Part 11 (2/2)
”Is she Abby's mother?”
”Yes, but you'd never imagine they were any relation. Abby gave me more trouble than any girl I ever taught. She never would learn the multiplication table, and I don't believe to this day she knows it.
There isn't any harm in her except that she is a scatter-brain, and will make eyes or burst. I sometimes think it isn't her fault--that she was just born man-crazy.”
”She's awfully good fun,” he laughed.
”Are you going to her garden party on Wednesday?”
”I accepted before I quarrelled with Uncle Cyrus, but I'll have to get out of it now.”
”Oh, I wouldn't. All the pretty girls in town will be there.”
”Are there any plain ones? And what becomes of them?”
”The Lord only knows! Old Judge Ba.s.sett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!”
For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. ”Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?” he asked.
”She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss w.i.l.l.y Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on.”
He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby.
”Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair,” he said.
”Then you are going?”
”Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family.”
”Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance.
n.o.body ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl.
You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it.”
When he returned from a.s.sisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the ma.n.u.script to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal.
The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts.
What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Pa.s.sion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life.
Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams a.s.sumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--”What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?” So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work.
CHAPTER VIII
WHITE MAGIC
In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss w.i.l.l.y Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see ”Jinny” or ”Miss Jinny dressed for the party,” and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, ”Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss w.i.l.l.y won't get the bows right.” At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast.
Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss w.i.l.l.y as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: ”I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?” Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. ”You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse,” she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness.
<script>