VI
Colonel Denbighand Virginia had arrived at the corner of the street after a lengthy discussion.
“I suppose I ought to call,” the colonel had said thoughtfully, pulling his mustache.
“Of course!” said Virginia. “I’ve called already, but they were all out.”
“Couldn’t you manage it that way for me, Jinny?”
She laughed, blushing furiously.
“I really wanted to see her, grandpa. They say she’s astonishingly pretty.”
“Humph! I don’t gossip,” the Colonel grinned; “but Sallie Payson said to me, ‘The bride paints her face!’”
Virginia looked at him absently, her eyes thoughtful.
“I wonder! I met Emily yesterday. You know what a blond child she is? She has short, almost white eyelashes naturally.”
Her grandfather nodded.
“Yes, pig lashes—I remember. What about ’em?”
Virginia laughed weakly.
“She’s painted them. It gives her the most singular look. I can’t think her mother knows!”
“She’s at the monkey age. She’s copying Mrs. William, of course.” He stood a moment, thinking, his thumbs in his waistcoat, and his fine white head bent. “It’s too bad! I—I suppose I’ve got to call, Jinny?”
She hesitated, and he turned his head slowly, looking at her with a fine reluctance. If she was distressed, he did not want to see it. But he was reassured by her face. It was calm; there was only a little higher color in her cheeks, but her eyes sparkled.
After a moment she answered him.
“I don’t see why you have to go. William’s such a young man, and I’ve called and left your card. Perhaps you needn’t—not at once, grandpa.”
“I don’t want them to think——” he stopped with his mouth open, he had come very near to speaking out—“I don’t want to hang back,” he concluded lamely; “but, confound it, Jinny, I don’t want to go alone!”
She laughed a little nervously.
“You needn’t. I’ve got to ask her to sing at the concert on Friday. Emily told me she had a lovely voice, and it’s got around that she’s a sensation—a beauty, you know. Mrs. Payson andMrs. Barbour made me promise to ask her to sing. It’s for the Carters’ church, anyway, so of course it’s all right.”
“You mean that concert to pay the church debt off?” The colonel looked thoughtful a moment; then suddenly he guffawed. “Going to ask her to sing in a Sunday-school hall—before all those strait-laced people—a girl from Paris? I reckon I’ll go, Jinny!”
“I hope you will, and pay five dollars for a front seat. It’s really going to be very good, grandpa. Caraffi—the pianist, you know—is going to play. He’s expected Friday morning. His manager, a man called Corwin, came over to arrange for it yesterday. I’m very glad that I don’t have to deal with him again!” she added with a shudder.
The colonel gave her a quick look.
“Why?”
She laughed.
“Oh, for no reason—except that he’s terrible! A—a person!”
“What sort of a person?”
“Showy. He wears a huge diamond ring and very sporty clothes. He’s got a perfectly beautiful mustache and sparkling eyes, and—well, he’s just terrible!”
“Humph! How about Caraffi, then?”
“That’s different, of course. Caraffi plays exquisitely. I heard him last year, you know, in Baltimore. I was so glad when we could get him to come. It makes us sure of success, and we’ve all worked hard.”
“You have,” the colonel remarked dryly; then he rose reluctantly from the old garden-seat where they had been sitting. “I suppose we might as well go, Jinny, and get it over.”
“You mean—to call upon Mrs. William Carter?”
She spoke in a low voice. For the first time there was a note in it that betrayed the pressure she was putting on herself. It did not tremble, but it hurt the colonel’s ear.
He glanced at her quickly, and caught the soft flush on her downcast face. He thought she had never looked so pretty.
“Yes,” he replied slowly. “When I’ve got to have a tooth pulled I like to get it over. Suppose we go now, Jinny?”
“All right,” she smiled cheerfully. “I’ll ask her for Friday, and get that over, too. You see, they put me on the musical committee.”
“Going to play, child?”
She shook her head.
“After Caraffi? Heaven forbid!”
“I bet you a dollar you could beat him at it!” said the colonel with fine loyalty.
His granddaughter laughed, taking his arm affectionately.
They walked down the quiet street thus, his fine white head towering over hers. The colonel was a tall old man, and he walked with the erectness of a soldier. He had run away at sixteen to be a drummer-boy in Lee’s army, and long afterward, as loyal to the Union as he had been active against it in his boyhood, he got his title in the Spanish war, fighting under General Wheeler. He had the military bearing still, and he sometimes saluted when he met one of the old neighbors trudging past him on the familiar street.
It was a pleasant street, where the quiet houses stood well back among the trees, and here and there white-clad figures rocked on the verandas. The elms arched beautifully overhead, the sunshine flickering through the close-leafed branches and falling in a shower of light in the center of the old, white road. It was peaceful, rural, and profoundly quiet. Virginia and the colonel, who loved it, counted six different kinds of birds.
“There’s a black-and-white warbler,” said Virginia. “Look, grandpa! It’s the first I’ve seen this year.”
“I love the old cardinal best,” the colonel replied.“There he is, right on Mrs. Payson’s magnolia. Hello, Jinny, isn’t that William Carter at the corner?”
Virginia, who had been looking at the warbler, started perceptibly. She even put her hand out quickly and caught at the nearest fence-paling, for she had long ago dropped the colonel’s arm. This was the first time she had seen William since his return, and the shock of it sent the color away from her face and brought it back with a rush. She was rosy when she looked around.
“He seems to be alone,” she said quietly.
The colonel nodded.
Meanwhile, the encounter was inevitable, since they were moving toward William, and William, after a moment of almost visible hesitation, was moving toward them.
“Why, how d’you do, Colonel Denbigh?” said young Carter nervously. “I—I haven’t seen you since I came back.”
“No,” replied the colonel dryly, shaking hands. “I live at the same place, though.”
William Carter blushed. He and Virginia greeted each other silently. She was quite natural and sweet, but William’s blush deepened. Across the ocean, under the spell of other emotions and far different surroundings, it had seemed so easy to forget home ties—even ties of honor; but itwas not easy here. The very palings in the old fences seemed to shriek at him.
He remembered painfully the sleepless night he had spent in Paris after that wild moment when he forgot himself and asked Fanchon to marry him. It had been a night haunted with his own sense of the fine things in life, and he remembered that—after the tumult had passed—he had had the sense to burn Virginia’s letters. He could see, even here, the pile of ashes in the little grate in his room at the hotel. The ashes of Virginia’s faithful, cheerful, loving words! He shuddered.
“We were just going to call on your wife,” said Virginia simply.
As she spoke she raised her clear, untroubled eyes to his. It seemed as if she wanted to reassure him by a look—since they could scarcely speak of it again—that he was forgiven. She wanted bygones to be bygones.
“Do you think she’s at home?” she added gently, partly because William seemed incapable of speech.
He pulled himself together.
“I don’t know—I suppose she is.”
He glanced vaguely in the direction of his father’s house.
The colonel, who was standing, planted firmly with his feet well apart, and stroking his mustache,regarded him with no very friendly gaze. He saw a violent change come over the young man’s flushed face. The flush deepened and his glance toward his home became a fixed and stony stare. The colonel followed it, discovered the cause, and stopped pulling his mustache.
Fanchon, emerging from the house in a tempest of emotion, ran down the garden-path and started up the street, still smoking Daniel’s cigarette. She smoked it gracefully, but with the confidence of long habit. The small figure, too, had an assurance, a swinging grace, that seemed to differentiate it from any other figure in the world. There was a Parisian elegance, too, about her dress, and she wore a most amazing hat—a coronet of feathers, flashing red and black, a hat that no one else could have worn with such astonishing charm and style. In fact, from the tip of the highest crimson feather to the end of her tiny shoe, she was an artistic creation. Two or three passers-by walked sidewise and one little pickaninny stood transfixed, in imminent danger of swallowing a lollypop.
Colonel Denbigh coughed.
“Your wife?” he asked William politely.
William, very red, nodded.
“I want you to meet her,” he muttered hastily. “Just a moment——”
He hurried toward Fanchon. Colonel Denbigh caught Virginia’s eye and shook silently.
“Gone to capture that cigarette!” he murmured. “I think I’ll not call to-day.”
“Hush!” whispered Virginia, and blushed again, painfully this time, for her eyes were on the other two.
William, having met his wife, turned and came back with her, the sun shining in their faces. They could be seen much more plainly than they could see. Fanchon had tossed away her cigarette and was looking at her husband, with something in the lift of her small face and the gestures of her quick, nervous hands, suggesting anger.
“She’s wonderfully pretty,” Virginia thought, “but a strange little exaggerated creature—and—and William’s wife!”
She was aware that her own heart was beating heavily, but she held up her head. Meanwhile William came up.
“My wife, Colonel Denbigh. Fanchon, this is Miss Virginia Denbigh. We—we’re old friends,” he added lamely.
Fanchon looked at them with shining eyes. Her beauty—a delicate, captivating, elusive kind of beauty—seemed soft and childlike at the moment. In spite of the flagrant hat and the flagrantly loud stockings and the amazing style of dress, she wasdainty, graceful, altogether delightful. And she wanted to please. She smiled at them softly; she spoke very little—in a light, hurrying, childish voice—and she was very deferential, very gentle, to Colonel Denbigh.
“She’s lovely,” Virginia thought generously. “I can’t blame him!” Aloud she gave Fanchon the invitation to sing at the concert. “Caraffi is to play, so you mustn’t think it’s just an ordinary concert,” she explained. “We’d be delighted if you could give us a song—a French song, if you will.”
Fanchon hesitated, she even blushed, and she raised her dark eyes to Virginia’s with that peculiarly engaging wild-fawn look.
“Moi!I’m afraid I don’t sing well enough,” she said deprecatingly.
“She sings beautifully,” William interposed eagerly. He was warmed to the heart by her evident success; he saw that the colonel and Virginia thought her lovely. “Don’t let her off, Virginia!”
The name slipped out with the sound, so subtle and yet so unmistakable, that betrays long and tender intimacy. It slipped out, and William stopped short, reddening to his hair. It was not merely calling a beautiful girl by her Christian name. It was saying a thousand things at once; and he felt it, like a thrill of electricity, runningthrough Fanchon. Besides, Virginia blushed, her eyes meeting his with a sudden appeal, a kind of silent prayer.
“Please don’t—not in that way!” she seemed to say.
Fanchon laughed gaily and lightly, looking from one to the other. Then, with a captivating gesture, she laid her small fingers on Virginia’s arm.
“Merci du compliment!” she said, sweetly. “I’ll sing—just one song—for you!”
Virginia, who had recovered her composure in an instant, smiled back at her.
“That’s all we could hope for, Mrs. Carter. I can put your name on the program, then—and the song?”
Fanchon nodded, an elfish look in her eyes now.
“Oui, par example—I can sing anything?” she asked.
“Oh, sing something nice—it’s for the church, Fanchon!” said William hastily.
“She means something nice,” said Virginia. “Of course—anything you’ll give us,” she added, sweetly, drawing away a little.
Evidently she did not quite mean to go back to the house with them. William saw it—and flushed again.
“You two were coming to call, weren’t you?” he asked bluntly.
Virginia glanced at her grandfather, and the colonel shook his head.
“Some other day. It’s”—he looked at his watch—“it’s near dinner-time now, Jinny.”
She assented, and they drew away graciously. In spite of that first happy moment when the impression seemed so good, there was something wrong. William felt it. He glanced nervously at his wife, but she was smiling. He had never seen her look more lovely or less dangerous. He drew a long breath of relief and urged the Denbighs to come soon.
“Some evening,” he suggested. “Father will be delighted to see you, colonel, and Fanchon will sing for you both.”
“Then we’ll surely come soon,” said Virginia.
They managed to get away, and William had an uneasy feeling as he saw them retreating toward their home. He was positive that they had been coming to call. It all embarrassed him. It had been an ordeal, and he had felt it keenly. He had always held a good opinion of himself. The successful eldest son of the family, he had had the éclat of his success at home; but to-day, face to face with Virginia, he had felt—he grew hot all over at the thought of how he had felt.
His wife’s voice startled him.
“Are you going back to the house?” she asked in an odd tone.
He started, looking at her reluctantly.
“Why, yes, I was. Shall we walk a little way, instead?”
She shrugged, turning without a word and going back with him. At another time he would have thought that there was something strange about her, but to-day he did not notice. They walked quite a distance without speaking. The silence was growing apparent when Fanchon broke it.
“So that’s the girl who’s in love with you!” she said abruptly.
William reddened.
“Don’t say that!” he exclaimed hastily. “I never said that!”
She laughed, and he grew angry.
“Listen, Fanchon, I’ve got something to say to you!”
She gave him a sidelong look.
“Dis donc,” she said.
“I wish you wouldn’t smoke on the street. American girls never do it.”
“Street?” Fanchon looked about her vacantly. “Ciel, do you call this a street?”
“Yes, I do. It’s a street in my home town,” replied William doggedly. “I’m sorry you don’t like it. We’ve got to live here, you know.”
“Here?” She looked at him now, her lip trembling. “Toujours?”
Suddenly she began to laugh, softly at first, and then wildly, hysterically, dashing tears from her eyes.
William, nonplused, simply stared. He no longer understood her.