XXI
Colonel Denbighwas reading the morning paper. He had breakfasted lightly, and he sat on the rear veranda smoking a long cigar. His face was troubled. He had a sincere friendship for the Carters, and he fairly twinged as he read the flaring headlines. There were three columns devoted to the Corwin murder, with a snap-shot of Leigh being led from the court-house to the police van. Half-way down the first column there was an extra large caption to one paragraph:
MRS. WILLIAM CARTER, THE CAUSE OFTHE TROUBLE, ONCE A BEAUTIFULVAUDEVILLE DANCER
The colonel slapped his paper down on his knee with a groan.
“By gum!” he ejaculated softly.
Plato thrust his head out of the door.
“Miss Jinny done say she don’ want dat speckled hen killed fo’ dinner to-morrer, suh.”
The colonel’s mouth twisted under his white mustache.
“Why not?”
“Miss Jinny, she’s been makin’ a pet ob her, yessuh. She say dat speckled hen ain’t gwine ter be killed, an’ I kin take de rooster. Miss Jinny, she say she’s fo’ woman’s rights, col’nel.”
The colonel grinned sardonically.
“You get a steak, Plato. We’ve got to stand up for our own sex. I’m going to keep that rooster.”
“Yessuh, dat we has!” Plato edged back toward the door as he heard Virginia coming. “Mis’ Wilyum Carter done run away from her husband yes’day,” he added in a stage whisper. “Mirandy, de girl dat works dere, done tole me so, yessuh!”
The colonel scowled.
“You tell Miranda to stop gossiping,” he said sharply.
Plato grinned.
“Dat’s woman’s rights, yessuh. Mirandy says so!”
The colonel caught the old negro’s eye and shook with silent laughter.
“Mind your own business, you old rogue!” he said shortly, resuming his paper.
He heard Plato’s discreet retirement and then a frou-frou of skirts. Virginia, in the freshest of white gowns, came out. She was very pale,and there was a little line of worry between her brows.
“Anything new, grandpa?” she asked eagerly, looking at his newspaper. “Can they get Leigh out on bail?”
The colonel shook his head sadly.
“Think of a boy like that held for murder! Bless my soul, it seems as if it was only last year when I saw him in rompers and eating a lollypop. I remember perfectly—the stick was in his mouth and the lollypop all over his face. Good Lord! And he’s shot a man!”
“He’s such a nice boy,” said Virginia. “He has such a sweet, dreamy face, and his eyes are beautiful. Haven’t you noticed how he’s grown up?”
“Yep!” the colonel snapped, frowning at space. “I did notice he was getting to be quite a young lady.”
Virginia laughed musically.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” Then her face sobered. “I’ve just telephoned to Mrs. Carter—I mean Mrs. Johnson Carter,” she explained, blushing suddenly; “and there doesn’t seem to be anything that we can do.”
The colonel nodded thoughtfully.
“I saw Dr. Barbour last night. He says there’s nothing we can do.”
Virginia looked thoughtfully across the green lawn toward the street. It was screened from view here by the colonel’s horse-chestnut, but she glimpsed a strip of the street below the side gate. The sunlight, shining through the honeysuckle on the veranda, flashed on her white gown with glorification, as if it shouted halleluiah, and it shone, too, in her clear eyes. The colonel, who was watching her, thought her the loveliest thing on earth.
“I’m afraid there’s a terrible time down there,” she remarked regretfully. “I mean at the Carters.”
The colonel assented. He was thinking. He dreaded to tell her.
“Jinny, Plato says that——”
He got no farther; she had uttered a soft exclamation and gone down the steps.
“There’s Dan, grandpa!” she said in evident surprise.
The colonel watched her go on to meet Daniel Carter and he saw the change in the young man’s face as they met on the lawn. Daniel was very pale, and he limped badly toward her.
“By gum!” said the colonel below his breath. “I wonder if she knows! Women don’t like weakness, I’m afraid. Nothing that’s been injured appeals—not really. Girls like to imagine demigods.And that poor boy’s breaking his heart for her, by gum!”
Meanwhile, Virginia turned with Daniel, and they came toward the veranda. The colonel rose and descended the steps.
“Dan,” he said in a hoarse voice, holding out his hand, “if there’s anything I can do——”
Daniel shook his head, the muscles of his white face twitching a little from weariness and pain.
“Nothing at all, Colonel, except—to feel for us!”
“Come and sit with us on the piazza,” suggested Virginia. “Can’t you, Dan?”
He shook his head.
“I’ve got to go on to the office, and then over—to the jail. I was passing—I had to stop to say ‘howdy,’ as Plato would express it. Mother’s been ill in bed since yesterday. She wanted me to thank you both for the flowers and for your messages.”
“Flowers and messages are mighty poor substitutes for deeds,” rejoined the colonel bluntly. “You know I’ll go bail for Leigh, if you wish it.”
“Mr. Payson did that at once, thank you. We had Leigh out to see mother, but we couldn’t keep reporters away from him, and we thought it best for him to go back to jail for the present. You see, he wants to go to Fanchon, to express hischampionship and all that. It’s a hard situation, colonel, any way we can fix it. Leigh’s been in a state of collapse, too—lost his nerve at first.”
“He’s nothing but a kid,” said the colonel with indignation. “I—by gum, Dan, I don’t like to say what I think!”
Virginia clapped her soft hand over his mouth.
“Not another word, grandpa!”
Daniel smiled.
“Never mind, Virginia, the newspapers are blatant. My father read the paper this morning and broke the cream-pitcher—the Wedgewood one, too.”
The colonel caught Virginia’s restraining hand and held it.
“Dan, how’s William?”
Daniel, who was looking at Virginia, became very grave.
“I don’t know how to answer that, colonel. He’s heartbroken over Leigh, I think. He and his wife”—Daniel hesitated, his eyes on Virginia—“have separated,” he concluded in a low voice.
The colonel, who knew it, only wagged his head soberly, but Virginia started. A deep blush rose from her throat to her white forehead. Her eyes fell before Daniel’s, and he saw her hands tremble.
“She loves him still!” he thought bitterly.
He turned, looking paler than ever.
“I must go on. I only stopped to thank you both for your sympathy. We”—he hesitated again—“we appreciate it.”
The colonel laid his hand on the younger man’s shoulder, and his eyes misted.
“I’ll walk to the street with you, Dan,” he said, swallowing a lump in his throat. “I reckon there isn’t much we can do—any of us—but to stand by you-all.”
Daniel looked back at Virginia, raising his hat again, and the two men walked away across the long lawn to the group of cedars that grew by the side gate.
Virginia, left alone, turned and entered the house. She was very pale now, and her lips trembled. She went into the drawing-room and stood looking at the little old picture of William as a boy. She had looked at it a thousand times before, and she remembered that once she had kissed it. They had always been fond of each other and then—or was it a dream?—he had asked her to marry him. They had planned their happiness gaily, with youthful laughter at sorrow and doubt. She had loved him, and he had married—this woman!
Virginia would have been less than human if she had not thrilled at the thought that he must regret it. She felt that he did. He had alreadyalmost said so. He had been caught; she knew it! What woman, placed as Virginia was, would not have felt that! In the rush of sympathy for him she blamed only Fanchon.
She remembered the night at the Sunday-school hall and Fanchon’s blanched face at the sight of Corwin. Corwin had made Virginia shudder; but such men as this had been Fanchon’s associates, such men as Corwin had been part of her life, and William Carter had unwittingly married her! In the storm of her resentment, Virginia felt only that William needed her sympathy, he even needed—it was on the tip of her tongue to say—her love!
Then the thing suddenly stood out before her; she saw it in all its horrible nakedness and cruelty. The poor little wayward dancer caught in the snare of her past—whatever that past might be—and in the midst of her fancied security assailed and ruined, snatched from her new happiness, talked about, shamed, and at last cast out!
Yet—poor William! Tears rushed to Virginia’s eyes. Her heart yearned over him. At that moment, when William was breaking with the wife that he had preferred to her, when he was crushed by the scandal that the woman had made of his life, Virginia forgave him.
She sank down on the piano-stool under his childish picture, and, covering her face with herhands, she wept—not for herself, as Fanchon had done, but for William. She had fought hard to crush out her love for him, but at that moment she felt that she had not succeeded, that it was too strong for her, and she trembled.
She trembled at the thought of the look on his face when she had seen him last. She knew that he had come back to her. Virginia, who could not see into the future, still felt a thrill of terror at her heart. It was as if an invisible power walked with her, an invisible hand thrust her toward unforeseen perils, and into ways that she knew not.
Strangely enough, too, in the midst of her emotion, the thought came to her, keenly and vividly—what would Dan think of it? And of her—Virginia? In some way, intuitively, for he had said nothing about it, she knew that Daniel’s attitude toward Fanchon had changed. Something in the very intonation of his voice had told her that; yet he had announced the separation without comment, and had even appeared to assent to Colonel Denbigh’s suppressed recognition of Fanchon’s culpability.
Virginia, weeping for William, trembling at the thought that William’s heart must have turned remorsefully to the memories of their innocent affection, nevertheless flushed at the thought thatDaniel would be a witness, a bystander, at any drama that unrolled now in their lives. She had never thought of Daniel before as having any part between William and her, but now it was Daniel’s judgment that mattered. Yet she loved William. She no longer attempted to deny that to herself, she could not—it was William who was suffering and shamed by the woman who had left him.
Virginia was softly wiping the tears from her eyes when she heard her grandfather coming back. She rose, looked hastily into the mirror, and, reassured by the face she saw there, went out into the hall and met him.
“I thought you were going to walk all the way into town with Dan,” she remarked casually.
The colonel shook his head.
“I only went to the corner. Jinny, the trial’s to be next week. Judge Jessup has managed to rush it before the court adjourns this session. It seems Mrs. Carter can’t bear the suspense, and I reckon the boy can’t, either. I never did think Leigh had much grit—not even when he ate lollypops,” he added grimly, eying Virginia.
“I know his poor mother has gone to pieces,” she replied gently. “Emily told me as much. Poor Emily, she’s cried so hard that paint won’t help her white eyelashes now.”
The colonel, who had discovered that Virginiahad been crying herself, looked thoughtful. They turned and walked through the hall together to the staircase. Virginia started to ascend—she wanted to escape—but her grandfather had more news for her.
“Dan’s a kind of clam,” he observed after a moment’s pause, “but I got something out of him. Fanchon has told him her story. He believes that it will help save Leigh. He’s going to put her on the stand.”
Virginia, leaning on the banister, blushed again.
“I thought she’d left William,” she said in a low voice.
“So she has—so she has; but Dan says she’ll do anything to save Leigh. She seems to be fond of that fool kid. Got him under her thumb, I suppose, and then made him do her bidding. I reckon she’d better go on the stand. It’s the only thing she can do. But, by gum, I’m sorry for Johnson Carter and his wife, and Emily and Dan.”
“And William,” suggested Virginia softly.
“No!” thundered the colonel. “No! I’m not a mite sorry for that lummox—he went and married her! He——”
The old man stopped with his mouth open. Lucas, the negro driver, had just appeared at the back door, his arms full of green ears of corn.
“Been up de hill, suh,” he explained genially,“an’ Col’nel Colfax’s son, he don’ send yo’ all dis yere corn. Golden Bantam—dat’s what he call it, same as dey calls dem lil no-account chickens.”
“It looks small,” said the colonel. “How about that horse? Did you like it, Lucas?”
“Yessuh, I like ’im, but he don’ like me. He’s very good horse, Pole Star’s grandson, but I reckon I scared ob ridin’ him. Sam Bun, he Mist’ Colfax’s man—he say dat horse bit four men las’ Saturday week.”
“I don’t want him,” said Virginia laughing. “Hear any news up there, Lucas? How’s Miss Sally?”
“Gone to de springs, Miss Jinny. I did heah on de road back ’bout young Mis’ Carter—de one dat done got Mist’ Corwin shot.” He looked over his green corn at the colonel. “She’s stayin’ up to Quantah’s place now.”
“Eh!” The colonel stared. “Pretty poor place isn’t it, Lucas?”
“Sho is, suh. Ain’t noffin’ dere now but de woman, Mis’ Quantah, an’ dat bug-house boy ob hers. Dey sold de cow las’ week to de butcher. Ain’t no place fo’ quality nohow. Yessuh, Mis’ Wilyum Carter up dere now. She lef’ Mist’ Wilyum or Mist’ Wilyum lef’ her, I don’t know—”
“Lucas, you take that corn to the kitchen. I want some for dinner.”
“Yessuh,” said Lucas, and went.
The colonel turned to Virginia.
“That Quantah place is pretty forlorn. Can that girl be as poor as that? I thought Mrs. Quantah was about down and out.”
“Why, grandpa, the place is a wreck! There can’t be a decent room up-stairs!” Virginia’s face was still flushed, she clung to the banister. “I can’t understand.”
The colonel looked grave.
“She’s going on the stand for Leigh. The Carters oughtn’t to allow this.” He turned and laid his hand on his granddaughter’s shoulder. “Jinny,” he said quietly. “I reckon we mustn’t judge it too hard, but—well, I’m beginning to pity that girl.”
Virginia said nothing. She was afraid that her grandfather felt her trembling under his hand.