XXIX
WhenVirginia came down-stairs she heard the pleasant jingle of ice in the drawing-room. Plato was serving iced tea, there being no occasion in life, not even a funeral, when refreshments were not served; but Mr. Carter and her grandfather were the only tea-drinkers. Mrs. Carter was sitting in the corner, surreptitiously wiping her eyes, and Daniel was walking up and down on the rear piazza. Virginia heard his restless tramp as she crossed the hall and stood for a moment in the drawing-room door. They all looked up at her, and Plato discreetly withdrew, bearing his tray.
“How is she, Jinny?” the colonel asked quietly, setting aside his slender glass of tea.
“I think she knew him,” Virginia answered simply, and then, ignoring the two men, she went over to Mrs. Carter. “You were good to come,” she said softly.
“Oh, Virginia!” Mrs. Carter dabbed at her eyes, “I feel as if I’d been guilty.” She lowered her voice and added in a whisper: “What did William say?”
Virginia smiled, a beautiful light in her eyes.
“I think he’s forgiven her already,” she replied sweetly. “I’ve been with her for hours and hours, and I’m fond of her. I can’t help it. She’s like a child, Mrs. Carter, and she loves William. Besides, she’s suffered terribly, and don’t you think suffering expiates everything?”
Mrs. Carter pressed her handkerchief against her lips. For a moment she was silent, aware of her husband’s eyes and Colonel Denbigh’s. Involuntarily they looked at her. She wavered a little, and then she spoke, faint-heartedly but sincerely.
“Johnson, I think we ought to go up-stairs, too. We ought to tell William how we feel—at least, I should. I’m ready to do anything that’s right.”
Mr. Carter nodded his head slowly.
“I’ve just told the colonel that we’re not really monsters,” he replied bluntly; “but we’ve had rather a rough experience, take it all in all. There’s Leigh, nothing but a boy, and he’s killed a man. It’s not a nice thing to think about. He told me one night how he felt. It haunts him. Besides, I’ve seen William falling down on his work. The whole racket got on our nerves. I reckon we were hard on her. William used to call her a wild fawn. Maybe, if we’d met her from the first in the right way, she’d have tamed down.”
Colonel Denbigh pulled hard at his mustache.
“Give her a little love, Carter, and trust in the Lord,” he advised gently.
It was Virginia, however, who solved the problem.
“William must take her away,” she said decidedly. “She’s used to big cities, to life and light and change, and she couldn’t endure us here. It will be a long time before she can. If he takes her away they’ll understand each other, Mrs. Carter, and then the rest of it will solve itself.”
Mrs. Carter assented to this. It came to her in the nature of manna from heaven. To mend William’s marriage and to escape the responsibility of Fanchon would be almost too good to be true.
“I reckon that’s just it, Jinny,” she said weakly. “It’s all wrong for two young people to start in together with another family. We’re right set in our ways, too. I think you’re right. Don’t you, papa?”
Mr. Carter nodded again. There was a little pause, broken only by the distant sound of Daniel’s march on the piazza.
“Isn’t that boy coming in here to sit down and drink some tea?” Mr. Carter demanded suddenly and sharply, addressing space.
“I’ll call him,” said Virginia.
But as she spoke they heard a step on the stairs and William’s voice.
“Mother, will you come up and see—my wife?”
Mrs. Carter rose, with a gasp, glancing at her husband. She met assent in his eyes, and she hurried out into the hall. William stood there, his face changed and softened, but still very pale. His eyes met his mother’s, and he held out his hand.
“She’s come out of her delirium. She knows me—and she wants to ask your forgiveness,” he said in a low voice, swallowing a lump in his throat.
Mrs. Carter clung to his arm, lifting her face to his.
“Oh, Willie!” she sobbed, and kissed him.
The colonel and Mr. Carter saw the mother and son going up-stairs together.
“It’s all right,” said the colonel with manifest relief. “I’m mighty glad of it!”
Mr. Carter made no reply, but lifted his glass of iced tea slowly to his lips and drank it. He felt choked. He was registering a silent vow that, whatever happened, Emily shouldn’t paint her eyelashes!
Virginia, smiling at her grandfather, slipped quietly out of the room. She stood for a moment in the wide, cool hall, listening. She could hearthe faint murmur of voices above her, and the tramp of Daniel’s nervous feet. Outside the door the warm sunshine seemed to pulsate, and a thousand little gnats danced in a circle in mid air. Virginia crossed the hall softly and stood in the door.
Daniel, very pale and quiet, stopped his marching up and down. His eyes met hers with a silent interrogation.
“It’s all right, Dan,” she said gently. “William just called your mother. It’s made up.”
Daniel drew a deep breath, his eyes on her face. He thought he had never seen her look so beautiful.
“It’s your doing, Virginia,” he said softly.
She shook her head, coming out and standing beside him in the sunshine.
“It’s God’s doing, Dan,” she replied gravely.
He said nothing. He was still gazing at her. She looked so beautiful and so happy that he wondered if, after all, she cared for William. Then he reflected that angels must always look beautiful in acts of love and renunciation.
She turned and smiled at him again.
“Let’s walk down to the end of the garden,” she said gently. “It’s cool there under the old mulberry.”
They walked slowly, not because of his lameness,for he was limping very little to-day, but because the walk through the old garden-paths was sweet.
“My roses are still blooming,” remarked Virginia. “I’m going to set out some more of these late ones this autumn. How sweet the air is to-day!”
He looked up at the clear sky. Only a few white clouds floated in the deep, ineffable blue.
“It’s a heavenly day,” he said.
They were silent after that, walking between the hedgerows, until they came to a grassy slope that was left to go wild, because Virginia loved wild flowers. Here, in the spring, were pink anemones and blood-root, and now there were little yellow flowers on the green blades of grass.
They sat down together on a fallen tree, which had been left lying there for a seat. Daniel looked down at the little yellow stars in the grass.
“Aren’t they pretty things?” he said musingly. “At first I thought this was only common turf, but it’s full of yellow stars.”
Virginia, following his eyes, smiled.
“They call that star-grass, Dan.”
“Star-grass?” he repeated thoughtfully, “it’s a pretty name, Virginia. Do you know why I was looking at it? Those little stars are everywherelike tiny points of flame—and they are all around your feet, little flames of incense.”
“There’s a legend,” she replied, “that those little stars were fastened on the blades of grass so that the humble things of earth, which couldn’t look so high as heaven, could see the stars in the grass. Isn’t it a quaint idea?”
Daniel nodded, leaning his chin on the hands that clasped the top of his walking-stick, and looking at them, something grim and sad coming into his face.
“I saw a white-breasted nuthatch yesterday in that tree,” said Virginia dreamily.
He did not reply, and there was such a long silence that she turned and looked at him. She saw how pale he had grown, how the delicate hollows had fallen in his cheeks, and the shadows under his eyes. Daniel’s eyes were beautiful, she thought—like a woman’s in their clear kindness. Perhaps it was the pain he had borne for so many years after his hurt.
“Virginia, if you look at me like that I shall say something,” he cried suddenly. “I can’t bear it! Turn your eyes away, Virginia.”
She laughed a little tremulously, blushing, too.
“But why, Dan? A cat may look at a king, you know.”
He did not answer for a while. He was digging little holes in the soft turf with his stick.
“A cripple can’t speak,” he said at last. “A cripple can’t tell a woman what he feels, even when that woman is an angel of compassion.”
“But you’re not a cripple, Dan. You’re only a little lame. It grows less, too, every day.”
“I overheard father once,” Daniel replied bitterly. “He called me a cripple. ‘No girl wants a cripple,’ he said.”
“Oh, how cruel,” Virginia cried. “And it’s not true, Dan; it’s not true at all!”
Daniel started, looking around at her, but her face was averted. He only saw her charming profile against the beauty of the foliage behind her. Something in it—something tender and sympathetic—reached him. He drew a long breath.
“Virginia, you can’t mean——”
She said nothing, but she lifted her eyes a little shyly to his face, and this time Daniel could not resist the look.
“You can’t mean that you’d marry me!” he cried, and then softly, with infinite tenderness: “Will you, Virginia?”
“Yes, Dan,” she answered, smiling.
Her smile seemed to change his whole world for him, and to fill it with an ineffable tenderness and light. It was no longer the sweet whistlingof a robin that he heard, but the music of the spheres. The very ground was carpeted with stars—with tiny stars that ran like little flames all the way to Virginia’s feet, for—like the humble things of earth—Daniel had found his bit of heaven there.
THE END