She had not heard the step on the stair. She had not seen the door open. She did not know that any one wage in the room until she heard his voice, and then she thought that she was dreaming.
"Miss Carvel!"
"Yes?" Her head did not move. He took a step toward her.
"Miss Carvel!"
Slowly she raised her face to his, unbelief and wonder in her eyes,--unbelief and wonder and fright. No; it could not be he. But when she met the quality of his look, the grave tenderness of it, she trembled, and our rendered her own to the page where his handwriting quivered and became a blur.
He never knew the effort it cost her to rise and confront him. She herself had not measured or fathomed the power which his very person exhaled. It seemed to have come upon him suddenly. He needed not to have spoken for her to have felt that. What it was she could not tell. She knew alone that it was nigh irresistible, and she grasped the back of the chair as though material support might sustain her.
"Is he--dead?"
She was breathing hard.
"No," she said. "Not--not yet, They are waiting for the end."
"And you?" he asked in grave surprise, glancing at the door of the Judge"s room.
Then she remembered Clarence.
"I am waiting for my cousin," she said.
Even as she spoke she was with this man again at the Brinsmade gate.
Those had been her very words! Intuition told her that he, too, was thinking of that time. Now he had found her at his desk, and, as if that were not humiliation enough, with one of his books taken down and laid open at his signature. Suffused, she groped for words to carry her on.
"I am waiting for Clarence, Mr. Brice. He was here, and is gone somewhere."
He did not seem to take account of the speech. And his silence--goad to indiscretion--pressed her to add:-- "You saved him, Mr. Brice. I--we all--thank you so much. And that is not all I want to say. It is a poor enough acknowledgment of what you did,--for we have not always treated you well." Her voice faltered almost to faintness, as he raised his hand in pained protest. But she continued: "I shall regard it as a debt I can never repay. It is not likely that in my life to come I can ever help you, but I shall pray for that opportunity."
He interrupted her.
"I did nothing, Miss Carvel, nothing that the most unfeeling man in our army would not do. Nothing that I would not have done for the merest stranger."
"You saved him for me," she said.
O fateful words that spoke of themselves! She turned away from him for very shame, and yet she heard him saying:-- "Yes, I saved him for you."
His voice was in the very note of the sadness which has the strength to suffer, to put aside the thought of self. A note to which her soul responded with anguish when she turned to him with the natural cry of woman.
"Oh, you ought not to have come here to-night. Why did you come? The Doctor forbade it. The consequences may kill you."
"It does not matter much," he answered. "The Judge was dying."
"How did you know?"
"I guessed it,--because my mother had left me."
"Oh, you ought not to have come!" she said again.
"The Judge has been my benefactor," he answered quietly. "I could walk, and it was my duty to come."
"You did not walk!" she gasped.
He smiled, "I had no carriage," he said.
With the instinct of her s.e.x she seized the chair and placed it under him. "You must sit down at once," she cried.
"But I am not tired," he replied.
"Oh, you must sit down, you must, Captain Brice." He started at the t.i.tle, which came so prettily from her lips, "Won"t you please!" she said pleadingly.
He sat down. And, as the sun peeps out of a troubled sky, she smiled.
"It is your chair," she said.
He glanced at the book, and the bit of sky was crimson. But still he said nothing.
"It is your book," she stammered. "I did not know that it was yours when I took it down. I--I was looking at it while I was waiting for Clarence."
"It is dry reading," he remarked, which was not what he wished to say.
"And yet--"
"Yes?"
"And yet you have read it twice." The confession had slipped to her lips.
She was sitting on the edge of his desk, looking down at him. Still he did not look at her. All the will that was left him averted his head.
And the seal of honor was upon his speech. And he wondered if man were ever more tempted.
Then the evil spread its wings, and soared away into the night. And the moment was past. Peace seemed to come upon them both, quieting the tumult in their hearts, and giving them back their reason. Respect like wise came to the girl,--respect that was akin to awe. It was he who spoke first.
"My mother has me how faithfully you nursed the Judge, Miss Carvel. It was a very n.o.ble thing to do."
"Not n.o.ble at all," she replied hastily, "your mother did the most of it, And he is an old friend of my father--"
"It was none the less n.o.ble," said Stephen, warmly, "And he quarrelled with Colonel Carvel."
"My father quarrelled with him," she corrected. "It was well that I should make some atonement. And yet mine was no atonement, I love Judge Whipple. It was a--a privilege to see your mother every day--oh, how he would talk of you! I think he loves you better than any one on this earth."
"Tell me about him," said Stephen, gently.
Virginia told him, and into the narrative she threw the whole of her pent-up self. How patient the Judge had been, and the joy he had derived from Stephen"s letters. "You were very good to write to him so often,"
she said. It seemed like a dream to Stephen, like one of the many dreams of her, the mystery of which was of the inner life beyond our ken. He could not recall a time when she had not been rebellious, antagonistic.
And now--as he listened to her voice, with its exquisite low tones and modulations, as he sat there in this sacred intimacy, perchance to be the last in his life, he became dazed. His eyes, softened, with supreme eloquence cried out that she, was his, forever and forever. The magnetic force which G.o.d uses to tie the worlds together was pulling him to her.
And yet the Puritan resisted.
Then the door swung open, and Clarence Colfax, out of breath, ran into the room. He stopped short when he saw them, his hand fell to his sides, and his words died on his lips. Virginia did not stir.