Virginia Part 17

"And I'll have enough clothes to last me for years, shan't I, mother?"

"I hope so, darling. Your father and I have done the best that we could for you."

"You've been angels. Oh, how I shall hate to leave you!"

"If only you weren't going away, Jinny!" Then she broke down, and dropping the tomato-shaped pin-cus.h.i.+on she had been holding, she slipped from the room, while Virginia thrust the polonaise into Miss w.i.l.l.y's hands and fled breathlessly after her.

In the girl's room, with her head bowed on the top of the little bookcase, above those thin rows of fiction, Mrs. Pendleton was weeping almost wildly over the coming separation. She, who had not thought of herself for thirty years, had suddenly broken the constraint of the long habit. Yet it was characteristic of her, that even now her first feeling, when Virginia found her, should be one of shame that she had clouded for an instant the girl's happiness.

"It is nothing, darling. I have a little headache, and--oh, Jinny!

Jinny!----"

"Mother, it won't be long. We are coming back to live just as soon as Oliver can get work. It isn't as if I were going for good, is it? And I'll write you every day--every single day. Mother, dearest, darling mother, I can't stay away from you----"

Then Virginia wept, too, and Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own sorrow at sight of the girl's tears, began to comfort her.

"Of course, you'll write and tell me everything. It will be almost as if I were with you."

"And you love Oliver, don't you, mother?"

"How could I help it, dear--only I can't quite get used to your calling your husband by his name, Jinny. It would have horrified your grandmother, and somehow it does seem lacking in respect. However, I suppose I'm old-fas.h.i.+oned."

"But, mother, he laughs if I call him 'Mr. Treadwell.' He says it reminds him of his Aunt Belinda."

"Perhaps he's right, darling. Anyway, he prefers it, and I fancy your grandfather wouldn't have liked to hear his wife address him so familiarly. Times have changed since my girlhood."

"And Oliver has lived out in the world so much, mother."

"Yes," said Mrs. Pendleton, but her voice was without enthusiasm. The "world" to her was a vague and sinister shape, which looked like a bubble, and exerted a malignant influence over those persons who lived beyond the borders of Virginia. Her imagination, which seldom wandered farther afield than the possibility of the rector or of Virginia falling ill, or the dreaded likelihood that her market bills would overrun her weekly allowance, was incapable of grasping a set of standards other than the one which was accepted in Dinwiddie.

"Wherever you are, Jinny, I hope that you will never forget the ideas your father and I have tried to implant in you," she said.

"I'll always try to be worthy of you, mother."

"Your first duty now, of course, is to your husband. Remember, we have always taught you that a woman's strength lies in her gentleness. His will must be yours now, and wherever your ideas cross, it is your duty to give up, darling. It is the woman's part to sacrifice herself."

"I know, mother, I know."

"I have never forgotten this, dear, and my marriage has been very happy.

Of course," she added, while her forehead wrinkled nervously, "there are not many men like your father."

"Of course not, mother, but Oliver----"

In Mrs. Pendleton's soft, anxious eyes the shadow darkened, as if for the first time she had grown suspicious of the traditional wisdom which she was imparting. But this suspicion was so new and young that it could not struggle for existence against the archaic roots of her inherited belief in the Pauline measure of her s.e.x. It was characteristic of her--and indeed of most women of her generation--that she would have endured martyrdom in support of the consecrated doctrine of her inferiority to man.

"Even in the matter of religion you ought to yield to him, darling," she said after a moment in which she had appealed to that orthodox arbiter, her conscience. "Your father and I were talking about what church you should go to, and I said that I supposed Oliver was a Presbyterian, like all of the Treadwells."

"Oh, mother, I didn't tell you before because I hoped I could change him--but he doesn't go to any church--he says they all bore him equally.

He has broken away from all the old ideas, you know. He is dreadfully--unsettled."

The anxiety, which had been until then merely a shadow in Mrs.

Pendleton's eyes, deepened into a positive pain.

"Your father must have known, for he talked to him--but he wouldn't tell me," she said.

"I made father promise not to. I hoped so I could change Oliver, and maybe I can after we're married, mother."

"If he has given up the old spiritual standards, what has he in place of them?" asked Mrs. Pendleton, and she had suddenly a queer feeling as if little fine needles were p.r.i.c.king her skin.

"I don't know, but he seems to have a great deal, more than any of us,"

answered Virginia, and she added pa.s.sionately, "He is good, mother."

"I never doubted it, darling, but he is young, and his character cannot be entirely formed at his age. A man must be very strong in order to be good without faith."

"But he has faith, mother--of some kind."

"I am not judging him, my child, and neither your father nor I would ever criticise your husband to you. Your happiness was set on him, and we can only pray from our hearts that he will prove worthy of your love.

He is very lovable, and I am sure that he has fine, generous traits.

Your father has been completely won over by him."

"He likes me to be religious, mother. He says the church has cultivated the loveliest type of woman the world has ever seen."

"Then by fulfilling that ideal you will please him best."

"I shall try to be just what you have been to father--just as unselfish, just as devoted."

"I have made many mistakes, Jinny, but I don't think I have ever failed in love--not in love, at least."

Then the pain pa.s.sed out of her eyes, and because it was impossible for her to look on any fact in life except through the transfiguring idealism with which the ages had endowed her, she became immediately convinced that everything, even the unsettling of Oliver's opinions, had been arranged for the best. This a.s.surance was the more solacing because it was the result, not of external evidence, but of that instinctive decision of temperament which breeds the deepest conviction of all.

"Love is the only thing that really matters, isn't it, mother?"

"A pure and n.o.ble love, darling. It is a woman's life. G.o.d meant it so."

"You are so good! If I can only be half as good as you are."

"No, Jinny, I'm not really good. I have had many temptations--for I was born with a high temper, and it has taken me a lifetime to learn really to subdue it. I had--I have still an unfortunate pride. But for your father's daily example of humility and patience, I don't know how I could have supported the trials and afflictions we have known. Pray to be better than your mother, my child, if you want to become a perfect wife. What I am that seems good to you, your father has made me----"

"And father says that he would have been a savage but for you."

A tremor pa.s.sed through Mrs. Pendleton's thin bosom, and bending over, she smoothed a fine darn in the skirt of her alpaca dress.

"We have loved each other," she answered. "If you and Oliver love as much, you will be happy whatever comes to you." Then choking down the hard lump in her throat, she took up her leather key basket from the little table beside the bed, and moved slowly towards the door. "I must see about supper now, dear," she said in her usual voice of quiet cheerfulness.

Left to herself, Virginia opened the worn copy of the prayer-book, which she kept at her bedside, and read the marriage service from beginning to end, as she had done every day since her engagement to Oliver. The words seemed to her, as they seemed to her mother, to be almost divine in their n.o.bility and beauty. She was troubled by no doubt as to the inspired propriety of the canonical vision of woman. What could be more beautiful or more sacred than to be "given" to Oliver--to belong to him as utterly as she had belonged to her father? What could make her happier than the knowledge that she must surrender her will to his from the day of her wedding until the day of her death? She embraced her circ.u.mscribed lot with a pa.s.sion which glorified its limitations. The single gift which the ages permitted her was the only one she desired.

Her soul craved no adventure beyond the permissible adventure of being sought in marriage. Love was all that she asked of a universe that was overflowing with manifold aspects of life.

Beyond the window the tawny leaves of the paulownia were swinging in the October suns.h.i.+ne, and so gay they seemed that it was impossible to imagine them insensible to the splendour of the Indian Summer. Under the half bared boughs, on the green gra.s.s in the yard, those that had already fallen sped on, like a flock of frightened brown birds, towards the white paling fence of the churchyard.