The Voice of the People Part 41

"You aren't looking bright to-day," he said kindly, "but things will pull through, never fear--they always do, if you give them time."

Then he responded coolly to the general's cool nod, and, rejoining Tom, they went on arm in arm. In his large-minded manhood it had not occurred to him to connect the girl with the wrong done upon him--he knew her to be more weak than wicked, and, in her soft, pretty sadness, she reminded him of a half-drowned kitten.

During the next few months he frequently pa.s.sed Eugenia in the road.

Sometimes he did not look at her, and again he met her wistful gaze and spoke without a smile. Once he checked an eager movement towards her because he had met Bernard just ahead--and he hated him; once he had seen the carriage in the distance and had waited in a pa.s.sionate rush of remorse and love to hear her laughter as she talked with Dudley Webb.

They had faced each other at last with resolute eyes and unswerving wills. On his side was the pride of an innocent man accused, the bitterness of a proud man on an inferior plane; on hers, the recollection of that wild evening in the road, and the belated recognition of the debt she owed her race.

In the winter she went up to Richmond and he slowly forced himself to renounce her. He began to see his old dream as it was--an emotional chimera; a mental madness. As the year grew on he watched his long hope wither root and branch, until, with the resurrection of the spring, it lay still because there was no life left that might put forth. And when his hope was dead he told himself that his unhappiness died with it, that he might throw himself single-hearted into the work of his life.

VIII

The year pa.s.sed and was done with--leaves budded, expanded, fell again.

Eugenia watched their growth, fulfilment, and decay as she had watched them other seasons, though with eyes a thought widened by experience, a shade darkened by tears. At first she had suffered wildly, then pa.s.sively, at last resignedly. The colour rebloomed in her cheek, the gaiety rang back to her voice, for she was young, and youth is ever buoyant.

There was work for her to do on the place, and she did it cheerfully.

She studied farming with her father and overhauled the methods of the overseer, to the man's annoyance and the general's delight. "She tells me Varly isn't scientific," roared the general with rapturous enjoyment.

"A scientific overseer! She'll be asking for an honest politician next."

"I'm sure Varly is a very respectable man," protested Miss Chris in her usual position of defence. "The servants were always devoted to him before the war--that says a good deal."

"There's not a better man in the county," admitted the general, "or a worse farmer. Here I've let him go down hill at his own gait for more than thirty years, to be pulled up in the end by a chit of a girl. I wouldn't, if I were you, Eugie. He's old and he's slow."

"Oh! I'll promise not to hurt him," returned Eugenia. "I save him a lot of hard work, and he likes it."

She drew on her loose dogskin gloves and went out to overlook the shucking of the corn.

With the exercise in the open air she had gained in suppleness and brilliancy. It was the outdoor work that saved her spirit and her beauty--that gave her endurance for the indoor monotony and magnified the splendid optimism of her saddest hour. She was a woman born for happiness; when the Fates failed to accord it she defied them and found her own.

In the autumn news came that Nicholas was elected to the General a.s.sembly. The judge brought it, riding out on a bright afternoon to chat with the general before the blazing logs.

"The lad has a future," said the judge with a touch of pride. "Brains don't grow on blackberry vines;" then he laughed softly. "Caesar voted for him," he added.

The general slapped his knee.

"Caesar is a gentleman," he exclaimed. "He was the first darkey in Kingsborough to vote the Democratic ticket. I walked up to the polls with him and the boys cheered him. You weren't there, George."

The judge shook his head.

"They called it undue influence," he said; "but, on my honour, Tom, I never spoke a political word to Caesar in my life. Of course he'd heard me talk with Tom at dinner. He'd heard me say that the man of his race who would dare to vote with white men would be head and shoulders above his people, a man of mind, a man that any gentleman in the county would be proud to shake by the hand--but seek to influence Caesar! Never, sir!"

"Now, there's that Ishmael of mine," said the general aggrievedly. "He no sooner got his vote than he cast it just to spite me. I told the fool he didn't know any more about voting than the old mule Sairy did, and he said he didn't have to know 'nothin' cep'n his name.' He forgot that when they challenged him at the polls, but he voted all the same--voted in my face, sir."

They lighted their pipes and sang the praises of that idyllic period which they called "before the war," while Eugenia crept away into the shadows.

She was glad that Nicholas would go; glad, glad, glad--so glad that she wept a little in the cold of a dark corner.

A week later Dudley came down, and she met him with a friendliness that dismayed and disarmed him. Could a woman be so frankly cordial with a man she loved? Could she face a pa.s.sion that inspired her with such serene self-poise? He questioned these things, but he did not hesitate.

He was of a Virginian line of lovers, and he charged in courts.h.i.+p as courageously as his father had charged in battle. He was magnificent in his youthful ardour, and so fitted for success that it seemed already to cast a prophetic halo about his head.

"You are superb," Eugenia had said, half insolently, looking up at him as he stood in the firelight. "How odd that I never noticed it before."

"You are looking at yourself in my eyes," he returned gallantly.

She shook her head.

"There are so many women who like handsome men, it's a pity you can't fall in love with one," she said coldly.

"Am I to infer that you prefer ugly men?" he questioned.

"I--oh! I am too good-looking to care," she replied.

She sprang up suddenly and stood beside him. "We do look well together,"

she said with grave audacity.

He laughed. "I am flattered. It may weigh with you in your future plans.

Come, Eugie, let me love you!"

But her mood changed and she dragged him with her out into the autumn fields.

In the last days of November a long rain came--a ruinous autumnal rain that beat the white roads into livid streams of mud and sent the sad dead leaves in shapeless tatters to the earth. The glory of the fall had brought back the glory of her love; its death revived the agony of the long decay.

At night the rain throbbed upon the tin roof above her. Sometimes she would turn upon her pillow, stuffing the blankets about her ears; but, m.u.f.fled by the bedclothes, she heard always the incessant melancholy sound. She heard it beating on the naked roof, rus.h.i.+ng tumultuously to the overflowing pipes, dripping upon the wet stones of the gutter below, sweeping from the earth dead leaves, dead blossoms, dead desires.

In the day she watched it from the windows. The flower beds, desolated, formed muddy fountains, the gravel walk was a s.h.i.+ning rivulet, the sycamore held three yellow leaves that clung vainly to a sheltered bough, the aspen faced her, naked--only the impenetrable gloom of the cedars was secure--sombre and inviolate.

On the third day she went out into the rain; splas.h.i.+ng miles through the heavy roads and returning with a glow in her cheeks and the savour of the dampness in her mouth.

Taking off her wet garments she carried them to the kitchen to be dried.

With the needed exercise, her cheerful animation had returned.

In the brick kitchen a gloomy group of negroes surrounded the stove.

"Dar's gwine ter be a flood an' de ea'th hit's gwine ter pa.s.s away,"

lamented Aunt Verbeny, lifting the ladle from a huge pot, the contents of which she was energetically stirring. "Hit's gwine ter pa.s.s away wid de men en de cattle en de crops, en de black folks dey's gwine ter pa.s.s des' de same es dey wuz white."

"I'se monst'ous glad I'se got religion," remarked a strange little negro woman who had come over to sell a string of hares her husband had shot.

"De Lawd He begun ter git mighty pressin' las' mont', so I let 'im have His way. Blessed be de name er de Lawd! Is you a church member, Sis Delphy?"

"Yes, Lawd, a full-breasted member," responded Delphy, clamping the declivity of her bosom.

"I ain' got much use fur dis yer gittin' en ungittin' er salvation," put in Uncle Ish from the table where he was eating a late dinner of Aunt Verbeny's providing. "Dar's too much monkeyin' mixed up wid it fur me.

Hit's too much de work er yo' j'ints ter make me b'lieve hit's gwine ter salivate yo' soul. When my wife, Mandy, wuz 'live, I tuck 'n cyar'ed her long up ter one er dese yer revivals, en' ole Sis Saphiry Baker come 'long gittin' happy, en fo' de Lawd she rid 'er clean roun' de chu'ch.

Naw, suh, de religion I wanter lay holt on is de religion uv rest."

"I ain' never sarved my Lawd wid laziness," put in Aunt Verbeny reprovingly. "When He come arter me I ain' never let de ease er my limbs stan' in de way. Ef you can't do a little shoutin' on de ea'th, you're gwineter have er po' sho' ter keep de Lawd f'om overlookin' you at Kingdom Come."