This time the laugh was not to be put down. "I confess I shouldn"t," she said.
"Thought so," he replied, as one versed. His tones took on a nasal tw.a.n.g. "Well, as I was saying, I"ve about got ready to settle down, and I"ve had my eye on the lady this seven years."
"Marvel of constancy!" said Virginia. "And the lady?"
"The lady," said Eliphalet, bluntly, "is you." He glanced at her bewildered face and went on rapidly: "You pleased me the first day I set eyes on you in the store I said to myself, "Hopper, there"s the one for you to marry." I"m plain, but my folks was good people. I set to work right then to make a fortune for you, Miss Jinny. You"ve just what I need. I"m a plain business man with no frills. You"ll do the frills.
You"re the kind that was raised in the lap of luxury. You"ll need a man with a fortune, and a big one; you"re the sort to show it off. I"ve got the foundations of that fortune, and the proof of it right here. And I tell you,"--his jaw was set,--"I tell you that some day Eliphalet Hopper will be one of the richest men in the West."
He had stopped, facing her in the middle of the way, his voice strong, his confidence supreme. At first she had stared at him in dumb wonder.
Then, as she began to grasp the meaning of his harangue, astonishment was still dominant,--sheer astonishment. She scarcely listened. But, as he finished, the thatch of the summer house caught her eye. A vision arose of a man beside whom Eliphalet was not worthy to crawl. She thought of Stephen as he had stood that evening in the sunset, and this proposal seemed a degradation. This brute dared to tempt her with money.
Scalding words rose to her lips. But she caught the look on Eliphalet"s face, and she knew that he would not understand. This was one who rose and fell, who lived and loved and hated and died and was buried by--money.
For a second she looked into his face as one who escapes a pit gazes over the precipice, and shuddered. As for Eliphalet, let it not be thought that he had no pa.s.sion. This was the moment for which he had lived since the day he had first seen her and been scorned in the store.
That type of face, that air,--these were the priceless things he would buy with his money. Crazed with the very violence of his long-pent desire, he seized her hand. She wrung it free again.
"How--how dare you!" she cried.
He staggered back, and stood for a moment motionless, as though stunned.
Then, slowly, a light crept into his little eyes which haunted her for many a day.
"You--won"t--marry me?" he said.
"Oh, how dare you ask me!" exclaimed Virginia, her face burning with the shame of it. She was standing with her hands behind her, her back against a great walnut trunk, the crusted branches of which hung over the bluff. Even as he looked at her, Eliphalet lost his head, and indiscretion entered his soul.
"You must!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "You must! You"ve got no notion of my money, I say."
"Oh!" she cried, "can"t you understand? If you owned the whole of California, I would not marry you." Suddenly he became very cool. He slipped his hand into a pocket, as one used to such a motion, and drew out some papers.
"I cal"late you ain"t got much idea of the situation, Miss Carvel," he said; "the wheels have been a-turning lately. You"re poor, but I guess you don"t know how poor you are,--eh? The Colonel"s a man of honor, ain"t he?"
For her life she could not have answered,--nor did she even know why she stayed to listen.
"Well," he said, "after all, there ain"t much use in your lookin" over them papers. A woman wouldn"t know. I"ll tell you what they say: they say that if I choose, I am Carvel & Company."
The little eyes receded, and he waited a moment, seemingly to prolong a physical delight in the excitement and suffering of a splendid creature.
The girl was breathing fast and deep.
"I cal"late you despise me, don"t you?" he went on, as if that, too, gave him pleasure. "But I tell you the Colonel"s a beggar but for me.
Go and ask him if I"m lying. All you"ve got to do is to say you"ll be my wife, and I tear these notes in two. They go over the bluff." (He made the motion with his hands.) "Carvel & Company"s an old firm,--a respected firm. You wouldn"t care to see it go out of the family, I cal"late."
He paused again, triumphant. But she did none of the things he expected.
She said, simply:--"Will you please follow me, Mr. Hopper."
And he followed her,--his shrewdness gone, for once.
Save for the rise and fall of her shoulders she seemed calm. The path wound through a jungle of waving sunflowers and led into the shade in front of the house. There was the Colonel sitting on the porch. His pipe lay with its scattered ashes on the boards, and his head was bent forward, as though listening. When he saw the two, he rose expectantly, and went forward to meet them. Virginia stopped before him.
"Pa," she said, "is it true that you have borrowed money from this man?"
Eliphalet had seen Mr. Carvel angry once, and his soul had quivered.
Terror, abject terror, seized him now, so that his knees smote together.
As well stare into the sun as into the Colonel"s face. In one stride he had a hand in the collar of Eliphalet"s new coat, the other pointing down the path.
"It takes just a minute to walk to that fence, sir," he said sternly.
"If you are any longer about it, I reckon you"ll never get past it.
You"re a cowardly hound, sir!" Mr. Hopper"s gait down the flagstones was an invention of his own. It was neither a walk, nor a trot, nor a run, but a sort of sliding amble, such as is executed in nightmares. Singing in his head was the famous example of the eviction of Babc.o.c.k from the store,--the only time that the Colonel"s bullet had gone wide. And down in the small of his back Eliphalet listened for the crack of a pistol, and feared that a clean hole might be bored there any minute. Once outside, he took to the white road, leaving a trail of dust behind him that a wagon might have raised. Fear lent him wings, but neglected to lift his feet.
The Colonel pa.s.sed his arm around his daughter, and pulled his goatee thoughtfully. And Virginia, glancing shyly upward, saw a smile in the creases about his mouth: She smiled, too, and then the tears hid him from her.
Strange that the face which in anger withered cowards and made men look grave, was capable of such infinite tenderness,--tenderness and sorrow.
The Colonel took Virginia in his arms, and she sobbed against his shoulder, as of old.
"Jinny, did he--?"
"Yes--"
"Lige was right, and--and you, Jinny--I should never have trusted him.
The sneak!"
Virginia raised her head. The sun was slanting in yellow bars through the branches of the great trees, and a robin"s note rose above the ba.s.s chorus of the frogs. In the pauses, as she listened, it seemed as if she could hear the silver sound of the river over the pebbles far below.
"Honey," said the Colonel,--"I reckon we"re just as poor as white trash."
Virginia smiled through her tears.
"Honey," he said again, after a pause, "I must keep my word and let him have the business."
She did not reproach him.
"There is a little left, a very little," he continued slowly, painfully.
"I thank G.o.d that it is yours. It was left you by Becky--by your mother.
It is in a railroad company in New York, and safe, Jinny."
"Oh, Pa, you know that I do not care," she cried. "It shall be yours and mine together. And we shall live out here and be happy."
But she glanced anxiously at him nevertheless. He was in his familiar posture of thought, his legs slightly apart, his felt hat pushed back, stroking his goatee. But his clear gray eyes were troubled as they sought hers, and she put her hand to her breast.
"Virginia," he said, "I fought for my country once, and I reckon I"m some use yet awhile. It isn"t right that I should idle here, while the South needs me, Your Uncle Daniel is fifty-eight, and Colonel of a Pennsylvania regiment.--Jinny, I have to go."
Virginia said nothing. It was in her blood as well as his. The Colonel had left his young wife, to fight in Mexico; he had come home to lay flowers on her grave. She knew that he thought of this; and, too, that his heart was rent at leaving her. She put her hands on his shoulders, and he stooped to kiss her trembling lips.
They walked out together to the summer-house, and stood watching the glory of the light on the western hills. "Jinn," said the Colonel, "I reckon you will have to go to your Aunt Lillian. It--it will be hard.
But I know that my girl can take care of herself. In case--in case I do not come back, or occasion should arise, find Lige. Let him take you to your Uncle Daniel. He is fond of you, and will be all alone in Calvert House when the war is over. And I reckon that is all I have to say. I won"t pry into your heart, honey. If you love Clarence, marry him. I like the boy, and I believe he will quiet down into a good man."
Virginia did not answer, but reached out for her father"s hand and held its fingers locked tight in her own. From the kitchen the sound of Ned"s voice rose in the still evening air.
"Sposin" I was to go to N" Orleans an" take sick and die, Laik a bird into de country ma spirit would fly."
And after a while down the path the red and yellow of Mammy Easter"s bandanna was seen.