"It"s that girl of Jerry Pollard"s," he was saying. "She"s gotten into trouble, and that Burr boy"s mixed up in it; the young rascal!"
Miss Chris"s placid voice floated in.
"I can"t believe it," she charitably murmured; and Bernard, who was on the hearth rug, turned at the sound.
"It"s all gossip, you know," he said.
Eugenia pushed aside the curtains and stepped into the room. Her hands hung at her sides, and the animation had faded from her glance. Her face looked white and drawn.
"It is not true," she said steadily. "Papa, it is not true."
"I--I"m afraid it is, daughter," gasped the general. There was an abashed embarra.s.sment in his att.i.tude and his hands shook. He had hoped to keep such facts beyond the utmost horizon of his daughter"s life.
Eugenia crossed to the hearth rug and stood looking into Bernard"s face. She made an appealing gesture with her hands.
"Bernard, it is not true," she said.
He turned away from her and, nervously lifting the poker, divided the smouldering log. A red flame shot up, illuminating the gathered faces that stood out against the dusk. The glare lent a grotesque irony to the flabby, awe-stricken features of the general, brightened the boyish ill-humour in Bernard"s eyes, and played peaceably over Miss Chris"s tranquil countenance.
"Bernard, it is not true," she said again.
The poker fell with a clatter to the hearth; and the noise irritated her. Bernard put out a sudden, soothing hand.
"It is what they say in Kingsborough," he answered.
She turned from him to the window, pushed the curtains aside, and went out again into the sunset.
VI
She ran swiftly along the walk, into the gloom of the avenue, and out again to the open road. The sunset colours were flaming in the west, and above them a solitary star was shining. The fields lay sombre and deserted on either side, but straight ahead, in the lighter streak of the road, she saw Nicholas"s figure swinging onward. She might have called to him, but she did not; she sped like a shadow in his path until, hearing her footfalls in the dust, he looked back and halted.
"You!" he exclaimed.
She came up to him, her hand at her throat, her face turned towards the sunset. For a moment her breath failed and she could not speak; then all the words that she had meant to say--the appeal to him for truth, the cry of her own belief in him--rang theatrical and ineffectual in her brain.
When at last she spoke, it was to voice the mere tripping of her tongue--to utter words which belied the beating of her thoughts.
"You must marry her," she said, and it seemed to her that it was a stranger who spoke. She did not mean that--she had never meant it.
He looked at her blankly, and made a sudden movement forward, but she waved him off.
"For G.o.d"s sake, whom?" he demanded.
She wished that he had laughed at her--that he had laid bare the whole hideous farce, but he did not; he regarded her gravely, with a grim inquiry.
"Whom do you mean?" he repeated.
A light wind sprang up, blowing across the pasture and whirling the dead leaves of distant trees into their faces. Overhead other stars came out, and far away an owl hooted.
"Oh! you know, you know," she said, with a desperate anger at his immobility. "When I saw you with her to-day, I did not--I did not--"
"Do you mean Bessie Pollard?" he asked. His voice was hard; it was characteristic of him that, in the supreme test, his sense of humour failed him. He met grave issues with a gravity that upheld them.
She bowed her head. At the same time she flung out a despairing hand for hope, but he did not notice it. She was softening to him--if she had ever steeled herself against him--and a single summons to her faith would have vanquished the feeble resistance. But he did not make it--the inflexible front which she had seen turned to others she now saw presented to herself. He looked at her with an austere tightening of the mouth and held off.
"And they have told you that I ruined her," he said, "and you believe them."
"No--no," she cried; "not that!"
His eyes were on her, but there was no yielding in them. The arrogant pride of a strong man, plainly born, was face to face with her appeal.
His features were set with the rigidity of stone.
"Who has told you this?" he demanded.
"Oh, it is not true--it is not true," she answered; "but Bernard--Bernard believed it--and he is your friend."
Then his smouldering rage burst forth, and his face grew black. It was as if an incarnate devil had leaped into his eyes. He took a step forward.
"Then may G.o.d d.a.m.n him," he said, "for he is the man!"
She fell from him as if he had struck her. Her spirit flashed out as his had done. The anger of her race shot forth.
"Oh, stop! stop! How dare you!" she cried; "for he tried to shield you--he tried to shield you--he would shield you if he could."
But he crossed to where she stood and caught her outstretched hands in a grasp that hurt her. She winced, and his hold grew gentle; but his voice was brutal in its pa.s.sion.
"Be silent," he said, "and listen to me. They have lied to you, and you have believed them--you I shall never forgive--you are nothing to me--nothing. As for him--may G.o.d, in his mercy, d.a.m.n him!"
He let her hands drop and went from her into the silence of the open road.
When the thud of his footsteps was m.u.f.fled by the distance Eugenia turned and went back through the cedar avenue. She walked heavily, and there was a bruised sensation in her limbs as if she had hurt herself upon stones. A ma.s.sive fatigue oppressed her, and she stumbled once or twice over the rocks in the road. Her happiness was dead, this she told herself; telling herself, also, that it had not perished by anger or by disbelief. The slayer loomed intangible and yet inevitable--the shade that had arisen from the gigantic gulf between separate cla.s.ses which they had sought, in ignorance, to abridge. The pride of Nicholas was not individual, but typical--the pride of caste, and it was against this that she had sinned--not in distrusting his honour, but in offending it.
It was in the clash of cla.s.s, after all, that their theories had crumbled. He might come back to her again--she might go forth to meet him--but the bloom had gone from their dreams--in the reunion she saw neither permanence nor abiding. The strongest of her instincts--the one that made for the blood she bore--had quivered beneath the onslaught of his accusation, but had not bent. Wherever and whenever the struggle came she stood, as the Battles had always stood, for the clan. Be it right or wrong, true or false, it was hers and she was on its side.
As she went beneath the great cedars, their long branches brushed her face, like the remembering touch of familiar fingers, and she put up her cheek to them as if they were sentient things. Long ago they had soothed her as a troubled child, and now their caresses cooled her fever.
Underfoot she felt the ancient carpet they had spread throughout the century--and it smoothed the way for her heavy feet. She was in the state of subjective pa.s.siveness when the consciousness of external objects alone seems awake. She felt a tenderness for the twisted box bushes she brushed in pa.s.sing, a vague pity for a sickly moth that flew into her face; but for herself she was without pity or tenderness--she had not brought her mind to bear upon her own hurt.
Indoors she found the family at supper. The general, hearing her step, called her to her seat and gave her the brownest chicken breast in the dish before him. Miss Chris offered her the contents of the cream jug, and Congo plied her with Aunt Verbeny"s lightest waffles; but the food choked her and she could not eat. A lump rose in her throat, and she saw the kindly, accustomed faces through a gathering mist. She regarded each with a certain intentness, a peculiar feeling that there were hidden traits in the commonplace features which she had never seen before--a complexity in the benign candour of Miss Chris"s countenance, in the overwrought youthfulness of Bernard"s, in the apoplectic credulity of the general"s. Familiar as they were, it seemed to her that there were latent possibilities--obscure tendencies, which were revealed to her now with microscopic exaggeration.
The general put his hand to her forehead and smoothed back the moist hair.
"Ain"t you well, daughter?" he asked anxiously. "Would you like a toddy?"
"It"s nothing," said Miss Chris cheerfully. "She"s walked too far, that"s all. Eugie, you must go to bed early."
"I had her out all the morning in the sun," put in Bernard, with an affectionate nod at Eugenia, "and she"s such a trump she wouldn"t give out."