"I--I thought you did not care," she murmured beneath his kisses.
He could not speak--for it was a part of his ironic destiny that he, who was prodigal of light words, should find himself stricken dumb in any crucial instant.
"You know--you know----" he stammered, holding her closer.
"Then it--it is not all a dream?" she asked.
"I adored you from the first minute--you saw that--you knew it. I"ve wanted you day and night since I first looked at you."
"But you kept away. You avoided me. I couldn"t understand."
"It was because I knew I couldn"t be with you five minutes without kissing you. And I oughtn"t to--it"s madness in me--for I"m desperately poor, darling; I"ve no right to marry you."
A little smile shone on her lips. "As if I cared about that, Oliver."
"Then you"ll marry me? You"ll marry me, my beautiful?"
She lifted her face from his breast, and her look was like the enkindled glory of the sunrise. "Don"t you see? Haven"t you seen from the beginning?" she asked.
"I was afraid to see, darling--but, Virginia--oh, Virginia, let it be soon!"
When he went from her a little later, it seemed to him that all of life had been pressed down into the minute when he had held her against his breast; and as he walked through the dimly lighted streets, among the shadows of men who, like himself, were pursuing some shadowy joy, he carried with him that strange vision of a heaven on earth which has haunted mortal eyes since the beginning of love. Happiness appeared to him as a condition which he had achieved by a few words, by a kiss, in a minute of time, but which belonged to him so entirely now that he could never be defrauded of it again in the future. Whatever happened to him, he could never be separated from the bliss of that instant when he had held her.
He was going to Cyrus while his ecstasy enn.o.bled even the prosaic fact of the railroad. And just as on that other evening, when he had rushed in anger away from the house of his uncle, so now he was exalted by the consciousness that he was following the lead of the more spiritual part of his nature--for the line of least resistance was so overgrown with exquisite impressions that he no longer recognized it. The sacrifice of art for love appeared to him to-day as splendidly romantic as the sacrifice of comfort for art had seemed to him a few months ago. His desire controlled him so absolutely that he obeyed its different promptings under the belief that he was obeying the principles whose names he borrowed. The thing he wanted was trans.m.u.ted by the fire of his temperament into some artificial likeness to the thing that was good for him.
On the front steps, between the two pink oleanders, Cyrus was standing with his gaze fixed on a small grocery store across the street, and at the sight of his nephew a look of curiosity, which was as personal an emotion as he was in the habit of feeling, appeared on his lean yellow face. Behind him, the door into the hall stood open, and his stooping figure was outlined against the light of the gas-jet by the staircase.
"You see I"ve come," said Oliver; for Cyrus, who never spoke first unless he was sure of dominating the situation, had waited for him to begin.
"Yes, I see," replied the old man, not unkindly. "I expected you, but hardly so soon--hardly so soon."
"It"s about the place on the railroad. If you are still of the same mind, I"d like you to give me a trial."
"When would you want to start?"
"The sooner the better. I"d rather get settled there before the autumn.
I"m going to be married sometime in the autumn--October, perhaps."
"Ah!" said Cyrus softly, and Oliver was grateful to him because he didn"t attempt to crow.
"We haven"t told any one yet--but I wanted to make sure of the job. It"s all right, then, isn"t it?"
"Oh, yes, it"s all right, if you do your part. She"s Gabriel Pendleton"s girl, isn"t she?"
"She"s Virginia Pendleton. You know her, of course." He tried honestly to be natural, but in spite of himself he could not keep a note of constraint out of his voice. Merely to discuss Virginia with Cyrus seemed, in some subtle way, an affront to her. Yet he knew that the old man wanted to be kind, and the knowledge touched him.
"Oh, yes, I know her. She"s a good girl, and there doesn"t live a better man than Gabriel."
"I don"t deserve her, of course. But, then, there never lived a man who deserved an angel."
"Ain"t you coming in?" asked Cyrus.
"Not this evening. I only wanted to speak to you. I suppose I"d better go down to the office to-morrow and talk to Mr. Burden, hadn"t I?"
"Come about noon, and I"ll tell him to expect you. Well, if you ain"t coming in, I reckon I"ll close this door."
Looking up a minute later from the pavement Oliver saw his aunt rocking slowly back and forth at the window of her room, and the remembrance of her fell like a blight over his happiness.
By the time he reached High Street a wind had risen beyond the hill near the river, and the scattered papers on the pavement fled like grey wings before him into the darkness. As the air freshened, faces appeared in the doors along the way, and the whole town seemed drinking in the cooling breeze as if it were water. On the wind sped, blowing over the slack figure of Mrs. Treadwell; blowing over the conquering smile of Susan, who was unbinding her long hair; blowing over the joy-brightened eyes of Virginia, who dreamed in the starlight of the life that would come to her; blowing over the ghost-haunted face of her mother, who dreamed of the life that had gone by her; blowing at last, beyond the river, over the tired hands of the little seamstress, who dreamed of nothing except of how she might keep her living body out of the poorhouse and her dead body out of the potter"s field. And over the town, with its twenty-one thousand souls, each of whom contained within itself a separate universe of tragedy and of joy, of hope and of disappointment, the wind pa.s.sed as lightly it pa.s.sed over the unquiet dust in the streets below.
BOOK II
THE REALITY
CHAPTER I
VIRGINIA PREPARES FOR THE FUTURE
"Mother, I"m so happy! Oh! was there ever a girl so happy as I am?"
"I was, dear, once."
"When you married father? Yes, I know," said Virginia, but she said it without conviction. In her heart she did not believe that marrying her father--perfect old darling that he was!--could ever have caused any girl just the particular kind of ecstasy that she was feeling. She even doubted whether such stainless happiness had ever before visited a mortal upon this planet. It was not only wonderful, it was not only perfect, but it felt so absolutely new that she secretly cherished the belief that it had been invented by the universe especially for Oliver and herself. It was ridiculous to imagine that the many million pairs of lovers that were marrying every instant had each experienced a miracle like this, and yet left the earth pretty much as they had found it before they fell in love.
It was a week before her wedding, and she stood in the centre of the spare room in the west wing, which had been turned over to Miss w.i.l.l.y Whitlow. The little seamstress knelt now at her feet, pinning up the hem of a black silk polonaise, and turning her head from time to time to ask Mrs. Pendleton if she was "getting the proper length." For a quarter of a century, no girl of Virginia"s cla.s.s had married in Dinwiddie without the crowning benediction of a black silk gown, and ever since the announcement of Virginia"s betrothal her mother had cramped her small economies in order that she might buy "grosgrain" of the best quality.
"Is that right, mother? Do you think I might curve it a little more in front?" asked the girl, holding her feet still with difficulty because she felt that she wanted to dance.
"No, dear, I think it will stay in fashion longer if you don"t shorten it. Then it will be easier to make over the more goods you leave in it."
"It looks nice on me, doesn"t it?" Standing there, with the stiff silk slipping away from her thin shoulders, and the dappled sunlight falling over her neck and arms through the tawny leaves of the paulownia tree in the garden, she was like a slim white lily unfolding softly out of its sheath.
"Lovely, darling, and it will be so useful. I got the very best quality, and it ought to wear forever."
"I made Mrs. William Goode one ten years ago, and she"s still wearing it," remarked Miss w.i.l.l.y, speaking with an effort through a mouthful of pins.
A machine, which had been whirring briskly by the side window, stopped suddenly, and the girl who sewed there--a sickly, sallow-faced creature of Virginia"s age, who was hired by Mrs. Pendleton, partly out of charity because she supported an invalid father who had been crippled in the war, and partly because, having little strength and being an unskilled worker, her price was cheap--turned for an instant and stared wistfully at the black silk polonaise over the strip of organdie which she was hemming. All her life she had wanted a black silk dress, and though she knew that she should probably never have one, and should not have time to wear it if she ever had, she liked to linger over the thought of it, very much as Virginia lingered over the thought of her lover, or as little Miss w.i.l.l.y lingered over the thought of having a tombstone over her after she was dead. In the girl"s face, where at first there had been only admiration, a change came gradually. A quiver, so faint that it was hardly more than a shadow, pa.s.sed over her drawn features, and her gaze left the trailing yards of silk and wandered to the blue October sky over the swinging leaves of the paulownia. But instead of the radiant autumn weather at which she was looking, she still saw that black silk polonaise which she wanted as she wanted youth and pleasure, and which she knew that she should never have.
"Everything is finished but this, isn"t it, Miss w.i.l.l.y?" asked Virginia, and at the sound of her happy voice, that strange quiver pa.s.sed again through the other girl"s face.
"Everything except that organdie and a couple of nightgowns." There was no quiver in Miss w.i.l.l.y"s face, for from constant consideration of the poorhouse and the cemetery, she had come to regard the other problems of life, if not with indifference, at least with something approaching a mild contempt. Even love, when measured by poverty or by death, seemed to lose the impressiveness of its proportions.