Chapter II: Part 2

"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

_AT THE OAKS_

When Baillie Pegram rode into The Oaks grounds on that third Friday of April, 1861, the first person he encountered was none other than Agatha. She was gowned all in white, except that she had tied a cherry-coloured ribbon about her neck. She was wholly unbonneted, and was armed with a little gardening implement--hoe on one side and miniature rake on the other. She was busy over a flower-bed, and the young man, rounding a curve in the shrubbery, came upon her, to the complete surprise of both.

The situation might have been embarrassing but for the ease and perfect self-possession with which the girl accepted it. She greeted her visitor, to his astonishment, without any of the hauteur that had marked her demeanour on the occasion of their last previous meeting. Here at The Oaks she felt herself under the entirely adequate protection of her aunts. She had therefore no occasion to stand upon the defensive. Out there at the bridge she had been herself solely responsible for her conduct, and dependent upon herself for the maintenance of her dignity. Here Mr. Baillie Pegram was the guest of her people, while out there he had been a person casually and unwillingly encountered, and not on any account to be permitted any liberty of intercourse. Besides all these conclusive differences of circumstance, there was the additional fact that Agatha was in revolt against authority, and very strongly disposed to maintain her perfect freedom of innocent action. So she gave her visitor a garden-gloved hand as he dismounted, and slowly walked with him toward the house.

"I attended an opera once," she chattered, "when I was a very little girl. I remember that I thought the basso a porpoise, and the tenor a conceited popinjay, and the prima donna a fat woman, but I fell completely in love with the haymakers in the chorus. So whenever I go gardening I find myself instinctively trying to make myself look as like them as I can. That, I suppose, is why I tied a red ribbon about my neck this morning."

Here Baillie Pegram missed an opportunity to make a particularly gallant and flattering speech. To any other woman, under like circumstances, he would have said something of her success in making a charmingly attractive picture of herself. But there was much of reverence in his admiration for Agatha, and he felt that a merely complimentary speech addressed to her would be a frivolous impertinence. So instead he asked:

"Do you often go out gardening?"

"O, yes, always when the weather permits, and sometimes when it forbids. At Willoughby I've often gone out in a waterproof to train my flowers and vines. I'm just going away from The Oaks, and I've been digging up a hideously formal bed which the gardener's soul delights in, and sowing mixed portulaca instead of the priggish plants. Portulaca smiles at you, you know, when you get up soon enough in the morning to see it in its glory. But I'll never see the smiles in this case."

"But why not?"

"Why, I'm leaving The Oaks on Saturday, you know,--or rather you do not know,--and I'm not coming back for a long, long time."

"May I again presume to ask why not?"

"O, well, I must go to my grandfather. If I don't he'll enlist or join a company, or get a commission, or whatever else it is that a man does when he makes a soldier out of himself. You see I'm the only person who can manage my grandfather."

"But surely, at his age--"

"O, yes, I know. He's over eighty now, but you don't know him very well, or you'd understand. He was a soldier under Jackson at New Orleans, and a colonel in the Mexican War, and he'll go into this war, too, if I don't go home and tell him he mustn't. I'm going to-morrow morning."

Manifestly the girl wanted to chatter. Women often do that when they are anxious to avoid serious conversation. If men never do it, it is only because they lack the intellectual alertness necessary. They hem and haw, and make stupid remarks about the weather instead, and succeed only in emphasising the embarrassment which a woman would completely bury under charming chatter.

"You haven't seen my aunts yet, I suppose?" Miss Agatha presently asked.

"No. I'm just arriving at The Oaks. I dine here, you know, on the third Friday of every month."

"Yes--so I've heard. I don't think the aunties expected you to-day. They'll be glad to see you, of course, but I think they thought you were still in Richmond."

Baillie wondered if this was a covert rebuke to him for having ventured upon the premises while Agatha was still there. The girl was not altogether an easy person to understand. In any case her remark revealed the fact that the question of his coming had been discussed in the house and decided in the negative. It was with some embarrassment, therefore, that he presented himself to those formidable personages, The Oaks ladies, and tried to treat his own coming quite as a matter of course. But if his presence was in any wise unwelcome to them, there was nothing in their demeanour to suggest the fact. They expressed no surprise whatever, and only a placid, well-bred self-congratulation that absence had not deprived them of the pleasure of his company at dinner, as they had feared that it might. Then one of them added:

"It is unfortunate that Agatha is to dine at The Forest to-day, with our cousins, the Misses Blair. By the way," tinkling a bell, "it is time to order the carriage, and for you to change your gown, Agatha, dear."

Baillie Pegram happened to catch sight of the young girl's face as these words were spoken, and he read there enough of surprise to convince him that if it had been previously arranged for her to drive to The Forest for dinner, she at least had heard nothing of the matter until now. But whether the surprise reflected in her face was one of pleasure or the reverse, she gave him no chance to guess. She merely glanced at the tall and slowly ticking clock, and said:

"I'll go at once, auntie. I did not know it was so late. Excuse the abruptness of my leave-taking, Mr. Pegram, and let me say good-bye, for I leave for Willoughby to-morrow morning."

It was all an admirable bit of acting--the more admirable, Baillie thought, for the reason that the scene had been suddenly extemporised and not rehearsed--for he was satisfied that Agatha at least had been completely surprised by the announcement that she was to dine at The Forest that day.

Unfortunately the acting was destined to be wasted, for almost immediately after Agatha's departure for her chamber, a carriage drove up, and Baillie gallantly assisted Miss Blair herself to alight from it. She greeted her cousins of The Oaks effusively in the ceaseless speech with which it was her practice to meet and greet her friends.

"Isn't it good of me, Cousin Sarah and Cousin Jane? I had a positive headache to-day, but I was determined to drive over and dine with you, so as to bid Agatha good-bye. Where is the dear child? You see we heard only this morning that she had changed her plans and was going to leave us to-morrow. So I just had to come and dine"--and so forth, through a speech that fortunately gave The Oaks ladies time a-plenty in which to collect their wits and avoid all appearance of discomfiture.

"You are always so good and thoughtful," said Miss Sarah, as soon as Miss Blair left a little hole in her conversation. "We knew you'd want to see Agatha before she left, and we were just planning to send her to you for dinner. In fact she's gone up to dress. But this is so much better, particularly as we have Mr. Baillie Pegram with us, too. This is his regular day, you know, and he is always so mindful of his engagements. We had feared we should miss seeing him to-day, as he was away in Richmond; but he got home in time, and he never fails us when within reach. He has an admirable habit of punctuality which the other young men of our rather lax time might emulate with advantage."

Here was Baillie Pegram's opportunity, but he missed it. If he had possessed one-half or one-tenth the tact that Agatha had shown fifteen minutes before, he would have protested that, much to his regret, he could not remain to dinner that day, as he had a guest of his own at Warlock, and had ridden over only to make his apologies and express his regret. But Baillie Pegram, not being a woman, did not think of the right thing to say until it was one full minute too late, wherefore, of course, it would not do for him to say it at all.

What a pity it is that men can't be women--sometimes! Just for lack of that tact which is instinctive in a woman, the master of Warlock was doomed to dine that day under a sense of intrusion on his part, which certainly did not contribute to his enjoyment of the dinner or the company. But he had only himself to blame, and, like the resolute fellow that he was, he determined to bear the consequences of his blundering stupidity with the best grace he could. He professed the keenest delight in the unexpected pleasure of having Miss Blair for his fellow guest, adding, with an obeisance to The Oaks ladies, "Though of course one needs no other company than that of our hostesses themselves, to make the day of a dinner at The Oaks altogether delightful."

Obviously the young man was improving in tactfulness under the stimulus of circumstances.

When dinner was served half an hour later, he gave his arm to Miss Sarah, and entered the stately but gloomy old dining-room, with its high-backed, carved mahogany chairs, its stained-glass cathedral windows, and its general atmosphere of solemnity and depression, with such grace as a resolute spirit could command. He managed to taste the dishes as they were served, and to carve without a mishap of any kind, but in the matter of conversation he was certainly not brilliant, though he had the approaching war for his theme.

After the old English custom which survived in Virginia, the wine--a rich old Madeira--was not served until the dessert was removed. Then it came on with the cigars. The ladies sipped a single glass each, and rose, whereupon the young man gallantly held open the great door, bowing as the womankind took their departure.

When they had gone, there being no gentleman present except himself, young Pegram was left alone with the wine, the cigars, a single wax candle for cigar-lighting purposes,--and Henry. Henry was the perfectly trained butler of the establishment, a butler taught from childhood, by his late master, to comport himself always with the dignity of a diplomat who has dined. He stood bolt upright behind the young man's chair, eager to anticipate every want, and anticipating them all without a false movement or any suggestion of hurry. Henry had presided as butler in his late master's establishment when that master kept "open house" as a distinguished senator in Washington, and it was the serving-man's boast that he "knew what a gentleman wants and when he wants it."

But Henry's very propriety became irksome to Baillie Pegram presently. It reminded him of his own lack of any ease except a forcibly assumed one. "Henry feels himself in his proper place," the young man reflected. "I do not."

It was not the young man's habit to take more than a glass or two of wine after dinner, and on this occasion he had no relish even for that small allowance. Yet he sat with it for a sufficient time to show proper respect for the hospitality of the house. He held his glass up between him and the stained-glass windows, and went through all the motions of watching the play of colours through the amber liquid, quite as if his relish for it had been that of a confirmed _bon vivant_. Finally he lighted a fresh cigar, and said to Henry: "It is quite warm. I think I'll finish my cigar out among the shrubbery. Please say to the ladies that I'll join them within half an hour."

He was not destined, however, to fulfil this promise. For, as he passed out into the shrubbery, he encountered Miss Agatha by an accident which that young lady had in all probability arranged with the utmost care, as women do sometimes. She very much wanted speech with Baillie.

"I want to thank you, Mr. Pegram," she said, eagerly, "for not making a scene. It was very hard on you--the situation, I mean--and you have spared me at every point. Perhaps you had better take your leave now as quickly as you can."

But the young man's courage had completely come back to him, with something of the dare-devil spirit added to it: as the soldier beset, sometimes comes to relish danger for its own sake, and deliberately invites more of it, so Baillie Pegram, knowing perfectly that he had completely outraged the proprieties, as The Oaks ladies interpreted them, was minded to outrage them still further. Having braved the situation to this point, he was determined to brave it out to the end--whatever the end might be. So to the girl's suggestion, he answered:

"But the day is not over yet, and the piazzas of The Oaks fortunately include one with a western aspect. Let us sit there and enjoy the sunset. We'll join the ladies later."

The girl consented, willingly enough. She was already in revolt, for one thing, and she knew that her aunts would not venture again to censure her severely, after what had happened.

"But you must not misunderstand me, Mr. Pegram," she said, as the two seated themselves in the great oaken chairs fabricated on the plantation during colonial times. "I have declared my independence so far as to insist upon my right to treat you with courtesy upon occasion. But you must not suppose that I have forgotten the gulf that lies between us, and especially you must not interpret my attitude to mean that I am disloyal to the memory of my poor father."

"I quite understand," he answered, meditatively and sadly. "You and I are privileged, by your good pleasure, to treat each other with formal courtesy, but I must not in any way presume upon that privilege beyond its intention."

The girl sat silent, looking wistfully out into the glow that had followed the sunset. Finally she said:

"I suppose that is it. It is a hard situation to deal with--for me."

"And for me," the youth replied.

"Yes, for you, too, I suppose. But neither of us is responsible. We must recognise conditions and do the best we can."

"I quite understand. You give me leave hereafter to behave like a gentleman toward you, whenever circumstances shall happen to force any sort of intercourse upon us; but beyond that you remind me that there is war between your house and mine, and between me and thee. It is not a treaty of peace that you offer, or even a protocol looking to peace; it is only an amenity of war, like a cartel for the exchange of prisoners, or a temporary truce, for the burial of the dead who have fallen between the lines."

This statement of the case did not at all satisfy the bewildered girl's mind, but there was no opportunity to correct it, for at that moment a maid came with a formally polite message to the effect that if Mr. Pegram and Miss Ronald had _quite_ finished their conversation in the porch, the Misses Ronald and Miss Blair were waiting to receive them in the library.

"After all," Agatha thought, afterward, "I do not know that I could have bettered his definition of the situation. But it isn't one that I like."

All skies seemed serene as the two miscreants entered the library, Baillie making all that was necessary of apology by saying:

"Pardon us, good ladies, I pray you. We have lingered too long in the porch, but you will graciously attribute our fault to the unusual beauty of the sunset. Sunsets mean so much, you know. They suggest the end of pleasant things and the coming of a darkness to which we do not know the dawn. I cannot help thinking that the sunset that Miss Ronald and I have been witnessing is typical. Our beautiful Virginia life is at its sunset. A night-time of war and suffering is approaching, and we cannot know of the day that must follow."

At this point Miss Blair relieved the situation by giving the conversation a thoroughly practical and commonplace turn.

"Why, Mr. Pegram," she exclaimed, "you surely do not doubt the outcome of the war? You confidently expect the triumph of our righteous cause?"

"Well, I hope for it. But the size and the number of the guns will have something to do with the result, and our enemies can put four or five men and four or five guns to our one in the field. It is a dark night that must follow our sunset. We can only do our best, and leave the result to God. Ladies, I bid you good night, and good-bye; for I fear I shall see none of you again soon. I shall be off soldiering almost at once."

VI

_NEXT MORNING_

If Baillie Pegram imagined that by his parting words he had silenced the batteries of The Oaks ladies, he totally misjudged his enemy. For in spite of his intimation of intent not to dine at The Oaks again, there came to him at breakfast the next morning a little note in which the good ladies calmly reasserted their privilege of deciding such matters for themselves quite irrespective of the wishes or purposes of young persons of whatever sex or degree.

"The Misses Ronald present their respectful compliments to Mr.
Baillie Pegram," the note ran, "and beg to say that in view of the
terribly disturbed condition of the times, it is their purpose
presently to close The Oaks for a season, so far at least as the
entertainment of guests is concerned. They may perhaps go upon a
journey. As to that, their plans are as yet unformed, but at any
rate it is their purpose not to entertain again for the present,
except by special invitation to their nearest intimates. They feel
it incumbent upon them to give timely notice of this alteration in
the customs of their house to those valued friends who, like Mr.
Pegram, have been accustomed to dine at The Oaks at stated
intervals.

"With sincere good wishes for Mr. Pegram's safety and good fortune
in that soldierly career to which he feels himself summoned by the
circumstances of the time, and in full confidence that he is
destined to win for himself the laurels that befit one of his
distinguished ancestry, The Oaks ladies remain,

"Most respectfully,

"SARAH RONALD,
"JANE RONALD."

Having read the joint note, Baillie passed it to his friend at the other end of the breakfast-table, saying: "Read that, old fellow, and see what has come of following your madcap advice."

Pollard carefully read the letter through, and then asked:

"Well, what of it?"

"Why, don't you see, by going to The Oaks yesterday as you advised, I've managed to get myself forbidden the house."

"Well, what of that? I don't understand that you have any passionate desire to dine with the estimable old ladies every month, and I think you told me last night, when I was trying to get a nap, that Miss Agatha is leaving this morning."

"Yes, of course. But can't you understand that it's a disagreeable and humiliating thing thus to be forbidden the house, just as if I were guilty of some misconduct--"

"O, yes, I understand perfectly. It is exceedingly inconvenient to find yourself at odds with the elderly female relatives of a young gentlewoman to whom you would very much like to pay your addresses. But in this case, I do not see that it complicates matters very much, as you told me yourself yesterday that the case is hopeless--that there is already an impassable barrier between yourself and Miss Agatha Ronald, so what difference does it make? When you've a ten-rail staked and ridered fence in front of you, a rail more or less doesn't signify much. I'll tell you, Baillie, you must do as I've done. In view of the chances of war, which are apt to worry one who thinks much about them, I have decided to accept and believe the fatalistic philosophy, which teaches that what is to be will be, even if it never happens."

Pegram sat silent for a while before answering. Then he said:

"Be serious for a little if you can, Pollard, I want to talk with you. You were right after all in what you said to me yesterday, though at the time I regarded it as unutterable nonsense. It seems absurd, under the circumstances, but the fact is that--well, that Agatha Ronald has somehow come to mean more to me than any other woman ever did or ever will. Perhaps I shouldn't have found out the fact for a long time to come, if it hadn't been for what you said to me yesterday. But I've found it out now, and I know all that it means to me. It means that I've made a fool of myself, and I must set to work to repair the mistake. Fortunately, the way is open, and that is what I want to say to you. I'm going to leave you to-day. I'm going to Richmond to volunteer in one of the batteries there that are already organised, armed, and equipped, and nearly ready for the field. They'll be the first sent to the front, and I intend to put myself at the front just as speedily as I can."

"But why not do better than that for yourself?" asked Pollard.

"What better is there that I can do?"

"Why not raise a battery of your own, and command it? You know Governor Letcher, and you have influence in plenty. You can have a captain's commission for the asking."

"I suppose I might. But I am strongly impressed with the fact that there are altogether too many men in like predicament--too many men whose position and influence entitle them to expect commissions while, like me, they know nothing whatever of the military art. We need some privates in this war, and fortunately a good many of us are willing to serve as such. I am, for one. The number of gentlemen in Virginia whose position is as good as my own is quite great enough to officer any army in Europe, and our ignorance of military affairs is great enough to wreck the best army that was ever organised. I'll not add mine to the list. I'll go in as a private soldier. If I am ever fit to command, it will be time enough then for me to ask for a commission. I'm going to volunteer in the ranks."

"So am I," answered Pollard.

"What? You? When?"

"Yes. Me. Yesterday."

"Well, go on. Don't be provoking. Tell me all about it. When did you do it, and how, and why? For a generally agreeable young man, I must say, Marshall, you can make of yourself about as disagreeable a person as I ever encountered. Come! Tell me!"

Pollard smiled and meditated, as if planning the order of his utterance. At last he said:

"There isn't much to tell, and I don't know just where to begin. But after--well, after you rode away to The Oaks yesterday, I got to thinking and wondering what I should do with myself now that your companionship was lost to me. There is nobody about for me to fall in love with, and after all, there is a limit to the entertainment to be got out of old T. Gordon and his Tacitus. You see, girls never behave properly toward me. There isn't one of them in ten counties who would ever think of breaking her horse's leg in a bridge just in time to let me come to her rescue. Besides, I should probably be on foot, with no mare to lend the distressed damsel, and, altogether, you see--"

"Will you stop your nonsense, or will you not?" asked Baillie, with impatience. "Tell me what you did."

"Well, I got Sam to bring me the least objectionable of your abominably jolting saddle-horses--the bay with three white feet and a blaze on the face--and I managed to keep a little breath in my body while riding over to the Court-house. It was my purpose to go to Richmond, and I asked the old ticket agent to send me, but he obstinately refused. He said there were only two trains a day, one at noon and one at midnight. I remonstrated with him, but it was of no use. I explained to him that the _raison d'être_ of a railroad--I translated the French to him--was to carry people to whatever place they wished to go to, and at such hours as might suit their convenience. I told him it was an abominable outrage that with a railroad lying there unused, he would not send a gentleman to Richmond without making him wait for eight or ten hours for the convenience of people whom he knew nothing about. He looked at me rather curiously when I urged that consideration upon him. I think it rather staggered him, but he persisted in his obstinate refusal to send me to Richmond without further delay. He even suggested that I might go somewhere else, but I interpreted that as meaningless profanity, and gently explained to him that I did not wish to go to the place he had mentioned. Then he told me he had no train, and I asked him why he suffered himself to have no train, when a gentleman wanted one and was willing to pay for it."

"_Will_ you stop your nonsense, and tell me what happened?" interrupted Baillie.

Pollard smiled, and continued:

"Now, that question of yours reassures me as to the sanity of the station agent. It is closely similar to the question he asked, only, by reason of his lack of cultivation, he interrupted the even and orderly flow of his English with many objurgative and even violent terms, such as we do not employ in ordinary converse, but such as stablemen and innkeepers seem to like to use.

"Despairing of my efforts to secure reasonable public service at the hands of the railroad, I looked about me, and presently encountered Captain Skinner. You know him, of course--lives at the Kennels, or some such place--keeps a lot of dogs, and drinks a good deal more whiskey than would be good for most men. But he is a West Pointer, you know, and served for a considerable time in the Indian wars. He was at Chapultepec, too, I think. At any rate, he mentioned the fact in connection with his missing arm. He told me he was going to raise a battery in the purlieus of Richmond. He said he didn't want a company of young bloods, but one of soldiers. He proposes to enlist wharf-rats down at Rockett's, and ruffians, and especially jailbirds. 'There are more than a hundred as good men as ever smelt gunpowder or stopped a bullet in its career,' he said, 'now languishing in the Richmond jails and the Virginia State Penitentiary. Governor Letcher promises me that he will pardon all of them who choose to enlist with me, and I'm going to look them over. Those that are fit to make soldiers of, I'll enlist, and after a week or two of drilling I'll have a battery ready for the field.'

"His idea pleased me, so I told him to put me down as the first man on his list. He objected at first. You see, I've had no experience as a ruffian, and I never served a term in jail in my life, but I convinced him that I would make a good cannonier, and he enrolled me. I am to report to him at Rockett's by the day after to-morrow."

To Baillie's remonstrances and pleadings that his friend should choose a company of gentlemen in which to serve, Marshall turned a deaf ear.

"When I become a soldier," he said, "and put myself under another man's command, I want that other man to be one who knows something about the business. Captain Skinner knows what to do with a gun and a gunner, and I've a pretty well-defined notion that most of our coming captains have all that yet to learn, and besides--well, I've given you reasons enough."

"Besides what, Marshall? What were you going to say?"

"O, nothing that you would understand or sympathise with. It's only that somehow I don't want to be in a company of gentlemen turned soldiers, where I should be sure to meet our kind of people on terms of social equality now and then. As a common soldier, I should find it rather embarrassing at a military ball to have a lady put me on her dancing-list while scornfully refusing a like favour perhaps to the officer who must assign me to guard-duty next morning."