Two elderly gentlemen surveyed him closely. A girl, who had tossed a glance at him over her shoulder, seemed to find more attraction in the Alderney heifer, whose saucy rough tongue was at that moment stretched out to lick salt from a velvet palm, than in the mud-stained wayfarer.
"That's no common tramp," said one of the gentlemen to the other. "If you will stay here with my Lady-love, I'll just go and investigate his case."
Vance Townsend had, perhaps, like other mortals, known his "bad moments" in life. But he felt that there had been few like this, when the old gentleman, issuing through a gate opening from the pasture, came to him with a quick, decided step.
The younger man took off his hat. The older did likewise. And then Vance, between a laugh and a groan, told his story, confirmed by the apparition at that moment, in the distance, of the horses and Claggett, who was himself afoot.
"Say no more, my dear fellow, say not another word," interrupted the astonished old gentleman. "My name is Lloyd, and I'm the owner of that house behind the locusts, where I'm delighted to take you in, and Charley Claggett, too. We'll find out what's the matter with your horse, quick enough. Welcome to Wheatlands, sir, and just come along with me."
Before Vance fairly knew how, he found himself in a "prophet's chamber," looking upon a sloping roof, where a martin was nesting within reach of his hand. Tapping the panes of the upper sash of his window, a branch tasselled with sweet-smelling blossoms swayed in the breeze. Outside, he had a wide and glorious view of field and mountains. Inside, he possessed a clean, if homely, bedroom, at the door of which a soft-voiced negro woman was already knocking, to ask for his bespattered garments.
Vance was delighted. When he furthermore found left at his portal a tub with a large bucket of ice-cold water from the spring, together with his bag, he began to think that Virginia hospitality was not to be relegated among things traditional.
The soft Virginia dusk was closing upon the scene, when our young man, leaving his room, went down-stairs, through a hall hung with trophies and implements of sport, and out of an open door upon the "front porch," to look at the evening star hanging above the mountain crest.
In this occupation he found another person indulging likewise, and in the clear gloom discovered the face and figure of a young and singularly graceful girl, who without hesitation accosted him.
"Mr. Lloyd has told us of your mishap," she said, courteously. "He is congratulating himself that it happened near enough to let him help you out of it. I hope the horse will fare as well as the master."
"Merrylad will be all right, thank you, so Claggett has been up to tell me. It appears that Mr. Lloyd, in addition to his other attractions, is a famous amateur vet."
"You will find he has all the virtues," she said, laughing. At that moment, a lamp, lighted by the servant in the hall, sent a stream of illumination upon them. To Townsend's utter surprise, he saw the face of his cousin, Evelyn Carlyle.
"You!" he heard her say, in a not too well pleased tone; and "You?" he repeated, with what he felt to be not a distinguished success.
"How extraordinary that it should turn out to be you!" she began again, first of the two to recover her composure. "Did you think--were you, that is, on your way to visit _us_?"
"Nothing was further from my thoughts," he answered, bluntly. "I, on the contrary, believed myself to be going in the opposite direction from where you live."
"Of course," she said, somewhat piqued. "It is impossible you should have known that papa and I came yesterday on a visit to dear old Cousin Josephus. I beg your pardon if I was very rude."
"It is certainly not a welcome that seems inspired by what I have been led to think is Virginia cordiality," he answered, coolly.
"But I have asked your pardon, and that's not the way to answer me.
You might grant it, never so stiffly; and after that, we, being thrown together this way through no fault of either of us, might agree to be decently civil before papa, who can have no idea how I feel toward--I mean what my reasons are for feeling--well, never mind what I mean,"
she ended, vexed at his immobility.
"I quite join with you in thinking it would be very silly to take any one else into this armed neutrality of ours. I shall at the earliest moment, to-morrow, relieve you of my presence. Suppose, until then, you try to treat me as you would another unoffending man under my circumstances."
"Yes. You are right. It would be better, and it would not worry papa and Cousin Josephus," she said, reflectively. "Well, then, if you were another man, I should begin by asking you what brought you to Virginia. No; that would not be at all polite, would it? I think I shall just say nothing at all."
"Not till you let me assure you that I came because a fellow I know told me he had made a driving tour in this part, last year, with his wife, and had found it rather nice--and another reason was, that I wanted to get away from myself."
"You are very flattering to our State," she said, bridling her head after a fashion he found both comical and sweet. She was silent a little while, then resumed, more gently:
"I was thinking of what you last said, and maybe I have done you an injustice. Maybe you are to be pitied more than blamed."
"Do you mean because I spoiled a good suit of clothes and hurt my horse's leg?"
"No; not that. You are clearly not in need of sympathy. There! They are going to ring the supper-bell, and you must go and be introduced to my father, as his cousin. He is the dearest daddy in the world, and will be sure to try to make you come to visit us at the Hall."
"Am I to understand this is a hint not to accept?"
"I _could_ stay on here, you know," she said, in a businesslike way.
"You are perfectly exasperating," he exclaimed, and then the summons came to go into the house. Just before they crossed the threshold, she appeared to have undergone another change of mind. Turning back swiftly, in a voice of exceeding sweetness she breathed into his ear these words:
"Please, I am sorry. I ought not to keep forgetting, ought I, that you are a stranger within our gates, and a cousin, really?"
"Is she a coquette?" Vance began to ask himself, but was interrupted by a _sortie_ of his host in search of him.
Chapter III
Vance Townsend had reckoned without his host when he made the declaration that he would relieve Miss Carlyle of his presence the following day. The kind owner of Wheatlands, indulgent to every man and beast upon his premises, had yet a way of holding on to and controlling guests that none might resist.
Vance, however, did not try very hard to resist the invitation to stay at least until "Thursday, when the Carlyles would be running away home." An evening spent with the kind, simple, yet cultivated people who formed the little _coterie_ at Wheatlands (there was among them a widowed cousin with her unruly boy, and a cousin who had been unfortunate in his investments) had, somehow, quite upset our hero's notions upon many points.
Claggett, dismissed with a _douceur_, the liberality of which consoled that worthy countryman for an early reunion with the lady who would not allow him to tell stories of the war, took an affectionate leave of his employer. In his manner Vance detected more satisfaction in the vindication of Virginia customs than regret at the severance of their relation. The little triumph Claggett might readily have derived from the incident of the wayfarer's meeting, in spite of himself, with his relations was heroically suppressed. And before Townsend had turned upon his pillow the morning after his arrival, a telegram had gone to the town where his luggage had been left, ordering it to be sent by train that day.
Vance had been told that breakfast would be at nine; and, awakened at half-past seven by a bird on the bough in his window, he abandoned himself to a lazy review of his impressions of the family. Of his Cousin Eve he had seen little more than what has already been told.
After filling her place at a bounteous supper-table, where the talk was chiefly absorbed by the three gentlemen, she had vanished, in company with the widowed cousin, and was invisible thereafter--the men sitting together till midnight in the large, raftered hall, with a fire in its wide chimney, that served the old bachelor for a general living-room.
Vance could not remember to have seen a face of finer lines, a manner of finer courtesy, than that of his seventy-year-old host, who, in spite of the rust of desuetude in worldly ways, carried his inbred gentility where all who approached him might profit by it.
That he was a politician went without saying; and, indeed, the talk once directed in the channel of national government had kept there until they separated. On a claw-footed table holding a lamp beside Mr.
Lloyd's easy chair, covered with frayed haircloth, Vance saw lying a crisp new Review of English publication, and all about were piled newspapers and magazines, while shelves displayed row upon row of the antique, tawny volumes that had made up the complete library of a country gentleman in the days of old Josephus's grandfather.
Around the hearth, coming and going with every opening of many doors, gathered dogs of fine and varied breeds. One old patriarch of a St.
Bernard, who attached himself particularly to the stranger, had remained close to Vance's feet, and gravely escorted him to bed.
In his kinsman, Guy Carlyle, a handsome man of fifty odd years, who in a military youth had been noted for deeds of daring that rang through the army of Northern Virginia, but had long since resigned himself to the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, Vance saw the origin of Eve's rare beauty. He also became aware that, of a large family of sons and daughters born to the now widowed Colonel, Eve was the sole survivor; and it did not need the expression that irradiated her father's face when her name was touched upon to show in what estimation she was held by him.
The tinge of melancholy in Mr. Carlyle's manner had, however, no effect like repression of the cordial friendliness he extended to the newcomer. Vance had gone to rest with a feeling that he had conferred a genuine favor upon his two elders by according to them, as he had, his company.
Spite of these conditions of good-fellowship, he awoke next morning conscious that there was one under the roof with him who had the power (and no desire to withhold it) to make him far from comfortable; to puzzle him, to banter him, to pull him up with a jerk at the moment he might feel that he was getting reasonably ahead with her; to punish him, it would appear, for some offence he could not own to having committed.
It was very clear that Eve thought him a poor fellow, mentally and morally; that, apart from her specific grudge against him, of nature unknown, she was not in the least inclined to pay tribute to his position, fashion, culture, wealth,--the appendages of Vance Townsend's personality people around him had always been disposed to make so much of. In the firmament of American society, he took himself to be a planet of first importance. In other lands, he had enjoyed more than a reasonable share of social success. Why should he here, for the first time in his life, feel like a man coming in fancy costume to a dinner where all the other guests wore plain clothes?
It must be the doing of that girl. She it was who, with a few words, a cool glance or two that appeared to read his soul, had brought him into this strait; and Vance was still young enough to feel himself flame with resentment of her. Then fell upon his mental ear the soft cadence of her voice, asking his pardon for having possibly misjudged him, and his anger passed.
As from Eve he went on to think of Kitty Ainger, now Mrs. Crawford, Vance was surprised at the freedom from soreness the reflection left upon his mind. Mrs. Crawford, he even reflected, was really an admirable woman--just the wife, as everybody had said, for a rising fellow like Crawford, who would surely reach the top! She had shown her good sense in taking him. Was it possible Vance had ever thought anything else?
On a table near the bed lay the contents of a pocket emptied overnight--among them a folded paper, inscribed with the latest and most satisfactory draft of his verses to Kitty. This he now seized, and, upon re-reading it, a flush that was not of tender consciousness overspread his face. Regardless of the loss to the world of poetry, ignoring the recurrent efforts that Calliope had witnessed, he deliberately tore it up, and went to the open window prepared to scatter the tiny remnants upon a matin breeze.
A view of wide green plains, with here and there a clump of noble trees, of soaring blue hills beyond them, all shining in the morning sun, met his eye; and almost directly beneath his window were a couple of horses, of which one was bestridden by old Josephus, in a nankeen coat and venerable Panama hat; the other, little more than a colt, was held by a negro and saddled for a woman's use.
"Lady-love! Lady-love, I say!" called out the old gentleman, in a voice of Stentor.