feet on the level, and then came the period of frost and thaw; of melting snow and ice; and the imperceptible change from stagnation to life; and it was spring, and the maples were in bud again.
All this while he managed to be of use to Virginia in many ways. He watched over her interests with rare good judgment, for he was determined that no advantage should be taken of her. He found a tenant for the farm—Trent, whom Stephen had left in possession, having proved himself unworthy after the first year or two—and over this tenant he held a tight rein; and many were the trips he made to the farm to see that he failed in no part of his bargain. Then there was the mill, which he had rented on very desirable terms to a man by the name of Crawford, who came from a distance, and had some little capital and considerable energy.
He supposed, though she gave no sign, that he could interpret in support of his opinion, that there was much self-denial in the life that circumstances forced upon her. It was the same thing, without break or interruption, day after day, and month after month. Once, and the time was of course, well within his memory, the Landray home had been famous for its hospitality; but Virginia had neither the inclination nor the means to continue this; indeed her few friends in the town itself gradually dropped away, and her interests narrowed to the immediate members of her own household, who furnished her with something that stood for occupation. Jane's baby developed a variety of inconsequential ills such as babies usually develop, but of which Virginia was always inclined to take an extreme view as of potentially tragic possibilities. She had also been directing little Stephen's studies for some time; though she had assumed this responsibility with serious misgivings as to her fitness for such a task, since her own education was of the simple sort such as usually fell to the lot of girls at that period, and went no further than a fair use of the English language, a treacherous acquaintance with figures, and a very little French, which she had forgotten, she found, with a thoroughness that was quite disproportionate to so vague a knowledge as this had been at its best.
From Anna she heard occasionally. Her letters came at irregular intervals, great bulky packages filled with agreeably written descriptions of the places she was seeing. These, Virginia sometimes loaned the lawyer to read; as she took it for granted that he had the same interest in Anna that he had in her.
The summer that followed Anna's marriage passed; and the winter that succeeded it; and spring came again, and found Benson still committed to a self-denying silence. It was one of the first warm days of early summer and Virginia had sent for him; her note had been left by the farm tenant and the lawyer had discovered it on his desk when he went home to dinner after a morning spent in court, and by the middle of the afternoon he was jogging over the pleasant country road in the direction of the farm.
“It's about Stephen,” said Virginia, when they were seated in the library. “I must begin to think of his future. I am thinking seriously of sending him away to school!”
“But why burden yourself, Mrs. Landray? There is the public school—temporarily,” he added hastily, for he detected a look of quick resentment.
“His father and uncle were college-bred men, Mr. Benson, and I can't bear to think that his opportunities are to be limited in a way their's were not!” And, sadly, “He will have need of every advantage.”
“Not limited, except in the immediate present,” he made haste to say; “and don't you see, to send him East to some preparatory school would be a great trial to you? Might it not be dangerous as well? He might form undesirable associations, for instance.”
“For that reason, perhaps, I should prefer Dr. Long's school!”
But Benson was opposed to this purpose to which she was evidently only too willing to devote a part of her slender income. Stephen if he were properly ambitious, would do very well in the public schools.
“I don't wish to urge my opinion,” he said apologetically.
“Tell me, Mr. Benson, what I really have to look forward to in the way of money; I have never quite understood.”
“Well, there is the income from the farm, Mrs. Landray, and the rent from the mill; of course, part of this is absorbed by the interest you are paying.”
Virginia gazed at him thoughtfully.
“Of course,” she said slowly, considering the question, “the interest on the money that has been borrowed must be paid, and the money, too. Am I extravagant, do you think I am?”
“Oh, no!” and he smiled at the idea. “But you are inclined to be too generous where others are concerned.”
“Please tell me just what I owe?”
“In the first place, part of the debt is Stephen's.”
“Poor little fellow! And he is to begin life burdened by debt! How muchdowe owe, Mr. Benson?”
“The estate owes nine thousand dollars.”
“It's a very large sum, I don't know that I ever understood exactly how much it was before.”
“After all my explanations?” he said reproachfully.
“How much is the interest?”
“A trifle over six hundred dollars.”
“And how much is the income?”
“Well, there are the earnings from the farm; last year, in spite of a partial failure of the season, your share sold for five hundred dollars; and of course your actual expenses here are small; the rent from the mill is six hundred and fifty. Then there is the rent of the farm north of town, which is one hundred and fifty more. It figures up thirteen hundred dollars, which leaves you clear something over six hundred dollars.”
“That doesn't seem so bad, does it?” she said hopefully, but she added quickly, “I forgot, the debt itself will have to be paid eventually.” And her face fell.
“I wouldn't worry about that yet.” And he explained that the mill, and water rights, constituted such excellent security that Mr. Stark had signified his willingness to wait her pleasure in the matter.
“I don't know what I would do without your help and advice!” said Virginia, when he had finished.
He moved his hand in disparagement of this.
“Have I made it quite plain to you?” he asked, with grave kindness.
“Yes, I think so, but we haven't settled yet how I am to send Stephen to school, even to Dr. Long's academy.”
“We might very easily induce Mr. Stark to advance more money!” he ventured tentatively, but Virginia shook her head.
“No, I am afraid of debt; and it is not only my own means, it is Stephen's start in life that would be involved. I must exercise a greater economy.”
“My dear Mrs. Landray, that is quite out of the question, unless you deny yourself in ways I cannot even bear to think of!”
Virginia did not seem to hear him, and the tone that had unconsciously crept into his voice, escaped her notice. He could only guess at the needless self-denials she might practice, inspired by her love and sense of duty! She was too fine for that sort of thing; she had always seemed to him to adorn the easy circumstances for which the Landrays had been famous. It had not been great wealth, perhaps, but in that new country it had been riches; since relatively, little money purchased so much.
“If you will allow me”—he hesitated, and then continued—“to advance what money you need, it will give me the greatest pleasure.”
“You are very kind,” she said; it was plain she was rather surprised at the offer.
“I don't mean that you are to sign any more notes,” he hastily explained; “but it hurts me to think that you may be limited in any way. It can stand as a personal debt that some day you will repay when the other matters have been settled. I assure you it will give me great pleasure to aid you,” he finished warmly, but Virginia turned to him with the question:
“Mr. Benson, please tell me one thing, when you went West for me, who bore that expense? Did you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Landray;” but the admission was made with reluctance.
“It never occurred to me until this moment that that was possible! It has not been returned to you?”
“But it has not been my wish that it should be,” he rejoined quickly.—
“I wish you had told me of this before!” she continued a little reproachfully.
“Why?” he asked.
“It might have been easier.”
“Nonsense, Mrs. Landray! To tell you the truth I had forgotten all about it.”
“But when the estate was settled, should it not have gone in with the other claims?”
“It's not a debt in that sense; please don't place me in the position of a creditor!”
Virginia wished to do him full justice, yet she rather resented that she had not known of this before. His silence was a mistaken kindness; for had he spoken sooner, Anna would have met her share of this debt. With the feeling she had of the melting away of the fortune, this even was a matter of some moment. Benson, watching her narrowly, conjectured much of what was passing in her mind.
“Let us dismiss the whole matter!” he said. “I wish I had not told you. It is quite unimportant.”
“I fear I have never quite appreciated the full extent of your kindness.” she said, “nor how fond you were of Stephen, your friendship for him. I must have seemed very unreasonable to you in many ways, at first.”
Benson was silent. He feared to speak. He felt he could not continue in the false position in which she was placing him.
“You will let me return what you have expended,” Virginia continued.
“Do you find the obligation so irksome?” he asked, with a touch of exasperation in his tone.
“Any obligation must be irksome when one is so uncertain as to how it is to be met!”
“But you see that it has not worried me!”
“You are too kind to let it, too generous in your feeling—
“No,” he said, with sudden deliberation, “I am not so generous as you think. I wanted you to know that I was your friend. As your friend, all that I could do was a privilege; I gained more than I gave.”
Instinctively she drew back at the turn the conversation had taken. Her glance as it sought his face, lost something of its former frankness, but she had not been alarmed by anything he had said, for his meaning was still remote from his words; and she was so unsuspicious of him, had come so to regard him only as her dead husband's friend; and measured by the standard set by her own love, it was not strange that Stephen should have inspired such a friendship, or that it should extend in some lesser degree even to her; indeed, it was the most natural thing in the world.
But Benson had noted the subtle alteration in her manner, no change there ever escaped him; he felt that he had betrayed his secret.
“Friendship has its limitations, that is the unfortunate thing about it. It is not like—not like other things,” he finished abruptly.
She looked up quickly into his face; and what she saw there, caused her steady glance to waver. Her eyes fell. Perhaps she had not understood; perhaps—but her cheeks coloured, not with resentment, but with shame, at the thought that had laid hold of her. She rose from her chair, with all that dignity of manner in the presence of which he was wont to stand abashed and silent.
“I have offended you!” he said. “Please let me explain!”
“There is nothing to explain, you only meant to be kind, to spare me—”
“Oh, not that!” he cried, with sudden recklessness. “That shall be as you wish—I had no right to argue the point with you!”
She made a step toward the door.
0257
“Please!” he cried, “Mrs. Landray, youmustlet me speak!”
She turned on him swiftly; her eyes wide with wonder at the change that had come over him.
There was dead silence in the room.
Now that he had spoken, now that circumstances had led him on until there was no turning back, he could have bitten off his tongue that had betrayed him.
What she felt he could only guess; but it was clearly none of those emotions he might have expected to arouse. It was not embarrassment, it was not dismay; the look on her face was one of angry wonder.
He felt his cheeks pale under the steady glance with which she regarded him, and he was aware of a swift sense of pity for himself. Had he waited and struggled for this! After the years of patient devotion he had rendered her, was she so unmoved in the presence of his love; did it mean so little to her!
“You know it now!” he said in a low voice.
Even as he spoke, he was conscious that the angry wonder in her eyes changed to a look that was almost one of contempt; and the colour surged back into his face, until his cheeks burned with it. But her quite evident scorn of him served to rouse him. He met her glance with a look of quick resentment that she understood, and liked him none the less that he had been so ready to summon it.
“I think you are mistaken, Mr. Benson, you don't really wish me to stay. I'd better go.” She spoke coldly, but with a certain latent pity in her tone.
“Yes,” he said doggedly, “I do wish you to remain, I do wish to speak to you! I have waited, I have hoped the time would come when I might—”
“It is not now. It will never come,” she said slowly. “You have been very good, always—I am grateful to you. Be content with that; don't force me to say more than this, please, for I cannot listen to you with patience.”
“No, that won't suffice!” he persisted; roused by something in her manner to a stubborn determination to be heard, no matter what the consequences. “I haven't struggled to win your gratitude. That won't suffice, unless it leads to something else.”
“What more have you expected?” she asked quietly. But he was not misled by her restraint.
“What does a man expect when his heart has gone out of his keeping—”
“Don't!” she cried quickly, putting up her hands as though to ward off something. “Don't! How can you!”
“Why not?” he asked. “Every man says it sooner or later to some woman; and every woman hears it sooner or later from the lips of some man!”
“You must not!” she repeated.
“I have waited, I have tried to be patient; don't give me your answer now! If it is no, it will leave me nothing! I have lived and struggled for this day; that I might tell you that I love you! You may not be ready to hear it—I did not intend to speak; nothing could have been further from my purpose ten minutes ago; but I have spoken, and you know that I love you. This love seems to go back to the very beginnings of my life—I don't want to think of a time when I did not love you; it seems impossible to even imagine such a time, as impossible as to imagine a future when I shall have ceased to love you! You may not value my love, but it is as much yours as any other possession you have in the world!”
Her resentment toward him was slowly taking a definite shape in her mind, she was seeing the fullest reason for it. She had counted him her friend, generously disinterested and wholly self-forgetful; she felt he had advanced under the cloak of friendship for Stephen, until he dared to speak of love to her. To her! To the widow of the man for whom he had professed such devotion! Yet she parted from her ideal of him with a sense of bitter personal loss, as from a living presence on which she had come wholly to rely. If she could not trust him, whom could she trust! He dwindled in all the generous goodness with which she had unconsciously invested him, to contemptible littleness and petty self-seeking.
His patient kindness, his innumerable sacrifices of time and convenience had been but the stepping stones toward this moment, when he dared to tell her that he loved her! Her anger flamed in her face; but when she spoke she still maintained the control which she had put upon herself from the start.
“I wish that you had allowed me to leave you before you said what you have. Of course it would have made no difference in the opinion I had formed of you, but I should not have been forced to speak of it.”
He would have said that in his fancy he had already lived through the possibilities of this moment; but he had never quite conceived it possible that she could treat him with such cold scorn. In his bitterness he could only ask himself how had he failed so utterly. At her words, however, and the tone in which she had spoken them, his selfrespect came to his rescue.
“You need not say anything that you may regret later on; that is quite unnecessary, for I think I know just how you feel toward me,” he said gently.
She knit-her brows in an angry frown, but his words impressed her, and her manner became more one of resentful kindness. After all she had no wish to hurt him; only he must understand the extent of his enormity, for in her jealous love for Stephen Landray it was nothing else.
“Have I ever said anything, has there ever been in my manner toward you, anything that could lead you to think I could so far forget myself as to wish to hear what you have just told me, from the lips of any living man?”
“No,” he said, “there has not been; yet—”
“If I have been at fault you must tell me. I will hear you without offence; then I can the sooner forgive you for the way in which you have misjudged me, I should almost be glad to think that in some way I had been to blame!”
“No,” he answered, “I have known always that you would not care to hear this; that it would only hurt you.”
“Then why have you told me?” she demanded.
“The reason was in my words—because I love you!” he said. “I hoped that the time might come—”
“Never!” she cried, with fierce insistence. “Never! It can never come!”
“Even so; that I should love you was inevitable, you might have foreseen that! How could I meet you day after day, be near you, be your friend, and not come to love you! I only wonder that I was able to hold my peace so long as I did!”
“Then I was not at fault, none of the blame was mine?”
“None,” he assured her; but he was white to the lips.
“Then if I am not at fault I shall never forgive you!” There was a ring of triumph in her tone. She had wished his own words to vindicate her.
“Perhaps you may. It may even come to forgiveness,” he said. “No, I shall never forget the advantage you have taken!”
“I have paid you the highest compliment I could,” he said steadily. She made him a scornful gesture, and though his cheeks burnt, he went on. “That I have loved you, that I do love you, is my right; my own unworthiness, of which you cannot be more aware than I am, has nothing to do with it.”
Understanding her as he did, he fully realized her sense of outraged decency; he could think of it as nothing else. If he had loved her less, if he had parted from any portion of his high esteem and reverence for her, he would have urged his suit, he would have appealed to her pity, her generosity, and above all he would have urged the depth and constancy of his devotion; but he felt he could make no such appeal to her; the most he could hope was that when her anger against him had somewhat abated, she would see that he had taken no advantage of her; and that she would respect him for the restraint he had until now put upon himself. He knew her better than to suppose she would ever feel flattered by the declaration he had made. Whatever her secret vanities were, and he supposed they existed, they were not of that strictly feminine character that could pardon what she had first deemed an offence, because later she found this very offence included a compliment; and he was quite certain she would never look back to that moment with any feeling even remotely approaching satisfaction. The most he dared to hope for was that they might gradually return to their former relation, where he could begin again with tireless patience to recover the ground he had foolishly lost, since he had no thought of giving her up; that never occurred to him as possible. She had become as necessary to him as the very air he breathed. He knew that for the past years he had been living for these interviews with her, which had meant so much to him, while they had meant nothing to her. At the thought that they might be denied him in the future he turned sick at heart; the possibilities of such a thing seemed to sweep away the whole purpose of existence, to rob him in a twinkling of all that made his life worth while. He was sick with the dull ache that filled his heart. It was more than the mental appreciation of an impending catastrophe; it was a definite physical anguish. But the hope that had meant so much to him in the past, came to his rescue again. What did it matter if he waited years merely for her tardy forgiveness, the whole of his life belonged to her! His tenderness and patience should be infinite; and the time must surely come when the last vestige of her anger would have faded from her heart, and they could begin anew. He told himself that this was the one great emotion he should know. But for her, he lived in a world of dull commonplace; and she, whether she were aware of it or not, without intending it, had glorified his life.
In realizing what his love meant to him, he, for the first time fully realized what her love for Stephen Landray might still mean to her. He felt endless compassion for her. How she must have suffered, and she had always shown such courage. It made her all the more desirable that her own constancy had been so fine and true.
“You must forgive me!” he said. “Think that I forgot myself, and forget if you can what I have said!”
But she had no forgiveness for him; little things she might easily overlook, or they passed her by without being even noticed, but this was a hurt that only time could heal. Her pride was a stubborn thing, and it was her pride, her very self-respect, that he had hurt.
He glanced into her face and saw how far he was from forgiveness. In the telling of his love he had roused her anger to no purpose; he had destroyed the very thing that had been her stay through all these years, and there was nothing left her! He had cheapened each sacrifice he had made; for in her eyes he had performed each service, each generous act, with the idea that it would help to win him her love; he felt he could not argue with her, the justice or the injustice of her feeling for him, there was something fixed and final in this attitude of hers.
“You must try and forgive me!” he repeated.
“I shall try,” she said.
“Which means you will fail!” he retorted bitterly.
“Am I so unjust?” she demanded haughtily.
“I wish you might see it and feel it for one moment, as I see it and feel it!” he said, with hoarse emotion. “It might move you to mercy!”
“You are asking for friendship now?” she said.
“Yes”—he hesitated—“yes, friendship.”
“Will you be content with that?”
“Can it ever be friendship after this? Will it not be less—or more?”
“Less,” she said.
“I suppose so,” he admitted dully. “It's a small matter to you; but an hour ago I would have said it was a matter of life and death to me! You suffered—you loved!”
“You have no right to speak of it!” she cried. “Because I have trusted you—” She broke off abruptly.
“And I suppose you think I have taken advantage of your trust! I did not know until now—that is, I could not have imagined that a man could so offend a woman merely by telling her that he loved her.” She did not answer him; and after a moment's silence he went on. “Can you tell me how out of the wreck I seem to have made, I can preserve some portion of your esteem? In Heaven's name, let it be friendship if it is nothing more!”
“Wait!” she said, not unkindly; and then softening, “Oh, how could you, when you knew that I trusted you; that has been the cruelest part of it!”
“It was so easy,” he said. “But we look at it from such hopelessly different points of view.”
“You are never to speak to me of this again; you are to forget what has passed to-day, and I shall try, too! You must promise me!”
But he did not answer her directly.
“So you are going to impose silence on me; isn't that a little hard? Not,” he added bitterly, “that I find myself with any inclination to anything else!”
“It is necessary if we are to meet in the future,” she said quietly.
“But isn't it an unnecessary condition?” he persisted.
Her anger toward him seemed to have passed, and his courage was reviving. He threw aside his baffling manner and said frankly: “I'm more sorry than I can say, Mrs. Landray; and you shall not find me unworthy a second time.”
BENSON carried with him continually now a sense of hurt; and out of this came a certain subtle change in the very fibre of his love itself. He lost something of the spirit of worship, he seemed to be struggling for dominance. The reserve of his former attitude toward Virginia was lost. Once he had hoped to win her love, now he felt that he must compel it. He always came back to the one rankling conviction that she had been unjust; that she had allowed him to make sacrifices and to do for her in numberless ways she should not have permitted, unless she were willing to accept, not his love necessarily, but the full consequences of their intimacy, since it was perfectly incredible to him that any man could know her as he had known her, and not come to love her; he came to blame her that she had not understood.
It was not unnatural perhaps that the after effect upon Virginia of Benson's declaration was less pronounced than upon himself. Her active anger was of brief duration only, and she soon forgave him his unlucky utterances in remembering his real kindness. She would have liked him to know this; but she was sensible it would be unsafe to show it, and after all, a marked but kindly reserve was only a reasonable precaution. She was sorry for him, and his restrained manner in her presence only tended to deepen her feeling of pity; yet she considered him both a foolish and presumptuous young man.
In the first stress of her emotion she had meditated radical and salutary treatment of him. She had even thought of asking him to retire from the management of the estate; but she had decided that this would be a needless severity. When they met she was ceremoniously kind, but either Jane or Stephen was present. At first Benson had been rather inclined to smile at this; it struck him as being such a distinctly feminine maneuver; but the chaperonage when it was firmly persisted in, ended by becoming rather galling; it argued such a lack of confidence, as well as a fixed unwillingness to allow him to ever again revert to the subject which he had most at heart.
Virginia had found that even Dr. Long's select academy, with its modest fees for tuition, was out of the question; and was forced to send Stephen to the public school. At first Sam West drove him into town each morning, returning for him in the afternoon, and Benson pointed out to Virginia that when the winter actually set in these drives would be rather a hardship for the boy, and proposed that he stay with him when the weather was severe.
“Oh, no, I couldn't think of that!” said Virginia. “He would be such a care to you.”
“You leave that part of it to me, Mrs. Landray,” answered the lawyer good-naturedly.
“And I should miss him dreadfully, and he might be homesick!”
“He probably will be at first; but you'll be sending him off to college presently; this will prepare you both for that time.”
“Well, perhaps, when the roads get very bad indeed.”
After his first experience in town, Stephen carried Virginia such an enthusiastic account of his host's kindness that it won from her a grateful little letter of acknowledgment and thanks.
From the start Benson exerted a certain influence over the boy that was destined to increase with his development. The lawyer was the first man he had known of his own class; all his short life had been passed among women, they had been his companions and friends; and he slowly abandoned the reserve with which he had first met Benson's advances, until finally he talked to him almost as freely as he would have talked to Virginia herself.
If Stephen had never known men, it was equally true that Benson had never known boys, his father having made his own youth a period of the most rigorous industry; he had also been quiet and studiously inclined; the latter a characteristic which he noted Stephen did not appear to possess. He remembered that the boy's father and uncle, while they were educated men, had possessed a much greater respect for books than knowledge of them; and it impressed itself upon him that Stephen was most unlikely material from which to recruit a member of one of the learned professions. In short the boy evinced an utter and astonishing lack of curiosity concerning the lawyers well selected library which had been placed at his disposal. When Benson commented on this fact, Stephen informed him quite frankly that he didn't care for books; he had all the reading he wanted at school.
“How would you like to be a lawyer, Stephen?” Benson asked him on one occasion.
“I shouldn't like it, Mr. Benson,” he said promptly.
“Why not, Stephen?”
“I don't know, only I just know I shouldn't.”
“But you've got to do something,” urged Benson.
“I suppose so,” said the boy slowly. “My Aunt Virginia wants me to be a professional man, but I tell her that is all nonsense.”
“But to please her,” suggested Benson.
“I'd do a good deal to do that, but what I want is something out of doors. And I'd want there should be a great deal of money in it, whatever I did!”
“And if you got a great deal of money what would you do with it?” asked his host.
“Give most of it to my Aunt Virginia, and keep some for myself,” answered Stephen.
“That's a first-rate idea,” said Benson.
“They, my father and uncle, must have had a lot of money once, Mr. Benson.”
“Yes, they did—a fortune.”
The boy frowned.
“Well, I wish it hadn't been lost; then there wouldn't be this talk about my being a professional man. What are all the professions anyway, Mr. Benson?”
“The law, medicine, the ministry—”
“Oh, well, I guess I'll have to argue my Aunt Virginia out of that notion!” he said in evident low spirits.
Stephen was rather good looking and mature for his years. All his ideas, such as they were, were well thought out and definite. He was dark like his father, and had the Landray air of high breeding; indeed, his manner toward Benson was one of courteous and restrained good-fellowship, he was neither boisterous nor familiar; and the lawyer, considering those points which were most in his favour, decided that while in some respects he was only an average boy, he yet possessed certain fine possibilities of manhood, though he was forced to own he did not quite know what they were, and was dubious as to their practical value. He remembered that his father and uncle had both been exceptional men, but he would hardly have called them successful men.
If Benson's opinion of Stephen was not wholly complimentary, no doubt of the boy's capacity or brilliancy ever entered Virginia's mind. He was a Landray, and she was sure he would develop into such a man as his father had been. She felt that the future of the family rested entirely with him, and had her own ideals of what this future must be.
She had so fixed upon a profession for him that he soon ceased to combat the idea, though it was peculiarly distasteful to him; and this distaste grew as he grew, until his apathy on this one point was so great that Virginia's confidence was shaken somewhat; however, during the second winter of his attendance at the public school he delighted her by suggesting the law, since it seemed to him that with Benson's help it could be mastered with rather less personal inconvenience than any other of the professions; and probably it would be all right, but he had his doubts, still to please his aunt he was willing to make the effort; and so the law it became.
The following winter he worried through Humes's “History of England,” and then in very low spirits took up Blackstone, and felt that he was hopelessly committed; but he bravely guarded his speech that she might not know how great a sacrifice he was making.
In his fancy, speculating on his future, he saw himself as he saw Benson, digging away at his desk, among piles of papers, or delving into yellow calfskin volumes; or arguing his cases in the stuffy little court-room; or returning dusty or muddy, according to the season, from the round of the circuit courts; and this cheerless prospect filled him with a secret anguish that time in no wise abated. He did not dare tell any one what he would really have liked to do, which involved leaving home and going West; the life there, as he imagined it was the only kind of life he could think of with any degree of satisfaction. But this he knew could never be for him; so he plodded grimly on in his studies, and while he was not brilliant he wasted no time, but persevered in his uncongenial pursuits with a dogged tenacity that went far to atone for his lack of heart in his work. It would not have been so bad, if he had not felt he was surely building toward a future in which he could take no vital interest.
One day, during his fourth year in school, his teacher was called from the room, and on his return went to Stephen's desk.
“You are wanted, Landray, at home,” he said. “No, there is nothing wrong there,” he added, seeing the startled look on the boy's face. Outside in the hall Stephen found Sam West.
“What is it, Sam?” he asked anxiously.
“I don't know, but your aunt sent me in for you, she wants to see you. Wants you should go back with me right away.”
“But what is it, Sam? You're sure she is not sick?” he persisted, in vague alarm.
“No, she ain't sick; she's all right. I was in town this morning and took a letter out to her; she read it, and sent me in for you; that's all I know about it,” Sam explained.
On reaching home Stephen hurried into the library where he found Virginia waiting for him.
“There is nothing the matter with you, is there, Aunt Virginia?” he questioned anxiously. “You're not sick, are you?”
“Oh, no, dear—were you alarmed?” Virginia asked.
“Well, yes, I was!” he answered. “You see I couldn't make out why you should send for me.”
“Sit down, Stephen. I have heard from Dr. Stillman. Sam brought me the letter two hours ago.” Her manner was very gentle, and the boy saw that her eyes were red as with weeping.
“Is there anything the matter with my mother?” he asked quickly.
“Yes, dear,” said Virginia softly.
“She's sick?”
“Yes, she has been very ill, Stephen.”
He looked up into her face.
“You mean—” he began, with strange hesitancy.
“She is dead, dear. Your mother is dead.”
“Dead?” he repeated. He did not seem to understand. “When did it happen?” he asked at length.
He saw that his aunt expected some show of emotion from him, but he was conscious of no emotion beyond surprise. With the years that had intervened since her going away, his mother's letters had grown less and less frequent. She had long since ceased to write him with any regularity, and when her rare letters did reach him, they had been a burden to him rather than a pleasure. He had not known how to answer them.
“Would you like to see Dr. Stillman's letter?” Virginia asked.
He shook his head.
“No; you tell me what he says,” he replied.
“It is very brief, it was posted over four months ago. She died in upper Burmah, where she said they were going in the last letter we received from her, you remember, dear?”
He nodded slightly.
“It seems that her death was very sudden, a fever of some sort. Aren't you very, very sorry, dear?”
The inadequacy of his emotion, as she felt it, was a shock to her. “Why, yes, of course I am!” he said. “I wish I remembered her better. You'd like me to show a good deal of feeling, wouldn't you? but how can I, when I don't remember her so very well? You're the only mother I've had, you've been a real mother to me! I suppose you feel it more than I do, and you're surprised at it.”
“And you don't remember?” asked Virginia with tender pity; pity for him, and pity for the dead woman.
“Oh, yes, I do, in a way. I remember her saying good-bye and going off in the carriage. I watched her drive away from the hall window up-stairs, and you came to me there, and found me crying, you were crying, too; I remember a lot about her before that, long before that; and I remember him—the doctor, I mean. Why, I must have been a good-sized boy when they left!”
“Yes,” said Virginia sadly.
“I thought it was longer ago than that,” he muttered.
There was no use in his trying to show a grief he did not feel; his aunt would have detected the false ring if he had attempted it; yet he wondered, disquietingly, that he was so little stirred.
He never asked to see Dr. Stillman's letter, and only read it when he found that Virginia was really anxious he should; and then having read it, he returned it to her without comment beyond the words, “I don't like him!” meaning the doctor; but then, as a child, he had not liked him.