CHAPTER I

 
Holly’s eighteenth birthday was but a fortnight distant when the quiet stream of her life, which since her father’s death six years before had flowed placidly, with but few events to ripple its tranquil surface, was suddenly disturbed....
To the child of twelve years death, because of its unfamiliarity and mystery, is peculiarly terrible. At that age one has become too wise to find comfort in the vague and beautiful explanations of tearfully-smiling relatives—explanations in which Heaven is pictured as a material region just out of sight beyond the zenith; too selfishly engrossed with one’s own loneliness and terror to be pacified by the contemplation of the radiant peace and beatitude attained by the departed one in that ethereal[10] and invisible suburb. And at twelve one is as yet too lacking in wisdom to realize the beneficence of death.
Thus it was that when Captain Lamar Wayne died at Waynewood, in his fiftieth year, Holly, left quite alone in a suddenly empty world save for her father’s sister, Miss India Wayne, grieved passionately and rebelliously, giving way so abjectly to her sorrow that Aunt India, fearing gravely for her health, summoned the family physician.
 
“There is nothing physically wrong with her,” pronounced the Old Doctor, “nothing that I can remedy with my poisons. You must get her mind away from her sorrow, my dear Miss India. I would suggest that you take her away for a time; give her new scenes; interest her in new affairs. Meanwhile ... there is no harm....” The Old Doctor wrote a prescription with his trembling hand ... “a simple tonic ... nothing more.”
So Aunt India and Holly went away. At first the thought of deserting the new grave[11] in the little burying-ground within sight of the house moved Holly to a renewed madness of grief. But by the time Uncle Randall had put their trunk and bags into the old carriage interest in the journey had begun to assuage Holly’s sorrow. It was her first journey into the world. Save for visits to neighboring plantations and one memorable trip to Tallahassee while her father had served in the State Legislature, she had never been away from Corunna. And now she was actually going into another State! And not merely to Georgia, which would have been a comparatively small event since the Georgia line ran east[12] and west only a bare half-dozen miles up the Valdosta road, but away up to Kentucky, of which, since the Waynes had come from there in the first part of the century, Holly had heard much all her life.
As the carriage moved down the circling road Holly watched with trembling lips the little brick-walled enclosure on the knoll. Then came a sudden gush of tears and convulsive sobs, and when these had passed they were under the live-oaks at the depot, and the train of two cars and a rickety, asthmatic engine, which ran over the six-mile branch to the main line, was posing importantly in front of the weather-beaten station.
Holly’s pulses stirred with excitement, and when, a quarter of an hour later,—for Aunt India believed in being on time,—she kissed Uncle Ran good-bye, her eyes were quite dry.
That visit had lasted nearly three months, and for awhile Holly had been surfeited with new sights and new experiences against which no grief, no matter how poignant,[13] could have been wholly proof. When, on her return to Waynewood, she paid her first visit to her father’s grave, the former ecstasy of grief was absent. In its place was a tender, dim-eyed melancholy, something exaltedly sacred and almost sweet, a sentiment to be treasured and nourished in reverent devotion. And yet I think it was not so much the journey that accomplished this end as it was a realization which came to her during the first month of the visit.
 
In her first attempts at comforting the child, and many times since, Aunt India had reminded Holly that now that her father had reached Heaven he and her mother were together once more, and that since they had loved each other very dearly on earth they were beyond doubt very happy in Paradise. Aunt India assured her that it was a beautiful thought. But it had never impressed Holly as Miss India thought it should. Possibly she was too self-absorbed in her sorrow to consider it judicially. But one night she had a dream from which she awoke murmuring happily in the darkness. She could not remember very clearly what she had dreamed, although she strove hard to do so. But she knew that it was a beautiful dream, a dream in which her father and her mother,—the wonderful mother of whom she had no recollection,—had appeared to her hand in hand and had spoken loving, comforting words. For the first time she realized Aunt India’s meaning; realized how very, very happy her father and mother must be together[15] in Heaven, and how silly and selfish she had been to wish him back. All in the instant there, in the dim silence, the dull ache of loneliness which had oppressed her for months disappeared. She no longer seemed alone; somewhere,—near at hand,—was sympathy and love and heart-filling comradeship. Holly lay for awhile very quiet and happy in the great four-poster bed, and stared into the darkness with wide eyes that swam in grateful tears. Then she fell into a sound, calm sleep.
She did not tell Aunt India of her dream; not because there was any lack of sympathy between them, but because to have shared it would have robbed it of half its dearness. For a long, long time it was the most precious of her possessions, and she hugged it to her and smiled over it as a mother over her child. And so I think it was the dream that accomplished what the Old Doctor could not,—the dream that brought, as dreams so often do, Heaven very close to earth. Dreams are blessed things, be they day-dreams or dreams of the night; and[16] even the ugly ones are beneficent, since at waking they make by contrast reality more endurable.
If Aunt India never learned the cause she was at least quick to note the result. Holly’s thin little cheeks borrowed tints from the Duchess roses in the garden, and Aunt India graciously gave the credit to Kentucky air, even as she drew her white silk shawl more closely about her slender shoulders and shivered in the unaccustomed chill of a Kentucky autumn.
Then followed six tranquil years in which Holly grew from a small, long-legged, angular child to a very charming maiden of eighteen, dainty with the fragrant daintiness of a southern rosebud; small of stature, as her mother had been before her, yet possessed of a gracious dignity that added mythical inches to her height; no longer angular but gracefully symmetrical with the soft curves of womanhood; with a fair skin like the inner petal of a La France rose; with eyes warmly, deeply brown, darkened by large irises; a low, broad forehead[17] under a wealth of hair just failing of being black; a small, mobile mouth, with lips as freshly red as the blossoms of the pomegranate tree in the corner of the yard, and little firm hands and little arched feet as true to beauty as the needle to the pole. God sometimes fashions a perfect body, and when He does can any praise be too extravagant?
For the rest, Holly Wayne at eighteen—or, to be exact, a fortnight before—was perhaps as contradictory as most girls of her age. Warm-hearted and tender, she could be tyrannical if she chose; dignified at times, there were moments when she became a breath-taking madcap of a girl,—moments of which Aunt India strongly but patiently disapproved; affectionate and generous, she was capable of showing a very pretty temper which, like mingled flash of lightning and roar of thunder, was severe but brief; tractable, she was not pliant, and from her father she had inherited settled convictions on certain subjects, such for instance as Secession and Emancipation,[18] and an accompanying dash of contumacy for the protection of them.
She was fond of books, and had read every sombre-covered volume of the British Poets from fly-leaf to fly-leaf. She preferred poetry to prose, but when the first was wanting she put up cheerfully with the latter. The contents of her father’s modest library had been devoured with a fine catholicity before she was sixteen. Recent books were few at Corunna, and had Holly been asked to name her favorite volume of fiction she would have been forced to divide the honor between certain volumes of The Spectator, St. Elmo, and The Wide, Wide World. She was intensely fond of being out of doors; even in her crawling days her negro mammy had found it a difficult task to keep her within walls; and so her reading had ever been al fresco. Her favorite place was under the gnarled old fig-tree at the end of the porch, where, perched in a comfortable crotch of trunk and branch, or asway in a hammock, she spent many of her waking hours. When the weather kept[19] her indoors, she never thought of books at all. Those stood with her for filtered sunlight, green-leaf shadows, and the perfume-laden breezes.
Her education, begun lovingly and sternly by her father, had ended with a four-years’ course at a neighboring Academy, supplying her with as much knowledge as Captain Wayne would have considered proper for her. He had held to old-fashioned ideas in such matters, and had considered the ability to quote aptly from Pope or Dryden of more appropriate value to a young woman than a knowledge of Herbert Spencer’s absurdities or a bowing acquaintance with Differential Calculus. So Holly graduated very proudly from the Academy, looking her sweetest in white muslin and lavender ribbons, and was quite, quite satisfied with her erudition and contentedly ignorant of many of the things that fit into that puzzle which we are pleased to call Life.
And now, in the first week of November in the year 1898, the tranquil stream of her[20] existence was about to be disturbed. Although she could have no knowledge of it, as yet, Fate was already poising the stone which, once dropped into that stream, was destined to cause disquieting ripples, perplexing eddies, distracting swirls and, in the end, the formation of a new channel. And even now the messenger of Fate was limping along with the aid of his stout cane, coming nearer and nearer down the road from the village under the shade of the water-oaks, a limp and a tap for every beat of Holly’s unsuspecting heart.
CHAPTER II
 
Holly sat on the back porch, her slippered feet on the topmost step of the flight leading to the “bridge” and from thence to the yard. She wore a simple white dress and dangled a blue-and-white-checked sun-bonnet from the fingers of her right hand. Her left hand was very pleasantly occupied, since its pink palm cradled Holly’s chin. Above the chin Holly’s lips were softly parted, disclosing the tips of three tiny white teeth; above the mouth, Holly’s eyes gazed abstractedly away over the roofs of the buildings in the yard and the cabins behind them, over the tops of the Le Conte pear-trees in the back lot, over the fringe of pines beyond, to where, like a black speck, a buzzard circled and dropped and circled again above a distant hill. I doubt if Holly saw the buzzard. I doubt if she saw anything that you or I could[22] have seen from where she sat. I really don’t know what she did see, for Holly was day-dreaming, an occupation to which she had become somewhat addicted during the last few months.
The mid-morning sunlight shone warmly on the back of the house. Across the bridge, in the kitchen, Aunt Venus was moving slowly about in the preparation of dinner, singing a revival hymn in a clear, sweet falsetto:
“Lord Gawd of Israel,
Lord Gawd of Israel,
Lord Gawd of Israel,
I’s gwan to meet you soon!”
To the right, in front of the disused office, a half-naked morsel of light brown humanity was seated in the dirt at the foot of the big sycamore, crooning a funny little accompaniment to his mother’s song, the while he munched happily at a baked sweet potato and played a wonderful game with two spools and a chicken leg. Otherwise the yard was empty of life save for the chickens and guineas and a white cat[23] asleep on the roof of the well-house. Save for Aunt Venus’s chant and Young Tom’s crooning (Young Tom to distinguish him from his father), the morning world was quite silent. The gulf breeze whispered in the trees and scattered the petals of the late roses. A red-bird sang a note from the edge of the grove and was still. Aunt Venus, fat and forty, waddled to the kitchen door, cast a stern glance at Young Tom and a softer one at Holly, and disappeared again, still singing:
“Lord Gawd of Israel,
Lord Gawd of Israel,
Lord Gawd of Israel,
Wash all mah sins away!”
Back of Holly the door stood wide open, and at the other end of the broad, cool hall the front portal was no less hospitably placed. And so it was that when the messenger of Fate limped and thumped his way up the steps, crossed the front porch and paused in the hall, Holly heard and leaped to her feet.
[24]
“Is anyone at home in this house?” called the messenger.
Holly sped to meet him.
“Good-morning, Uncle Major!”
Major Lucius Quintus Cass changed his cane to his left hand and shook hands with Holly, drawing her to him and placing a resounding kiss on one soft cheek.
“The privilege of old age, my dear,” he said; “one of the few things which reconcile me to gray hairs and rheumatism.” Still holding her hand, he drew back, his head on one side and his mouth pursed into a grimace of astonishment. “Dearie me,” he said ruefully, with a shake of his head, “where’s it going to stop, Holly? Every time I see you I find you’ve grown more radiant and lovely than before! ’Pears to me, my dear, you ought to have some pity for us poor men. Gad, if I was twenty years younger I’d be down on my knees this instant!”
Holly laughed softly and then drew her face into an expression of dejection.
“That’s always the way,” she sighed.[25] “All the real nice men are either married or think they’re too old to marry. I reckon I’ll just die an old maid, Uncle Major.”
“Rather than allow it,” the Major replied, gallantly, “I’ll dye my hair and marry you myself! But don’t you talk that way to me, young lady; I know what’s going on in the world. They tell me the Marysville road’s all worn out from the travel over it.”
Holly tossed her head.
“That’s only Cousin Julian,” she said.
“Humph! ‘Only Cousin Julian,’ eh? Well, Cousin Julian’s a fine-looking beau, my dear, and Doctor Thompson told me only last week that he’s doing splendidly, learning to poison folks off real natural and saw off their legs and arms so’s it’s a genuine pleasure to them. I reckon that in about a year or so Cousin Julian will be thinking of getting married. Eh? What say?”
“He may for all of me,” laughed Holly. But her cheeks wore a little deeper tint,[26] and the Major chuckled. Then he became suddenly grave.
“Is your Aunt at home?” he asked, in a low voice.
“She’s up-stairs,” answered Holly. “I’ll tell her you’re here, sir.”
“Just a moment,” said the Major, hurriedly. “I—oh, Lord!” He rubbed his chin slowly, and looked at Holly in comical despair. “Holly, pity the sorrows of a poor old man.”
“What have you been doing, Uncle Major?” asked Holly, sternly.
“Nothing, ’pon my word, my dear! That is—well, almost nothing. I thought it was all for the best, but now——” He stopped and shook his head. Then he threw back his shoulders, surrendered his hat and stick to the girl, and marched resolutely into the parlor. There he turned, pointed upward and nodded his head silently. Holly, smiling but perplexed, ran up-stairs.
Left alone in the big, square, white-walled room, dim and still, the Major unbuttoned[27] his long frock coat and threw the lapels aside with a gesture of bravado. But in another instant he was listening anxiously to the confused murmur of voices from the floor above and plucking nervously at the knees of his trousers. Presently a long-drawn sigh floated onto the silence, and—
“Godamighty!” whispered the Major; “I wish I’d never done it!”
The Major was short in stature and generous of build. Since the war, when a Northern bullet had almost terminated the usefulness of his right leg, he had been a partial cripple and the enforced quiescence had resulted in a portliness quite out of proportion to his height. He had a large round head, still well covered with silky iron-gray hair, a jovial face lit by restless, kindly eyes of pale blue, a large, flexible mouth, and an even more generous nose. The cheeks had become somewhat pendulous of late years and reminded one of the convenient sacks in which squirrels place nuts in temporary storage. The Major[28] shaved very closely over the whole expanse of face each morning and by noon was tinged an unpleasant ghastly blue by the undiscouraged bristles.
Although Holly called him “Uncle” he was in reality no relation. He had ever been, however, her father’s closest friend and on terms of greater intimacy than many near relations. Excepting only Holly, none had mourned more truly at Lamar Wayne’s death. The Captain had been the Major’s senior by only one year, but seeing them together one would have supposed the discrepancy in age much greater. The Major always treated the Captain like an older brother, accepting his decisions with unquestioning loyalty, and accorded him precedence in all things. It was David and Jonathan over again. Even after the war, in which the younger man had won higher promotion, the Major still considered the Captain his superior officer.
The Major pursued an uncertain law practice and had served for some time as[29] Circuit Judge. Among the negroes he was always “Major Jedge.” That he had never been able to secure more than the simplest comforts of life in the pursuit of his profession was largely due to an unpractical habit of summoning the opposing parties in litigation to his office and settling the case out of court. Add to this that fully three-fourths of his clients were negroes, and that “Major Jedge” was too soft-hearted to insist on payment for his services when the client was poorer than he, and you can readily understand that Major Lucius Quintus Cass’s fashion of wearing large patches on his immaculately-shining boots was not altogether a matter of choice.
 
The Major had not long to wait for an audience. As he adjusted his trouser-legs for the third time the sound of soft footfalls on the bare staircase reached him. He glanced apprehensively at the open door, puffed his cheeks out in a mighty exhalation of breath, and arose from his chair just as Miss India Wayne swept into[30] the room. I say swept advisedly, for in spite of the lady’s diminutive stature she was incapable of entering a room in any other manner. Where other women walked, Miss India swept; where others bowed, Miss India curtseyed; where others sat down, Miss India subsided. Hers were the manners and graces of a half-century ago. She was fifty-four years old, but many of those years had passed over her very lightly. Small, perfectly proportioned, with a delicate oval face surmounted by light brown hair, untouched as yet by frost and worn in a braided coronet, attired in a pale lavender gown of many ruffles, she was for all the world like a little Chelsea figurine. She smiled upon the Major a trifle anxiously as she shook hands and bowed graciously to his compliments. Then seating herself erectly on the sofa—for Miss India never lolled—she folded her hands in her lap and looked calmly expectant at the visitor. As the visitor exhibited no present intention of broaching the subject of his visit she took[31] command of the situation, just as she was capable of and accustomed to taking command of most situations.
“Holly has begged me not to be hard on you, Major,” she said, in her sweet, still youthful voice. “Pray what have you been doing now? You are not here, I trust, to plead guilty to another case of reprehensible philanthropy?”
“No, Miss Indy, I assure you that you have absolutely reformed me, ma’am.”
Miss India smiled in polite incredulity, tapping one slender hand upon the other as she might in the old days at the White Sulphur have tapped him playfully, yet quite decorously, with her folded fan. The Major chose not to observe the incredulity and continued:
“The fact is, my dear Miss Indy, that I have come on a matter of more—ah—importance. You will recollect—pardon me, pray, if I recall unpleasant memories to mind—you will recollect that when your brother died it was found that he had unfortunately left very little behind him in[32] the way of worldly wealth. He passed onward, madam, rich in the love and respect of the community, but poor in earthly possessions.”
The Major paused and rubbed his bristly chin agitatedly. Miss India bowed silently.
“As his executor,” continued the Major, “it was my unpleasant duty to offer this magnificent estate for sale. It was purchased, as you will recollect, by Judge Linderman, of Georgia, a friend of your brother’s——”
“Pardon me, Major; an acquaintance.”
“Madam, all those so fortunate as to become acquainted with Captain Lamar Wayne were his friends.”
Miss India bowed again and waived the point.
“Judge Linderman, as he informed me at the time of the purchase, bought the property as a speculation. He was the owner of much real estate throughout the South. At his most urgent request you consented to continue your residence at[33] Waynewood, paying him rent for the property.”
“But nevertheless,” observed Miss India, a trifle bitterly, “being to a large extent an object of his charity. The sum paid as rent is absurd.”
“Nominal, madam, I grant you,” returned the Major. “Had our means allowed we should have insisted on paying more. But you are unjust to yourself when you speak of charity. As I pointed out—or, rather, as Judge Linderman pointed out to me, had you moved from Waynewood he would have been required to install a care-taker, which would have cost him several dollars a month, whereas under the arrangement made he drew a small but steady interest from the investment. I now come, my dear Miss Indy, to certain facts which are—with which you are, I think, unacquainted. That that is so is my fault, if fault there is. Believe me, I accept all responsibility in the matter and am prepared to bear your reproaches without a murmur, knowing that I have[34] acted for what I have believed to be the best.”
Miss India’s calm face showed a trace of agitation and her crossed hands trembled a little.
The Major paused as though deliberating.
“Pray continue, Major,” she said. “Whatever you have done has been done, I am certain, from motives of true friendship.”
The Major bowed gratefully.
“I thank you, madam. To resume, about four years ago Judge Linderman became bankrupt through speculation in cotton. That, I believe, you already knew. What you did not know was that in meeting his responsibilities he was obliged to part with all his real estate holdings, Waynewood amongst them.”
The Major paused, expectantly, but the only comment from his audience, if comment it might be called, was a quivering sigh of apprehension which sent the Major quickly on with his story.
“Waynewood fell into the hands of a[35] Mr. Gerald Potter, of New York, a broker, who——”
“A Northerner!” cried Miss India.
“A Northerner, my dear lady,” granted the Major, avoiding the lady’s horrified countenance, “but, as I have been creditably informed, a thorough gentleman and a representative of one of the foremost New York families.”
“A gentleman!” echoed Miss India, scornfully. “A Northern gentleman! And so I am to understand that for four years I and my niece have been subsisting on the charity of a Northerner! Is that what you have come to inform me, Major Cass?”
“The former arrangement was allowed to continue,” answered the Major, evenly, “being quite satisfactory to the new owner of the property. I regret, if you will pardon me, the use of the word charity, Miss India.”
“You may regret it to your soul’s content, Major Cass,” replied Miss India, with acerbity. “The fact remains—the horrible, dishonoring fact! I consider[36] your course almost—and I had never thought to use the word to you, sir—insulting!”
“It is indeed a harsh word, madam,” replied the Major, gently and sorrowfully. “I realize that I have been ill-advised in keeping the truth from you, but in a calmer moment you will, I am certain, exonerate me from all intentions unworthy of my love for your dead brother and of my respect for you.” There was a suggestive tremble in the Major’s voice.
Miss India dropped her eyes to the hands which were writhing agitatedly in her lap. Then:
“You are right, my dear friend,” she said, softly. “I was too hasty. You will forgive me, will you not? But—this news of yours—is so unexpected, so astounding——!”
“Pray say no more!” interposed the Major, warmly. “I quite understand your agitation. And since the subject is unpleasant to you I will conclude my explanation as quickly as possible.”
[37]
“There is more?” asked Miss India, anxiously.
“A little. Mr. Potter kept the property some three years and then—I learned these facts but a few hours since—then became involved in financial troubles and—pardon me—committed suicide. He was found at his desk in his office something over a year ago with a bullet in his brain.”
“Horrible!” ejaculated Miss India, but—and may I in turn be pardoned if I do the lady an injustice—there was something in her tone suggesting satisfaction with the manner in which a just Providence had dealt with a Northerner so presumptuous as to dishonor Waynewood with his ownership. “And now?” she asked.
“This morning I received a letter from a gentleman signing himself Robert Winthrop, a business partner of the late unfortunate owner of the property. In the letter he informs me that after arranging the firm’s affairs he finds himself in possession of Waynewood and is coming here to look it over and, if it is in condition to[38] allow of it, to spend some months here. He writes—let me see; I have his letter here. Ah, yes. H’m:
“‘My health went back on me after I had got affairs fixed up, and I have been dandling my heels about a sanitarium for three months. Now the physician advises quiet and a change of scene, and it occurs to me that I may find both in your town. So I am leaving almost at once for Florida. Naturally, I wish to see my new possessions, and if the house is habitable I shall occupy it for three or four months. When I arrive I shall take the liberty of calling on you and asking your assistance in the matter.’”
The Major folded the letter and returned it to the cavernous pocket of his coat.
“I gather that he is—ah—uninformed of the present arrangement,” he observed.
“That, I think, is of slight importance,” returned Miss India, “since by the time he arrives the house will be quite at his disposal.”
“You mean that you intend to move out?” asked the Major, anxiously.
“Most certainly! Do you think that I—that either Holly or I—would continue to[39] remain under this roof a moment longer than necessary now that we know it belongs to a—a Northerner?”
“But he writes—he expresses himself like a gentleman, my dear lady, and I feel certain that he would be only too proud to have you remain here——”
“I have never yet seen a Northern gentleman, Major,” replied Miss India, contemptuously, “and until I do I refuse to believe in the existence of such an anomaly.”
The Major raised his hands in a gesture of helpless protestation.
“Madam, I had the honor of fighting the Northerners, and I assure you that many of them are gentlemen. Their ways are not ours, I grant you, nor are their manners, but——”
“That is a subject upon which, I recollect, you and my brother were never able to agree.”
The Major nodded ruefully. The momentary silence was broken at last by Miss India.
[40]
“I do not pretend to pit my imperfect knowledge against yours, Major. There may be Northerners who have gentlemanly instincts. That, as may be, I refuse to be beholden to one of them. They were our enemies and they are still my enemies. They killed my brother John; they brought ruin to our land.”
“The killing, madam, was not all on their side, I take satisfaction in recalling. And if they brought distress to the South they have since very nobly assisted us to restore it.”
“My brother has said many times,” replied the lady, “that he might in time forgive the North for knocking us down but that he could never forgive it for helping us up. You have heard him say that, Major?”
“I have, my dear Miss India, I have. And yet I venture to say that had the Lord spared Lamar for another twenty years he would have modified his convictions.”
“Never,” said Miss India, sternly; “never!”
[41]
“You may be right, my dear lady, but there was something else I have often heard him say.”
“And pray what is that?”
“A couplet of Mr. Pope’s, madam:
“‘Good nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human; to forgive, divine.’”
“I reckon, however,” answered the lady, dryly, “that you never heard him connect that sentiment with the Yankees.”
The Major chuckled.
“Deftly countered, madam!” he said. And then, taking advantage of the little smile of gratification which he saw: “But this is a subject which you and I, Miss India, can no more agree upon than could your brother and myself. Let us pass it by. But grant me this favor. Remain at Waynewood until this Mr. Winthrop arrives. See him before you judge him, madam. Remember that if what he writes gives a fair exposition of the case, he is little better than an invalid and so must find sympathy in every woman’s heart.[42] There is time enough to go, if go you must, afterwards. It is scarcely likely that Mr. Winthrop could find better tenants. And no more likely that you and Holly could find so pleasant a home. Do this, ma’am.”
And Miss India surrendered; not at once, you must know, but after a stubborn defence, and then only when mutineers from her own lines made common cause with the enemy. Before the allied forces of the Major’s arguments and her own womanly sympathy she was forced to capitulate. And so when a few moments later Holly, after a sharp skirmish of her own in which she had been decisively beaten by Curiosity, appeared at the door, she found Aunt India and the Major amicably discussing village affairs.
 
CHAPTER III
 Robert Winthrop, laden with bag, overcoat and umbrella, left the sleeping-car in which he had spent most of the last eighteen hours and crossed the narrow platform of the junction to the train which was to convey him the last stage of his journey. It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon—for the Florida Limited, according to custom, had been two hours late—and Winthrop was both jaded and dirty; and I might add that, since this was his first experience with Southern travel, he was also somewhat out of patience.
Choosing the least soiled of the broken-springed, red-velveted seats in the white compartment of the single passenger car, he set his bag down and sank weariedly back. Through the small window beside him he saw the Limited take up its jolting progress once more, and watched the[44] station-agent deposit his trunk in the baggage-car ahead, which, with the single passenger-coach, comprised the Corunna train. Then followed five minutes during which nothing happened. Winthrop sighed resignedly and strove to find interest in the view. But there was little to see from where he sat; a corner of the station, a section of platform adorned with a few bales of cotton, a crate of live chickens, and a bag of raw peanuts, a glimpse of the forest which crept down to the very edge of the track, a wide expanse of cloudless blue sky. Through the open door and windows, borne on the lazy sun-warmed air, came the gentle wheezing of the engine ahead, the sudden discordant chatter of a bluejay, and the murmurous voices of two negro women in the other compartment. There was no hint of Winter in the air, although November was almost a week old; instead, it was warm, languorous, scented with the odors of the forest and tinged at times with the pleasantly acrid smell of burning pitch-pine from the engine.[45] It was strangely soft, that air, soft and soothing to tired nerves, and Winthrop felt its influence and sighed. But this time the sigh was not one of resignation; rather of surrender. He stretched his legs as well as he might in the narrow space afforded them, leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He hadn’t realized until this moment how tired he was! The engine sobbed and wheezed and the negroes beyond the closed door murmured on.
“Your ticket, sir, if you please.”
Winthrop opened his eyes and blinked. The train was swaying along between green, sunlit forest walls, and at his side the conductor was waiting with good-humored patience. Winthrop yielded the last scrap of his green strip and sat up. Suddenly the wood fell behind on either side, giving place to wide fields which rolled back from the railroad to disappear over tiny hills. They were fertile, promising-looking fields, chocolate-hued, covered with sere, brown cotton-plants to which here and there tufts of white still clung. Rail fences[46] zigzagged between them, and fire-blackened pine stumps marred their neatness. At intervals the engine emitted a doleful screech and a narrow road crossed the track to amble undecidedly away between the fields. At such moments Winthrop caught glimpses of an occasional log cabin with its tipsy, clay-chinked chimney and its invariable congress of lean chickens and leaner dogs. Now and then a commotion along the track drew his attention to a scurrying, squealing drove of pigs racing out of danger. Then for a time the woods closed in again, and presently the train slowed down before a small station. Winthrop reached tentatively toward his bag, but at that instant the sign came into sight, “Cowper,” he read, and settled back again.
 
Apparently none boarded the train and none got off, and presently the journey began once more. The conductor entered, glanced at Winthrop, decided that he didn’t look communicative and so sat himself down in the corner and leisurely bit the corner off a new plug of tobacco.
The fields came into sight again, and once a comfortable-looking residence gazed placidly down at the passing train from the crest of a nearby hill. But Winthrop saw without seeing. His thoughts were reviewing once more the chain of circumstances which had led link by link to the present moment. His thoughts went no further back than that painful morning nearly two years before when he had discovered Gerald Potter huddled over his desk, a revolver beside him on the floor, and his face horrible with the stains of blood and of ink from the overturned ink-stand. They had been friends ever since college days, Gerald and he, and the shock had never quite left him. During the subsequent work of disentangling the affairs[48] of the firm the thing haunted him like a nightmare, and when the last obligation had been discharged, Winthrop’s own small fortune going with the rest, he had broken down completely. Nervous prostration, the physician called it. Looking back at it now Winthrop had a better name for it, and that was, Hell. There had been moments when he feared he would die, and interminable nights when he feared he wouldn’t, when he had cried like a baby and begged to be put out of misery. There had been two months of that, and then they had bundled him off to a sanitarium in the Connecticut hills. There he, who a few months before had been a strong, capable man of thirty-eight, found himself a weak, helpless, emaciated thing with no will of his own, a mere sleeping and waking automaton, more interested in watching the purple veins on the backs of his thin hands than aught else in his limited world. At times he could have wept weakly from self-pity.
But that, too, had passed. One sparkling[49] September morning he lay stretched at length in a long chair on the uncovered veranda, a flood of inspiriting sunlight upon him, and a little breeze, brisk with the cool zest of Autumn, stirring his hair. And he had looked up from the white and purple hands and had seen a new world of green and gold and blue spread before him at his feet, a twelve-mile panorama of Nature’s finest work retouched and varnished overnight. He had feasted his eyes upon it and felt a glad stirring at his heart. And that day had marked the beginning of a new stage of recovery; he had asked, “How long?”
The last week in October had seen his release. He had returned to his long-vacant apartment in New York fully determined to start at once the work of rebuilding his fallen fortunes. But his physician had interposed. “I’ve done what I can for you,” he said, “and the rest is in your own hands. Get away from New York; it won’t supply what you need. Get into the country somewhere, away from cities and tickers. Hunt,[50] fish, spend your time out of doors. There’s nothing organically wrong with that heart of yours, but it’s pretty tired yet; nurse it awhile.”
“The programme sounds attractive,” Winthrop had replied, smilingly, “but it’s expensive. Practically I am penniless. Give me a year to gather the threads up again and get things a-going once more, and I’ll take your medicine gladly.”
The physician had shrugged his shoulders with a grim smile.
“I have never heard,” he replied, “that the hunting or fishing was especially good in the next world.”
“What do you mean?” asked Winthrop, frowning.
“Just this, sir. You say you can’t afford to take a vacation. I say you can’t afford not to take it. I’ve lived a good deal longer than you and I give you my word I never saw a poor man who wasn’t a whole lot better off than any dead one of my acquaintance. I don’t want to frighten you, but I tell you frankly that if you stay here[51] and buckle down to rebuilding your business you’ll be a damned poor risk for any insurance company inside of two weeks. It’s better to live poor than to die rich. Take your choice.”
Winthrop had taken it. After all, poverty is comparative, and he realized that he was still as well off as many a clerk who was contentedly keeping a family on his paltry twenty or thirty dollars a week. He sub-rented his apartment, paid what bills he owed out of the small balance standing to his name at the bank, and considered the question of destination. It was then that he had remembered the piece of property in Florida which he had taken over for the firm and which, having been the least desirable of the assets, had escaped the creditors. He went to the telephone and called up the physician.
“How would Florida do?” he had asked. “Good place to play invalid, isn’t it?”
“I don’t care where you go,” was the response, “so long as there’s pure air and sunshine there, and as long as you give[52] your whole attention to mending yourself.”
He had never been in Florida, but it appealed to him and he believed that, since he must live economically, there could be no better place; at least there would be no rent to pay. So he had written to Major Cass, whose name he had come across in looking over his partner’s papers, and had started South on the heels of his letter. The trip had been a hard one for him, but now the soft, fragrant air that blew against his face through the open car window was already soothing him with its caressing touch and whispering fair promises of strengthening days. A long blast of the whistle moved the conductor to a return of animation and Winthrop awoke from his thoughts. The train was slowing down with a grinding of hand-brakes. Through the window he caught glimpses of gardens and houses and finally of a broad, tree-lined street marching straight away from the railroad up a sloping hill to a gray stone building with a wooden cupola which[53] seemed to block its path. Then the station threw its shadow across him and the train, with many jerks and much rattling of coupling, came to a stop.
 
“Corunna,” drawled the conductor.
Outside, on the platform which ran in front of the station on a level with the car floors, Winthrop looked about him with mingled amusement and surprise. In most places, he thought, the arrival of the daily train was an event of sufficient importance to people the station platform with spectators. But here he counted just three persons beside himself and the train crew. These were the two negresses who had travelled with him and the station agent. There was no carriage in sight; not even a dray for his trunk. He applied to the agent.
“Take that street over yonder,” said the agent, “and it’ll fetch you right square to the Major’s office, sir. I’ll look after your bag until you send for it. You tell the nigger to ask me for it, sir.”
 
So Winthrop yielded the bag, coat and[54] umbrella and started forth. The station and the adjoining freight-shed stood, neutral-hued, under the wide-spreading branches of several magnificent live-oaks, in one of which, hidden somewhere in the thick greenery, a thrush was singing. This sound, with that of the panting of the tired engine, alone stirred the somnolent silence of mid-afternoon. A road, deep with white sand, ambled away beneath the trees in the direction of the wide street which Winthrop had seen from the car and to which he had been directed. It proved to be a well-kept thoroughfare lined with oaks and bordered by pleasant gardens in front of comfortable, always picturesque and sometimes handsome[55] houses. The sidewalks were high above the street, and gullies of red clay, washed deep by the heavy rains, divided the two. In front of the gates little bridges crossed the gullies. The gardens were still aflame with late flowers and the scent of roses was over all. Winthrop walked slowly, his senses alert and enravished. He drew in deep breaths of the fragrant air and sighed for very contentment.
“Heavens,” he said under his breath, “the place is just one big rest cure! If I can’t get fixed up here I might as well give up trying. I wonder,” he added a moment later, “if every one is asleep.”
There was not a soul in sight up the length of the street, but from one of the houses came the sound of a piano and, as he glanced toward its embowered porch, he thought he caught the white of a woman’s gown.
“Someone’s awake, anyhow,” he thought. “Maybe she’s a victim of insomnia.”
The street came to an end in a wide[56] space surrounded by one- and two-story stores and occupied in the centre by a stone building which he surmised to be the court-house. He bore to the right, his eyes searching the buildings for the shingle of Major Cass. A few teams were standing in front of the town hitching-rails, and perhaps a dozen persons, mostly negroes, were in view. He had decided to appeal for information when he caught sight of a modest sign on a corner building across the square. “L. Q. Cass, Counsellor at Law,” he read. The building was a two-story affair of crumbling red brick. The lower part was occupied by a general merchandise store, and the upper by offices. A flight of wooden steps led from the sidewalk along the outside of the building to the second floor. Winthrop ascended, entered an open door, and knocked at the first portal. But there was no reply to his demands, and, as the other rooms in sight were evidently untenanted, he returned to the street and addressed himself to a youth who sat on an empty box under the wooden[57] awning of the store below. The youth was in his shirt-sleeves and was eating sugar-cane, but at Winthrop’s greeting he rose to his feet, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and answered courteously:
“Waynewood is about three-quarters of a mile, sir,” he replied to the stranger’s inquiry. “Right down this street, sir, until you cross the bridge over the branch. Then it’s the first place.”
He was evidently very curious about the questioner, but strove politely to restrain that curiosity until the other had moved away along the street.
The street upon which Winthrop now found himself ran at right angles with that up which he had proceeded from the station. Like that, it was shaded from side to side by water-oaks and bordered by gardens. But the gardens were larger, less flourishing, and the houses behind them smaller and less tidy. He concluded that this was an older part of the village. Several carriages passed him, and once he paused in the shade to watch the slow approach[58] and disappearance of a creaking two-wheeled cart, presided over by a white-haired old negro and drawn by a pair of ruminative oxen. It was in sight quite five minutes, during which time Winthrop leaned against the sturdy bole of an oak and marvelled smilingly.
 
“And in New York,” he said to himself, “we swear because it takes us twenty minutes to get to Wall Street on the elevated!”
He went on, glad of the rest, passing from sunlight to shadow along the uneven sidewalk and finally crossing the bridge, a tiny affair over a shallow stream of limpid water which trickled musically over its bed of white sand. Beyond the bridge the sidewalk ceased and he went on for a little distance over a red clay road, rutted by wheels and baked hard by the sun. Then a picket fence which showed evidence of having once been whitewashed met him and he felt a sudden stirring within him. This was Waynewood, doubtless, and it belonged to him. The thought was somehow a very pleasant one. He wondered why.[59] He had possessed far more valuable real estate in his time but he couldn’t recollect that he had ever thrilled before at the thought of ownership.
 
“Oh, there’s magic in this ridiculous air,” he told himself whimsically. “Even a toad would look romantic here, I dare say. I wonder if there is a gate to my domain.”
Behind the fence along which he made his way was an impenetrable mass of shrubbery and trees. Of what was beyond, there was no telling. But presently the gate was before him, sagging wide open on its rusted hinges. From it a straight path, narrow and shadowy, proceeded for some distance, crossed a blur of sunlight and continued to where a gleam of white seemed to indicate a building. The path was set between solid rows of oleander bushes whose lanceolate leaves whispered murmurously to Winthrop as he trod the firm, moss-edged path.
The blur of sunlight proved to be a break in the path where a driveway angled across[60] it, curving on toward the house and backward toward the road where, as Winthrop later discovered, it emerged through a gate beyond the one by which he had entered. He crossed the drive and plunged again into the gloom of the oleander path. But his journey was almost over, for a moment later the sentinel bushes dropped away from beside him and he found himself at the foot of a flower garden, across whose blossom-flecked width a white-pillared, double-galleried old house stared at him in dignified calm. The porches were untenanted and the wide-open door showed an empty hall. To reach that door Winthrop had to make a half circuit of the garden, for directly in front of him a great round bed of roses and box barred his way. In the middle of the bed a stained marble cupid twined garlands of roses about his naked body. Winthrop followed the path to the right and circled his way to the drive and the steps, the pleasure of possession kindling in his heart. With his foot on the lowest step he paused and glanced about[61] him. It was charming! Find his health here? Oh, beyond a doubt he would. Ponce de Leon had searched in this part of the world for the Fountain of Youth. Who knew but that he, Robert Winthrop, might not find it here, hidden away in this fragrant, shaded jungle? And just then his wandering glance fell on a sprawling fig-tree at the end of the porch, at a white figure[62] perched in its branches, at a girl’s fresh young face looking across at him with frank and smiling curiosity.
Winthrop took off his hat and moved toward the fig-tree.
 
CHAPTER IV
 The Major had accomplished his errand and had taken his departure, accompanied down the oleander path as far as the gate by Holly. He was very well satisfied with his measure of success. Miss India had consented to remain at Waynewood until the arrival of the new owner, and if the new owner proved to be the kind of man the Major hoped him to be, things would work out quite satisfactory. Of course a good deal depended on Robert Winthrop’s being as much of an invalid as the Major had pictured him to Miss India. Let him appear on the scene exhibiting a sound body and rugged health and all the Major’s plans would be upset; Miss India’s sympathy would vanish on the instant, and Waynewood would be promptly abandoned to the enemy.
The Major’s affection for Miss India[64] and Holly was deep and sincere, and the idea of their leaving Waynewood was intolerable to him. The thing mustn’t be, and he believed he could prevent it. Winthrop, on arrival, would of course call upon him at once. Then he would point out to him the advantage of retaining such admirable tenants, acquaint him with the terms of occupancy, and prevail upon him to renew the lease, which had expired some months before. It was not likely that Winthrop would remain in Corunna more than three months at the most, and during his stay he could pay Miss India for his board. Yes, the Major had schemed it all out between the moment of receiving that disquieting letter and the moment of his arrival at Waynewood. And his schemes looked beyond the present crisis. In another year or so Julian Wayne, Holly’s second cousin, would have finished his term with Doctor Thompson at Marysville and would be ready to begin practice for himself, settle down and marry Holly. Why shouldn’t Julian buy Waynewood?[65] To be sure, he possessed very little capital, but it was not likely that the present owner of Waynewood would demand a large price for the property. There could be a mortgage, and Julian was certain to make a success of his profession. In this way Waynewood would remain with the Waynes and Miss India and Holly could live their lives out in the place that had always been home to them. So plotted the Major, while Fate, outwardly inscrutable, doubtless chuckled in her sleeve.
 
At the gate the Major had shaken hands with Holly and made a request.
“My dear,” he had said, “when you return to the house your Aunt will have something to tell you. Be guided by her. Remember that there are two sides to[66] every question and that—ah—time alters all things.”
“But, Uncle Major, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Holly had declared, laughing.
“I know you don’t, my dear; I know you don’t. And I haven’t time to tell you.” He had drawn his big silver watch from his vest and glanced at it apprehensively. “I promised to be at my office an hour ago. I really must hurry back. Good-bye, my dear.”
“Good-bye,” Holly had answered. “But I think you’re a most provoking, horrid old Uncle Major.”
But if the Major had feared mutiny on the part of Holly he might have spared himself the uneasiness. Holly had heard of the impending event from Aunt India at the dinner table with relish. Of course it was disgusting to learn that Waynewood was owned by a Northerner, but doubtless that was an injustice of Fate which would be remedied in good time. The exciting thing was that they were to have a visitor,[67] a stranger, someone from that fearsomely interesting and, if reports were to be credited, delightfully wicked place called New York; someone who could talk to her of other matters than the prospects of securing the new railroad.
“Auntie, is he married?” she had asked, suddenly.
“My dear Holly, what has that to do with it?”
“Well, you see,” Holly had responded, demurely, “I’m not married myself, and when you put two people together who are not married, why, something may happen.”
“Holly!” protested Miss India, in horror.
“Oh, I was only in fun,” said Holly, with a laugh. “Do you reckon, Auntie dear, that I’d marry a Northerner?”
“I should certainly trust not,” replied Miss India, severely.
“Not if he had millions and millions of money and whole bushels of diamonds,” answered Holly, cheerfully. “But is he married, Auntie?”
[68]
“I’m sure I can’t say. The Major believes him to be a man of middle age, possibly fifty years old, and so it is quite likely that he has a wife.”
“And he is not bringing her with him?”
“He said nothing of it in his letter, my dear.”
“Then I think she’s a very funny kind of a wife,” replied Holly, with conviction. “If he is an invalid, I don’t see why she lets him come away down here all alone. I wouldn’t if I were she. I’d be afraid.”
“I don’t reckon he’s as much of an invalid as all that.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking about his health then,” answered Holly. “I’d be afraid he’d meet someone he liked better than me and I wouldn’t see him again.”
“Holly, where do you get such deplorable notions?” asked her Aunt severely. “It must be the books you read. You read altogether too much. At your age, my dear, I assure you I——”
“I shall be eighteen in just twelve days,” interrupted Holly. “And eighteen[69] is grown-up. Besides, you know very well that wives do lose their husbands sometimes. There was Cousin Maybird Fairleigh——”
“I decline to discuss such vulgar subjects,” said Miss India, decisively. “Under the circumstances I think it just as well to forget the relationship, which is of the very slightest, my dear.”
“But it wasn’t Cousin Maybird’s fault,” protested Holly. “She didn’t want to lose him, Aunt India. He was a very nice husband; very handsome and distinguished, you know. It was all the fault of that other woman, the one he married after the divorce.”
“Holly!”
“Yes?”
“We will drop the subject, if you please.”
“Yes, Auntie.”
Holly smiled at her plate. Presently:
“When is this Mr. Winthrop coming?” she asked.
“He didn’t announce the exact date of[70] arrival,” replied Miss India. “But probably within a day or two. I have ordered Phœbe to prepare the West Chamber for him. He will, of course, require a warm room and a good bed.”
“But, Auntie, the carpet is so awful in the West Room,” deplored Holly.
“That is his affair,” replied Aunt India, serenely, as she arose from the table. “It is his carpet.”
Holly looked surprised, then startled.
“Do you mean that everything here belongs to him?” she asked, incredulously. “The furniture and pictures and books and—and everything?”
“Waynewood was sold just as it stood at the time, my dear. Everything except what is our personal property belongs to Mr. Winthrop.”
“Then I shall hate him,” said Holly, with calm decision.
“You must do nothing of the sort, my dear. The place and the furnishings belong to him legally.”
“I don’t care, Auntie. He has no right[71] to them. I shall hate him. Why, he owns the very bed I sleep in and my maple bureau and——”
“You forget, Holly, that those things were bought after your father died and do not belong to his estate.”
“Then they’re really mine, after all? Very well, Auntie dear, I shan’t hate him, then; at least, not so much.”
“I trust you will not hate him at all,” responded Miss India, with a smile. “Being an invalid, as he is, we must——”
“Shucks!” exclaimed Holly. “I dare say he’s just making believe so we won’t put poison in his coffee!”
In the middle of the afternoon, what time Miss India composed herself to slumber and silence reigned over Waynewood, Holly found a book and sought the fig-tree. The book, for having been twice read, proved none too enthralling, and presently it had dropped unheeded to the ground and Holly, leaning comfortably back against the branches, was day-dreaming once more. The sound of footsteps on the garden path[72] roused her, and she peered forth just as the intruder began his half circuit of the rose-bed.
Afterwards Holly called herself stupid for not having guessed the identity of the intruder at once. And yet, it seems to me that she was very excusable. Robert Winthrop had been pictured to her as an invalid, and invalids in Holly’s judgment were persons who lay supinely in easy chairs, lived on chicken broth, guava jelly and calomel, and were alternately irritatingly resigned or maddeningly petulant. The expected invalid had also been described as middle-aged, a term capable of wide interpretation and one upon which the worst possible construction is usually placed. The Major had suggested fifty; Holly with unconscious pessimism imagined sixty. Add to this that Winthrop was not expected before the morrow, and that Holly’s acquaintance with the inhabitants of the country north of Mason and Dixon’s line was of the slightest and that not of the[73] sort to prepossess her in their favor, and I think she may be absolved from the charge of stupidity. For the stranger whose advent in the garden had aroused her from her dreams looked to be under forty, was far from matching Holly’s idea of an invalid, and looked quite unlike the one or two Northerners she had seen. To be sure the man in the garden walked slowly and a trifle languidly, but for that matter so did many of Holly’s townsfolk. And when he paused at last with one foot on the lower step his breath was coming a bit raggedly and his face was too pale for perfect health. But these facts Holly failed to observe.
What she did observe was that the stranger was rather tall, quite erect, broad of shoulder and deep of chest, somewhat too thin for the size of his frame, with a pleasant, lean face of which the conspicuous features were high cheek-bones, a straightly uncompromising nose and a pair of nice eyes of some shade neither dark nor light. He wore a brown mustache which, contrary[74] to the Southern custom, was trimmed quite short; and when he lifted his hat a moment later Holly saw that his hair, dark brown in color, had retreated well away from his forehead and was noticeably sprinkled with white at the temples. As for his attire, it was immaculate; black derby, black silk tie knotted in a four-in-hand and secured with a small pearl pin, well-cut grey sack suit and brown leather shoes. In a Southerner Holly would have thought such carefulness of dress foppish; in fact, as it was, she experienced a tiny contempt for it even as she acknowledged that the result was far from displeasing. Further observations and conclusions were cut short by the stranger, who advanced toward her with hat in hand and a puzzled smile.
“How do you do?” said Winthrop.
“Good evening,” answered Holly.
There was a flicker of surprise in Winthrop’s eyes ere he continued.
“I’m afraid I’m trespassing. The fact is, I was looking for a place called Waynewood[75] and from the directions I received in the village I thought I had found it. But I guess I’ve made a mistake?”
“Oh, no,” said Holly; “this is Waynewood.”
Winthrop was silent a moment, striving to reconcile the announcement with her presence: evidently there were complications ahead. At last:
“Oh!” he said, and again paused.
“Would you like to see my Aunt?” asked Holly.
“Er—I hardly know,” answered Winthrop, with a smile for his own predicament. “Would it sound impolite if I asked who your Aunt is?”
“Why, Miss India Wayne,” answered Holly. “And I am Holly Wayne. Perhaps you’ve got the wrong place, after all?”
“Oh, no,” was the reply. “You say this is Waynewood, and of course there can’t be two Waynewoods about here.”
Holly shook her head, observing him gravely and curiously. Winthrop frowned.[76] Apparently there were complications which he had not surmised.
“Will you come into the house?” suggested Holly. “I will tell Auntie you wish to see her.” She prepared to descend from the low branch upon which she was seated, and Winthrop reached a hand to her.
“May I?” he asked, courteously.
Holly placed her hand in his and leaped lightly to the ground, bending her head as she smoothed her skirt that he might not see the ridiculous little flush which had suddenly flooded her cheeks. Why, she wondered, should she have blushed. She had been helped in and out of trees and carriages, up and down steps, all her life, and couldn’t recollect that she had ever done such a silly thing before! As she led the way along the path which ran in front of the porch to the steps, she discovered that her heart was thumping with a most disconcerting violence. And with the discovery came a longing for flight. But with a fierce contempt for her weakness[77] she conquered the panic and kept her flushed face from the sight of the man behind her. But she was heartily glad when she had reached the comparative gloom of the hall. Laying aside her bonnet, she turned to find that her companion had seated himself in a chair on the porch.
“You won’t mind if I wait here?” he asked, smiling apologetically. “The fact is—the walk was——”
Had Holly not been anxious to avoid his eyes she would have seen that he was fighting for breath and quite exhausted. Instead she turned toward the stairs, only to pause ere she reached them to ask:
“What name shall I say, please?”
“Oh, I beg your pardon! Winthrop, please; Mr. Robert Winthrop, of New York.”
Holly wheeled about.
“Mr. Winthrop!” she exclaimed.
“If you please,” answered that gentleman, weakly.
“Why,” continued Holly, in amazement, “then you aren’t an invalid, after all!”[78] She had reached the door now and was looking down at him with bewilderment. Winthrop strove to turn his head toward her, gave up the effort and smiled strainedly at the marble Cupid, which had begun an erratic dance amongst the box and roses.
“Oh, no,” he replied in a whisper. “I’m not—an invalid—at all.”
[79]
Then he became suddenly very white and his head fell back over the side of the chair. Holly gave one look and, turning, flew like the wind up the broad stairway.
 
 
“Auntie!” she called. “Aunt India! Come quickly! He’s fainted!”
“Fainted? Who has fainted?” asked Miss India, from her doorway. “What are you saying, child?”
“Mr. Winthrop! He’s on the porch!” cried Holly, her own face almost as white as Winthrop’s.
“Mr. Winthrop! Here? Fainted? On the porch?” ejaculated Miss India, dismayedly. “Call Uncle Ran at once. I’ll get the ammonia. Tell Phœbe to bring some feathers. And get some water yourself, Holly.”
In a moment Miss India, the ammonia bottle in hand, was—I had almost said scuttling down the stairs. At least, she made the descent without wasting a moment.
“The poor man,” she murmured, as she looked down at the white face and inert[80] form of the stranger. “Holly! Phœbe! Oh, you’re here, are you? Give me the water. There! Now bathe his head, Holly. Mercy, child, how your hand shakes! Have you never seen any one faint before?”
“It was so sudden,” faltered Holly.
“Fainting usually is,” replied Miss India, as she dampened her tiny handkerchief with ammonia and held it under Winthrop’s nose. “Do not hold his head too high, Holly; that’s better. What do you say, Phœbe? Why, you’ll just stand there and hold them until I want them, I reckon. Dead? Of course he isn’t dead, you foolish girl. Not the least bit dead. There, his eyelids moved; didn’t you see them? He will be all right in a moment. You may take those feathers away, Phœbe, and tell Uncle Ran to come and carry Mr. Winthrop up to his room. And do you go up and start the fire and turn the bed down.”
Winthrop drew a long breath and opened his eyes.
[81]
“My dear lady,” he muttered, “I am so very sorry to bother you. I don’t——”
“Sit still a moment, sir,” commanded Miss India, gently. “Holly, I told you to hold his head. Don’t you see that he is weak and tired? I fear the journey was too much for you, sir.”
Winthrop closed his eyes for a moment, nodding his head assentingly. Then he sat up and smiled apologetically at the ladies.
“It was awfully stupid of me,” he said. “I have not been very well lately and I guess the walk from the station was longer than I thought.”
“You walked from the depot!” exclaimed Miss India, in horror. “It’s no wonder then, sir. Why, it’s a mile and a quarter if it’s a step! I never heard of anything so—so——!”
Miss India broke off and turned to the elderly negro, who had arrived hurriedly on the scene.
“Uncle Ran, carry Mr. Winthrop up to the West Chamber and help him to retire.”
“My dear lady,” Winthrop protested.[82] “I am quite able to walk. Besides, I have no intention of burdening you with——”
“Uncle Ran!”
“Yes’m.”
“You heard what I said?”
“Yes’m.”
Uncle Randall stooped over the chair.
“Jes’ you put yo’ ahms roun’ my neck, sir, an’ I’ll tote you mighty cahful an’ comfable, sir.”
“But, really, I’d rather walk,” protested Winthrop. “And with your permission, Miss—Miss Wayne, I’ll return to the village until——”
[83]
“Uncle Ran!”
“Yes, Miss Indy, ma’am, I heahs you. Hol’ on tight, sir.”
And in this ignoble fashion Winthrop took possession of Waynewood.
CHAPTER V
 True to his promise, Uncle Ran bore Winthrop “careful and comfortable” up the wide stairs, around the turn and along the upper hall to the West Chamber, lowering him at last, as tenderly as a basket of eggs, into a chair. In spite of his boasts, Winthrop was in no condition to have walked up-stairs unaided. The fainting spell, the first one since he had left the sanitarium, had left him feeling limp and shaky. He was glad of the negro’s assistance and content to have him remove his shoes and help him off with his coat, the while he examined his quarters with lazy interest.
The room was very large, square, high-ceilinged. The walls were white and guiltless of both paper and pictures. Four large windows would have flooded the room with light had not the shades been carefully[85] drawn to within two feet of the sills. As it was, from the windows overlooking the garden and opening onto the gallery the afternoon sunlight slanted in, throwing long parallelograms of mellow gold across the worn and faded carpet. The bed was a massive affair of black walnut, the three chairs were old and comfortable, and the big mahogany-veneer table in the centre of the room was large enough to have served for a banquet. On it was a lamp, a plate of oranges whose fragrance was pleasantly perceptible, and a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress bound in the “keepsake” fashion of fifty years ago. The fire-place and hearth were of soft red bricks and a couple of oak logs were flaring brightly. A formidable wardrobe, bedecked with carved branches of grapes, matched the bed, as did a washstand backed by a white “splasher” bearing a design of cat-tails in red outline. The room seemed depressingly bare at first, but for all of that there was an air of large hospitality and plain comfort about it that was somewhat[86] of a relief after the over-furnished, over-decorated apartments with which Winthrop was familiar.
As his baggage had not come Miss India’s command could not be literally obeyed, and Uncle Ran had perforce to be satisfied with the removal of Winthrop’s outer apparel and his installation on the bed instead of in it.
“I’ll get yo’ trunk an’ valise right away, sir,” he said, “before they close the depot. Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Winthrop? Can I fetch you a lil’ glass of sherry, sir?”
“Nothing, thanks. Yes, though, you might open some of those windows before you go. And look in my vest pocket and toss me a cigarette case you’ll find there. I saw matches on the mantel, didn’t I? Thanks. That’s all. My compliments to Miss Wayne, and tell her I am feeling much better and that I will be down to dinner—that is, supper.”
“Don’t you pay no ’tention to the bell,” said Uncle Ran, soothingly. “Phœbe’ll[87] fetch yo’ supper up to you, sir. I’ll jes’ go ’long now and get yo’ trunk.”
Uncle Ran closed the door softly behind him and Winthrop was left alone. He pulled the spread over himself, gave a sigh of content, and lighted a cigarette with fingers that still trembled. Then, placing his hands beneath his head, he watched the smoke curl away toward the cracked and flaking ceiling and gave himself up to his thoughts.
What an ass he had made of himself! And what a trump the little lady had been! He smiled as he recalled the manner in which she had bossed him around. But who the deuce was she? And who was the young girl with the big brown eyes? What were they doing here at Waynewood, in his house? He wished he had not taken things for granted as he had, wished he had made inquiries before launching himself southward. He must get hold of that Major Cass and learn his bearings. Perhaps, after all, there was some mistake and the place didn’t belong to him at all! If that was[88] the case he had made a pretty fool of himself by walking in and fainting on the front porch in that casual manner! But he hoped mightily that there was no mistake, for he had fallen in love at first sight with the place. If it was his he would fix it up. Then he sighed as he recollected that until he got firmly on his feet again such a thing was quite out of the question.
The cigarette had burned itself down and he tossed it onto the hearth. The light was fading in the room. Through the open windows, borne on the soft evening air, came the faint tinkling of distant cow-bells. For the rest the silence held profoundly save for the gentle singing of the fire. Winthrop turned on to his side, pillowed his head in his hand and dropped to sleep. So soundly he slept that when Uncle Ran tiptoed in with his trunk and bag he never stirred. The old negro nodded approvingly from the foot of the bed, unstrapped the trunk, laid a fresh log on the fire, and tiptoed out again. When Winthrop finally awoke he found a neat colored girl lighting[89] the lamp, while beside it on the table a well-filled tray was laid.
“I fetched your supper, Mr. Winthrop,” said Phœbe.
 
“Thank you, but I really meant to go down. I—I think I fell asleep.”
“Yes, sir. Miss Indy say good-night, and she hopes you’ll sleep comfable, sir.”
“Much obliged,” muttered Winthrop.
“I’ll be back after awhile to fetch away the tray, sir.”
“All right.”
When he was once more alone he arose and laughed softly.
“Confound the woman! She’s a regular tyrant. I wonder if she’ll let me get up to-morrow. Oh, well, maybe she’s right. I don’t feel much like making conversation. Hello! there’s my trunk; I must have slept soundly, and that’s a fact!”
Unlocking the trunk, he rummaged through it until he found his dressing-gown and slippers. With those on he drew a chair to the table and began his supper.
[90]
“Nice diet for an invalid,” he thought, amusedly, as he uncovered the hot biscuits.
But he didn’t object to them, for he found himself very hungry; spread with the white, crumbly unsalted butter which the repast provided he found them extremely satisfactory. There was cold chicken, besides, and egg soufflé, fig preserve and marble cake, and a glass of milk. Winthrop’s gaze lingered on the milk.
“No coffee, eh?” he muttered. “Not suitable for invalids, I suppose; milk much better.”
But when he had finished his meal the glass of milk still remained untouched and he observed it thoughtfully. “I fancy Miss Wayne will see this tray when it goes down and she’ll feel hurt because I haven’t drunk that infernal stuff.” His gaze wandered around the room until it encountered the washstand. “Ah!” he said, as he arose. When he returned to the table the glass was quite empty. Digging his pipe and pouch from his bag he filled the former and was soon puffing enjoyably,[91] leaning back in the easy-chair and watching the smouldering fire.
“Even if I have to get out of here,” he reflected, “I dare say there’s a hotel or boarding-house in the village where I could put up. I’m not going back North yet awhile, and that’s certain. But if there’s anything wrong with my title to Waynewood why shouldn’t they let me stay here now that I’m established? That’s a good idea, by Jove! I’ll get my trunk unpacked right away; possession is nine points, they say. I dare say these folks aren’t so well off but what they’d be willing to take a respectable gentleman to board.”
A fluttering at his heart warned him and he laid aside his half-smoked pipe regretfully and began to unpack his trunk and bag. In the midst of the task Phœbe appeared to rearrange his bed and bear away the tray, bidding him good-night in her soft voice as she went.
By half-past seven his things were in place and, taking up one of the books which he had brought with him, he settled[92] himself to read. But voices in the hall below distracted his attention, and presently footsteps sounded on the stairway, there was a tap at his door and Phœbe appeared again.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Phœbe, “but Major Cass say can he see you——”
“Phœbe!” called the Major from below.
“Yes, sir?”
“You tell Mr. Winthrop that if he’s feeling too tired to see me to-night I’ll call again to-morrow morning.”
“Yes, sir.” Phœbe turned to Winthrop. “The Major say——”
“All right. Ask the Major to come up,” interrupted Winthrop, tossing aside his book and exchanging dressing-gown for coat and waistcoat. A moment later the Major’s halting tread sounded outside the open door and Winthrop went forward to meet him.
“I’m honored to make your acquaintance, Mr. Winthrop,” said the Major, as they shook hands.
“Glad to know you, Major,” replied[93] Winthrop. “Come in, please; try the arm-chair.”
The Major bowed his thanks, laid his cane across the table and accepted the chair which Winthrop pushed forward. Winthrop drew a second chair to the other side of the fire-place.
“A fire, Mr. Winthrop,” observed the Major, “is very acceptable these cool evenings.”
“Well, I haven’t felt the need of it myself,” replied Winthrop, “but it was here and it seemed a shame to waste it. I’ll close the windows if you like.”
“Not at all, not at all; I like fresh air. I couldn’t have too much of it, sir, if it wasn’t for this confounded rheumatism of mine. With your permission, sir.” The Major leaned forward and laid a fresh log on the fire. Winthrop arose and quietly closed the windows.
“Do you smoke, Major? I have some cigars here somewhere.”
“Thank you, sir, if they’re right handy.” He accepted one, held it to his[94] nose and inhaled the aroma, smiled approvingly and tucked it into a corner of his mouth. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t light it,” he said.
“Certainly,” replied Winthrop.
“I never learned to smoke, Mr. Winthrop,” explained the Major, “and I reckon I’m too old to begin now. But when I was a boy, and afterwards, during the war, I got a lot of comfort out of chewing, sir. But it’s a dirty habit, sir, and I had to give it up. The only way I use tobacco now, sir, is in this way. It’s a compromise, sir.” And he rolled the cigar around enjoyably.
“I see,” replied Winthrop.
“I trust you are feeling recovered from the effects of your arduous journey?” inquired the Major.
“Quite, thank you. I dare say Miss Wayne told you what an ass I made of myself when I arrived?”
“You refer to your—ah—momentary indisposition? Yes, Miss India informed me, and I was very pleased to learn of it.”[95] Winthrop stared in surprise. “You are feeling better now, sir?”
“Oh, yes; quite fit, thank you.”
“I’m very glad to hear it. I must apologize for not being at the station to welcome you, sir, but I gathered from your letter that you would not reach Corunna before to-morrow, and I thought that perhaps you would telegraph me again. I was obliged to drive into the country this afternoon on business, and only learned of your visit to my office when I returned. I then took the liberty of calling at the earliest moment.”
“And I’m very glad you did,” answered Winthrop, heartily. “There’s a good deal I want to talk to you about.”
“I am quite at your service, sir.”
“Thanks, Major. Now, in the first place, where am I?”
“Your pardon, Mr. Winthrop?” asked the Major, startledly.
“I mean,” answered the other, with a smile, “is this Waynewood and does it belong to me?”
[96]
“This is certainly Waynewood, sir, and I have gathered from your letter that you had come into possession of it.”
“All right. Then who, if I may ask the question without seeming impertinent, who are the ladies down-stairs?”
“Ah, Mr. Winthrop, I understand your question now,” returned the Major. “Allow me to explain. I would have done so before had there been opportunity, but your letter said that you were leaving New York at once and I presumed that there would be no time for an answer to reach you.”
“Quite right, Major.”
“The ladies are Miss India Wayne and her niece, Miss Holly Wayne, sister and daughter respectively of my very dear and much lamented friend Captain Lamar Wayne, whose home this was for many years. At his death I found myself the executor of his will, sir. He left this estate and very little else but debts. I did the best I could, Mr. Winthrop, but Waynewood had to go. It was sold to a Judge[97] Linderman of Georgia, a very estimable gentleman and a shining light of the State Bar. As he had no intention of living here I made an arrangement with him whereby Miss India and her niece might remain here in their home, sir, paying a—a nominal rent for the place.”
“A very convenient arrangement, Major.”
“I am glad to hear you say so,” replied the Major, almost eagerly. “Judge Linderman, however, was a consarned fool, sir, and couldn’t let speculation alone. He was caught in a cotton panic and absolutely ruined. Waynewood then passed to your late partner, Mr. Potter. The arrangement in force before was extended with his consent, and the ladies have continued to reside here. They are paying”—(the Major paused and spat voluminously into the fire)—“they are paying, Mr. Winthrop, the sum of five dollars a month rent.”
“A fair figure, I presume, as rents go hereabouts,” observed Winthrop, subduing a smile.
[98]
The Major cleared his throat. Then he leaned across and laid a large hand on Winthrop’s knee.
“A small price, Mr. Winthrop, and that’s the truth. And I don’t deny that after the property fell into Mr. Potter’s hands I was troubled right smart by my conscience. As long as it was Judge Linderman it was all right; he was a Southerner, one of us, and could understand. No offense intended, Mr. Winthrop. But afterwards when I wrote Mr. Potter of the arrangement in force and—ah—suggested its continuance, I felt that maybe I was taking advantage of his absence from the scene. To be sure the amount was all that the ladies could afford to pay, and it isn’t likely that Mr. Potter could have found more satisfactory tenants. Still, I dare say it was my place to tell him that the figure was pretty cheap, and let him try and do better with the property. I reckon I allowed my interest in my clients to sway my judgment, Mr. Winthrop. But I made up my mind when I got your letter and[99] learned you were coming here that I’d explain things to you, sir, and let you do as you thought best.”
“In regard to——?”
“In regard to re-renting, sir.”
“But I had intended occupying the house myself, Major.”
“So I gathered, sir, so I gathered. But of course you couldn’t know what the circumstances were, Mr. Winthrop. It isn’t as though the place was family property, sir, with you; not as though it was your birthplace and home. It’s just a house and a few acres of ground to you, sir; it has no—ah—sentimental value. You follow me, sir?”
“Yes, and you are beginning to make me feel like an interloper, Major Cass.”
“God forbid, sir! I had no such intention, I assure you, sir. I am sure no one could be more welcome at any time to Waynewood, and I trust, sir, that we shall often have the pleasure of seeing you here, sir.”
Winthrop’s laugh held a touch of exasperation.
[100]
“But, Great Scott! Major, you’re proposing to turn me out of my own house!”
“Bless your soul, sir, don’t say that! Dear, dear! Does it sound that way to you? My apologies, Mr. Winthrop! I won’t say another word, sir!”
The Major rolled the cigar agitatedly about in the corner of his loose mouth.
“Look here,” said Winthrop, “let’s understand each other, Major. I have come into possession of this property and we’ll allow for the sake of the argument that it holds no sentimental value for me. Now what do you propose I should do? Sign a new rental and pack up my things and go home again?”
“Nothing of the kind, sir, I assure you! What I meant to convey was that as you were intending to stay here in Corunna only two or three months, you could perhaps be quite as comfortable in the Palmetto House as at Waynewood. The Palmetto House, sir, is a very well-managed hotel, sir, and you would receive the most hospitable treatment.”
[101]
“Thanks for your frankness, Major. This Palmetto House is in the village?”
“It is, sir. It faces the court-house on the south.”
“And it has a large garden in front of it, with trees and vines and roses and a marble Cupid dancing in a bed of box?”
The Major shook his head regretfully.
“Well, Major, the place I’ve taken a fancy to boasts of just those attractions. Don’t you think that perhaps we could somehow arrange it so that I could stay there?”
“Do you mean, sir, that you would be willing to remain here as—as a paying guest?” asked the Major, eagerly.
Winthrop shrugged his shoulders.
“Why not? If the ladies are agreeable. At first sight there may be something a trifle anomalous in the idea of the owner of a property who has journeyed several hundred miles to occupy it petitioning for the privilege of being allowed to remain as a boarder, but, of course, I have the limitations[102] of the Northerner and doubtless fail to get the correct point of view.”
But Winthrop’s irony was quite lost on the Major.
“My dear sir, you have taken a great load from my mind,” exclaimed the latter. “I had hoped that the difficulty might be surmounted in just the way you propose, but somehow I gathered after meeting you that you—ah—resented the presence of the ladies.”
“Nonsense!” said Winthrop, a trifle impatiently. “Miss Wayne and her niece are quite welcome to remain here as long as they like. I was, however, naturally surprised to find anyone in possession. By all means let us renew the rental agreement. Meanwhile, if the ladies are agreeable, I will remain here and pay board and room-rent. I dare say my visit will not cover more than three months. And I will try to be as little trouble as possible.”
“Then the matter is settled,” answered the Major, with a gratified smile. “Unless——” He paused.
[103]
“More difficulties?” asked Winthrop, patiently.
“I hope not, sir, but I won’t deny that Miss India may spoil our plans.”
 
 
“You mean that she may not want to take a boarder?”
“Well, it’s this way, Mr. Winthrop.” The Major cleared his throat. “Miss Wayne has always been prejudiced against Northerners, but——”
“Really? But she seemed kindness itself this afternoon.”
“I’m delighted to hear it, sir, delighted! And allow me to say, Mr. Winthrop, sir, that you couldn’t have played a stronger card than you did.”
“Card? What do you mean, Major?”
“I mean that in losing consciousness as you did, sir, you accomplished more than I could have accomplished in an hour’s argument. It was very well done, sir, for I assure you that it was only by representing you as an invalid that I was able to prevail on Miss India to remain here, sir, until your arrival. When I found that I had[104] missed you at the office I feared that you would perhaps unwittingly give the impression of being a—a well man, sir, and thus prejudice the lady against you. But as it happened, sir, you played just the card calculated to win the trick.”
“But, Great Scott!” exclaimed Winthrop, exasperatedly; “you don’t think for a moment, do you, that I deliberately simulated[105] illness in order to work on her sympathies?”
“Of course not,” said the Major, earnestly. “How could you have known? No, no; I merely congratulated you on the fortunate—ah—coincidence, sir.”
“Oh! Then I am to understand that as a well man Miss Wayne will refuse to harbor me, but as an invalid she will consent to do so—for a consideration?”
“Exactly, Mr. Winthrop; that is just how it stands, sir.”
“And having once been accepted will it be necessary for me to continue to pose as an invalid for the rest of my stay?” he asked dryly.
“We-ell,” answered the Major, hesitatingly, “I don’t deny that it would help, but I don’t reckon it’ll be absolutely necessary, sir.”
Winthrop smiled.
“I’m glad to hear it, for I’m rather tired of being an invalid, and I don’t think I should enjoy even making believe for very long. May I ask whether Miss Wayne’s[106] dislike for persons from my section of the country is ineradicable, Major?”
“I sincerely hope not, sir!” replied the Major, earnestly. “Her brother’s views on the subject were very—ah—settled, sir, and Miss India had the highest respect for his opinions. But she has never had the fortune, I believe, to meet with a real Northern gentleman, Mr. Winthrop.” And the Major bowed courteously.
“And the niece? Miss——?”
“Holly, sir. Well, she is guided largely by her Aunt, Mr. Winthrop, and doubtless clings to many of her father’s convictions, but she has a well-developed sense of justice and a warm heart, sir, and I believe her prejudices can be dispelled.”
“Well, I appear to be in the enemy’s country, with a vengeance,” said Winthrop. “How about you, Major? Are you also down on us?”
“No, Mr. Winthrop. I don’t deny, sir, that shortly after the war I felt resentment, but that sentiment has long since disappeared. I am honored with the[107] friendship of several very estimable Northern gentlemen, sir. Nor must you think the sentiment hereabouts prejudicial to your people, Mr. Winthrop. Corunna is off the track of the tourist, to be sure; we have no special attractions here; no big hotels, sir, to cater to him; but once in a while a Northerner wanders to our town and we have grown to appreciate his many very excellent qualities, sir.”
“That’s comforting. I had begun to feel like a pariah.”
“My dear sir!” expostulated the Major. “Disabuse your mind of such wrong ideas, Mr. Winthrop. I shall take pleasure in convincing you that any ill-feeling engendered by the late unpleasantness has quite passed away. I shall esteem it a great privilege to be allowed to introduce you to some of our more prominent citizens, sir.”
“Thank you very much,” answered Winthrop. “The privilege will be mine, Major. Must you go?”
“Yes, we mustn’t forget that you are not yet as strong as we hope to have you after[108] you have been under the treatment of our climate for awhile, sir. Good-night, Mr. Winthrop. I have enjoyed our little talk, and it has been a pleasure to meet a gentleman of your attainments, sir.”
“You are very good,” Winthrop replied. “It has been a pleasure to meet you, Major. And may I leave the negotiations in your hands?”
“You may, sir. I hope to be able to inform you to-morrow that our plan is successful.”
“Yes. And in regard to the price to be paid, Major; I’ll leave that entirely with you as I haven’t any idea what is right.”
“You may do so, sir. And possibly some day at your convenience you will drop in at my office and we will attend to the matter of the new lease?”
“With pleasure, Major. Good-night, sir.”
Winthrop remained at the door until the Major had reached the lower hall. Then he closed it and, hands in his pockets, returned to the fire-place and stared frowningly[109] into the coals. Mechanically he reached his pipe from the mantel and lighted it with an ember. And presently, as he smoked, the frown disappeared and he laughed softly.
“Of all the ridiculous situations!” he muttered.
 
CHAPTER VI
 Holly came softly down the stairs, one small hand laid upon the broad mahogany rail to steady her descent, her little slippered feet twinkling in and out from beneath the hem of her gingham skirt, her lithe young body swaying in unconscious rhythm with the song she was singing under her breath. It was not yet seven o’clock, and no one save the servants was astir. Holly had always been an early riser, and when the weather permitted the hour before breakfast was spent by her in the open air. On warm mornings she kept to the grateful shade of the porch, perching herself on the joggling-board and gently jouncing herself up and down the while she stared thoughtfully out across the garden into the cool green gloom of the grove, an exercise undoubtedly beneficial to the liver but one which would have resulted with[111] most persons in a total disinclination for breakfast. On those terribly cold winter mornings when the water-pail on the back porch showed a film of ice, she slipped down the oleander path and out on to the road for a brisk walk or huddled herself in a sun-warmed corner at the back of the house. But this morning, which held neither the heat of summer nor the tang of frost, when, after unlatching the front door and swinging it creakingly open, she emerged on to the porch, she stood for a moment in the deep shadow of it, gazing happily down upon the pleasant scene before her.
 
Directly in front of her spread the fragrant quadrangle of the garden, the paths, edged with crumbling bricks set cantwise in the dark soil, curving and angling between the beds in formal precision. In the centre, out of a tangle of rose-bushes and box, the garlanded Cupid, tinged to pale gold by the early sunlight, smiled across at her. About him clustered tender blooms of old-fashioned roses, and the path was sprinkled with the fallen petals. Beyond, the long tunnel between the oleanders was still filled with the lingering shadows of dawn. To right and left of the centre bed lay miniature jungles of overgrown shrubs; roses, deutzias, cape jasmines, Japan quinces, sweet shrubs and all the luxuriant hodge-podge of a Southern garden somewhat run to seed, a little down at the heels maybe, but radiantly beautiful in its very disorder.
 
On the far side, the garden was bordered with taller shrubs—crépe-myrtles, mimosas, camelias, which merged imperceptibly into the trees of the grove. To the right,[113] beyond the bordering path, a few pear-trees showed their naked branches and a tall frankincense tree threw delicate shadow-tracery over the corner bed. To the left were Japan plums and pomegranates and figs, half hiding the picket fence, and a few youthful orange-trees, descendants of sturdy ancestors who had lost their lives in the freeze three years before. A huge magnolia spread its shapely branches over one of the beds, its trunk encircled by a tempting seat. Ribbon-grass swayed gently here and there above the rioting shrubbery, and at the corner of the porch, where a gate gave on to the drive, a clump of banana-trees, which had almost but not quite borne fruit that year, reared their succulent green stems in a sunny nook and arched their great broad leaves, torn and ribboned by the winds, with tropical effect. Near at hand, against the warm red chimney, climbed a Baltimore Belle, festooning the end of the house for yards with its tiny, glossy leaves. The shadow of the house cut the garden sharply into[114] two triangles, the dividing line between sunlight and shade crossing the pedestal of the smiling Cupid. Everywhere glistened diamonds of dew, and over all, growing more intense each instant as the sunlight and warmth grew in ardor, was the thrilling fragrance of the roses and the box, of damp earth and awakening leaves.
 
While Holly’s mother had lived the garden had been her pride and delight. It had been known to fame all through that part of the State and the beauty of the Wayne roses was a proverb. But now the care of it fell to Uncle Ran, together with the care of a bewildering number of other things, and Uncle Ran had neither the time nor the knowledge to maintain its former perfection. Holly loved it devotedly, knew it from corner to corner. At an earlier age she had plucked the blossoms for dolls and played with them for long hours on the seat under the magnolia. The full-blown roses were grown-up ladies, with beautiful outspread skirts of pink, white or yellow, and little green waists. The[115] half-opened roses were young ladies, and tiny white violets, or waxen orange-blooms or little blossoms of the deutzia were the babies. For the men, although Holly seldom bothered much with men, there were the jonquils or the oleanders. She knew well where the first blue violets were to be found, where the white jonquils broke first from their green calyces, where the little yellow balls of the opopanax were sweetest, what rose-petals were best adapted to being formed into tiny sacs and exploded against the forehead, and many other wonderful secrets of that fair domain. But in spite of all this, Holly was no gardener.
 
She loved flowers just as she loved the deep blue Florida sky with its hazy edges, the soft wind from the Gulf, the golden sunlight, the birds and bees and butterflies—just as she loved everything that was quickened with the wonderful breath of Nature. There was something of the pagan in Holly when it came to devotion to Nature. And yet she had no ability to make things grow. From her mother she[116] had inherited the love of trees and plants and flowers but not the gift of understanding them. Doubtless the Druids, with all their veneration for the oak and mistletoe, would have been sorely puzzled had they had to rear their leafy temples from planted acorns.
 
Holly went down the steps and, holding her gown away from the moisture-beaded branches, buried her face in a cluster of pink roses. Then, struck by a thought, she returned to the house, reappearing a moment later with her hands encased in a pair of old gloves, and carrying scissors.
Aunt India didn’t believe in bringing flowers into the house. “If the Lord had intended us to have them on the tables and mantels,” she said, “He’d have put them[117] there. But He didn’t; He meant them to be out of doors and we ought to be satisfied to admire them where He’s put them.” Usually Holly respected her Aunt’s prejudice, but to-day seemed in a way a special occasion. The Cloth of Gold roses seemed crying to be gathered, and their stems snipped gratefully under the scissors as she made her way along the edge of the bed. Her hands were almost full of the big yellow blooms when footsteps sounded on the porch and she glanced up to see Winthrop descending the steps. She wondered with sudden dismay whether she was going to blush as she had yesterday, and, for fear that she was, leaned far over the refractory cluster she was cutting. Winthrop’s footsteps approached along the sandy walk, and—
 
“Good-morning, Miss Holly,” he said.
“Good-morning,” answered Holly, and, having won her prize started to straighten up. “I hope——”
But instead of finishing the polite inquiry she said “Oh!” A branch of the rose-bush had caught in her hair, and the more she tugged the more firmly it held.
“Still a moment,” said Winthrop. He leaned over and disentangled the thorns. “There you are. I hope I didn’t pull very hard?”
“Thank you,” murmured Holly, raising a very red face. Winthrop, looking down into it, smiled; smiled for no particular reason, save that the morning air was very delightful, the morning sunlight very warm and cheering, and the face before him very lovely to look at. But Holly, painfully aware of her burning cheeks, thought he was smiling at her blushes. “What a silly he must think me!” she reflected, angrily. “Blushing every time he comes near!” She busied herself with the roses for a moment.
[119]
“You’ve got more than you can manage, haven’t you?” asked Winthrop. “Suppose you entrust them to me; then you’ll have your hands free.”
“I can manage very nicely, thank you,” answered Holly, a trifle haughtily.
Winthrop’s smile deepened.
“Do you know what I think, Miss Holly?” he asked.
“No,” said Holly, looking about her in a very preoccupied way in search of more blossoms.
“I think you’re a little bit resentful because I’ve come to share your Eden. I believe you were playing that you were Eve and that you were all alone here except for the serpent.”
“Playing!” said Holly, warmly. “Please, how old do you think I am, Mr. Winthrop?”
“My dear young lady,” answered Winthrop, gravely, “I wouldn’t think of even speculating on so serious a subject. But supposing you are very, very old, say seventeen—or even eighteen!—still you[120] haven’t, I hope, got beyond the age of make-believe. Why, even I—and, as you will readily see, I have one foot almost in the grave—even I sometimes make-believe.”
“Do you?” murmured Holly, very coldly.
There was silence for a moment during which Holly added further prizes to her store and Winthrop followed her and watched her in mingled admiration and amusement—admiration for the grace and beauty and sheer youth of her, amusement at her evident resentment.
“I’m sorry,” he said presently, slowly and thoughtfully.
“At what?” Holly allowed herself a fleeting look at his face. It was very serious and regretful, but the smile still lurked in the dark eyes, and Holly’s vanity flew to arms again.
“Sorry that I’ve said something to displease you,” returned Winthrop. “You see, I was hoping to make friends with you, Miss Holly.”
[121]
Holly thought of a dozen questions to ask, but heroically refrained.
“I gathered from Major Cass last evening,” continued Winthrop, “that Northerners are not popular at Waynewood. But you seemed a very kind young lady, and I thought that if I could only win you over to my side you might intercede for me with your aunt. You see, I’d like very much to stay here, but I’m afraid Miss Wayne isn’t going to take to the idea. And now I’ve gone and antagonized the very person I meant to win for an ally.”
“I don’t see why you can’t stay here if you want to,” answered Holly. “Waynewood belongs to you.”
“But what would I do here all alone?” asked Winthrop. “I’m a frightfully helpless, ignorant chap. Why, I don’t even know how to cook a beefsteak! And as for beaten biscuit——!”
Holly smiled, in spite of herself.
“But you could hire some servants, I reckon.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t know how to manage[122] them, really. No, the only way in which I can remain here is as your guest, Miss Holly. I’ve asked Major Cass to tell Miss Wayne that, and I’ve no doubt but what he will do all he can for me, but I fancy that a word from you would help a lot, Miss Holly. Don’t you think you could tell your aunt that I am a very respectable sort of a fellow, one who has never been known to give any trouble? I have been with some of the best families and I can give references from my last place, if necessary.”
“I reckon you don’t know Aunt India,” laughed Holly. “If she says you can’t stay, you can’t, and it wouldn’t do a mite of good if I talked myself black in the face.”
Holly turned toward the house and he followed.
“You think, then,” he asked, “that there’s nothing more we can do to influence Fate in my behalf?”
 
Holly ran lightly up the steps, tossed the flowers in a heap on the porch, and sat down with her back against a pillar. Then[123] she pointed to the opposite side of the steps.
 
“Sit down there,” she commanded.
 
Winthrop bowed and obeyed. Holly clasped her hands about her knees, and looked across at him with merry eyes.
“Mr. Winthrop.”
“Madam?”
“What will you give me if I let you stay?”
“Pardon my incredulity,” replied Winthrop, “but is your permission all that is necessary?”
Holly nodded her head many times.
“If I say you can stay, you can,” she said, decisively.
“Then in exchange for your permission I will give you half my kingdom,” answered Winthrop, gravely.
“Oh, I don’t think I could use half a kingdom. It would be like owning half a horse, wouldn’t it? Supposing I wanted my half to go and the other half wouldn’t?”
“Then take it all.”
[124]
“No, because I reckon your kingdom’s up North, and I wouldn’t want a kingdom I couldn’t live in. It will have to be something else, I reckon.”
“And I have so little with me,” mourned Winthrop. “I dare say you wouldn’t have any use for a winter overcoat or a pair of patent-leather shoes? They’re about all I have to offer.”
“No,” laughed Holly; “anyhow, not the overcoat. Do you think the shoes would fit me?”
She advanced one little slippered foot from beyond the hem of her skirt. Winthrop looked, and shook his head.
“Honestly, I’m afraid not,” he said. “I don’t believe I ever saw a shoe that would fit you, Miss Holly.”
Holly acknowledged the compliment with a ceremonious bow and a little laugh.
“I didn’t know you Northerners could pay compliments,” she said.
“We are a very adaptable people,” answered Winthrop, “and pride ourselves on being able to face any situation.”
[125]
“But you haven’t told me what you’ll give me, Mr. Winthrop.”
“I have exhausted my treasures, Miss Holly. There remains only myself. I throw myself at your feet, my dear young lady; I will be your slave for life.”
“Oh, I thought you Northerners didn’t believe in slavery,” said Holly.
“We don’t believe in compulsory slavery, Miss Holly. To be a slave to Beauty is always a pleasure.”
“Another compliment!” cried Holly. “Two before breakfast!”
“And the day is still young,” laughed Winthrop.
“Oh, I won’t demand any more, Mr. Winthrop; you’ve done your duty already.”
“As you like; I am your slave.”
“How lovely! I never had a slave before,” said Holly, reflectively.
“I fear your memory is poor, Miss Holly. I’ll wager you’ve had, and doubtless still have, a score of them quite as willing as I.”
[126]
Holly blushed a little, but shook her head.
“Not I. But it’s a bargain, Mr. Winthrop. I won’t keep you for life, though; when you leave here I’ll give you your ‘freedance,’ as the negroes say. But while you are here you are to do just as I tell you. Will you?” she added, sternly.
“I obey implicitly,” answered Winthrop. “And now?”
“Why, you may stay, of course. Besides, it was all arranged last evening. Uncle Major and Auntie fixed it all up between them after he came down from seeing you. You are to have the room you are in and the one back of it, if you want it, and you are to pay three dollars and a-half a week; one dollar for your room and two dollars and a-half for your board.”
“But—isn’t that——?”
“Please don’t!” begged Holly. “I don’t know anything about it. If it’s too much, you must speak to Aunt India or Major Cass.”
[127]
“I was about to suggest that it seemed ridiculously little,” said Winthrop. “But——”
“Gracious!” exclaimed Holly. “Uncle Major thought it ought to be more, but Auntie wouldn’t hear of it. Do you think it should be?”
“Well, I’m scarcely a disinterested party,” laughed Winthrop, “but it doesn’t sound much, does it?”
“Three dollars and a-half!” said Holly, slowly and thoughtfully. Then she nodded her head vigorously. “Yes, it sounds a whole lot.” She laughed softly. “It’s very funny, though, isn’t it?”
“What?” he asked, smiling in sympathy.
“Why, that you should be paying three dollars and a-half a week for the privilege of being a slave!”
“Ah, but that’s it,” answered Winthrop. “It is a privilege, as you say.”
“Oh!” cried Holly, in simulated alarm. “You’re at it again, Mr. Winthrop!”
“At it? At what?”
[128]
“Compliments, compliments, sir! You’ll have none left for this evening if you don’t take care. Just think; you might meet a beautiful young lady this evening and not have any compliments for her! Wouldn’t that be dreadful?”
“Horrible,” answered Winthrop. “I shudder.”
“Are you hungry?” asked Holly, suddenly.
“Hungry? No—yes—I hardly know.”
“You’re probably starving, then,” said Holly, jumping up and sweeping the roses into her arms. “I’ll see if breakfast isn’t nearly ready. Auntie doesn’t come down to breakfast very often, and it’s my place to see that it’s on time. But I never do, and it never is. Do you love punctuality, Mr. Winthrop?”
“Can’t bear it, Miss Holly.”
She stood a little way off, smiling down at him, a soft flush in her cheeks.
“You always say just the right thing, don’t you?” She laughed. “How do you manage it?”
[129]
“Long practice, my dear young lady. When you’ve lived as long as I have you will have discovered that it is much better to say the right thing than the wrong—even when the right thing isn’t altogether right.”
“Yes, I reckon so, but—sometimes it’s an awful temptation to say the wrong, isn’t it? Are you awfully old? May I guess?”
“I shall be flattered.”
“Then—forty?”
Winthrop sighed loudly.
“Too much? Wait! Thirty—thirty-seven?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Is that very old? I shall be eighteen in a few days.”
“Really? Then, you see, I have already lived twice as long as you have.”
“Yes,” Holly nodded, thoughtfully. “Do you know, I don’t think I want to live to be real, real old; I think I’d rather die before—before that.”
“And what do you call real, real old?” asked Winthrop.
[130]
“Oh, I don’t know; fifty, I reckon.”
“Then I have twelve years longer to live,” said Winthrop, gravely.
Holly turned a pair of startled eyes upon him.
“No, no! It’s different with you; you’re a man.”
“Oh, that makes a difference?”
“Lots! Men can do heaps of things, great, big things, after they’re old, but a woman——” She paused and shrugged her shoulders in a funny, exaggerated way that Winthrop thought charming. “What is there for a woman when she’s that old?”
“Much,” answered Winthrop, gravely, “if she has been a wise woman. There should be her children to love and to love her, and if she has married the right man there will be that love, too, in the afternoon of her life.”
“Children,” murmured Holly. “Yes, that would be nice; but they wouldn’t be children then, would they? And—supposing they died before? The woman would[131] be terribly lonely, wouldn’t she—in the afternoon?”
Winthrop turned his face away and looked out across the sunlit garden.
“Yes,” he said, very soberly; “yes, she would be lonely.”
Something in his tones drew Holly’s attention. How deep the lines about his mouth were this morning, and how gray the hair was at his temples; she had not noticed it before. Yes, after all, thirty-eight was quite old. That thought or some other moved her to a sudden sentiment of pity. Impulsively she tore one of the big yellow roses from the bunch and with her free hand tossed it into his lap.
“Do you know, Mr. Winthrop,” she said, softly, “I reckon we’re going to be friends, you and I,—that is, if you want to.”
Winthrop sprang to his feet, the rose in his hand.
“I do want to, Miss Holly,” he said, earnestly. Somehow, before she realized it, Holly’s hand was in his. “I want it very much. I haven’t very many friends,[132] I guess, and when one gets toward forty he doesn’t find them as easily as he did. Is it a bargain, then? We are to be friends, very good friends, Miss Holly?”
“Yes,” answered Holly, simply, “very good friends.”
Her dark eyes looked seriously into his for a moment. Then she withdrew her hand, laughed softly under her breath and turned toward the door. But on the threshold she looked back over her shoulder, the old mischief in her face.
“But don’t you go and forget that you’re my slave, Mr. Winthrop,” she said.
“Never! You have fettered me with roses.”
 
CHAPTER VII
 Miss India made no exception that morning to her general rule, and Holly presided over the coffee cups. The table was rather large, and although Winthrop’s place was in the middle, facing the open door onto the back porch, there was quite an expanse of emptiness between him and his hostess. Through the door and across the bridge to the kitchen Phœbe trotted at minute intervals to bring fresh relays of hot biscuits and buckwheat cakes. The dining-room was rather shabby. The walls were papered in dark brown, and the floor was covered[134] with linoleum. A mahogany sideboard, which took up quite ten feet of one end of the room, looked sadly out of its element. Three pictures in tarnished gilt frames hung by thick green cords very close to the ceiling, so that Winthrop was spared the necessity of close examination, something which they did not invite. But for all its shabbiness there was something comfortable about the room, something homey that made the old dishes with their chipped edges and half-obliterated ornamentation seem eminently suitable, and that gave Winthrop a distinct sensation of pleasure.
He found that, in spite of his previous uncertainty, he was very hungry, and, although he had hard work to keep from grimacing over the first taste of the coffee, he ate heartily and enjoyed it all. And while he ate, Holly talked. Sometimes he slipped in a word of comment or a question, but they were not necessary so far as Holly was concerned. There was something almost exciting for her in the situation.[135] To have an audience who was quite fresh and sympathetic was an event in her life, and there are so many, many things one has to say at eighteen. And Winthrop enjoyed it almost as much as Holly. Her naive views of life amused even while they touched him. She seemed very young for her age, and very unsophisticated after the Northern girls Winthrop knew. And he found her voice and pronunciation charming, besides. He loved the way she made “I” sound like “Ah,” the way she narrowed some vowels and broadened others, her absolute contempt for the letter “r.” The soft drawl of Southern speech was new to him, and he found it fascinating. Once Holly stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence, laid her left hand palm downwards on the edge of the table and struck her knuckles sharply with the handle of her knife.
“What’s the matter?” inquired Winthrop, in surprise.
“Punishment,” answered Holly, gravely, the chastised hand held against her[136] lips. “You see there are three words that Auntie doesn’t like me to use, and when I do use them I rap my knuckles.”
“Oh,” smiled Winthrop, “and does it help?”
“I don’t reckon it’s helped much yet,” said Holly, “but maybe it will. It sure does hurt, though.”
“And may I ask what the words are?”
“One is ‘Fiddle.’ Does that sound very bad to you?”
“N-no, I think not. What does it signify, please?”
“Oh, you just say ‘Fiddle’ when—when something happens you don’t like.”
“I see; ‘Fiddle;’ yes, quite expressive. And the others?”
“‘Shucks’ is one of them.”
“Used, I fancy, in much the same sense as ‘Fiddle’?”
Holly nodded.
“Only—only not so much so,” she added.
“Certainly not,” replied Winthrop. “I understand. For instance, if you fell down[137] stairs you’d say ‘Fiddle!’ but if you merely bumped your head you’d say ‘Shucks!’”
“Yes,” laughed Holly.
“And the third prohibited word?” asked Winthrop.
“That’s—that’s——” Holly bent her head very meekly over her plate—“that’s ‘Darnation!’”
“Expressive, at least,” laughed Winthrop. “That is reserved, I suppose, for such extraordinary occasions as when you fall from a sixth-story window?”
“No; I say that when I stick a needle into my finger,” answered Holly. “It seems to suit better than ‘Fiddle’ or ‘Shucks;’ don’t you think so, Mr. Winthrop?”
“Well, I don’t remember ever having stuck a needle into my finger, but I’ll try it some time and give you my candid opinion on the question.”
After breakfast Winthrop wandered out into the garden and from thence into the grove beyond. There were pines and cedars[138] here, and oaks, and other trees which he didn’t know the names of. The gray-green Spanish moss draped an occasional limb, and at times there was some underbrush. Finding the drive, he followed it toward the gate, but before reaching the latter he struck off again through a clearing and climbed a little knoll on the summit of which a small brick-walled enclosure guarded by three huge oaks attracted his attention and aroused his curiosity. But he didn’t open the little iron gate when he reached it. Within the square enclosure were three graves, two close together near at hand, one somewhat removed. From where he leaned across the crumbling wall Winthrop could read the inscriptions on the three simple headstones. The farther grave was that of “John Wayne, born Fairfield, Kentucky, Feb. 1, 1835; fell at Malvern Hill, July 1, 1862; interred in this spot July 28, 1862.”
The nearer of the two graves which lay together was that, as Winthrop surmised, of Holly’s mother. Behind the headstone[139] a rose-bush had been planted, and this morning one tiny bloom gleamed wanly in the shadow of the wall. “To the Beloved Memory of Margaret Britton, Wife of Lamar Wayne; Sept. 3, 1853-Jan. 1, 1881. Aged 27 years. ‘The balmy zephyrs, silent since her death, Lament the ceasing of a sweeter breath.’”
Winthrop’s gaze turned to the stone beside it.
“Here lies,”—he read—“the Body of Captain Lamar Wayne, C. S. A., who was born in Fairfield, Kentucky, Aug, 4, 1842, and died at Waynewood, Sept. 21, 1892, aged 50 years. ‘Happier for me that all our hours assign’d, Together we had lived; ev’n not in death disjoined.’”
Here, thought Winthrop, was hint of a great love. He compared the dates. Captain Wayne had lived twelve years after his wife’s death. Winthrop wondered if those years had seemed long to him. Probably not, since he had Holly to care for—Holly, whom Winthrop doubted not, was very greatly like her mother. To have the[140] child spared to him! Ah, that was much. Winthrop’s eyes lifted from the quiet space before him and sought the distant skyline as his thoughts went to another grave many hundred miles away. A mocking-bird flew into one of the oaks and sang a few tentative notes, and then was silent. Winthrop roused himself with a sigh and turned back down the knoll toward the house, which stood smiling amidst its greenery a few hundred yards away.
As he entered the hall he heard Holly in converse with Aunt Venus on the back porch, and as he glanced through the doorway she moved into sight, her form silhouetted against the sunlight glare. But he gave her only a passing thought as he mounted the stairs to his room. The spell of the little graveyard on the knoll and of that other more distant one was still with him, and remained until, having got his hat and cane, he passed through the open gate and turned townward on the red clay road.
Major Cass was seated in his cushioned[141] arm-chair with his feet on his desk and a sheepskin-covered book spread open on his knees when Winthrop obeyed the invitation to enter.
“Ah, Mr. Winthrop, sir, good-morning,” said the Major, as he tossed the book on to the desk and climbed to his feet. “Your rest has done you good, sir; I can see that. Feeling more yourself to-day, eh?”
“Quite well, thanks,” answered Winthrop, accepting the arm-chair which his host pushed toward him. “I thought I’d come down and hear the verdict and attend to the matter of the rental.”
“Yes, yes,” said the Major. “Very kind of you, sir.”
He limped to a cupboard in one corner and returned with a jug and two not overly clean glasses, which he set on the desk, brushing aside a litter of papers and books. “You will join me, Mr. Winthrop, in a little liquor, sir, I trust?”
“A very little, then,” answered Winthrop. “I’m still under doctor’s orders, you know.”
[142]
“As little as you like,” rejoined the Major, courteously, “but we must drink to the success of our conspiracy, sir. The matter is all arranged. Miss India was—ah—surprisingly complacent, sir.” The Major handed the glass to Winthrop with a bow. “Your very good health, sir!”
During the subsequent talk, in which the Major explained the terms of the bargain as Winthrop had already learned them from Holly, the visitor was able to look about him. The room was small and square save for the projecting fire-place at one side. A window on the front overlooked the street which led to Waynewood, while through another on the side of the building Winthrop could see the court-house[143] behind its border of oaks, the stores across the square and, peering from behind the court-house, the end of the Palmetto House with its long gallery. It was Saturday, and the town looked quite busy. Ox-carts, farm wagons drawn by mules, and broken-down buggies crawled or jogged past the window on their way to the hitching-place. In front of the court-house, in the shade, were half-a-dozen carts loaded with bales of cotton, and the owners with samples in hand were making the round of the buyers. The sidewalks were thronged with negroes, and the gay medley of the voices came through the open window.
 
 
A set of shelves occupied the end of the room beside the door and were filled to overflowing with yellow law books. The mantel was crowded with filing cases and a few tin boxes. Beside the front window a small, old-fashioned safe held more books. Besides these there was only the plain oak desk, two chairs and the aforementioned cupboard to be seen, if one excepts[144] the wall decorations in the shape of colored advertisements and calendars and a box filled with sawdust beside the arm-chair. The Major had tucked a greenish and very damp cigar in the corner of his mouth, and Winthrop soon discovered the necessity for the box.
Presently the new rental agreement was signed and the Major, after several abortive attempts, flung open the door of the safe and put it carefully away in one of the compartments. Then he took up his broad-brimmed black felt hat and reached for his cane.
 
“And now, Mr. Winthrop,” he said, “we’ll just take a walk around the town, sir; I’d like you to meet some of our citizens, sir.”
Winthrop good-naturedly acquiesced and preceded the Major down the stairs. During the next hour-and-a-half Winthrop was impressively introduced to and warmly welcomed by some two dozen of Corunna’s foremost citizens, from ’Squire Parish, whom they discovered buying a bale of[145] cotton in the dim recess of his hardware store, to Mr. “Cad” Wilson, who wiped his hand on a towel before reaching it across the bar to add his welcome.
“Not one of the aristocracy,” explained the Major, as they took their way out after drinking Winthrop’s health in Bourbon, “but a gentleman at heart, sir, in spite of his business, sir. When in need of liquid refreshment, Mr. Winthrop, you will find his place the best in town, sir, and you may always depend on receiving courteous treatment.”
The post-office, toward which they bent their steps after breasting Mr. “Cad” Wilson’s swinging doors, proved to be a veritable stamping-ground for Corunna’s celebrities. There Winthrop was introduced to the Reverend Mr. Fillock, the Presbyterian minister; to Mr. “Ham” Somes, the proprietor of the principal drug store; to Colonel Byers, in from his plantation a few miles outside of town to look up an express shipment, and the postmaster himself, Major Warren, who displayed an[146] empty sleeve and, as Winthrop’s guide explained, still never took a drink without preceding it with the toast, “Secession, sah!”
When Colonel Byers alluded to the missing express package the Major chuckled.
“Colonel,” he said, “’taint another of those boxes of hardware, is it?”
The Colonel laughed and shook his head, and the Major turned to Winthrop with twinkling eyes.
“You see, Mr. Winthrop, the Colonel got a box of hardware by express some years ago; from Savannah, wan’t it, Colonel?”
“Atlanta, sir.”
“Well, anyhow, the Colonel was busy and didn’t get into town right away, and one day he got a letter from the express agent, saying: ‘Please call for your box of hardware as it’s leaking all over the floor.’”
The Colonel appeared to enjoy the story quite as much as the Major, and Winthrop found their mirth quite as laugh-provoking as the tale.
[147]
“And I have heard that the Colonel never got to town in as quick time as he did then!”
“Morning, Harry,” said the Major, turning to the newcomer. “I reckon you heard just about right, Harry. I want to introduce you to my friend Mr. Winthrop, of New York, sir. Mr. Winthrop, shake hands with Mr. Bartow. Mr. Bartow, sir, represents us at the Capital.”
“I’m honored to make your acquaintance, sir,” said the Honorable Mr. Bartow. “You are staying with us for awhile, sir?”
“Yes, probably for a few months,” replied Winthrop.
“Good, sir; I am pleased to hear it. You must give me the pleasure of taking dinner with me some day, sir. I’ll get the Major to arrange it at your convenience.”
“And bring Mr. Winthrop out to Sunnyside, Lucius,” said the Colonel. “Some Sunday would be best, I reckon.”
Winthrop accepted the invitations—or perhaps the Major did it for him—and after[148] shaking hands with the Colonel and the Honorable Harry Bartow he was conducted forth by his guide. Their course along the sunlit street was often interrupted, and Winthrop’s list of acquaintances grew with each interruption. It was quite evident that being vouched for by Major Lucius Quintus Cass stood for a good deal, and in every case Winthrop’s welcome was impressively courteous. Once or twice the Major was stopped by men to whom Winthrop was not introduced. After one such occasion the Major said, as they went on:
“Not one of our kind, Mr. Winthrop; his acquaintance would be of no benefit, sir.”
Winthrop noticed that not once did the Major in his introductions allude to the former’s ownership of Waynewood. And evidently the Major concluded that the fact required elucidation, for when they had finally returned to the corner where stood the Major’s office the latter said:
“You may have observed, Mr. Winthrop, that I have not mentioned your[149] ownership of Waynewood. I thought it as well not to, sir, for as you do not intend to take possession this winter there can be no harm in allowing folks to remain in ignorance of—ah—the change. It will make it much easier, sir, for Miss India and her niece. You agree with me?”
“Entirely,” replied Winthrop, suppressing a smile. “We will keep the fact a secret for awhile, Major.”
“Quite so, sir, quite so. And now, sir, I should be delighted if you would take dinner with me at the hotel, if you will be so kind.”
But Winthrop declined and, thanking the other for his kindness, shook hands and turned his steps homeward, or, at least, toward Waynewood; he had begun to doubt his possession of that place.
CHAPTER  VIII.
 
Winthrop had been at Waynewood a week—a week of which one day had been so like the next that Winthrop remembered them all with impartial haziness and content. It was delightful to have nothing more startling to look forward to than a quail-shoot, a dinner at Sunnyside, or a game of whist in town; to have each day as alike in mellowness and sunshine as they were similar in events, pass softly across the garden, from shadow to shadow, the while he watched its passage with tranquilly smiling eyes and inert body from the seat under the magnolia or a chair on the quiet porch.
The past became the flimsiest of ghosts, the future a mere insignificant speck on the far horizon. What mattered it that once his heart had ached? That he was practically penniless? That somewhere[151] men were hurrying and striving for wealth? The sky was hazily blue, the sunlight was wine of gold, the southern breeze was the soothing touch of a soft and fragrant hand that bade him rest and sleep, for there was no yesterday and no morrow, and the taste of lotus was sweet in his mouth. The mornings danced brightly past to the lilt of bird song; the afternoons paced more leisurely, crossing the tangled garden with measured, somnolent tread so quiet that not a leaf stirred, not a bird chirped in the enfolding silence; the evenings grew from purple haze, fragrant with wood-smoke, to blue-black clarity set with a million silver stars whose soft radiance bathed the still world with tender light. Such days and such nights have a spell, and Winthrop was bound.
And Holly? Fate, although she was still unsuspecting of the fact, had toppled the stone into the stream and the ripples were already widening. Winthrop’s coming had been an event. Holly had her friends, girls of her own age, who came to Waynewood[152] to see her and whom she visited in town, and young men in the early twenties who walked or drove out in the evenings, when their duties in the stores and offices were over, and made very chivalrous and distant love to her in the parlor. But for all that many of the days had been long with only Aunt India, who was not exactly chatty, and the servants to talk to. But now it was different. This charming and delightfully inexplicable Northerner was fair prey. He was never too busy to listen to her; in fact, he was seldom busy at all, unless sitting, sometimes with a closed book in one’s lap, and gazing peacefully into space may be termed being busy. They had quite exciting mornings together very often, exciting, at least, for Holly, when she unburdened herself of a wealth of reflections and conclusions and when he listened with the most agreeable attention in the world and always said just the right thing to tempt her tongue to more brilliant ardor.
And then in the afternoons, while Aunt[153] India slept and Holly couldn’t, just because the blood ran far too fast in her young veins, there were less stimulating but very comforting talks in the shade of the porch. And sometimes they walked, but,—for Holly had inherited the characteristic disinclination for overindulgence in that form of exercise,—not very frequently. Holly would have indorsed the proverb—Persian, isn’t it?—which says, in part, that it is easier to sit than to stand and easier to lie down than to sit. And Winthrop at this period would have agreed with her. Judged by Northern standards, Holly might have been deemed lazy. But we must remember that Holly came of people who had never felt the necessity of physical exertion, since there had always been slaves at hand to perform the slightest task, and for whom the climate had prohibited any inclination in that direction. Holly’s laziness was that of a kitten, which seldom goes out to walk for pleasure but which will romp until its breath is gone or stalk a sparrow for an hour untiringly.
[154]
By the end of the first week she and Winthrop had become the very good friends they had agreed to be. They had reached the point where it was no longer necessary to preface their conversation with an introduction. Now when Holly had anything to say—and she usually did—she plunged right in without any preliminary shivers. As this morning when, having given out the supplies for the day to Aunt Venus, she joined Winthrop under the magnolia, settling her back against the trunk and clasping her hands about her knees, “I reckon there are two sides to everything,” she said, with the air of one who is announcing the result of long study.
Winthrop, who had arisen at her approach and remained standing until she had seated herself, settled back again and smiled encouragingly. He liked to hear her talk, liked the soft coo of her voice, liked the things she said, liked, besides, to watch the play of expression on her face.
“Father always said that the Yankees had no right to interfere with the South[155] and that it wasn’t war with them, it was just homicide. Homicide’s where you kill someone else, isn’t it? I always get it mixed up with suicide.”
Winthrop nodded.
“That’s what he used to say, and I’m sure he believed it or he’d never have said it. But maybe he was mistaken. Was he, do you think?”
“He might have been a trifle biased,” said Winthrop.
Holly was silent a moment. Then——
“Uncle Major,” she continued, “used to argue with him, but father always had the best of it. I reckon, though, you Northerners are sorry now, aren’t you?”
“Sorry that there was war, yes,” answered Winthrop, smilingly; “but not sorry for what we did.”
“But if it was wrong?” argued Holly. “’Pears to me you ought to be sorry! Just see the heaps and heaps of trouble you made for the South! Julian says that you ought to have paid us for every negro you took away from us.”
[156]
“Indeed? And who, may I ask, is Julian?”
“Julian Wayne is my cousin, my second cousin. He graduated from medical college last year. He lives in Marysville, over yonder.” Holly nodded vaguely toward the grove.
“Practising, is he?”
“He’s Dr. Thompson’s assistant,” said Holly. “He’s getting experience. After awhile he’s going to come to Corunna.” There was a pause. “He’s coming over to-morrow to spend Sunday.”
“Really? And does he make these trips very often?”
“Oh, every now and then,” answered Holly, carelessly.
“Perhaps there is an attraction hereabouts,” suggested Winthrop.
“Maybe it’s Aunt India,” said Holly, gravely.
Winthrop laughed.
“Is he nice, this Cousin Julian?” he asked.
Holly nodded.
[157]
“He’s a dear boy. He’s very young yet, only twenty-three.”
“And eighteen from twenty-three leaves five,” teased Winthrop. “I’ve heard, I think, that ten is the ideal disparity in years for purposes of marriage, but doubtless five isn’t to be sneezed at.”
Holly’s smooth cheeks reddened a little.
“A girl ought to marry a man much older than herself,” she said, decisively.
“Oh! Then Julian won’t do?”
“I haven’t decided,” Holly laughed. “Maybe. He’s nice. I wonder if you’ll like him. Will you try to, please? He—he’s awfully down on Northerners, though.”
“That’s bad,” said Winthrop, seriously. “Perhaps he won’t approve of me. Do you think I’d better run away over Sunday? I might go out to visit Colonel Byers; he’s asked me.”
“Silly!” said Holly. “He won’t eat you!”
“Well, that’s comforting. I’ll stay, then. The dislike of Northerners seems to[158] be a strong trait in your family, Miss Holly.”
“Oh, some Northerners are quite nice,” she answered, with a challenging glance.
“I wonder,” he asked, with intense diffidence, “I wonder—if I’m included among the quite nice ones?”
“What do you think, Mr. Winthrop?”
“Well, I’ve always thought rather well of myself until I came to Corunna. But now that I have learned just how poor a lot Northerners are, I find myself rather more modest.”
Winthrop sighed depressedly.
“I’ll change it,” said Holly, her eyes dancing. “I’ll say instead that one Northerner is very nice.”
“You said ‘quite nice’ before.”
“That just shows that I like you better every minute,” laughed the girl.
Winthrop sighed.
“It’s a dangerous course you’re pursuing, Miss Holly,” he said, sadly. “If you aren’t awfully careful you’ll lose a good slave and find a poor admirer.”
[159]
“My admirers must be my slaves, too,” answered Holly.
“I am warned. I thank you. I could never play a dual rôle, I fear.”
Holly pouted.
“Then which do you choose?” she asked, aggrievedly.
“To be your slave, my dear young lady; I fancy that rôle would be more becoming to middle-age and, at all events, far less hazardous.”
“But if I command you to admire me you’ll have to, you see; slaves must obey.”
“I haven’t waited for the command,” replied Winthrop.
“You blow hot and cold, sir. First you refuse to be my admirer and then you declare that you do admire me. What am I to believe?”
“That my heart and brain are at war, Miss Holly. My heart says: ‘Down on your knees!’ but my brain says: ‘Don’t you do it, my boy; she’ll lead you a dance that your aged limbs won’t take kindly to, and in the end she’ll run out of your sight,[160] laughing, leaving you to sorrow and liniment!”
“You have as good as called me a coquette, Mr. Winthrop,” charged Holly, severely.
“Have I? And, pray, what have you been doing for the last ten minutes but coquetting with me, young lady? Tell me that.”
“Have I?” asked Holly, with a soft little laugh. “Do you mind?”
“Mind? On the contrary, do you know, I rather like it? So go right ahead; you are keeping your hand in, and at the same time flattering the vanity of one who has reached the age when to be used even for target practice is flattering.”
“Your age troubles you a great deal, doesn’t it?” asked Holly, ironically. “Please, why do you always remind me of it? Are you afraid that I’ll lose my heart to you and that you’ll have to refuse me?”
“Well, you have seen me for a week,” answered Winthrop, modestly, “and know my irresistible charm.”
[161]
Holly was silent a moment, her brown eyes fixed speculatively on the man’s smiling face. Then——
“You must feel awfully safe,” she said, with conviction, “to talk the way you do. And I reckon I know why.”
“And may I know, too?”
“No; that is, you do know already, and I’m not going to tell you. Oh, what time is it, please?”
Winthrop drew out his watch and then, with a shrug, dropped it back into his pocket.
“I can’t tell you. The fact is, I forgot to wind it last night. Why should I wind it, anyhow? What does it matter what time it is in this place? If the sun is there, I know it’s morning; if it’s somewhere overhead, I know it’s noon; when it drops behind the trees, I know it’s evening; when it disappears, I know it’s night—and I go to sleep. Watches and clocks are anachronisms here. Like arctics and fur overcoats.”
“I shall go and find out,” said Holly, rising.
[162]
“Why waste time and effort in the pursuit of unprofitable knowledge?” sighed Winthrop. But he received no answer, for his companion was already making her way through the garden. Winthrop laid his head back against the tree and, with half-closed eyes, smiled lazily and contentedly up into the brown-and-green leafage above. And as he did so a thought came to him, a most ridiculous, inappropriate thought, a veritable serpent-in-Eden thought; he wondered what “A. S. common” was selling for! He drove the thought away angrily. What nonsense! If he wasn’t careful he’d find himself trying to remember the amount of his balance in bank! Odd what absurd turns the mind was capable of! Well, the only way to keep his mind away from idle speculation was to turn his thoughts toward serious and profitable subjects. So he wondered why the magnolia leaves were covered with green satin on top and tan velvet beneath. But before he had arrived at any conclusion Holly came back, bearing a glass containing[163] a milky-white liquid and a silver spoon.
 
“It’s past the time,” she said.
“Then you shouldn’t have bothered to bring it,” answered Winthrop, regretfully. “But never mind; we’ll try and remember it at supper time.”
“But you must take it now,” persisted Holly, firmly.
“But I fear it wouldn’t do any good. You see, your Aunt said distinctly an hour before meals. The psychological moment has passed, greatly to my rel—regret.”
“Please!” said Holly, holding the glass toward him. “You know it’s doing you heaps of good.”
“Yes, but that’s just it, don’t you see, Miss Holly? If I continue to take it I’ll be quite well in no time, and that would never do. Would you deprive your Aunt of the pleasure she is now enjoying of dosing[164] me thrice a day with the most nauseous mixture that was ever invented?”
“Shucks! It isn’t so terribly bad,” laughed Holly.
Winthrop observed her sternly.
“Have you sampled it, may I ask?”
Holly shook her head.
“Then please do so. It will do you lots of good, besides preventing you from making any more well-meant but inaccurate remarks. And you have been looking a bit pale the last day or two, Miss Holly.”
Holly viewed the mixture dubiously, hesitatingly.
“Besides, you said ‘Shucks,’ and you owe yourself punishment.”
“Well——” Holly swallowed a spoonful, tried not to shiver, and absolutely succeeded in smiling brightly afterwards.
“Well?” asked Winthrop, anxiously.
“I—I think it has calomel in it,” said Holly.
“I feared it.” He shook his head and warded off the proffered glass. “I am a homœopath.”
[165]
“You’re a baby, that’s what you are!” said Holly, tauntingly.
“Ha! No one shall accuse me of cowardice.” He clenched his hands. “Administer it, please.”
Holly moved toward him until her skirt brushed his knees. As she dipped the spoon a faint flush crept into her cheeks. Winthrop saw, and understood.
“No, give it to me,” he said. “I will feed myself. Then, no matter what happens—and I fear the worst!—you will not be implicated.”
Holly yielded the glass and moved back, watching him sympathetically while he swallowed two spoonfuls of the medicine.
“Was it awfully bad?” she asked, as he passed the glass to her with a shudder.
Winthrop reflected. Then:
“Frankly, it was,” he replied. “But it’s a good deal like having your teeth filled; it’s almost worth it for the succeeding glow of courage and virtue and relief it brings. Put it out of sight, please, and let us talk of pleasant things.”
[166]
“What?” asked Holly, as she sat down once more on the bench.
“Well, let me see. Suppose, Miss Holly, you tell me how you came to have such a charming and unusual name.”
“My mother gave it to me,” answered Holly, softly. “She was very fond of holly.”
“I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Winthrop. “It was an impertinent question.”
“Oh, no. My mother only lived a little while after I was born—about five weeks. She died on New Year’s morning. On Christmas Day father picked a spray of holly from one of the bushes down by the road. It was quite full of red berries and so pretty that he took it in to my mother. Father said she took it in her hands and cried a little over it, and he was sorry he had brought it to her. They had laid me beside her in the bed and presently she placed the holly sprig over me and kissed me and looked at father. She couldn’t talk very much then. But father understood what she meant. ‘Holly?’ he asked,[167] and mother smiled, and—and that was ‘how come.’” Holly, her hands clasped between her knees, looked gravely and tenderly away across the sunny garden. Winthrop kept silence for a moment. Then——
“I fancy they loved each other very dearly, your father and mother,” he said.
“Oh, they did!” breathed Holly. “Father used to tell me—about it. He always said I was just like my mother. It—it must have been beautiful. Do you reckon,” she continued wistfully, “people love that way nowadays?”
“To-day, yesterday, and to-morrow,” answered Winthrop. “The great passions—love, hate, acquisitiveness—are the same now as in the beginning, and will never change while the earth spins around. I hope, Miss Holly, that the years will bring you as great a love and as happy a one as your mother’s.”
Holly viewed him pensively a moment. Then a little flush crept into her cheeks and she turned her head away.
[168]
“No,” she said, “I’m not dear and sweet and gentle like my mother. Besides, maybe I’d never find a man like my father.”
“Perhaps not,” replied Winthrop, “although I hope you will. But even if not, I wouldn’t despair. Love is a very wonderful magician, who transmutes clay into gold, transforms baseness into nobility, and changes caitiffs into kings.” He laughed amusedly. “Great Scott! I’m actually becoming rhetorical! It’s this climate of yours, Miss Holly; there is something magical about it; it creeps into one’s veins like wine and makes one’s heart thump at the sound of a bird’s song. Why, hang it, in another week I shall find myself singing love songs under your window on moonlight nights!”
“Oh, that would be lovely!” cried Holly, clapping her hands. “I haven’t been serenaded for the longest time!”
“Do you mean that such things are really done here?”
“Of course! The boys often serenade.[169] When I came home from the Academy, Julian and a lot of them serenaded me. It was a white, white night and they stood over there under my windows; I remember how black their shadows were on the path. Julian and Jim Stuart played guitars and some of the others had banjos, and it was heavenly!”
“And such things still happen in this prematurely-aged, materialistic world!” marvelled Winthrop. “It sounds like a fairy tale!”
“I reckon it sounds silly to you,” said Holly.
“Silly! Oh, my dear young lady, if you could only realize how very, very rich you are!”
“Rich?”
“Yes, rich and wise with the unparalleled wealth and wisdom of Youth! Hearken to the words of Age and Experience, Miss Holly,” he continued, half jestingly, half seriously. “The world belongs to you and your kind; it is the Kingdom of Youth. The rest of us are here on sufferance;[170] but you belong. The world tolerates Age, but to Youth it owes allegiance and love. But your days are short in your kingdom, O Queen, so make the most of them; laugh and play and love and live; above all, live! And above all be extravagant, extravagant of laughter—and of tears; extravagant of affection; run the gamut of life every hour; be mad, be foolish—but live! And so when the World thrusts you to one side, saying: ‘The King is dead! Long live the King!’ you will have no regrets for a wasted reign, but can say: ‘While I ruled, I lived!’”
“I—I don’t understand—quite!” faltered Holly.
“Because you are too wise.”
“I reckon you mean too stupid,” mourned Holly.
“Too wise. You are Youth, and Youth is Perfect Wisdom. When you grow old you will know more but be less wise. And the longer you live the more learning will come to you and the more wisdom will depart. And in proof of this I point to myself[171] as an example. For no wise person would try to convince Youth of its wisdom.” Winthrop stopped and drew his cigarette-case from his pocket. When he had lighted a cigarette he smiled quizzically across at the girl’s sober, half-averted face. “It’s very warm, isn’t it?” he asked, with a little laugh.
But Holly made no reply for a minute. Then she turned a troubled face toward him.
“Why did you say that?” she cried. “You’ve made me feel sad!”
With a gesture of contrition Winthrop reached across and laid his hand for an instant on hers.
“My dear, I am sorry; forget it if it troubles you; I have been talking nonsense, sheer nonsense.”
But she shook her head, examining his face gravely.
“No, I don’t reckon you have; but—I don’t understand quite what you mean. Only——” She paused, and presently asked:
[172]
“Didn’t you live when you ruled? Are you regretting?”
Winthrop shrugged his shoulders.
“That,” he answered, smilingly, “is the sorry part of it; one always regrets. Come, let’s go in to dinner. I heard the bell, didn’t I?”
 
CHAPTER  IX.
 
Winthrop thought that he could like Julian Wayne if that youth would let him. But it was evident from the moment of their first meeting that Julian wasn’t going to allow anything of the sort. He arrived at Waynewood Saturday night, and Winthrop, who had spent the evening with the Major at ’Squire Parish’s house, did not meet him until Sunday morning. He was tall, dark haired and sallow complexioned, and as handsome as any youth Winthrop had ever seen. His features were regular, with a fine, straight nose, wide eyes, a strong chin and a good, somewhat tense, mouth that matched with the general air of imperiousness he wore. Winthrop soon discovered that Julian Wayne retained undiminished the old Southern doctrine of caste and that he looked upon the new member of the Waynewood household[174] with a polite but very frank contempt. He was ardent, impetuous, and arrogant, but they were traits of youth rather than of character, and Winthrop, for his part, readily forgave them. That he was head-over-heels in love with Holly was evident from the first, and Winthrop could have liked him the more for that. But Julian’s bearing was discouraging to any notions of friendship which Winthrop might have entertained. For Winthrop breakfast—which Miss India attended, as was her usual custom on Sundays—was an uncomfortable meal. He felt very much like an intruder, in spite of the fact that both Miss India and Holly strove to include him in the conversation, and he was relieved when it was over.
Julian imperiously claimed Holly’s companionship and the two went out to the front porch. Miss India attended to the matter of dinner supplies, and then returned to her room to dress for church. Being cut off from the porch, Winthrop went up-stairs and took a chair and a book[175] out on to the gallery. But the voices of the two below came up to him in a low, eager hum, interspersed with occasional words, and drew his mind from the book. He was a little disappointed in Julian Wayne, he told himself. He could have wished a different sort of a man for Holly’s husband. And then he laughed at himself for inconsistency. Only two days before he had been celebrating just the youthful traits which Julian exhibited. Doubtless the boy would make her a very admirable mate. At least, he was thoroughly in love with her. Winthrop strove to picture the ideal husband for Holly and found himself all at sea on the instant, and ended by wondering whimsically how long he would allow Julian undisputed possession of her if he were fifteen—even ten—years younger!
Later they all walked to church, Julian and Holly leading the way, as handsome a couple as had ever passed under the whispering oak-trees, and Winthrop and Miss India pacing staidly along behind—at a[176] discreet interval. Miss India’s bearing toward him amused Winthrop even while it piqued him. She was the most kind, most courteous little woman in the world to him, displaying a vast interest in and sympathy for his invalidism, and keeping an anxious watch over his goings and comings in the fear that he would overtax his strength. And yet all the while Winthrop knew as well as he knew his name that she resented his ownership of her home and would be vastly relieved at his departure. And knowing this, he, on every possible occasion, set himself to win the little lady’s liking, with, he was forced to acknowledge, scant prospect of success.
Winthrop sat between Miss India and Holly, with Julian at the end of the pew. It was his first sight of the little, unadorned Episcopal church, for he had not accompanied the ladies the previous Sunday. It was a plain, uncompromising interior in which he found himself. The bare white walls were broken only by big, small-paned windows of plain glass. The pews were of[177] yellow pine and the pulpit and stiff chairs on either side were of the same. The only note of decoration was found in the vase of roses which stood beside the big closed Bible. A cottage organ supplied the music. But there was color in the congregation, for the younger women wore their best dresses and finest hats, and Winthrop concluded that all Corunna was at church. For awhile he interested himself in discovering acquaintances, many of them scarcely recognizable to-day in their black coats and air of devoutness. But the possibilities of that mode of amusement were soon exhausted, since the Wayne pew was well past the middle of the church. After the sermon began Winthrop listened to it for awhile. Probably it was a very excellent and passably interesting sermon, but the windows were wide open and the languorous air waved softly, warmly in, and Winthrop’s eyes grew heavier and heavier and the pulpit mistier and mistier and the parson’s voice lower and lower and....
[178]
He opened his eyes very suddenly, for Holly had reached forth and brought the toe of her shoe into sharp contact with his ankle. He turned to find her watching him with grave face and laughing eyes, and he looked his thanks. Then his eyes roved by to encounter the hostile stare of Julian, who had witnessed the incident and was jealously resenting the intimacy it denoted.
After church the party delayed at the door to greet their friends. Julian, with the easy courtesy that so well became him, shook hands with fully half the congregation, answering and asking questions in his pleasant, well-bred drawl. Winthrop wondered pessimistically if he had in mind the fact that in another year or so he would be dependent on these persons for his bread and butter. But Julian’s punctiliousness gave Winthrop his chance. Miss India and Holly had finished their share of the social event and had walked slowly out on to the porch, followed by Winthrop. Presently Julian emerged through the door[179] in conversation with Mrs. Somes, and Winthrop turned to Holly.
“There comes your cousin,” he said. “Shall we start on ahead and let them follow?”
There was a little flicker of surprise in the brown eyes, followed by the merest suggestion of a smile. Then Holly moved toward the steps and Winthrop ranged himself beside her.
“A little discipline now and then has a salutary effect, Miss Holly,” he remarked, as they passed out through the gate.
“Oh, are you doing this for discipline?” asked Holly, innocently.
“I am doing it to please myself, discipline your cousin, and—well, I don’t know what the effect on you may be.”
“I believe you’re hinting for compliments, Mr. Winthrop!”
“Maybe; I’ve been feeling strangely frivolous of late. By the way, please accept my undying gratitude for that kick.”
“You ought to be grateful,” answered Holly, with a laugh. “In another moment[180] your head would have been on Auntie’s shoulder and—I hope you don’t snore, Mr. Winthrop?”
“Heavens! Was it as bad as that? I am grateful! Fancy your Aunt’s horror!” And Winthrop laughed at the thought.
“Oh, Auntie would have just thought you’d fainted and had you carried home and put to bed,” said Holly.
“I wonder how much you know?” mused Winthrop, turning to look down into her demure face.
“About what, Mr. Winthrop?”
“About my—my invalidism.”
“Why, you’re a very sick man, of course,” replied Holly. “Auntie is quite worried about you at times.”
Winthrop laughed.
“But you’re not, I suspect. I fancy you have guessed that I am something of an impostor. Have you?”
“Mh-mh,” assented Holly, smilingly.
“I thought so; you’ve been so fearfully attentive with that—lovely medicine of[181] late. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself to cause me so much affliction?”
“Aren’t you ashamed to impose on two unsuspecting ladies?”
“Well, seeing that I haven’t fooled you I don’t think you need to say ‘two.’ But I’m not altogether to blame, Miss Holly. It was that scheming Uncle Major of yours that beguiled me into it. He declared up and down that if I wanted to remain at Waynewood the only thing to do was to continue being an invalid. And now—well, now I don’t dare get well!”
Holly laughed gayly.
“If you had owned up before, you would have been spared a good many doses of medicine,” she said. “It was lots of fun to make you take it! But now I don’t reckon I’ll have the heart to any more.”
“Bless you for those words!” said Winthrop, devoutly. “That infernal medicine has been the one fly in my ointment, the single crumbled leaf in my bed of roses. Hereafter I shall be perfectly happy. That is, if I survive the day. I fancy your[182] cousin may call me out before he leaves and put a bullet into me.”
“Why?” asked Holly, innocently.
“Jealousy, my dear young lady. Haven’t I carried you off from under his nose?”
“I don’t reckon I’d have gone if I hadn’t wanted to,” said Holly, with immense dignity.
“That makes it all the worse, don’t you see? He is convinced by this time that I have designs on you and looks upon me as a hated rival. I can feel his eyes boring gimlet-holes in my back this moment.”
“It will do him good,” said Holly, with a little toss of her head.
“That’s what I thought,” said Winthrop. “But I doubt if he is capable of taking the same sensible view of it.”
“I’m afraid you don’t like him,” said Holly, regretfully.
“My dear Miss Holly,” he expostulated, “he doesn’t give me a chance. I am as dirt under his feet. I think I might like him if he’d give me chance. He’s as handsome[183] a youngster as I’ve ever seen, and I fancy I can trace a strong resemblance between him and the portrait of your father in the parlor; the eyes are very like.”
“Others have said that,” answered Holly, “but I never could see the resemblance; I wish I could.”
“I assure you it’s there.”
“Julian is very silly,” said Holly, warmly. “And I shall tell him so.”
“Pray don’t,” begged Winthrop. “He doubtless already dislikes me quite heartily enough.”
“He has no right to be rude to you.”
Winthrop smiled ruefully.
“But he isn’t; that’s the worst of it! He’s scrupulously polite—just as one would be polite to the butler or the man from the butcher’s! No, don’t call him to account, please; we shall get on well enough, he and I. Maybe when he discovers that I am not really trying to steal you away from him he will come off his high horse. I suppose, however, that the real reason for it all is that he resents my intrusion[184] at Waynewood—quite in the popular manner.”
He regretted the latter remark the instant he had made it, for Holly turned a distressed countenance toward him.
“Oh, have we been as bad as all that?” she cried, softly. “I’m so sorry! But really and really you mustn’t think that we don’t like you to be at Waynewood! You won’t, will you? Please don’t! Why, I—I have been so happy since you came!”
“Bless you,” answered Winthrop, lightly, “I really meant nothing. And if you are willing to put up with me, why, the others don’t matter at all. But I’m awfully glad to know that you haven’t found me a bother, Miss Holly.”
“How could I? You’ve been so nice and—and chummy! I shan’t want you to go away,” she added, sorrowfully. “I feel just as though you were a nice, big elder brother.”
“That’s just what I am,” replied Winthrop, heartily, “a big elder brother—and a slave—and always an admirer.”
[185]
“And I shall tell Julian so,” added Holly.
“I wouldn’t, really.”
“But why?”
“Oh, well, you’ll just make him more jealous and unhappy, my dear. Or, at least, that’s the effect it would have on me were I in his place, and I fancy lovers are much the same North and South.”
“Jealousy is nasty,” said Holly, sententiously.
“Many of our most human sentiments are,” responded Winthrop dryly, “but we can’t help them.”
Holly was silent a moment. Then——
“Would you mind not calling me ‘my dear’?” she asked.
“Have I done that? I believe I have. I beg your pardon, Miss Holly! Really, I had no intention of being—what shall I say?—familiar.”
“Oh, it isn’t that,” replied Holly earnestly, “but it makes me feel so terribly young! If you’d like to call me Holly, you may.”
[186]
“Thank you,” answered Winthrop as they entered the gate and passed into the noonday twilight of the oleander path. “But that is a privilege I don’t deserve, at all events, not yet. Perhaps some day, maybe the day I dance at your wedding, I’ll accept the honor.”
“Just see how many, many roses are out!” cried Holly.
They went on to the house in silence.
Dinner was a pleasanter meal for Winthrop than breakfast had been, principally because the Major and a Miss Virginia Parish, a maiden lady of uncertain age and much charm of manners, were present. The Major observed and resented Julian’s polite disregard of Winthrop and after dinner took him to task for it. The ladies were in the parlor, Winthrop had gone up-stairs to get some cigars, and the Major and Julian were at the end of the porch. It was perhaps unfortunate that Winthrop should have been forced to overhear a part of the conversation under his window.
“You don’t treat the gentleman with[187] common civility,” remonstrated the Major, warmly.
“I am not aware that I have been discourteous to him,” responded Julian in his drawling voice.
The Major spluttered.
“Gad, sir, what do you mean by discourteous? You can’t turn your back on a man at his own table without being discourteous! Confound it, sir, remember that you’re under his roof!”
“I do remember it,” answered Julian quickly. “I’m not likely to forget it, sir. But how did it become his roof? How did he get hold of it? Some damned Yankee trick, I’ll wager; stole it, as like as not!”
“Tut, tut, sir! What language is that, Julian? Mr. Winthrop——”
But Winthrop waited to hear no more. With the cigars he joined them on the porch, finding the Major very red of face and looking somewhat like an insulted turkey-cock, and Julian with a sombre sneer on his dark face. Julian declined the proffered[188] cigar and presently left the others alone, taking himself off in search of Holly. The Major waved a hand after him, and scowled angrily.
“Just like his father,” he grunted. “Hot-headed, stubborn, badly balanced, handsome as the devil and bound to come just such a cropper in the end.”
“You mean that his father was unfortunate?” asked Winthrop idly, as he lighted his cigar.
“Shot himself for a woman, sir. Most nonsensical proceeding I ever heard of. The woman wasn’t worth it, sir.”
“They seldom are,” commented Winthrop, gravely, “in the opinion of others.”
“She was married,” continued the Major, unheeding the remark, “and had children; fine little tots they were, too. Husband was good as gold to her. But she had to have Fernald Wayne to satisfy her damned vanity. I beg your pardon, Mr. Winthrop, but I have no patience with that sort of women, sir!”
“You don’t understand them.”
[189]
“I don’t want to, sir.”
“You couldn’t if you did,” replied Winthrop.
The Major shot a puzzled glance at him, rolling his unlighted cigar swiftly around in the corner of his mouth. Then he deluged the Baltimore Bell with tobacco-juice and went on:
“Fernald was plumb out of his head about her. His own wife had been dead some years. Nothing would do but she must run away with him. Well——”
“Did the lady live here?” asked Winthrop.
“Godamighty, no, sir! We don’t breed that kind here, sir! She lived in New Orleans; her husband was a cotton factor there. Well, Fernald begged her to run away with him, and after a lot of hemming and hawing she consented. They made an appointment for one night and Fernald was there waiting. But the lady didn’t come. After awhile he went back to his hotel and found a note. She was sorry, but her husband had bought tickets for[190] the opera for that evening. Eh? What? There was soul for you, Mr. Winthrop!”
Winthrop nodded.
“So the lover blew his brains out, eh?”
“Shot a hole in his chest; amounted to about the same thing, I reckon,” answered the Major, gloomily. “Now what do you think of a woman that’ll do a thing like that?”
“Well, I don’t know but what a good opera is to be preferred to an elopement,” answered Winthrop. “There, there, Major, I don’t mean to be flippant. The fact is we hear of so many of these ‘crimes of passion’ up our way nowadays that we take them with the same equanimity that we take the weather predictions. The woman was just a good sample of her sort as the man was doubtless a good sample of his. He was lucky to be out of it, only he didn’t realize it and so killed himself. That’s the deuce of it, you see, Major; a man who can look a thousand fathoms into a woman’s eyes and keep his judgment from slipping a cog is—well, he just isn’t;[191] he doesn’t exist! And if he did you and I, Major, wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”
“Shucks!” grunted the Major, half in agreement, half in protest.
“But I hope this boy won’t follow his father’s lead, just the same,” said Winthrop.
“No, no,” answered the Major, energetically; “he won’t, he won’t. He—he’s better fitted for hard knocks than his dad was. I—we had just had a few words and I was—ah—displeased. Shall we join the ladies inside, Mr. Winthrop?”
The Major drove back to town in his side-bar buggy behind his aged gray mule at sunset, taking Miss Parish with him. Miss India retired to her room, and Julian and Holly strolled off together down the road. Winthrop drew the arm-chair up to the fireplace in his room and smoked and read until supper time. At that meal only he and Holly and Julian were present, and the conversation was confined principally to the former two. Julian was plainly out[192] of sorts and short of temper; his wooing, Winthrop concluded, had not gone very well that day. Holly seemed troubled, but whether over Julian’s unhappiness or his impoliteness Winthrop could not guess. After supper they went out to the porch for a while together, but Winthrop soon bade them good-night. For some time through the opened windows he could hear the faint squeaking of the joggling-board and the fainter hum of their low voices. At ten Julian’s horse was brought around, and he clattered away in the starlit darkness toward Marysville. He heard Holly closing the door down-stairs, heard her feet patter up the uncarpeted stairway, heard her humming a little tune under her breath. The lamp was still lighted on his table, and doubtless the radiance of it showed under the door, for Holly’s footsteps came nearer and nearer along the hall until—
“Good-night, slave!” she called, softly.
“Good-night, Miss Holly,” he answered.
He heard her footsteps dying away, and finally the soft closing of a door.[193] Thoughtfully he refilled his pipe and went back to the chair in front of the dying fire....
The ashes were cold and a chill breeze blew through the open casements. Winthrop arose with a shiver, knocked the ashes from his pipe and dropped it on the mantel.
“There’s no fool like an old—like a middle-aged fool,” he muttered, as he blew out the lamp.
CHAPTER X
 Holly’s birthday was quite an event at Waynewood. Aunt Venus outdid herself and there never was such a dinner, from the okra soup to the young guineas and on to the snowy syllabub and the birthday cake with its eighteen flaring pink candles. Uncle Major was there, as were two of Holly’s girl friends, and the little party of six proved most congenial. Holly was in the highest spirits; everyone she knew had[195] been so kind to her. Aunt India had given her dimity for a new dress and a pair of the gauziest white silk stockings that ever crackled against the ear. The dimity was white sprinkled with little Dresden flowers of deep pink. Holly and Rosa and Edith had spent fully an hour before dinner in enthusiastic planning and the fate of the white dimity was settled. It was to be made up over pale pink, and the skirt was to be quite plain save for a single deep flounce at the bottom. Rosa had just the pattern for it and Holly was to drive out to Bellair in a day or so and get it.[196] The Major had brought a blue plush case lined with maroon satin and holding three pairs of scissors, a bodkin, and two ribbon-runners.
 
“I don’t know what those flat gimcracks are for, Holly,” he said, as she kissed him, “but ‘Ham’ he said he reckoned you’d know what to do with them. I told him, ‘Ham, you’re a married man and I’m a bachelor, and don’t you go and impose on my ignorance. If there’s anything indelicate about those instruments you take ’em out.’ But he said as long as I didn’t see ’em in use it was all right and proper.”
Julian had sent a tiny gold brooch and Winthrop had presented a five-pound box of candy. Of the two the candy made the more pronounced hit. It had come all the way from New York, and was such an imposing affair with its light blue moire-paper box and its yards of silk ribbon! And then the wonderful things inside! Candied violets and rose- and chrysanthemum-petals, grapes hidden in coverings of white cream, little squares of fruit-cake[197] disguised as plebeian caramels, purple raisins and white almonds buried side by side in amber glacé, white and lavender pellets that broke to nothing in the mouth and left a surprising and agreeable flavor of brandy, little smooth nuggets of gold and silver and a dozen other fanciful whims of the confectioner. The girls screamed and laughed with delight, and the Major pretended to feel the effects of three brandy-drops and insisted on telling Miss India about his second wife. There had been other gifts besides. Holly’s old “mammy” had walked in, three miles, with six-guinea-eggs in a nest of gray moss; Phœbe had gigglingly presented a yard of purple silk “h’ar ribbon,” Aunt Venus had brought a brown checked sun-bonnet of her own making, and even Young Tom, holding one thumb tightly between his teeth and standing embarrassedly on one dusty yellow foot, had brought his gift, a bundle of amulets rolled out of newspaper and artistically dyed in beet juice. Yes, everyone had been very kind to Holly, and[198] her eighteenth birthday was nothing short of an occasion.
In the afternoon Holly and Rosa and the Major piled into his buggy and went for a ride, while Miss India retired for her nap, and Winthrop and Edith sat on the porch. Miss Bartram was a tall, graceful, golden-haired beauty of nineteen, with sentimental gray eyes and an affectation of world-weariness which Winthrop found for a time rather diverting. They perched on the joggling-board together and discussed Holly, affinities, Julian Wayne, love, Richmond, New York, Northern customs—which Miss Edith found very strange and bizarre—marriage in the abstract, marriage in the concrete as concerned with Miss Edith, flowers, Corunna, Major Cass, milk-shakes, and many other subjects. The girl was a confirmed flirt, and Winthrop tired of her society long before relief came in the shape of a laughing trio borne into sight behind a jogging gray mule. After supper they played hearts, after a fashion introduced by Miss Bartram. Whoever[199] held the queen of spades when a game was ended received a smudge on the face from each of the other players, whose privilege it was to rub one finger in the soot of the fireplace and inscribe designs on the unfortunate one’s countenance. As the queen of spades and Major Cass developed an affinity early in the evening the latter was a strange and fearsome sight when the party broke up. The Major was to take Miss Edith back to town with him, and the latter entered the buggy to a chorus of remonstrances from the other girls.
“Oh, don’t you go with him!” cried Rosa. “Your face will be a perfect sight by the time you reach home!”
“I really think, Major,” laughed Winthrop, “that maybe you’d better wash the side of your face next to Miss Bartram.”
“Don’t you-all worry so much,” responded the Major. “Miss Edith isn’t saying anything, is she? She knows it’s dark and no one’s going to see her face when she gets home. I don’t know what’s coming to the ladies these days. When I[200] was younger they didn’t let a little thing like a grain of smut interfere with a kiss or two.”
“Then don’t you let him have more than two, Edith,” said Holly. “You heard what he said.”
“Merely a figure of speech, ladies,” replied the Major. “I’ve heard there wasn’t such a thing as a single kiss and I reckon there ain’t such a thing as a pair of ’em; eh, Mr. Winthrop?”
“Always come by the dozen, as I understand it,” answered Winthrop.
Miss Edith gave a shriek.
“I’m powerful glad I’m not riding home with you, Mr. Winthrop!”
“Oh, it washes off quite easily, really!”
The buggy trundled out of sight around the corner of the drive to an accompaniment of laughter and farewells. Miss Rosa was to spend the night at Waynewood, and she and Holly and Winthrop returned to the joggling-board, the girls spreading wraps over their shoulders. There were clouds in the sky, and the air[201] held promise of rain. Holly was somewhat silent and soon dropped out of the conversation altogether. Winthrop and Rosa talked of books. Neither, perhaps, was a great reader, but they had read some books in common and these they discussed. Winthrop liked Miss Rosa far better than Miss Bartram. She was small, pretty in a soft-featured way, quiet of voice and manner, and all-in-all very girlish and sweet. She was a few months younger than Holly. She lived with her brother, Phaeton Carter, on his plantation some eight miles out on the Quitman road. Her parents were dead, but before their deaths, she told him wistfully, she had been all through the North and knew Washington well. Her father had served as Representative for two terms. She aroused Winthrop’s sympathies; there seemed so little ahead of her; marriage perhaps some day with one of their country neighbors, and after that a humdrum existence without any of the glad things her young heart craved. His sympathy showed in his voice, which could[202] be very soft and caressing when it wanted to, and if Rosa dreamed a little that night of an interesting Northerner with sympathetic voice and eyes it wasn’t altogether her fault. Meanwhile they were getting on very well, so well that they almost forgot Holly’s existence. But they were reminded of it very suddenly. Holly jumped off the board and seized Rosa by the hand.
“Bed time,” she announced, shortly.
“Oh, Holly!” cried the girl, in dismay. “Why, it can’t be half-past ten yet!”
“It’s very late,” declared Holly, severely. “Come along!”
Rosa allowed herself to be dragged off the seat and into the house. Winthrop followed. At the foot of the stairs he said good-night, shaking hands as the custom was.
“Good-night, Mr. Winthrop,” said Rosa, regretfully, smiling a trifle shyly at him across the rail.
“Good-night, Miss Carter. We’ll settle our discussion when there is no ogress about to drag you away. Good-night, Miss[203] Holly. I hope there’ll be many, many more birthdays as pleasant as this one.”
“Good-night,” answered Holly, carelessly, her hand lying limply in his. “I’m not going to have any more birthdays—ever; I don’t like birthdays.” The glance which accompanied the words was hard, antagonistic. “Will you please lock the door, Mr. Winthrop?”
“I’m sorry,” thought Winthrop, as he made his way to his room. “She’s only a child, and a child’s friendship is very jealous. I should have remembered that.”
 
Miss Rosa returned to Bellair the next afternoon, and with her departure Holly’s spirits returned. Winthrop smiled and sighed at the same time. It was all so palpable, so childish and—so sweet. There was the disturbing thought. Why should he find his heart warming at the contemplation of Holly’s tiny fit of jealousy? Was he really going to make a fool of himself and spoil their pleasant comradeship by falling in love with her? What arrant nonsense! It was the silly romantic atmosphere[204] that was doing the mischief! Hang it all, a man could fall in love with an Alaskan totem-pole here if he was in company with it for half an hour! There were three very excellent reasons why he mustn’t let himself fall in love with Holly Wayne, and it was plainly his duty to keep a watch on himself. With that thought in mind he spent more time away from Waynewood than theretofore, throwing himself on the companionship of the Major, who was always delighted to have him drop in at his office or at the Palmetto House, where he lived; or riding out to Sunnyside to spend the day with Colonel Byers. The Major had loaned him a shotgun, an antiquated 12-bore, and with this and ’Squire Parish’s red setter Lee, he spent much time afield and had some excellent sport with the quail. Holly accused him many times of being tired of her company, adding once that she was sorry she wasn’t as entertaining as Rosa Carter, whereupon Winthrop reiterated his vows of fealty, but declared that his lazy spell had passed,[205] that he was at last acclimated and no longer satisfied with sweet inaction. And Holly professed to believe him, but in her heart was sure that the fault lay with her and decided that when she was married to Julian she would make him take her travelling everywhere so that she could talk as well as Rosa.
December rains
December came in with a week of rainy days, during which the last of the roses were beaten from their stalks and the garden drooped dank and disconsolate. Blue violets, moist and fragrant under their dripping leaves, were the only blooms the garden afforded those days. Holly, to whose pagan spirit enforced confinement in-doors brought despair, took advantage of every lift of the clouds to don a linen cluster, which she gravely referred to as her rain-coat, and her oldest sun-bonnet, and get out amidst the drenched foliage. Those times she searched the violet-beds and returned wet and triumphant to the house. Winthrop coming back from a tramp to town one afternoon rounded the[206] curve of the carriage-road just as she regained the porch.
“Violets?” he asked, his eyes travelling from the little cluster of blossoms and leaves in her hand to the soft pink of her cool, moist cheeks.
“Yes, for the guest chamber,” answered Holly.
“You are expecting a visitor?” he asked, his thoughts turning to Julian Wayne.
“Stupid!” said Holly. “Your room is the guest room. Didn’t you know it? Wait, please, and I’ll put them in water for you.”
 
She came back while Winthrop was taking off his rain-coat. The violets were nodding over the rim of a little glass. Winthrop thanked her and bore them up-stairs. The next morning Holly came from her Aunt’s room, the door of which was opposite Winthrop’s across the broad hall. His door was wide open and on the bureau stood the violets well in the angle of a two-fold photograph frame of crimson leather. Holly paused in the middle of[207] the hall and looked. It was difficult to see the photographs, but one was the likeness of a child, while the other, in deeper shadow, seemed to be that of a woman. She had never been in the room since Winthrop had taken possession, but this morning the desire to enter was strong. She listened, glancing apprehensively at the closed door of her Aunt’s room. There was no danger from that direction, and she knew that Winthrop had gone to the village.[208] Fearsomely, with thumping heart and cheeks that alternately paled and flushed, she stole across the floor to the bureau. Clasping her hands behind her, lest they should unwittingly touch something, she leaned over and examined the two portraits. The one on the left was that of a young woman of perhaps twenty-two years. So beautiful was the smiling oval face with its great dark eyes that Holly almost gasped as she looked. The dress, of white shimmering satin, was cut low, and the shoulders and neck were perfect. A rope of small pearls encircled the round throat and in the light hair, massed high on the head, an aigrette tipped with pearls lent a regal air to beauty. Holly looked long, sighing she scarcely knew why. Finally she drew her eyes away and examined the other photograph, that of a sturdy little chap of four or five years, his feet planted wide apart and his chubby hands holding tight to the hoop that reached to his breast. Round-faced, grave-eyed and curly-haired, he was yet a veritable[209] miniature of Winthrop. But the eyes were strongly like those in the other picture, and Holly had no doubts as to the identity of each subject. Holly drew away, gently restored a fallen violet, and hurried guiltily from the room.
Winthrop did not return for dinner that day, but sent a note by a small colored boy telling them that he was dining with the Major. Consequently the two ladies were alone. When the dessert came on Miss India said:
“I think Mr. Winthrop would relish some of this clabber for his supper, Holly. It will do him good. I’ll put it in the safe, my dear, and don’t let me forget to get it out for him this evening.”
“I don’t reckon he cares much for clabber, Auntie.”
“Not care for clabber! Nonsense, my dear; everyone likes clabber. Besides, it’s just what he ought to have after taking dinner at the hotel; I don’t reckon they’ll give him a thing that’s fit to eat. When your father was alive he took me to Augusta[210] with him once and we stopped at a hotel there, and I assure you, Holly, there wasn’t a thing I could touch! Such tasteless trash you never saw! I always pity folks that have to live at hotels, and I do wish the Major would go to Mrs. Burson’s for his meals.”
“But the Bursons live mighty poorly, Auntie.”
“Because they have to, my child. If the Major went there Mrs. Burson could spend more on her table. She has one of the best cooks in the town.” Holly made no reply and presently Miss India went on: “Have you noticed,” she asked, “how Mr. Winthrop has improved since he came here, Holly?”
“Yes, Auntie. He says himself that he’s much better. He was wondering the other day whether it wasn’t time to stop taking the medicine.”
“The tonic? Sakes, no! Why, that’s what’s holding him up, my dear, although he doesn’t realize it. I reckon he’s a much sicker man than he thinks he is.”
[211]
“He appears to be able to get around fairly well,” commented Holly. “He’s always off somewhere nowadays.”
“Yes, and I’m afraid he’s overdoing it, my dear. I must speak to him about it.”
“Then we mightn’t get any more quail or doves, Auntie.”
“It would be just as well. Why he wants to kill the poor defenceless creatures I don’t see.”
“But you know you love doves, Auntie,” laughed Holly.
“Well, maybe I do; but it isn’t right to kill them, I know.”
“Doesn’t it seem strange,” asked Holly presently, her eyes on the bread she was crumbling between her fingers, “that Mr. Winthrop never says anything about his wife?”
“I’ve never yet heard him say he had a wife,” answered Miss India.
“Oh, but we know that he has. Uncle Major said so.”
“I don’t reckon the Major knows very much about it. Maybe his wife’s dead.”
[212]
“Oh,” said Holly, thoughtfully. Then: “No, I don’t think she could be dead,” she added, with conviction. “Do you—do you reckon he has any children Auntie?”
“Sakes, child, how should I know? It’s no concern of ours, at any rate.”
“I reckon we can wonder, though. And it is funny he never speaks of her.”
“Northerners are different,” said Miss India sagely. “I reckon a wife doesn’t mean much to them, anyhow.”
“Don’t you think Mr. Winthrop is nice, Auntie?”
“I’ve seen men I liked better and a heap I liked worse,” replied her Aunt, briefly. “But I’ll say one thing for Mr. Winthrop,” she added, as she arose from her chair and drew her shawl more closely around her shoulders, “he has tact; I’ve never heard him allude to the War. Tact and decency,” she murmured, as she picked her keys from the table. “Bring the plates, Phœbe.”
Four Sundays passed without the appearance of Julian. Winthrop wondered.[213] “Either,” he reflected, “they have had a quarrel or he is mighty sure of her. And it can’t be a quarrel, for she gets letters from him at least once a week. Perhaps he is too busy at his work to spare the time, although——” Winthrop shook his head. He had known lovers who would have made the time.
The rainy weather passed northward with its draggled skirts, and a spell of warm days ushered in the Christmas season. The garden smiled again in the sunlight, and a few of the roses opened new blooms. Winthrop took a trip to Jacksonville a week before Christmas, spent two days there, and purchased modest gifts for Miss India, Holly, and the Major. The former had flatteringly commissioned him to make a few purchases for her, and Winthrop, realizing that this showed a distinct advance in his siege of the little lady’s liking, spent many anxious moments in the performance of the task. When he returned he was graciously informed that he had purchased wisely and well. Christmas[214] fell on Saturday that year and Julian put in an appearance Friday evening. Christmas morning they went to church and at two o’clock sat down to a dinner at which were present besides the family and Winthrop, Major Cass, Edith Bartram, and Mr. and Mrs. Burson. Burson kept the livery stable and was a tall, awkward, self-effacing man of fifty or thereabouts, who some twenty years before had in an unaccountable manner won the toast of the county for his bride. A measure of Mrs. Burson’s former beauty remained, but on the whole she was a faded, depressing little woman, worn out by a long struggle against poverty.
The Major, who had been out in the country in the morning, arrived late and very dusty and went up to Winthrop’s room to wash before joining the others. When he came down and, after greeting the assembled party, tucked his napkin under his ample chin, he turned to Winthrop with twinkling eyes.
“Mr. Winthrop, sir,” he said, “I came[215] mighty near not getting out of your room again, sir. I saw that picture on your bureau and fell down and worshipped. Gad, sir, I don’t know when I’ve seen a more beautiful woman, outside of the present array! Yes, sir, I came mighty near staying right there and feasting my eyes instead of my body, sir. And a fine-looking boy, too, Mr. Winthrop. Your family, I reckon, sir?”
“My wife and son,” answered Winthrop, gravely.
The conversation had died abruptly and everyone was frankly attentive.
“I envy you, sir, ’pon my word, I do!” said the Major emphatically, between spoonfuls of soup. “As handsome a woman and boy as ever I saw, sir. They are well, I trust, Mr. Winthrop?”
“The boy died shortly after that portrait was taken,” responded Winthrop. There were murmurs of sympathy.
“Dear, dear, dear,” said the Major, laying down his spoon and looking truly distressed. “I had no idea, Mr. Winthrop——![216] You’ll pardon me, sir, for my—my unfortunate curiosity.”
“Don’t apologize, Major,” answered Winthrop, smilingly. “It has been six years, and I can speak of it now with some degree of equanimity. He was a great boy, that son of mine; sometimes I think that maybe the Lord was a little bit envious.”
“The picture of you, sir,” said the Major, earnestly. “But your lady, sir? She is—ah—well, I trust?”
“Quite, I believe,” answered Winthrop.
“I am glad to hear it. I trust some day, sir, you’ll bring her down and give us the pleasure of meeting her.”
“Thank you,” Winthrop replied, quietly.
Holly began an eager conversation with Julian and the talk became general, the Major holding forth on the subject of Cuban affairs, which were compelling a good deal of attention in that winter of 1897-8. After dinner they went out to the porch, but not before the Major had, unnoticed, stationed himself at the dining-room door with a sprig of mistletoe in his hand.[217] Holly and Julian reached the door together and with a portentous wink at Julian the Major held the little bunch of leaves and berries over Holly’s head. Winthrop, the last to leave the room, saw what followed. Julian imprisoned Holly’s hands in front of her, leaned across her shoulder and pressed a kiss on her cheek. There was a little cry of alarm from Holly, drowned by the Major’s chuckle and Julian’s triumphant laugh. Holly’s eyes caught sight of the mistletoe, the blood dyed her face, and she smiled uncertainly.
 
“He caught you, my dear,” chuckled the Major.
“You’re a traitor, Uncle Major,” she answered, indignantly. With a quick gesture she seized the mistletoe from his grasp and threw it across the room. As she turned, her head in air, her eyes encountered Winthrop’s and their glances clung for an instant. He wondered afterwards what she had read in his eyes for her own grew large and startled ere the lids fell over them and she turned and ran out[218] through the hall. The rest followed laughing. Winthrop ascended to his room, closed his door, lighted a pipe and sat down at an open window. From below came the sound of voices, rising and falling, and the harsh song of a red-bird in the magnolia-tree. From the back of the house came the sharp explosions of firecrackers, and Winthrop knew that Young Tom was beatifically happy. The firecrackers had been Winthrop’s “Chrismus gif.” But his thoughts didn’t remain long with the occupants of the porch or with Young Tom, although he strove to keep them there. There was something he must face, and so, tamping the tobacco down in his pipe with his finger, he faced it.
He was in love with Holly.
The sudden rage of jealousy which had surged over him down there in the dining-room had opened his eyes. He realized now that he had been falling in love with her, deeper and deeper every day, ever since his arrival at Waynewood. He had been blinding himself with all sorts of excuses,[219] but to-day they were no longer convincing. He had made a beastly mess of things. If he had only had the common sense to look the situation fairly in the face a month ago! It would have been so simple then to have beat a retreat. Now he might retreat as far as he could go without undoing the damage. Well, thank Heaven, there was no harm done to anyone save himself! Then he recalled the startled look in Holly’s brown eyes and wondered what she had read in his face. Could she have guessed? Nonsense; he was too old to parade his emotions like a school-boy. Doubtless he had looked annoyed, disgusted, and Holly had seen it and probably resented it. That was all. Had he unwittingly done anything to cause her to suspect? He strove to remember. No, the secret was safe. He sighed with relief. Thank Heaven for that! If she ever guessed his feelings what a fool she would think him, what a middle-aged, sentimental ass! And how she would laugh! But no, perhaps she wouldn’t do just that; she was[220] too kind-hearted; but she would be amused. Winthrop’s cheeks burned at the thought.
Granted all this, what was to be done? Run away? To what end? Running away wouldn’t undo what was done. Now that he realized what had happened he could keep guard on himself. None suspected, none need ever suspect, Holly least of all. It would be foolish to punish himself unnecessarily for what, after all, was no offense. No; he would stay at Waynewood; he would see Holly each day, and he would cure himself of what, after all, was—could be—only a sentimental attachment evolved from propinquity and idleness. Holly was going to marry Julian; and even were she not——. Winthrop glanced toward the photograph frame on the bureau—there were circumstances which forbade him entering the field. Holly was not for him. Surely if one thoroughly realized that a thing was unobtainable he must cease to desire it in time. That was common sense. He knocked the ashes from his pipe and arose.
[221]
“That’s it, Robert, my boy,” he muttered. “Common sense. If you’ll just stick to that you’ll come out all right. There’s nothing like a little, hard, plain common sense to knock the wind out of sentiment. Common sense, my boy, common sense!”
He joined the others on the porch and conducted a very creditable flirtation with Miss Edith until visitors began to arrive, and the big bowl of eggnog was set in the middle of the dining-room table and banked with holly. After dark they went into town and watched the fireworks on the green surrounding the school-house. Holly walked ahead with Julian, and Winthrop thought he had never seen her in better spirits. She almost seemed to avoid him that evening, but that was perhaps only his fancy. Returning, there were only Holly and Julian and Winthrop, for Miss Bartram and the Bursons returned to their homes and the Major had been left at Waynewood playing bezique with Miss India. For awhile the conversation lagged, but Winthrop[222] set himself the task of being agreeable to Julian and by the time they reached the house that youth had thawed out and was treating Winthrop with condescending friendliness. Winthrop left the young pair on the porch and joined the Major and Miss India in the parlor, watching their play and hiding his yawns until the Major finally owned defeat.
 
CHAPTER  XI.
 
Holly had grown older within the last two months, although no one but Aunt India realized it. It was as though her eighteenth birthday had been a sharp line of division between girlhood and womanhood. It was not that Holly had altered either in appearance or actions; she was the same Holly, gay or serious, tender or tyrannical, as the mood seized her; but the change was there, even if Miss India couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Perhaps she was a little more sedate when she was sedate, a little more thoughtful at all times. She read less than she used to, but that was probably because there were fewer moments when she was alone. She was a little more careful of her attire than she had been, but that was probably because there was more reason to look well. Miss India felt the change rather than saw it.
[224]
I have said that no one save Miss India realized it, but that is not wholly true. For Holly herself realized it in a dim, disquieting way. The world in which she had spent her first eighteen years seemed, as she looked back at it, strangely removed from the present one. There had been the same sky and sunshine, the same breezes and flowers, the same pleasures and duties, and yet there had been a difference. It was as though a gauze curtain had been rolled away; things were more distinct, sensations more acute; the horizon was where it always had been, but now it seemed far more distant, giving space for so many details which had eluded her sight before. It was all rather confusing. At times it seemed to Holly that she was much happier than she had been in that old world, and there were times when the contrary seemed true, times when she became oppressed with a feeling of sorrowfulness. At such moments her soft mouth would droop at the corners and her eyes grow moist; life seemed very tragic in some indefinable[225] way. And yet, all the while, she knew in her heart that this new world—this broader, vaster, clearer world—was the best; that this new life, in spite of its tragedy which she felt but could not see, was the real life. Sorrow bit sharper, joy was more intense, living held a new, fierce zest. Not that she spent much time in introspection, or worried her head with over-much reasoning, but all this she felt confusedly as one groping in a dark room feels unfamiliar objects without knowing what they may be or why they are there. But Holly’s groping was not for long. The door of understanding opened very suddenly, and the light of knowledge flooded in upon her.
 
January was a fortnight old and Winter held sway. The banana-trees drooped blackened and shrivelled, the rose-beds were littered with crumpled leaves, and morning after morning a film of ice, no thicker than a sheet of paper, but still real ice, covered the water-pail on its shelf on the back porch. Uncle Ran groaned with rheumatism as he laid the morning fires,[226] and held his stiffened fingers to the blaze as the fat pine hissed and spluttered. To Winthrop it was the veriest farce of a winter, but the other inhabitants of Waynewood felt the cold keenly. Aunt India kept to her room a great deal, and when she did appear down-stairs she seemed tinier than ever under the great gray shawl. Her face wore a pinched and anxious expression, as though she were in constant fear of actually freezing to death.
“I don’t understand what has gotten into our winters,” she said one day at dinner, drawing her skirts forward so they would not be scorched by the fire which blazed furiously at her back. “They used to be at least temperate. Now one might as well live in Russia or Nova Zembla! Phœbe, you forgot to put the butter on the hearth and it’s as hard as a rock. You’re getting more forgetful every day.”
 
It was in the middle of the month, one forenoon when the cold had moderated so that one could sit on the porch in the sunshine without a wrap and when the southerly[227] breeze held a faint, heart-stirring promise of Spring—a promise speedily broken,—that Winthrop came back to the house from an after-breakfast walk over the rutted clay road and found Holly removing the greenery from the parlor walls and mantel. She had spread a sheet in the middle of the room and was tossing the dried and crackling holly and the gummy pine plumes onto it in a heap. As Winthrop hung up his hat and looked in upon her she was standing on a chair and, somewhat red of face, was striving to reach the bunch of green leaves and red berries above the half-length portrait of her father.
“You’d better let me do that,” suggested Winthrop, as he joined her.
“No,” answered Holly, “I’m——going to——get it——There!”
Down came the greenery with a shower of dried leaves and berries, and down jumped Holly with a triumphant laugh.
“Please move the chair over there,” she directed.
[228]
Winthrop obeyed, and started to step up onto it, but Holly objected.
“No, no, no,” she cried, anxiously. “I’m going to do it myself. It makes me feel about a foot high and terribly helpless to have folks reach things down for me.”
Winthrop smiled and held out his hand while she climbed up.
“There,” said Holly. “Now I’m going to reach that if I—have to—stretch myself—out of—shape!” It was a long reach, but she finally accomplished it, laid hold of one of the stalks and gave a tug. The tug achieved the desired result, but it also threw Holly off her balance. To save herself she made a wild clutch at Winthrop’s shoulder, and as the chair tipped over she found herself against his breast, his arms about her and her feet dangling impotently in air. Perhaps he held her there an instant longer than was absolutely necessary, and in that instant perhaps his heart beat a little faster than usual, his arms held her a little tighter than before, and his eyes darkened with some emotion not altogether[229] anxiety for her safety. Then he placed her very gently on her feet and released her.
“You see,” he began with elaborate unconcern, “I told you——”
Then he caught sight of her face and stopped. It was very white, and in the fleeting glimpse he had of her eyes they seemed vast and dark and terrified.
“It startled you!” he said, anxiously.
She stood motionless for a moment, her head bent, her arms hanging straight. Then she turned and walked slowly toward the door.
“Yes,” she said, in a low voice; “it——I feel——faint.”
 
Very deliberately she climbed the stairs, passed along the hall, and entered her room. She closed the door behind her and walked, like one in a dream, to the window. For several minutes she stared unseeingly out into the sunlit world, her hands strained together at her breast and her heart fluttering chokingly. The door of understanding had opened and the sudden light bewildered her. But gradually things[230] took shape. With a little sound that was half gasp, half moan, she turned and fell to her knees at the foot of her bed, her tightly-clasped hands thrown out across the snowy quilt and her cheek pillowed on one arm. Tears welled slowly from under her closed lids and seeped scorchingly through her sleeve.
“Don’t let me, dear God,” she sobbed, miserably, “don’t let me! You don’t want me to be unhappy, do you? You know he’s a married man and a Northerner! And I didn’t know, truly I didn’t know until just now! It would be wicked to love him, wouldn’t it? And you don’t want me to be wicked, do you? And you’ll take him away, dear God, where I won’t see him again, ever, ever again? You know I’m only just Holly Wayne and I need your help. You mustn’t let me love him! You mustn’t, you mustn’t....”
She knelt there a long time, feeling very miserable and very wicked,—wicked because in spite of her prayers, which had finally trailed off into mingled sobs and[231] murmurs, her thoughts flew back to Winthrop and her heart throbbed with a strange, new gladness. Oh, how terribly wicked she was! It seemed to her that she had lied to God! She had begged Him to take Winthrop away from her and yet her thoughts sought him every moment! She had only to close her own eyes to see his, deep and dark, looking down at her, and to read again their wonderful, fearsome message; to feel again the straining clasp of his arms about her and the hurried thud of his heart against her breast! She felt guilty and miserable and happy.
She wondered if God would hear her prayer and take him away from her. And suddenly she realized what that would mean. Not to see him again—ever! No, no; she couldn’t stand that! God must help her to forget him, but He mustn’t take him away. After all, was it so horribly wicked to care for him as long as she never let him know? Surely no one would suffer[232] save herself? And she—well, she could suffer. It came to her, then, that perhaps in this new world of hers it was a woman’s lot to suffer.
Her thoughts flew to her mother. She wondered if such a thing had ever happened to her. What would she have done had she been in Holly’s place? Holly’s tears came creeping back again; she wanted her mother very much just then....
As she sat at the open window, the faint and measured tramp of steps along the porch reached her. It was Winthrop, she knew. And at the very thought her heart gave a quick throb that was at once a joy and a pain. Oh, why couldn’t people be just happy in such a beautiful world? Why need there be disappointments, and heartaches? If only she could go to him and explain it all! He would take her hand and look down at her with that smiling gravity of his, and she would say quite fearlessly: “I love you very dearly. I can’t help it. It isn’t my fault, nor yours.[233] But you must make it easy for me, dear. You must go away now, but not for ever; I couldn’t stand that. Sometimes you must come back and see me. And when you are away you will know that I love you more than anything in the world, and I will know that you love me. Of course, we must never speak again of our love, for that would be wicked. And you wouldn’t want me to be wicked. We will be such good, good friends always. Good-bye.”
You see, it never occurred to her that Winthrop’s straining arms, his quickening heart-throbs, and the words of his eyes, might be only the manifestation of a quite temporal passion. She judged him by herself, and all loves by that which her father and mother had borne for each other. There were still things in this new world of hers which her eyes had not discerned.
She wondered if Winthrop had understood her emotion after he had released her from his arms. For an instant, she hoped that he had. Then she clasped her hands closely to her burning cheeks and[234] thought that if he had she would never have the courage to face him again! She hoped and prayed that he had not guessed.
Suddenly, regretfully for the pain she must cause him, she recollected Julian. She could never marry him now. She would never, never marry anyone. She would be an old maid, like Aunt India. The prospect seemed rather pleasing than otherwise. With such a precious love in her heart she could never be quite lonely, no matter if she lived to be very, very old! She wondered if Aunt India had ever loved. And just then Phœbe’s voice called her from below and she went to the door and answered. She bathed her hot cheeks and wet eyes in the chill water, and with a long look about the big square room, which seemed now to have taken on the sacredness of a temple of confession, she went down-stairs.
Winthrop had not guessed. She knew that at once when she saw him. He was eagerly anxious about her, and blamed himself for her fright.
[235]
“I ought never to have let you try such foolishness,” he said, savagely. “You might have hurt yourself badly.”
“Oh,” laughed Holly, “but you were there to catch me!”
There was a caressing note in her voice that thrilled him with longing to live over again that brief moment in the parlor. But he only answered, and awkwardly enough, since his nerves were taut: “Then please see that I’m there before you try it again.”
They sat down at table with Miss India, to whom by tacit consent no mention was made of the incident, and chattered gayly of all things save the one which was crying at their lips to be spoken. And Holly kept her secret well.
 
CHAPTER  XII.
 
January and Winter had passed together. February was nearly a week old. Already the garden was astir. The violet-beds were massed with blue, and the green spikes of the jonquils showed tiny buds. There was a new balminess in the air, a new languor in the ardent sunlight. The oaks were tasseling, the fig-trees were gowning themselves in new green robes of Edenic simplicity, the clumps of Bridal Wreath were sprinkled with flecks of white that promised early flowering and the pomegranates were unfolding fresh leaves. On the magnolia burnished leaves of tender green squirmed free from brown sheaths like moths from their cocoons. The south wind blew soft and fresh from the Gulf, spiced with the aroma of tropic seas. Spring was dawning over Northern Florida.
[237]
It was Saturday afternoon, and Holly was perched in the fig-tree at the end of the porch, one rounded arm thrown back against the dusky trunk to pillow her head, one hand holding her forgotten book, one slender ankle swinging slowly like a dainty pendulum from under the hem of her skirt. Her eyes were on the green knoll where the oaks threw deep shadow over the red-walled enclosure, and her thoughts wandered like the blue-jay that flitted restlessly through garden and grove. Life was a turbid stream, these days, filled with perplexing swirls—a stream that rippled with laughter in the sunlight, and sighed in its shadowed depths, and all the while flowed swiftly, breathlessly on toward—what?
 
The sound of a horse’s hoofs on the road aroused Holly from her dreams. She lifted her head and listened. The hoof-beats slackened at the gate, and then drew nearer up the curving drive. The trees hid the rider, however, and Holly could only surmise his identity. It could scarcely be Mr. Winthrop, for he had gone[238] off in the Major’s buggy early in the forenoon for an all-day visit to Sunnyside. Then it must be Julian, although it was unlike him to come so early. She slipped from her seat in the tree and walked toward the steps just as horse and rider trotted into sight. It was Julian—Julian looking very handsome and eager as he threw himself from the saddle, drew the reins over White Queen’s head and strode toward the girl.
“Howdy, Holly?” he greeted. “Didn’t expect to see me so early, I reckon.” He took her hand, drew her to him, and had kissed her cheek before she thought to deny him. She had grown so used to having him kiss her when he came and departed, and his kisses meant so little, that she forgot. She drew herself away gravely.
“I’ll call Uncle Ran,” she said.
“All right, Holly.” Julian threw himself on to the steps and lighted a cigarette, gazing appreciatively about him. How pretty it was here at Waynewood! Some day he meant to own it. He was the only[239] male descendant of the old family, and it was but right and proper that the place should be his. In a year or two that interloping Yankee would be glad enough to get rid of it. Then he would marry Holly, succeed to the Old Doctor’s practice and—— Suddenly he recollected that odd note of Holly’s and drew it from his pocket. Nonsense, of course, but it had worried him a bit at first. She had been piqued, probably, because he had not been over to see her. He flicked the letter with his finger and laughed softly. The idea of Holly releasing him from their engagement! Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure that there was any engagement; for the last three years there had been a tacit understanding that some day they were to be married and live at Waynewood, but Julian couldn’t remember that he had ever out-and-out asked Holly to marry him. He laughed again. That was a joke on Holly. He would ask her how she could break what didn’t exist. And afterwards he would make sure that it did exist. He had[240] no intention of losing Holly. No, indeed! She was the only girl in the world for him. He had met heaps of pretty girls, but never one who could hold a candle to his sweetheart.
Holly came back followed by Uncle Ran. The horse was led away to the stable, and Holly sat down on the top step at a little distance from Julian. Julian looked across at her, admiration and mischief in his black eyes.
“So it’s all over between us, is it, Holly?” he asked, with a soft laugh. Holly looked up eagerly, and bent forward with a sudden lighting of her grave face.
“Oh, Julian,” she cried, “it’s all right, then? You’re not going to care?”
Julian looked surprised.
“Care about what?” he asked, suspiciously.
“But I explained it all in my note,” answered Holly, sinking back against the pillar. “I thought you’d understand, Julian.”
“Are you talking about this?” he asked,[241] contemptuously, tapping the letter against the edge of the step. “Do you mean me to believe that you were in earnest?”
“Yes, quite in earnest,” she answered, gently.
“Shucks!” said Julian. But there was a tone of uneasiness in his contempt. “What have I done, Holly? If it’s because I haven’t been getting over here to see you very often, I want you to understand that I’m a pretty busy man these days. Thompson’s been getting me to do more and more of his work. Why, he never takes a night call any more himself; passes it over to me every time. And I can tell you that that sort of thing is no fun, Holly. Besides,”—he gained reassurance from his own defence—“you didn’t seem very particular about seeing me the last time I was here. I reckoned that maybe you and the Yankee were getting on pretty well without me.”
“It isn’t that,” said Holly. “I—I told you in the letter, Julian. Didn’t you read it?”
[242]
“Of course I read it, but I couldn’t understand it. You said you’d made a mistake, and a lot of foolishness like that, and had decided you couldn’t marry me. Wasn’t that it?”
“Yes, that was it—in a way,” answered Holly. “Well, I mean it, Julian.”
Julian stared across impatiently.
“Now don’t be silly, Holly! Who’s been talking about me? Has that fellow Winthrop been putting fool notions into your head?”
“No, Julian.”
“Then what—— Oh, well, I dare say I’ll be able to stand it,” he said, petulantly.
“Don’t be angry, Julian, please,” begged Holly. “I want you to understand it, dear.”
Holly indulged in endearments very seldom, and Julian melted.
“But, hang it, Holly, you talk as though you didn’t care for me any more!” he exclaimed.
“No, I’m not talking so at all,” she answered, gently. “I do care for you—a[243] heap. I always have and always will. But I—I don’t love you as—as a girl loves the man who is to be her husband, Julian. I tried to explain that in my letter. You see, we’ve always been such good friends that it seemed sort of natural that we should be sweethearts, and then I reckon we just fell into thinking about getting married. I don’t believe you ever asked me to marry you, Julian; I—I just took it for granted, I reckon!”
“Nonsense!” he exclaimed.
“I don’t reckon you ever did,” she persisted, with a little smile for his polite disclaimer. “But I’ve always thought of marrying you, and it seemed all right until—until lately. I don’t reckon I ever thought much about what it meant. We’ve always been fond of each other and so it—it seemed all right, didn’t it?”
“It is all right, Holly,” he answered, earnestly. He changed his seat to where he could take her hand. “You’ve been thinking about things too much,” he went on. “I reckon you think that because I[244] don’t come over oftener and write poetry to you and all that sort of thing that I don’t love you. Every girl gets romantic notions at some time or other, Holly, and I reckon you’re having yours. I don’t blame you, Sweetheart, but you mustn’t get the notion that I don’t love you. Why, you’re the only woman in the world for me, Holly!”
“I don’t reckon you’ve known so very many women, Julian,” said Holly.
“Haven’t I, though? Why, I met dozens of them when I was at college.” There was a tiny suggestion of swagger. “And some of them were mighty clever, too, and handsome. But there’s never been anyone but you, Holly, never once.”
Holly smiled and pressed the hand that held hers captive.
“That’s dear of you, Julian,” she answered. “But you must get over thinking of me—in that way.”
He drew back with an angry flush on his face and dropped her hand. There was an instant’s silence. Then:
[245]
“You mean you won’t marry me?” he demanded, hotly.
“I mean that I don’t love you in the right way, Julian.”
“It’s that grinning Yankee!” he cried. “He’s been making love to you and filling your head with crazy notions. Oh, you needn’t deny it! I’m not blind! I’ve seen what was going on every time I came over.”
“Julian!” she cried, rising to her feet.
“Yes, I have!” he went on, leaping up and facing her. “A fine thing to do, isn’t it?” he sneered. “Keep me dangling on your string and all the while accept attentions from a married man! And a blasted Northerner, too! Mighty pleased your father would have been!”
“Julian! You forget yourself!” said Holly, quietly. “You have no right to talk this way to me!”
“It’s you who forget yourself,” he answered, slashing his riding-whip against his boots. “And if I haven’t the right to call you to account I’d like to know who[246] has! Miss Indy’s blind, I reckon, but I’m not!”
Holly’s face had faded to a white mask from which her dark eyes flashed furiously. But her voice, though it trembled, was quiet and cold.
“You’ll beg my pardon, Julian Wayne, for what you’ve said before I’ll speak to you again. Mr. Winthrop has never made love to me in his life.”
She turned toward the door.
“You don’t dare deny, though, that you love him!” cried Julian, roughly.
“I don’t deny it! I won’t deny it!” cried Holly, facing him in a blaze of wrath. “I deny nothing to you. You have no right to know. But if I did love Mr. Winthrop, married though he is, I’d not be ashamed of it. He is at least a gentleman!”
She swept into the house.
“By God!” whispered Julian, the color rushing from his face. “By God! I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!” He staggered down the steps, beating the air with his whip. A moment later, Holly, sitting with clenched[247] hands and heaving breast in her room, heard him shouting for Uncle Ran and his horse. Ten minutes later he was riding like a whirlwind along the Marysville road, White Queen in an ecstasy of madness as the whip rose and fell.
But by the time the distance was half covered Julian’s first anger had cooled, leaving in its place a cold, bitter wrath toward Winthrop, to whom he laid the blame not only of Holly’s defection but of his loss of temper and brutality. He was no longer incensed with Holly; it was as plain as a pikestaff that the sneaking Yankee had bewitched her with his damned grinning face and flattering attentions, all the while, doubtless, laughing at her in his sleeve! His smouldering rage blazed up again and with a muttered oath Julian raised his whip. But at Queen’s sudden snort of terror he let it drop softly again, compunction gripping him. He leaned forward and patted the wet, white neck soothingly.
“Forgive me, girl,” he whispered. “I[248] was a brute to take it out on you. There, there, easy now; quiet, quiet!”
On Monday Holly received a letter from him. It was humbly apologetic, and self-accusing. It made no reference to Winthrop, nor did it refer to the matter of the broken engagement; only—
 
 
“Try and forget my words, Holly,” he wrote, “and forgive me and let us be good friends again just as we always have been. I am going over to see you Saturday evening to ask forgiveness in person, but I shan’t bother you for more than a couple of hours.”
Holly, too, had long since repented, and[249] was anxious to forgive and be forgiven. The thought of losing Julian’s friendship just now when, as it seemed, she needed friendship so much, had troubled and dismayed her, and when his letter came she was quite prepared to go more than halfway to effect a reconciliation. Her answer, written in the first flush of gratitude, represented Holly in her softest mood, and Julian read between the lines far more than she had meant to convey. He folded it up and tucked it away with the rest of her letters and smiled his satisfaction.
 
At Waynewood in those days life for Holly and Winthrop was an unsatisfactory[250] affair, to say the least. Each strove to avoid the other without seeming to do so, with the result that each felt piqued. In Winthrop’s case it was one thing to keep out of Holly’s presence from motives of caution, and quite another to find that she was avoiding him. He believed that his secret was quite safe, and so Holly’s apparent dislike for his society puzzled and disturbed him. When they were together the former easy intimacy was absent and in its place reigned a restlessness that made the parting almost a relief. So affairs stood when on the subsequent Saturday Julian rode over to Waynewood again.
It was almost the middle of February, and the world was aglow under a spell of warm weather that was quite unseasonable. The garden was riotous with green leaves and early blossoms. Uncle Ran confided to Winthrop that “if you jes’ listens right cahful you can hear the leaves a-growin’ an’ the buds a-poppin’ open, sir!” Winthrop had spent a restless day. Physically he was as well as he had ever[251] been, he told himself; three months at Waynewood had worked wonders for him; but mentally he was far from normal. Of late he had been considering more and more the advisability of returning North. It was time to get back into harness. He had no doubt of his ability to retrieve his scattered fortune, and it was high time that he began. And then, too, existence here at Waynewood was getting more complex and unsatisfactory every day. As far as Miss India’s treatment of him was concerned, he had only cause for congratulation, for his siege of that lady’s heart had been as successful as it was cunning; only that morning she had spoken to him of Waynewood as “your property” without any trace of resentment; but it was very evident that Holly had wearied of him. That should have been salutary knowledge, tending to show him the absurdity and hopelessness of his passion, but unfortunately it only increased his misery without disturbing the cause of it. Yes, it was high time to break away from an ungraceful position,[252] and get back to his own world—high time to awake from dreams and face reality.
So his thoughts ran that Saturday afternoon, as he walked slowly out from town along the shaded road. As he came within sight of Waynewood a horse and rider turned in at the gate, and when Winthrop left the oleander path and reached the sun-bathed garden he saw that Julian and Holly were seated together on the porch, very deep in conversation—so interested in each other, indeed, that he had almost gained the steps before either of them became aware of his presence. Holly looked anxiously at Julian. But that youth was on his good behavior. He arose and bowed politely, if coldly, to Winthrop. Something told the latter that an offer to shake hands would not be a happy proceeding. So he merely returned Julian’s bow as he greeted him, remained for a moment in conversation, and then continued on his way up-stairs. Once in his room he lighted a pipe and, from force of habit, sank into[253] a chair facing the empty fireplace. Life to-day seemed extremely unattractive. After ten minutes he arose, knocked out the ashes briskly, and dragged his trunk into the center of the room. He had made up his mind.
Supper passed pleasantly enough. Julian was resolved to reinstall himself in Holly’s good graces, even if it entailed being polite to the Northerner. Holly was in good spirits, while Winthrop yielded to an excitement at once pleasant and perturbing. Now that he had fully decided to return North he found himself quite eager to go; he wondered how he could have been content to remain in idleness so long. Miss India was the same as always, charming in her simple dignity, gravely responsive to the laughter of the others, presiding behind the teapot with the appropriate daintiness of a Chelsea statuette. Winthrop said nothing of his intended departure to-morrow noon; he would not give Julian that satisfaction. After Julian had gone he would inform Holly. They must be[254] alone when he told her. He didn’t ask himself why. He only knew that the blood was racing in his veins to-night, that the air seemed tinged with an electrical quality that brought pleasant thrills to his heart, and that it was his last evening at Waynewood. One may be pardoned something on one’s last evening.
Contrary to his custom, and to all the laws of Cupid’s Court, Winthrop joined Julian and Holly on the porch after supper. He did his best to make himself agreeable and flattered himself that Holly, at least, did not resent his presence. After his first fit of resentment at the other’s intrusion Julian, too, thawed out and, recollecting his rôle, was fairly agreeable to Winthrop. A silver moon floated above the house and flooded the world with light. The white walls shone like snow, and the shadows were intensely black and abrupt. No air stirred the sleeping leaves, and the night was thrillingly silent, save when a Whippoorwill sang plaintively in the grove.
[255]
At nine Julian arose to take his leave. White Queen had been brought around by Uncle Ran and was pawing the earth restively beside the hitching-post outside the gate at the end of the house. Doubtless Julian expected that Winthrop would allow him to bid Holly good-night unmolested. But if so he reckoned without the spirit of recklessness which controlled the Northerner to-night. Winthrop arose with the others and accompanied them along the path to the gate, returning Julian’s resentful glare with a look of smiling insouciance. Julian unhitched White Queen and a moment of awkward silence followed. Holly, dimly aware of the antagonism, glanced apprehensively from Julian to Winthrop.
“That’s a fine horse you have there,” said Winthrop, at last.
“Do you think so?” answered Julian, with a thinly-veiled sneer. “You know something about horses, perhaps?”
“Not much,” replied Winthrop, with a good-natured laugh. “I used to ride when I was at college.”
[256]
“Perhaps you’d like to try her?” suggested Julian.
“Thanks, no.”
“I reckon you had better not,” Julian drawled. “A horse generally knows when you’re afraid of her.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid,” said Winthrop. “I dare say I’d manage to stick on, but it is some time since I’ve ridden and my efforts would only appear ridiculous to one of your grace and ability.”
“Your modesty does you credit, if your discretion doesn’t,” replied the other, with a disagreeable laugh. “I hadn’t done you justice, Mr. Winthrop, it seems.”
“How is that?” asked Winthrop, smilingly.
“Why, it seems that you possess two virtues I had not suspected you of having, sir.”
“You wound me, Mr. Wayne. I pride myself on my modesty. And as for discretion——”
“You doubtless find it useful at such times as the present,” sneered Julian.
[257]
“I really almost believe you are suspecting me of cowardice,” said Winthrop, pleasantly.
“I really almost believe you are a mind-reader,” mocked Julian.
Their eyes met and held in the moonlight. Julian’s face was white and strained. Winthrop’s was smiling, but the mouth set hard and there was a dangerous sparkle in the eyes. Challenge met challenge. Winthrop laughed softly.
“You see, Miss Holly,” he said, turning to her, “I am forced to exhibit my deficiencies, after all, or stand accused of cowardice. I pray you to mercifully turn your eyes away.”
“Please don’t,” said Holly, in a troubled voice. “Really, Queen isn’t safe, Mr. Winthrop.”
“The advice is good, sir,” drawled Julian. “The mare isn’t safe.”
“Oh, pardon me, the mare is quite safe,” replied Winthrop, as he took the bridle reins from Julian’s hand; “it’s I who am not safe. But we shall see. At least, Miss[258] Holly, credit me with the modesty which Mr. Wayne seems to begrudge me, for here on the verge of the sacrifice I acknowledge myself no horseman.”
He placed his foot in the stirrup and sprang lightly enough into the saddle. White Queen flattened her ears as she felt a new weight on her back, but stood quite still while Winthrop shortened the reins.
“Come on, Queen,” he said. The mare moved a step hesitatingly and shook her head. At that moment there was a sharp cry of warning from Holly. Julian raised the whip in his hand and brought it down savagely, and the mare, with a cry of terror, flung herself across the narrow roadway so quickly that Winthrop shot out of the saddle and crashed against the picket fence, to lie crumpled and still in the moonlight. Holly was beside him in the instant and Julian, tossing aside his whip, sprang after her.
Holly turned blazing eyes upon him.
“No, no!” she cried, wildly. “You [259]shan’t touch him! Keep away! You’ve killed him. I won’t let you touch him!” She threw one arm across Winthrop’s breast protectingly, and with the other sought to ward Julian away.
 
“Hush!” he cried, tensely. “I must look at him. He is only stunned. His head struck the fence. Let me look at him.”
“I won’t! I won’t!” sobbed the girl. “You have done enough! Go for help!”
“Don’t be a fool!” he muttered, kneeling beside the still form and running a hand under the vest. “You don’t want him to die, do you? Here, hold his head up—so; that’s it.” There was an instant’s silence broken only by Holly’s dry, choking sobs. Then Julian arose briskly to his feet. “Just as I said,” he muttered. “Stunned. Find Uncle Ran and we’ll take him into the house and attend to him!”
“No, no! I’ll stay here,” said Holly, brokenly. “Hurry! Hurry!”
For an instant Julian hesitated, scowling down upon her. Then, with a muttered word, he turned abruptly and ran toward the house. Holly, huddled against the[260] fence with Winthrop’s head on her knee, held tightly to one limp hand and watched with wide, terrified eyes. The face was so white and cold in the moonlight! There was a little troubled frown on the forehead, as though the soul was wondering and perplexed. Had Julian spoken the truth? Was he really only stunned, or was this death that she looked on? Would they never come? She gripped his hand in a sudden panic of awful fear. Supposing death came and took him away from her while she sat there impotent! She bent closer above him, as though to hide him, and as she did so he gave a groan. Her heart leaped.
“Dear,” she whispered, “it’s Holly. She wants you. You won’t die, will you? When you know that I want you, you won’t leave me, will you? What would I do without you, dear? I’ve so long to live!”
Footsteps hurried across the porch and down the steps. Very gently Holly yielded her burden to Uncle Ran, and Winthrop was carried into the house, where Aunt India,[261] in a pink flowered wrapper, awaited them at the head of the stairs. They bore Winthrop into his room and laid him, still unconscious, on his bed. Holly’s gaze clung to the white face.
“Get on Queen, Uncle Ran, and ride in for the Old Doctor,” Julian directed. “Tell him there’s a collar-bone to set. You had better leave us, Holly.”
“No, no!” cried Holly, new fear gripping her heart.
“Holly!” said her aunt. “Go at once, girl. This is no place for you.” But Holly made no answer. Her eyes were fixed on the silent form on the bed. Julian laid his hand on her arm.
“Come,” he said. She started and tore away from him, her eyes ablaze.
“Don’t touch me!” she whispered, hoarsely, shudderingly. “Don’t touch me, Julian! You’ve killed him! I want never to see you again!”
“Holly!” exclaimed Miss India, astoundedly.
“I am going, Auntie.”
[262]
Julian held the door open for her, looking troubledly at her as she passed out. But she didn’t see him. The door closed behind her. She heard Julian’s quick steps across the floor and the sound of murmuring voices.
A deep sob shook her from head to feet. Falling to her knees she laid her forehead against the frame of the door, her hands clasping and unclasping convulsively.
“Dear God,” she moaned, “I didn’t mean this! I didn’t mean this!”
CHAPTER  XIII.
 
The effects of striking the head against a well-built fence may vary in severity, ranging all the way from a simple contusion through concussion of the brain to a broken neck. If unconsciousness results it may last from a fraction of a second to—eternity. In Winthrop’s case it lasted something less than ten minutes, at the end of which time he awoke to a knowledge of a dully aching head and an uncomfortable left shoulder. Unlike some other injuries, a broken collar-bone is a plain, open-and-above-board affliction, with small likelihood of mysterious complications. It is possible for the surgeon to tell within a day or two the period of resulting incapacity. The Old Doctor said two weeks. Sunday morning Uncle Ran unpacked Winthrop’s trunk, arranging the contents in the former places with evident satisfaction. On Monday[264] Winthrop was up and about the house, quite himself save for the temporary loss of his left arm and a certain stiffness of his neck.
 
Miss India was once more in her element. As an invalid, Winthrop had been becoming something of a disappointment, but now he was once again in his proper rôle. Miss India kept an anxiously watchful eye on him, and either Uncle Ran or Phœbe was certain to be hovering about whenever he lifted his eyes. The number[265] of eggnoggs and other strengthening beverages which Winthrop was compelled to drink during the ensuing week would be absolutely appalling if set down in cold print.
Of Holly he caught but brief glimpses those first days of his disability. She was all soft solicitude, but found occupations that kept her either at the back of the house or in her chamber. She feared that Winthrop was awaiting a convenient moment when they were alone to ask her about the accident. As a matter of fact, he had little curiosity about it. He was pretty certain that Julian had in some manner frightened the horse, but he had not heard the sound of the whip, since Holly’s sudden cry and the mare’s instant start had drowned it. It seemed a very slight matter, after all. Doubtless Julian’s rage had mastered him for the instant, and doubtless he was already heartily ashamed of himself. Indeed his ministrations to Winthrop pending the arrival of the Old Doctor had been as solicitous as friendship[266] could have demanded. Winthrop was quite ready to let by-gones be by-gones.
“Besides,” Winthrop told himself, “I deliberately led him on to lose control of himself. I’m as much to blame as he is. I wasn’t in my right mind myself that night; maybe the evening ended less disastrously than it might have. I dare say it was the moonlight. I’ve blamed everything so far on the weather, and the moonlight might as well come in for its share. Served me right, too, for wanting to make a holy show of myself on horseback. Oh, I was decidedly mad that night; moon-mad, that’s it.” He reflected a moment, then— “The worst thing about being knocked unconscious,” he went on, “is that you don’t know what happens until you come to again. Now I’d like to have looked on at events. For instance, I’d give a thousand dollars—if I still possess that much—to know what Holly did or said, or didn’t do. I think I’ll ask her.”
He smiled at the idea. Then—
“Why not?” he said, half aloud. “I[267] want to know; why not ask? Why, hang it all, I will ask! And right now, too.”
He arose from the chair in the shade of the Baltimore Belle and walked to the door.
“Miss Holly,” he called.
“Yes?” The voice came from up-stairs.
“Are you very, very busy?”
“N-no, not very, Mr. Winthrop.”
“Then will you grant a dying man the grace of a few moments of your valuable time?”
There was a brief moment of hesitation, broken by the anxious voice of Miss India.
“Holly!” called her aunt, indignantly, “go down at once and see what Mr. Winthrop wants. I reckon Phœbe has forgotten to take him his negus.”
Winthrop smiled, and groaned. Holly’s steps pattered across the hall and he went back to the end of the porch, dragging a second chair with him and placing it opposite his own. When Holly came he pointed to it gravely. Holly’s heart fell. Winthrop had a right to know the truth, but it didn’t seem fair that the duty of confessing[268] Julian’s act should fall to her. The cowardice of it loomed large and terrible to her.
 
“Miss Holly,” said Winthrop, “I am naturally curious to learn what happened the other night. Now, as you were an eye-witness of the episode, I come to you for information.”
“You mean that I’ve come to you,” answered Holly, smiling nervously.
“True; I accept the correction.”
“What—what do you want to know?” asked Holly.
[269]
“All, please.”
Holly’s eyes dropped, and her hands clutched each other desperately in her lap.
“I—he—oh, Mr. Winthrop, he didn’t know what he was doing; truly he didn’t! He didn’t think what might happen!”
 
“He? Who? Oh, you mean Julian? Of course he didn’t think; I understand that perfectly. And it’s of no consequence, really, Miss Holly. He was angry; in fact,[270] I’d helped make him so; he acted on the impulse.”
“Then you knew?” wondered Holly.
“Knew something was up, that’s all. I suppose he flicked the mare with the whip; I dare say he only wanted to start her for me.”
Holly shook her head.
“No, it wasn’t that. He—he cut her with the whip as hard as he could.” Winthrop smiled at her tragic face and voice.
“Well, as it happens there was little harm done. I dare say he’s quite as regretful about it now as you like. What I want to know is what happened afterwards, after I—dismounted.”
“Oh,” said Holly. Her eyes wandered from Winthrop’s and the color crept slowly into her face.
“Well,” he prompted, presently. “You are not a very good chronicler, Miss Holly.”
“Why, afterwards——oh, Julian examined you and found that you weren’t killed——”
[271]
“There was doubt about that, then?”
“I—we were frightened. You were all huddled up against the fence and your face was so white——”
Holly’s own face paled at the recollection. Winthrop’s smile faded, and his heart thrilled.
“I’m sorry I occasioned you uneasiness, Miss Holly,” he said, earnestly. “Then they carried me into the house and up to my room, I suppose. And that was all there was to it,” he added, regretfully and questioningly. It had been rather tame and uninteresting, after all.
“Yes——no,” answered Holly. “I—stayed with you while Julian went for Uncle Ran. I thought once you were really dead, after all. Oh, I was so—so frightened!”
“He should have stayed himself,” said Winthrop, with a frown. “It was a shame to put you through such an ordeal.”
There was a little silence. Then Holly’s eyes went back to Winthrop’s quite fearlessly.
[272]
“I wouldn’t let him,” she said. “I was angry. I told him he had killed you, and I wouldn’t let him touch you—at first. I—I was so frightened! Oh, you don’t know how frightened I was!”
She knew quite well what she was doing. She knew that she was laying her heart quite bare at that moment, that her voice and eyes were telling him everything, and that he was listening and comprehending! But somehow it seemed perfectly right and natural to her. Why should she treat her love—their love—as though it was something to be ashamed of, to hide and avoid? Surely the very fact that they could never be to each other as other lovers, ennobled their love rather than degraded it!
And as they looked at each other across a little space her eyes read the answer to their message and her heart sang happily for a moment there in the sunlight. Then her eyes dropped slowly before the intensity of his look, a soft glow spread upward into her smooth cheeks, and she smiled very gravely and sweetly.
[273]
“I’ve told you, haven’t I!” she said, tremulously.
“Holly!” he whispered. “Holly!”
He stretched his hand toward her, only to let it fall again as the first fierce joy gave place to doubt and discretion. He strove to think, but his heart was leaping and his thoughts were in wild disorder. He wanted to fall on his knees beside her, to take her in his arms, to make her look at him again with those soft, deep, confessing eyes. He wanted to whisper a thousand endearments to her, to sigh “Holly, Holly,” and “Holly” again, a thousand times. But the moments ticked past, and he only sat and held himself to his chair and was triumphantly happy and utterly miserable in all his being. Presently Holly looked up at him again, a little anxiously and very tenderly.
“Are you sorry for me!” she asked, softly.
“For you and for myself, dear,” he answered, “unless——”
“Will it be very hard?” she asked.[274] “Would it have been easier if I hadn’t—hadn’t——”
“No, a thousand times no, Holly! But, dear, I never guessed——”
Holly shook her head, and laughed very softly.
“I didn’t mean you to know, I reckon; but somehow it just—just came out. I couldn’t help it. I reckon I ought to have helped it, but you see I’ve never—cared for anyone before, and I don’t know how to act properly. Do you think I am awfully—awfully—you know; do you?”
“I think you’re the best, the dearest——” He stopped, with something that was almost a sob. “I can’t tell you what I think you are, Holly; I haven’t the words, dear.”
“I don’t suppose you ought to, anyhow,” said Holly, thoughtfully.
“Holly, have I—have I been to blame?”
“No,” she answered quickly. “It was just—just me, I reckon. I prayed God that He wouldn’t let me love you, but I reckon He has to look after so many girls that—that[275] care for the wrong people that He didn’t have time to bother with Holly Wayne. Anyhow, it didn’t seem to do much good. Maybe, though, He wanted me to love you—in spite of—of everything. Do you reckon He did?”
“Yes,” said Winthrop, fiercely, “I reckon He did. And He’s got to take the consequences! Holly, I’m not fit for you; I’m twenty years older than you are; I’ve been married and I’ve had the bloom brushed off of life, dear; but if you’ll take me, Holly, if you’ll take me, dear——”
“Oh!” Holly arose to her feet and held a hand toward him appealingly. “Please don’t! Please!” she cried. “Don’t spoil it all!”
“Spoil it?” he asked, wonderingly.
He got slowly to his feet and moved toward her.
“You know what I mean,” said Holly, troubledly. “I do love you, and you love me——you do love me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he answered, simply.
“And we can’t be happy—that way.[276] But we can care for each other—always—a great deal, and not make it hard to—to——”
She faltered, the tears creeping one by one over her lids. A light broke upon Winthrop.
“But you don’t understand!” he cried.
“What?” she faltered, looking up at him anxiously, half fearfully, from swimming eyes as he took her hand.
“Dear, there’s no wrong if I——”
Sounds near at hand caused him to stop and glance around. At the gate Julian Wayne was just dismounting from White Queen. Holly drew her hand from Winthrop’s and with a look, eager and wondering, hurried in-doors just as Julian opened the gate. Winthrop sank into his chair and felt with trembling fingers for his cigarette-case. Julian espied him as he mounted the steps and walked along the porch very stiffly and determinedly.
 
“Good-morning,” said Winthrop.
“Good-morning, sir,” answered Julian. “I have come to apologize for what occurred—for[277] what I did the other night. I intended coming before, but it was impossible.”
“Don’t say anything more about it,” replied Winthrop. “I understand. You acted on a moment’s impulse and my poor horsemanship did the rest. It’s really not worth speaking of.”
“On the contrary I did it quite deliberately,” answered Julian. “I meant to do it, sir. But I had no thought of injuring you. I—I only wanted Queen to cut up. If you would like satisfaction, Mr. Winthrop——”
Winthrop stared.
“My dear fellow,” he ejaculated, “you aren’t proposing a duel, are you?”
“I am quite at your service, sir,” replied Julian, haughtily. “If the idea of reparation seems ridiculous to you——”
“I beg your pardon, really,” said Winthrop, gravely and hurriedly. “It was only that I had supposed duelling to be obsolete.”
“Not among gentlemen, sir!”
[278]
“I see. Nevertheless, Mr. Wayne, I’m afraid I shall have to refuse you. I am hardly in condition to use either sword or pistol.”
“If that is all,” answered Julian, eagerly, “I can put my left arm in a sling, too. That would put us on even terms, I reckon, sir.”
Winthrop threw out his hand with a gesture of surrender, and laughed amusedly.
“I give in,” he said. “You force me to the unromantic acknowledgment that I’ve never used a sword, and can’t shoot a revolver without jerking the barrel all around.”
“You find me mighty amusing, it seems,” said Julian, hotly.
“My dear fellow——”
“I don’t know anything more about swords or pistols than you do, I reckon, sir, but I’ll be mighty glad to—to——”
“Cut my head off or shoot holes through me? Thanks, but I never felt less like departing this life than I do now, Mr. Wayne.”
[279]
“Then you refuse?”
“Unconditionally. The fact is, you know, I, as the aggrieved party, am the one to issue the challenge. As long as I am satisfied with your apology I don’t believe you have any right to insist on shooting me.”
Julian chewed a corner of his lip and scowled.
“I thought maybe you weren’t satisfied,” he suggested hopefully.
Winthrop smiled.
“Quite satisfied,” he answered. “Won’t you sit down?”
Julian hesitated and then took the chair indicated, seating himself very erect on the edge, his riding-whip across his knees.
“Will you smoke?” asked Winthrop, holding forth his cigarette-case.
“No, thanks,” replied Julian, stiffly.
There was a moment’s silence while Winthrop lighted his cigarette and Julian observed him darkly. Then—
“Mr. Winthrop,” said Julian, “how long do you intend to remain here, sir?”
[280]
“My plans are a bit unsettled,” answered Winthrop, tossing the burnt match onto the walk. “I had intended leaving Sunday, but my accident prevented. Now I am undecided. May I enquire your reason for asking, Mr. Wayne?”
“Because I wanted to know,” answered Julian, bluntly. “Your presence here is—is distasteful to me and embarrassing to Miss India and Miss Holly.”
“Really!” gasped Winthrop.
“Yes, sir, and you know it. Anyone but a Northerner would have more feeling than to force himself on the hospitality of two unfortunate ladies as you have done, Mr. Winthrop.”
“But—but——!” Winthrop sighed, and shook his head helplessly. “Oh, there’s no use in my trying to get your view, I guess. May I ask, merely as a matter of curiosity, whether the fact that Waynewood is my property has anything to do with it in your judgment.”
“No, sir, it hasn’t! I don’t ask how you came into possession of the place——”
[281]
“Thank you,” murmured Winthrop.
“But in retaining it you are acting abominably, sir!”
“The deuce I am! May I ask what you would advise me to do with it? Shall I hand it over to Miss India or Miss Holly as—as a valentine?”
“Our people, sir, don’t accept charity,” answered Julian, wrathfully.
“So I fancied. Then what would you suggest? Perhaps you are in a position to buy it yourself, Mr. Wayne?”
Julian frowned and hesitated.
“You had no business taking it,” he muttered.
“Granted for the sake of argument, sir. But, having taken it, now what?”
Julian hesitated for a moment. Then—
“At least you’re not obliged to stay here where you’re not wanted,” he said, explosively.
Winthrop smiled deprecatingly.
“Mr. Wayne, I’d like to ask you one question. Did you come here this morning on purpose to pick a quarrel with me?”
[282]
“I came to apologize for what happened Saturday night. I’ve told you so already.”
“You have. You have apologized like a gentleman and I have accepted your apology without reservations. That is finished. And now I’d like to make a suggestion.”
“Well?” asked Julian, suspiciously.
“And that is that if your errand is at an end you withdraw from my property until you can address me without insults.”
Julian’s face flushed; he opened his lips to speak, choked back the words, and arose from his chair.
“Don’t misunderstand me, please,” went on Winthrop, quietly. “I am not turning you out. I should be glad to have you remain as long as you like. Only, if you please, as long as you are in a measure my guest, you will kindly refrain from impertinent criticisms of my actions. I’d dislike very much to have you weaken my faith in Southern courtesy, Mr. Wayne.”
Julian’s reply was never made, for at that instant Holly and Miss India came out[283] on the porch. Holly’s first glance was toward Winthrop. Then, with slightly heightened color, she greeted Julian kindly. He seized her hand and looked eagerly into her smiling face.
“Am I forgiven?” he asked, in an anxious whisper.
“Hush,” she answered, “it is I who should ask that. But we’ll forgive each other.” She turned to Winthrop, who had arisen at their appearance, and Julian greeted Miss India.
“What have you gentlemen been talking about for so long?” asked Holly, gayly.
“Many things,” answered Winthrop. “Mr. Wayne was kind enough to express his regrets for my accident. Afterwards we discussed”—he paused and shot a whimsical glance at Julian’s uneasy countenance—“Southern customs, obsolete and otherwise.”
“It sounds very uninteresting,” laughed Holly. Then—“Why, Uncle Ran hasn’t taken your horse around, Julian,” she exclaimed.
[284]
“I didn’t call him. I am going right back.”
“Nonsense, Julian, dinner is coming on the table now,” said Holly.
“It’s much too warm to ride in the middle of the day,” said Miss India, decisively. “Tell Phœbe to lay another place, Holly.” Julian hesitated and shot a questioning glance at Winthrop.
“You are quite right, Miss India,” said Winthrop. “This is no time to do twelve miles on horseback. You must command Mr. Wayne to remain. No one, I am sure, has ever dared disregard a command of yours.”
“I’ll tell Phœbe and call Uncle Ran,” said Holly. But at the door she turned and looked across the garden. “Why, here is Uncle Major! We’re going to have a regular dinner party, Auntie.”
The Major, very warm and somewhat breathless, was limping his way hurriedly around the rose-bed, his cane tapping the ground with unaccustomed force.
“Good-morning, Miss India,” he called.[285] “Good-morning, Holly; good-morning, gentlemen. Have you heard the news?”
“Not a word of it,” cried Holly, darting to the steps and pulling him up. “Tell me quick!”
The Major paused at the top of the little flight, removed his hat, wiped his moist forehead, and looked impressively about the circle.
“The battleship Maine was blown up last night in Havanna harbor by the damned—I beg your pardon, ladies—by the pesky Spaniards and nearly three hundred officers and men were killed.”
“Oh!” said Holly, softly.
“I never!” gasped Miss India.
“It is known that the Spanish did it?” asked Winthrop, gravely.
“There can be no doubt of it,” answered the Major. “They just got the news half an hour ago at the station and particulars are meager, but there’s no question about how it happened.”
“But this,” cried Julian, “means——!”
“It means intervention at last!” said the[286] Major. “And intervention means war, by Godfrey!”
“War!” echoed Julian, eagerly.
“And if it wasn’t for this da—this trifling leg of mine, I’d volunteer to-morrow,” declared the Major.
“How awful!” sighed Miss India. “Think of all those sailors that are killed! I never did like the Spanish, Major.”
“It may be,” said Winthrop, “that the accident will prove to have been caused by an explosion on board.”
“Shucks!” said Julian. “That’s rubbish! The Spaniards did it, as sure as fighting, and, by Jupiter, if they think they can blow up our ships and kill our men and not suffer for it—— How long do you reckon it’ll be, Major, before we declare war on them?”
“Can’t say; maybe a week, maybe a month. I reckon Congress will have to chew it over awhile. But it’s bound to come, and—well, I reckon I’m out of it, Julian,” concluded the Major, with a sigh.
“But I’m not!” cried the other. “I’ll[287] go with the hospital corps. It’s the chance of a lifetime, Major! Why, a man can get more experience in two weeks in a field hospital than he can in two years anywhere else! Why——”
“The bell has rung,” interposed Miss India. “You must take dinner with us, Major, and tell us everything you know. Dear, dear, I feel quite worked up! I remember when the news came that our army had fired on Fort Sumter——”
Winthrop laid his hand on the Major’s arm and halted him.
“Major,” he said, smiling slightly, “don’t you think you ought to explain to them that the Maine wasn’t a Confederate battleship, that she belonged to the United States and that probably more than half her officers and men were Northerners?”
“Eh? What?” The Major stared bewilderedly a moment. Then he chuckled and laid one big knotted hand on Winthrop’s shoulder. “Mr. Winthrop, sir,” he said, “I reckon all that doesn’t matter so much now.”
CHAPTER  XIV.
 
“I’m going for a walk with Mr. Winthrop, Auntie,” said Holly. She fastened a broad-brimmed hat on her head and looked down at Miss India with soft, shining eyes. Dinner was over and Miss India, the Major and Julian were sitting in a shady spot on the porch. Winthrop awaited Holly at the steps.
“Well, my dear,” answered Miss India. “But keep Mr. Winthrop away from those dark, damp places, Holly. It’s so easy to get the feet wet at this time of year.”
“You see, Uncle Major,” laughed Holly, “she doesn’t care whether I catch cold or not; it’s just Mr. Winthrop!”
“Holly!” expostulated her Aunt.
“She knows, my dear,” said the Major, gallantly, “that those little feet of yours will skim the wet places like swallows!”
“Thank you, sir!” She made a face at[289] the Major. “You will be here when we get back, won’t you, Julian?”
“I don’t know,” answered Julian, dismally.
“We won’t be long.” She nodded to the trio and joined Winthrop, and side by side they went down the steps, wound through the garden and disappeared into the oleander path. Julian watched them with a pain at his heart until they were out of sight, and for several minutes afterwards he sat silent, thinking bitter thoughts. Then a remark of the Major’s aroused him and he leaped impetuously into the conversation.
“Trouble!” he exclaimed. “Why, we can clear the Spaniards out of Cuba in two weeks. Look at our ships! And look at our army! There isn’t a better one in the world! Trouble! Why, it’ll be too easy; you’ll see; it’ll be all over before we know it!”
“I dread another war, Major,” said Miss India, with a little shudder. “The last one was so terrible.”
[290]
“It was, ma’am, it was. It was brother kill brother. But this one will be different, Miss Indy, for North and South will stand together and fight together, and, by Godfrey, there’ll be no stopping until Spanish dominion in Cuba is a thing of the past!”
“That’s right,” cried Julian. “This is the whole country together this time; it’s the United States of America, by Jupiter!”
“Let us thank God for that,” said Miss India, devoutly.
Winthrop and Holly were rather silent until they had left the red clay road behind and turned into the woods. There, in a little clearing, Winthrop led the way to the trunk of a fallen pine and they seated themselves upon it. The afternoon sunlight made its way between the branches in amber streams. Above them festoons of gray-green moss decked the trees. The woods were very silent and not even a bird-call broke the silence. Holly took her hat off and laid it beside her on the gray bark.[291] Then she turned gravely to Winthrop and met his eyes.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“I’ve brought you here, Holly, to ask you to marry me,” he answered. Holly’s hand flew to her heart, and her eyes grew big and dark.
“I don’t understand,” she faltered.
“No, and before I do ask you, dear, I’ve got something to tell you. Will you listen?”
“Oh, yes,” answered Holly, simply.
“I was married when I was twenty-four years old,” began Winthrop, after a moment. “I had just finished a course in the law school. The girl I married was four years younger than I. She was very beautiful and a great belle in the little city in which she lived. We went to New York and I started in business with a friend of mine. We were stock brokers. A year later my wife bore me a son; we called him Robert. For five years we were very happy; those years were the happiest I have ever known. Then the boy died.”[292] He was silent a moment. “I loved him a great deal, and I took it hard. I made a mistake then. To forget my trouble I immersed myself too deeply, perhaps, in business. Well, two years later I made the discovery that I had failed to keep my wife’s love. If our boy had lived it would have been different but his death left her lonely and—I was thoughtless, selfish in my own sorrow, until it was too late. I found that my wife had grown to love another man. I don’t blame her; I never have. And she was always honest with me. She told me the truth. She sued me for divorce and I didn’t contest. That was six years ago. She has been married for five years and I think, I pray, that she is very happy.”
He paused, and Holly darted a glance at his face. He was looking straight ahead down the woodland path, and for an instant she felt very lonely and apart. Then—
“You see, dear,” he continued, “I have failed to keep one woman’s love. Could[293] I do better another time? I think so, but—who knows? It would be a risk for you, wouldn’t it?”
He turned and smiled gently at her, and she smiled tremulously back.
“There,” he said. “Now you know what I am. I am thirty-eight years old, twenty years older than you, and a divorced man into the bargain. Even if you were willing to excuse those things, Holly, I fear your aunt could not.”
“If I were willing,” answered Holly, evenly, “nothing else would matter. But—you will tell me one thing? Do you—are you quite, quite sure that you do not still love her—a little?”
“Quite, Holly. The heart I offer, dear, is absolutely free.”
“I think God did mean me to love you, then, after all,” said Holly, thoughtfully.
Winthrop arose and stood before her, and held out his hand. She placed hers in it and with her eyes on his allowed him to raise her gently toward him.
“Then, Holly,” he said, “I ask you to[294] be my wife, for I love you more than I can ever tell you. Will you, Holly, will you?”
“Yes,” sighed Holly.
Very gently he strove to draw her to him but, with her hands against his breast, she held herself at the length of his arms.
“Wait,” she said. “Don’t kiss me until you are sure that you mean what you’ve said, Robert—quite, quite sure. Because”—her eyes darkened, and her voice held a fierceness that thrilled him—“because, dear, after you have kissed me it will be too late to repent. I’ll never let you go then, never while I live! I’ll fight for you until—until——!”
Her voice broke, and the lashes fell tremblingly over her eyes. Winthrop, awed and stirred, raised the bowed head until her eyes, grown soft and timid, glanced up at him once more.
“Dear,” he said, very low and very humbly, “such as I am I am yours as long as God will let me live for you.”
He bent his head until his lips were on hers.
[295]
The next instant she had buried her face against his shoulder, and he felt her body shaking in his arms.
“Holly!” he cried. “Holly! You’re crying! What is it, dear? What have I done, Sweetheart?”
For an instant she ceased to quiver, and from against his coat came a smothered voice.
“What’s the good of be-being happy,” sobbed Holly, “if you can’t cr-cr-cry?”
A breath of wind from the south swept through the wood, stirring the tender leaves to rustling murmurs. And the sound was like that of a little stream which, obstructed in its course, finds a new channel and leaps suddenly on its way again, laughing joyously.