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Later, and more seriously, he said to the girl:
"Every human being is the better for being free – women as well as men. Liberty to a human being is like sunshine and fresh air. Restraint is like medicine – excellent for those who are ill, but very bad indeed for healthy people. Did it ever occur to you, Agatha, that you never took a pill or a powder in your life? You haven't needed medicine because you've had air and sunshine; no more do you need restraint, and for the same reason. You are perfectly healthy in your mind as well as in your body."
"But, Chummie, you don't know how very ill regulated I am. Aunt Sarah and Aunt Jane disapprove very seriously of many things that I do."
"What things?"
"Well, they say, for example, that it is very unladylike for me to call you 'Chummie,' – that it indicates a want of that respect for age and superiority which every young person – you know I am only a 'young person' to them – should scrupulously cultivate."
"Well, now, let me give you warning, Miss Agatha Ronald; if you ever call me anything but 'Chummie,' I'll alter my will, and leave this plantation to the Abolitionist Society as an experiment station."
Nevertheless, Agatha Ronald was, as has been said at the beginning of this chapter, a particularly well ordered young gentlewoman so long as she remained as a guest with her aunts at The Oaks. She loved the gentle old ladies dearly, and strove with all her might, while with them, to comport herself in accordance with their standards of conduct on the part of a young gentlewoman.
Sometimes, however, her innocence misled her, as it had done on that morning when Baillie Pegram had met her at the bridge over Dogwood Branch. The spirit of the morning had taken possession of her on that occasion, and she had so far reverted from her condition of dame-nurtured grace into her habitual state of nature as to mount her horse and ride away without the escort even of a negro groom. It was not at all unusual at that time for young gentlewomen in Virginia to ride thus alone, but The Oaks ladies strongly disapproved the custom, as they disapproved all other customs that had come into being since their own youth had passed away, especially all customs that in any way tended to enlarge the innocent liberty of young women. On this point the good ladies were as rigidly insistent as if they had been the ladies superior of a convent of young nuns. They could not have held liberty for young gentlewomen in greater dread and detestation, had they believed, as they certainly did not, in the total depravity of womankind.
"It is not that we fear you would do anything wrong, dear," they would gently explain. "It is only that – well, you see a young gentlewoman cannot be too careful."
Agatha did not see, but she yielded to the prejudices of her aunts with a loyalty all the more creditable to her for the reason that she did not and could not share their views. On this occasion she had not thought of offending. It had not occurred to her that there could be the slightest impropriety in her desire to greet the morning on horseback, and certainly it had not entered her mind that she might meet Baillie Pegram and be compelled to accept a courtesy at his hands. She knew, as she rode silently homeward after that meeting at the bridge, that in this respect she had sinned beyond overlooking.
For Agatha Ronald knew that she must be on none but the most distant and formal terms with the master of Warlock. She had learned that lesson at Christmas-time, three months before. She had spent the Christmas season in Richmond, with some friends. There Baillie Pegram had met her for the first time since she had attained her womanhood – for he had been away at college, at law school, or on his travels at the time of all her more recent sojourns at The Oaks. He had known her very slightly as a shy and wild little girl, but the woman Agatha was a revelation to him, and her beauty not less than her charm of manner and her unusual intelligence, had fascinated him. He frequented the house of her Richmond friends, and had opportunities to learn more every day of herself. He did not pause to analyse his feeling for her; he only knew that it was quite different from any that he had ever experienced before. And Agatha, in her turn and in her candor, had admitted to herself that she "liked" young Pegram better than any other young man she had ever met.
No word of love had passed between these two, and both were unconscious of their state of mind, when their intercourse was suddenly interrupted. A note came to Baillie one day from Agatha, in which the frank and fearlessly honest young woman wrote:
"I am not to see you any more, Mr. Pegram. I am informed by my relatives that there are circumstances for which neither of us is responsible, which render it quite improper that you and I should be friends. I am very sorry, but I think it my duty to tell you this myself. I thank you for all your kindnesses to me before we knew about this thing."
That was absolutely all there was of the note, but it was quite enough. It had set Baillie to inquiring concerning a feud of which he vaguely knew the existence, but to which he had never before given the least attention.
That is how it came about that Agatha rode sadly homeward after the meeting at the bridge, wondering how she could have done otherwise than accept the use of Baillie Pegram's mare, and wondering still more what her aunts would say to her concerning the matter.
"Anyhow," she thought at last, "I've done no intentional wrong. Chummie would not blame me if he were here, and I am not sure that I shall accept much blame at anybody's else hands. I'll be good and submissive if I can, but – well, I don't know. Maybe I'll hurry back home to Chummie."
III
Jessamine and honeysuckle
It was a peculiarity of inherited quarrels between old Virginia families that they must never be recognised outwardly by any act of discourtesy, and still less by any neglect of formal attention where courtesy was called for. Such quarrels were never mentioned between the families that were involved in them, and equally they were never forgotten. Each member of either family owed it to himself to treat all members of the other family with the utmost deference, while never for a moment permitting that deference to lapse into anything that could be construed to mean forgiveness or forgetfulness.
Agatha, as we have seen, had twice violated the code under which such affairs were conducted; once in the note she had sent to Baillie Pegram in Richmond, and for the second time in giving him permission to call at The Oaks to inquire concerning her journey homeward on his mare. But on both occasions she had been out of the presence and admonitory influence of her aunts, and when absent from them, Agatha Ronald was not at all well regulated, as we know. She was given to acting upon her own natural and healthy-minded impulses, and such impulses were apt to be at war with propriety as propriety was understood and insisted upon at The Oaks.
But Baillie Pegram was not minded to make any mistake in a matter of so much delicacy and importance. He had received Agatha's permission to make that formal call of inquiry, which was customary on all such occasions, and she in her heedlessness had probably meant what she said, as it was her habit to do. But Baillie knew very well that her good aunts would neither expect nor wish him to call upon their niece. At the same time he must not leave his omission to do so unexplained. He must send a note of apology, not to Agatha, – as he would have done to any other young woman under like circumstances, – but to her aunts instead. In a note to them he reported his sudden summons to Richmond, adding that as he was uncertain as to the length of his stay there, he begged the good ladies to accept his absence from home as his sufficient excuse for not calling to inquire concerning the behaviour of his mare during their niece's journey upon that rather uncertain-minded animal's back. This note he gave to Sam for delivery, when Sam brought him the horse he had ordered but no longer wanted.
Baillie Pegram had all the pride of his lineage and his class. He had sought to forget all about Agatha Ronald after her astonishing little note had come to him some months before in Richmond, and until this morning he had believed that he had accomplished that forgetfulness. But now the thought of her haunted him ceaselessly. All the way to Richmond her beauty and her charm, as she had stood there by the roadside, filled his mind with visions that tortured him. He tried with all his might to dismiss the visions and to think of something else. He bought the daily papers and tried to interest himself in their excited utterances, but failed. Red-hot leaders, that were meant to stir all Virginian souls to wrathful resolution, made no impression on his mind. He read them, and knew not what he had read. He was thinking of the girl by the roadside, and his soul was fascinated with the memory of her looks, her words, her finely modulated voice, her ways, as she had tried to refuse his offer of assistance. Had he been of vain and conceited temper, he might have flattered himself with the thought that her very hauteur in converse with him implied something more and better than indifference on her part toward him. But that thought did not enter his mind. He thought instead:
"What a sublimated idiot I am! That girl is nothing to me – worse than nothing. Circumstances place her wholly outside my acquaintance, except in the most formal fashion. She is a young gentlewoman of my own class – distinctly superior to all the other young gentlewomen of that class whom I have ever met, – and ordinarily it would be the most natural thing in the world for me to pay my addresses to her. But in this case that is completely out of the question. To me at least she is the unattainable. I must school myself to think of her no more, and that ought to be easy enough, as I am not in love with her and am not permitted even to think of being so. It's simply a craze that has taken possession of me for a time, – the instinct of the huntsman, to whom quarry is desirable in the precise ratio of its elusiveness. There, I've thought the whole thing out to an end, and now I must give my mind to something more important."
Yet even in the midst of the excitement that prevailed in Richmond that day, Baillie Pegram did not quite succeed in driving out of his mind the memory of the little tableau by the bridge, or forgetting how supremely fascinating Agatha Ronald had seemed, as she had haughtily declined his offer of service, and still more as she had reluctantly accepted it, and ridden away after so cleverly evading his offer to help her mount.
It had been his purpose to remain in Richmond for a week or more, but on the third morning he found himself homeward bound, and filled with vain imaginings. Just why he had started homeward before the intended time, it would have puzzled him to say; but several times he caught himself wondering if there would be awaiting him at Warlock an answer to his formal note of apology for not having made a call which nobody had expected him to make. He perfectly knew that no such answer was to be expected, and especially that if there should be any answer at all, it must be one of formal and repellent courtesy, containing no message from Agatha of the kind that his troubled imagination persisted in conceiving in spite of the scorn with which he rejected the absurd conjecture.
Nevertheless as he neared home he found himself half-expecting to find there an answer to his note, and he found it. It gave him no pleasure in the reading, and in his present state of mind he could not find even a source of amusement in the stilted formality of its rhetoric. It had been written by one of Agatha's aunts, and signed by both of them. Thus it ran:
"The Misses Ronald of The Oaks feel themselves deeply indebted to Mr. Baillie Pegram for his courtesy to their niece and guest, Miss Agatha Ronald, on the occasion of her recent misadventure. They have also to thank Mr. Pegram most sincerely for having taken upon himself the disagreeable duty of giving painless death to the unfortunate animal that their niece was riding upon that occasion. They have to inform Mr. Pegram that as Miss Agatha Ronald is making her preparations for an almost immediate return to her maternal grandfather's plantation of Willoughby, in Fauquier, and as she will probably begin her journey before Mr. Pegram's return from Richmond, there will scarcely be opportunity for his intended call to inquire concerning her welfare after her homeward ride upon the mare which he so graciously placed at her disposal at a time of sore need. They beg to report that the beautiful animal behaved with the utmost gentleness during the journey.
"The Oaks ladies beg to assure Mr. Pegram of their high esteem, and to express their hope that he will permit none of the events of this troubled time to prevent him from dining with them at The Oaks on the third Friday of each month, as it has been his courteous custom to do in the past. The Misses Ronald remain,
"Most respectfully,
"SARAH RONALD,
"JANE RONALD."
This missive was more than a little bewildering. Its courtesy was extreme. Even in practically telling Baillie Pegram not to call upon their niece, the good ladies had adroitly managed to make their message seem rather one of regret than of prohibition. Certainly there was not a word in the missive at which offence could be taken, and not an expression lacking, the lack of which could imply negligence. The young man read it over several times before he could make out its exact significance, and even then he was not quite sure that he fully understood.
"It reads like a 'joint note' from the Powers to the Grand Turk," he said to the young man – his bosom friend – whom he had found awaiting him at Warlock on his return. This young man, Marshall Pollard, had been Baillie Pegram's intimate at the university, and now that university days were done, it was his habit to come and go at will at Warlock, the plantation of which Baillie was owner and sole white occupant with the exception of a maiden aunt who presided over his household.
The intimacy between these two young men was always a matter of wonder to their friends. They had few tastes in common, except that both had a passionate love for books. Baillie Pegram was fond of fishing and shooting and riding to hounds. He loved a horse from foretop to fetlock. His friend cared nothing for sport of any kind, and very often he walked over long distances rather than "jolt on horseback," as he explained. He was thoroughly manly, but of dreamy, introspective moods and quiet tastes. But these two agreed in their love of books, and especially of such rare old books as abounded in the Warlock library, the accumulation of generations of cultivated and intellectual men and women. They agreed, too, in their fondness for each other.
Marshall Pollard was never regarded as a guest at Warlock, or treated as such. He came and went at will, giving no account of either his comings or his goings. He did precisely as he pleased, and so did his host, neither ever thinking it necessary to offer an apology for leaving the other alone for a day or for a week, as the case might be. Pollard had his own quarters in the rambling old house, with perfect liberty for their best furnishing. Often the two friends became interested together in a single subject of literary or historical study, and would pore over piles of books in the great hallway if it rained, and out under the spreading trees on the lawn if the weather were fair. Often, on the other hand, their moods would take different courses, and for days together they would scarcely see each other except at meal-times. Theirs was a friendship that trusted itself implicitly.
"It's an ideal friendship, this of yours and mine," said Marshall, in his dreamy way, one day. "It never interferes with the perfect liberty of either. What a pity it is that it must come to an end!"
"But why should it come to an end?" asked his less introspective friend.
"O, because one or the other of us will presently take to himself a wife," was the answer.
"But why should that make a difference? It will not if I am the one to marry first. That will only make your life at Warlock the pleasanter for you. It will give you two devoted friends instead of one."
"It will do nothing of the kind," answered Pollard, with that confidence of tone which suggests that a matter has been completely thought out. "Our friendship is based upon the fact that we both care more for each other than for anybody else. When you get married, you'll naturally and properly care more for your wife than for me. You'd be a brute if you didn't, and I'd quarrel with you. After your marriage we shall continue to be friends, of course, but not in the old way. I'll come to Warlock whenever I please, and go away whenever it suits me to go, just as I do now. But I shall make my bow to my lady when I come, and my adieus to her when I take my departure. I'll enjoy doing that, because I know that your wife will be a charming person, worthy of your devotion to her. But it will not be the same as now. And it will be best so. 'Male and female created he them,' and it would be an abominable shame if you were to remain single for many years to come. It is your duty, and it will presently be your highest pleasure to make some loving and lovable woman as happy as God intended her to be. Better than that – the love of a good woman will make your life richer and worthier than it is now. It will ennoble you, and fit you for the life that your good qualities destine you to lead. You see I've been studying your case, Baillie, and I've made up my mind that there never was a man who needed to marry more than you do. You're a thoroughly good fellow now – but that's about all. You'll be something mightily better than that, when you have the inspiration of a good woman's love to spur you out of your present egotistic self-content, and give you higher purposes in life than those of the well-bred, respectable citizen that you are. You pay your debts; you take excellent care of your negroes; you serve your neighbours as an unpaid magistrate and all that, and it is all very well. But you are capable of much higher things, and when you get yourself a wife worthy of you, you'll rise to a new level of character and conduct."
"And how about you?" the friend asked.
"O, as for me, I don't count. You see, I'm that anomalous thing, a Virginian who doesn't ride horses or care for sport. I'm abnormal. Women like me in a way, and the more elderly ones among them do me the honour to approve me. But that is all. Young women are apt to fall in love with robuster young fellows."
"But you are robust," quickly answered Baillie, "and altogether manly."
"No, I'm not. I'm physically strong enough, of course, but strength isn't all of robustness. I can lift as much as you can, but I don't like to lift, and you do. I can jump as high, but I don't like to jump, while you do. When we were canoeing in Canada a year ago, I could shoot a rapid as well as you, but I'd very much rather have walked down the bank, leaving the guide to navigate the canoe, while you often sent the guide about his business and rebuked his impertinence in offering help where you wanted to do your own helping of yourself without any interference on his part. I remember that just as we were starting on the long and difficult journey to the Lake of the Woods, you dismissed the whole crew of half-breed hangers-on, and we set out alone. I would never have done that, greatly as I detested the unclean company. I went with you, of course, but I went relying upon you for guidance, just as I should have gone relying upon the half-breeds if you had not been with me. We two are differently built, I tell you. Now, even here at Warlock, I send for Sam when I want my studs changed from one shirt to another, while only this morning you cleaned your own boots rather than wait for Sam after you had whistled for him thrice. I don't think I'm lazier than you are, and I know I'm not more afraid of anything. But you rejoice in toilsome journeys, while I prefer to take them easily, hiring other people to do the hard work. You relish danger just as you do red pepper, while I prefer safety and a less pungent seasoning. Now, young women of our kind and class prefer your kind of man to my kind, and so you are likely to marry, while I am not. Another thing. I saw you throw aside a copy of Shakespeare the other day without even marking your place in the volume, because a company of gentlewomen had driven up to visit your aunt, and you completely forgot your Shakespeare in thinking of the gentlewomen. Now I, in a like case, should have edged a little farther around the tree, read on to the end of the scene, marked my place, and only then have discovered that the gentlewomen had driven up. Women like your ways better than mine, and they are entirely right."
In all this, Marshall Pollard exaggerated somewhat, in playful fashion, and to his own discrediting. But in the main his analysis of the difference between himself and his friend was quite correct.
It was to this friend that Baillie Pegram spoke of the note he had received from The Oaks ladies, saying that it read "like a joint note from the Powers to the Grand Turk."
"Tell me about it," answered Marshall.
"O, read it for yourself," Baillie replied, handing him the sheet. "The stilted ceremoniousness of it," he presently added, "is easy enough to understand, but I can't, for the life of me, see why the good ladies of The Oaks felt it incumbent upon themselves to write to me at all. They are always scrupulously attentive to forms and conventionalities when discharging any obligation of courtesy, and in this case they have had the rather embarrassing duty imposed upon them of telling me not to call upon their niece, who is also their guest. That sufficiently accounts for the stiff formality of their rhetoric, and their scrupulous attention to the niceties of courtesy in the embarrassing case, but – "
"Remember, also," broke in Marshall Pollard, "that they are 'maiden ladies,' while you, my dear, unsuspicious boy, are a particularly marriageable young man."
"Don't talk nonsense, Marshall; this is a serious matter," answered Baillie.
"It isn't nonsense at all that I'm talking," said his friend. "I'm speaking only words of 'truth and soberness.' The Misses Sarah and Jane Ronald, as I understand the matter, are highly bred and blue-bloodedly descended Virginia gentlewomen, who happen to be as yet unmarried. Very naturally and properly they adopt a guarded manner in addressing a missive to a peculiarly marriageable young gentleman like you, lest their intentions be misinterpreted."
"Why, they are old enough," Baillie replied, "to be my grandmothers!"
"True," answered the other, "but you wouldn't venture to suggest that fact to the mind of either of them, would you, Baillie?"
"Certainly not, but – "
"Certainly not. And certainly they in their turn do not give special weight to that fact. When will you learn to understand women a little bit, Baillie? Don't you know that no woman ever thinks of herself as too old or too ugly or too unattractive to fascinate a young man? Especially no well-bred spinster, accustomed to be courted in her youth, and treated with deference in her middle age, ever realises that she is so old as to be privileged to lay aside those reserves with which she was trained in youth to guard her maidenly modesty against the ugly imputation of a desire to 'throw herself at the head' of a young gentleman possessed of good manners, good looks, an old family name, and a plantation of five or six thousand acres? Now, don't let your vanity run away with you, my boy. I do not mean for one moment to suggest that either of The Oaks ladies would think of accepting an offer of marriage from you or anybody else. I am too gallant to imagine that they have not had abundant opportunities of marriage in their day. At the same time, propriety is propriety, you know, and the conduct of an 'unattached female' cannot be too carefully guarded against the possibility of misinterpretation."
Baillie laughed, and presently fell into silence for a space. Finally his companion lazily said:
"It is time for you to be off, if you are going."
"Going where?"
"Why, to dine at The Oaks, of course. You are invited for the third Friday of each month, if I understand the matter correctly, and this is the third Friday of April, I believe."
"Why, so it is. I hadn't thought of the date. By Jove, I'll go! There's just a chance that she hasn't started yet."
"It's awkward, of course," said Pollard, in his meditative, philosophical way, "especially with this war coming on. But these things never will adjust themselves to circumstances in a spirit of rationality and accommodation."
"What on earth do you mean, Marshall? I don't understand."
"Of course not. The bird caught in the net of the fowler does not usually see just what is the matter with him."
"But Marshall – "
"O, I'll explain as well as I can. I mean only that you are in love with Agatha Ronald. Of course you're totally unconscious of your state of mind, but you'll find it out after awhile. It is an utterly irrational state of mind for you to be in, but the malady often takes that form, I believe, and I've done you a service in telling you about it, for as a rule a man never finds out what's the matter with him in such a case until some friend tells him. He just goes on making a fool of himself until somebody else jogs his elbow with information which he alone has need of. Now suppose you tell me all about this case. What is it that stands between you and the young lady?"
Again Baillie laughed. But this time the laugh was accompanied by a tell-tale flushing of the face.
"The whole thing is ridiculous," he presently said. "It couldn't have happened anywhere but in this dear old Virginia of ours. I'll tell you all I know about it. My grandfather whom I never saw in my life, and Miss Agatha Ronald's father, who died before she was born, were friends, like you and me. They owned adjoining plantations, – Warlock and The Oaks, both held by original grants to their great-grandfathers, made in the early colonial times. But the county clerk's office burned up, a generation or two ago, and with it all the records that could show where the boundaries between these two plantations lay. In trying to determine those boundaries one unlucky day, when both had probably taken too much or too little Madeira for dinner, the two irascible old gentlemen fell into a dispute as to where the boundary line should run through a wretched little scrap of ground down there on Nib's Creek, which never had been cultivated, never has been, and never will be. The thing was not worth a moment's thought in itself, but the gout got into it, or in some other way the two absurd old gentlemen's dignity got itself involved, and so they quarrelled. If there had been time, they would have laughed the thing off presently over a mint-julep. But unhappily one of them died, and that made a permanent family quarrel of the dispute. All the women-kind took it up as an inherited feud, which made it impossible that any Pegram should have aught to do with any Ronald, or any Ronald with any Pegram. So much, it was held, was due to the tender memory of the dead. But, after our Virginian tradition, the individual members of both families have been held bound to treat each other with the extreme of formal but quite unfriendly courtesy. That is why I have been required, from my fifteenth birthday onward, to dine at The Oaks on the third Friday of every month when I happened to be in the county on that day. I had only the vaguest notion of the situation until last Christmas, when circumstances brought it to my attention. Then I made my good Aunt Catherine tell me all about it. When I learned what the matter in dispute was, I sent for the family lawyer, and ordered him to make out a deed to The Oaks ladies, conveying all my right, title, and interest in the disputed piece of land to them 'for and in consideration of the sum of one dollar in hand paid, receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged.' I sent the deed to The Oaks ladies, with a perhaps too effusive note, asking them to accept it as an evidence of my desire to make an end of a quarrel which had long alienated those who should have remained friends."
"What an idiot you made of yourself by doing that!" broke in young Pollard.
"Of course, and I soon found it out. The Oaks ladies wrote that they had never, by any act or word, recognised the existence of a quarrel; that if such quarrel existed, it lay between the dead, who had not authorised them or me to adjust it; and that they, holding only a life interest in The Oaks, by virtue of their 'poor brother's' kindly will, were not authorised either to alienate any part of the fee, or to add to it, by deed of gift or otherwise; that their 'poor brother' had never been accustomed to accept gifts of land or of anything else from others, and finally that they were sure his spirit would not sanction the purchase, for the miserable consideration of one dollar, of a piece of land which, till the time of his death, he had believed to be absolutely his own. There was no use arguing such a case or explaining it. So I have let it rest, and have gone once a month to dine with The Oaks ladies, as a matter of duty. It's all absurd, but – "
"But it interferes with your interest in Miss Agatha," broke in the friend. "Take my advice, and don't let it. Off with you to The Oaks, and ten to one you'll find the young lady still there. The date of her departure was not fixed when this diplomatic note was despatched, and as you were not expected to receive the communication for a week to come, she is probably still there. If so, by the way, please don't mention my presence at Warlock. You see – well, I have met the young lady at her grandfather's, and properly I ought to pay my respects to her, now that she's a guest on a plantation adjoining that on which I am staying. But I don't want to. Your saddle-horses jolt so confoundedly, and besides, I've discovered up-stairs a copy of old T. Gordon's seventeenth century translation of Tacitus, with his essays on that author, and his bitter-tongued comments on all preceding translations of his favourite classic. I want an afternoon with the old boy."
"You certainly are a queer fellow, Marshall," said Baillie.
"How so? Because I like old books? Or is it because I don't like the jolting of your horses?"
"Why haven't you told me that you knew Miss Agatha Ronald?"
"I have told you – within the last minute."
"But why didn't you tell me before?"
"O, well, – perhaps I didn't think of it. Never mind that. It is time for you to be off, unless you want the soup and your welcome to grow cold while waiting for you."
When Baillie had ridden away, Marshall Pollard sat idly for a time in the porch. Then tossing aside the book he had been holding in his hand but not reading, he rose and went to his room. There he searched among his belongings for a little Elzevir volume, and took from between its leaves a sprig of dried yellow jessamine.
"It is a poisonous flower," he said, as he tossed it out of the window. "She warned me of that when I took it from her hand. She was altogether right."
Apparently pursuing a new-born purpose, the young man returned to the porch, broke off a sprig of honeysuckle leaves – for the vine was not yet in flower – and carefully placed it between the pages of the Elzevir.
"The honeysuckle," he said to himself, "is unlike the yellow jessamine. It is sweet and wholesome. So is the friendship of the man from whose vine I have plucked it."
IV
In revolt
When Agatha reached The Oaks, mounted upon Baillie Pegram's mare, her reception at the hands of her aunts was one of almost stunned astonishment. The two good ladies had learned an hour before her coming that she had ridden away alone that morning while yet they had slept, and they had carefully prepared a lecture upon that exceeding impropriety, for delivery on the young woman's return.
But when they saw her dismount from Baillie Pegram's mare, they were well-nigh speechless with horror at her depravity. The deliverance that had been so carefully prepared for her chastening no longer met the requirements of the case. A new and far severer rebuke must be extemporised, and the necessity of that was an additional offence on the part of the young woman who had forced it upon them. They were not accustomed to speak extemporaneously on any subject of importance. To do so involved the danger of saying too much, or saying it less effectively than they wished, or – worse still – leaving unsaid things that they very much wished to say. In response to their horrified questionings, Agatha made the simplest and most direct statement possible.
"The morning was fine, and I wanted to ride. I rode as far as Dogwood Branch. There my poor horse – the one that my grandfather sent down for me to ride while here – met with a mishap. His foot went through a hole in the bridge, and in his struggle to extricate it, he broke his leg. Mr. Pegram came along and released the poor beastie's foot, but it was too late. So he insisted upon my taking his mare, and showed me that I couldn't refuse. He sent his servant to ride on a mule behind me in case I should have trouble with his only partially broken mare. He promised to put my poor horse out of his misery. There. That's all there is to tell."
The little speech was made in a tone and with a manner that suggested difficult self-restraint. When it was ended the two good aunts sat for a full minute looking at the girl with eyes that were eloquent of reproach – a reproach that for the moment could find no fit words for its expression. At last the torrent came – not with a rushing violence of speech, but with a steady, overwhelming flow. The girl stood still, seemingly impassive.
"Will you not be seated?" presently asked Aunt Sarah.
"If you don't mind, I prefer to stand," she answered, in the gentlest, most submissive tone imaginable, for Agatha – angry and outraged – was determined to maintain her self-control to the end. Her gentle submissiveness of seeming deceived her censors to their undoing. Satisfied that they might rebuke her to their hearts' content, they proceeded, adding one word of bitter reproach and condemnation to another, and waxing steadily stronger in their righteous wrath. Still the girl stood like a soldier under a fire which he is forbidden to return. Still she controlled her countenance and restrained herself from speech. Only a slight flushing of the face, and now and then a tremor of the lip, gave indication of emotion of any kind.
Not until the storm had completely expended its wrath upon her head did Agatha Ronald open her lips. Then she spoke as Agatha Ronald:
"Will you please order my carriage to be ready for me on Saturday morning, Aunt Sarah? My maid is too ill to travel to-morrow or the next day. But by Saturday morning she will be well enough, and I shall begin my journey to Willoughby at nine o'clock, if you will kindly order a cup of coffee served half an hour before the usual breakfast-time on Saturday."
She departed instantly from the room, giving no time or opportunity for reply or remonstrance.
"Perhaps we have spoken too severely, Jane," said Aunt Sarah.
Perhaps they had. At any rate, it had been Agatha's purpose to remain a full month longer at The Oaks before beginning the long homeward carriage journey which alone Colonel Archer permitted to his grandchild. Railroads were new in those days, and Colonel Archer had not reconciled himself to them.
"They are convenient for carrying freight," he said, "but a young lady isn't freight. She should travel in her own carriage."
Later in the day Agatha reappeared, as gentle and smiling as usual, and as attentive as ever to the comfort of her aunts. Her manner was perfect in its docility, for she had decided that so long as she should remain under their roof, it was her duty to herself, and incidentally to her aunts, to minister in every way she could to their pleasure, and to obey their slightest indicated wishes implicitly. They were misled somewhat by her manner, which they construed to be an indication of submission.
"You will surely not think of leaving us on Saturday, dear, now that you have thought the matter over calmly," said Aunt Sarah; "and perhaps we spoke too severely this morning. But you will overlook that, I am sure, in view of the concern we naturally feel for your bringing up."
A bitter and convincing speech was on the girl's lips ready for delivery, – a speech in which she should declare her independence, and assert her right as a woman fully grown to determine her conduct for herself within the limits of perfect innocence, – but she drove it back into her heart, and restrained her utterance to the single sentence:
"I shall begin my journey on Saturday morning."
Agatha Ronald was in revolt against an authority which she deemed oppressive, and such revolt was natural enough on the part of a daughter of Virginia whose ancestry included three signers of the Declaration of Independence, and at least half a dozen fighting soldiers of the Revolution. It was in her blood to resent and resist injustice and to defy the authority that decreed injustice. But after the fashion of those revolutionary ancestors of hers, she would do everything with due attention to "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." She had decided to quit The Oaks because she could not and would not longer submit to a discipline which she felt to be arbitrary, unreasonable, and unjust. But she was determined to be as gentle and as gentlewomanly as possible in the manner of her leaving. It was her fixed purpose never again to visit that plantation – her birthplace – until she should be summoned thither to take possession as its sole inheritor, but she let slip no hint of this determination to distress her aunts, who, after all, meant only kindness to her by their severity.
"I'll say nothing about it," she resolved. "I'll just go back to Chummie. He understands me, and I'll never leave him again."
V
