Chapter XXXIII: Conspiracies

Jack Towns was particularly pleased with the reassurance that Farnsworth gave him respecting the campaign. It set him free. In his loyalty to Boyd Westover he would have ridden all night and all day in aid of his friend's election; but he greatly preferred to go to Dr. Carver's and dance all night with Millicent.

In fact he did very nearly that. He put his name down on her card for every set that wasn't taken in advance, and he danced all of them but three or four which she elected to "sit out." If she had been accompanied by a chaperon, she would have had to restrict Mr. Towns's allowance of sets, but chaperons were not deemed necessary for well-bred young women in Virginia. Such young women were supposed to know how to behave properly, and as for protection, was not the entire adult male population ready and eager to render it upon occasion?

Moreover, Jack Towns did not in fact secure an undue proportion of Millicent's sets, for the reason that all the young men in the company, who managed to get possession of her card in time, put their names on it, for one dance each. She rigidly restricted them to one. Perhaps she considered Jack. But she put no restriction on Jack Towns in the matter, and Jack was so ill-mannered in his infatuation that he asked no other young woman for her card, except in the case of Charlotte Deane. Charlotte was no longer as young as she could have wished, and she was distinctly not beautiful or brilliant. So Jack, observing that there were no throngs of young men about her, asked for her card and put his name down for two dances.

For the rest, he devoted his attention to Millicent Danvers until everybody was set wondering if at last Jack Towns had really and truly fallen in love. The same question arose in Jack's own mind, but he, at least, was able to answer it. "Yes," he admitted to himself, "I have had many fleeting fancies before, but none that resembled this. I am determined to win Millicent Danvers if devotion can accomplish it. I never felt in that way before. Always I have felt, that while one young woman pleased me, there were others who might be equally pleasing. I don't feel so now. It is Millicent Danvers now, or nobody with me. I wonder what she will think of my big, disorderly bachelor establishment if she ever consents to be its mistress? I'll wager something handsome that she'll--well, it will be time enough to speculate on that when I have won her. By the way, she would say that differently--'when I shall have won her.' Anyhow my present task is to win her. If I do that she will take care of the rest. And after all a bachelor establishment isn't a home. Just think of the difference between my big house, where everything is in chaos, and that home of hers among the blue hills of Milton."

So he went on, thinking, wondering, speculating, so long as she was fulfilling an engagement to dance with somebody else whom he hated and held in unmerited contempt without any assignable reason. And when his own turn came and he danced with her, his fancies floated before his eyes as a dream pervades the mind, a dream that so rejoices as to make of waking a calamity.

Millicent did well whatever she did at all. In dancing with her, Jack felt that she simply lifted herself half an inch or so from the floor and floated about without again touching it. It was a delight to dance with her, as every young man who had enjoyed the experience stood ready to testify, but Jack Towns rejoiced even more in "sitting out" a set. For then, with her arm in his he could promenade the porches, or the pair could stroll out into the grounds where common prudence and courtesy required him frequently to readjust the wrappings that protected her otherwise bare arms and shoulders, or, better still, he could seek out a secluded nook in the porch or elsewhere, where they two might talk of things that held interest for both of them in common.

It was during one of these confabs, when they sat out two dances in succession, that Jack Towns invited himself to Boston and to Millicent's home in the blue hills of Milton. It came about in this way. Jack was really and earnestly in love, for the first time in his life, and the impulse to tell Millicent so was well nigh irresistible. But Jack was a Virginian, and he recognized the right of a young woman to be courted in her own home. He restrained his impulse of speech, therefore, so far as open avowals were concerned, but his utterances, short of a declaration, were such as to leave the young woman in no doubt as to his attitude and purpose.

When she spoke of her prospective home-going, he asked, a little eagerly perhaps, when that was to occur. She answered:

"It must be very soon--as soon as I shall have done a duty that rests upon me. I'm sorry Mr. Boyd Westover isn't here to-night. He told me, when I met him casually this afternoon, that he was obliged to return to Wanalah."

"I suppose he was," answered Jack Towns in a peculiarly inscrutable tone that he adopted upon occasion. "But why? Do you particularly want to see him?"

"Yes, not only particularly but peremptorily. It is a part of the duty I have set myself. I cannot go back to Boston till I do."

"I see," he answered. "If you like I'll call at The Oaks and ask you to ride with me. We can ride over to Wanalah, and I'll see to it that he shall be there at the time."

"Oh, no, no, no! That would never do. There are reasons which I cannot explain, if you'll excuse me. I must meet Mr. Westover casually, quite by accident as it were."

"Very well, then," answered Jack, with all the confidence he was accustomed to assume at a court trial when his case was an uncertain one. "I'll arrange the accident and create the 'casualty.' You have only to respond favorably to the invitations you receive during the next few days. I'll take care of the rest."

There was a certain masterful self-confidence in his words and tone that was somehow exceedingly pleasing to Millicent. She felt that Jack Towns was a man of limitless resource, a man accustomed to do things and to get others to do things, a man to be leant upon with confidence, and the feeling was altogether comforting. The thought that floated vaguely through her mind, though she shrank from formulating it, was that if ever Jack Towns should love a woman, that woman would be exceedingly comfortable in the certainty that his care of her would be always tenderly solicitous in its impulse, aggressively masterful in its manifestation, and measurelessly ingenious in its devices of safety for her against every ill. If she had permitted her thought to frame itself, as she resolutely refused to do, it would have been to the effect that he was a man into whose arms the woman he loved might throw herself in full assurance of a welcome and in trustful confidence of all-loving, all-daring protection. She did not let the thought formulate itself, but it floated nebulously in her mind, which was perhaps even more dangerous--if indeed there was any danger involved.

In answer to his words she said:

"You are certainly very good. I'll leave it to you to arrange for me, and as soon as I know definitely that my duty is done, I shall go back to Boston,--or at least as soon after that as my brother can come down here to escort me. You know the journey is a trying one."

"Yes, I know. But why trouble your brother needlessly? I shall be obliged to go to Boston sometime soon, and if you permit, I shall be glad to be your escort."

Jack was not fibbing. It is true that he had no business that required him to visit Boston, and yet he really felt it necessary for him to go thither. He had fully decided to ask Millicent Danvers to become his wife, and he must go to Boston for that.

Millicent was right in saying that the journey was a trying one. In that infant age of railroad service the trip from Richmond to Boston involved eight or ten changes of cars, some of them at midnight. There were no sleeping cars, no parlor cars, no dining cars, no buffet cars--nothing in fact but rattletrap coaches, linked together with chains and pins and controlled only by hand brakes. No car ran through, or further than its own railway terminus. The connections were never close, and for the waiting times between there were no accommodations other than those which an open and often rain-drenched railway platform afforded.

But there was the question of chaperonage to be considered. Boston notions on that subject were different from Virginia notions. In Virginia it was held that a man in escort of a woman was in honor bound to protect her not only against all others but against himself as well. He must not, under such circumstances, permit his conversation even remotely to approach the confines of courtship. He must maintain, from beginning to end of the escorting, the attitude of one performing a duty with absolutely unemotional and impersonal temper. The man escorting was supposed to be a gentleman who would suffer no harm to come to the woman under his escort, even if his life should be the forfeit.

But Jack Towns understood the difference between Northern and Southern manners in that respect, and so, to his offer of escort, he promptly added:

"My good old negro Mammy will go with you, of course. She'll see that you have all the comforts that are possible on such a trip."

"But if you take her to Massachusetts she will be free, will she not?" asked Millicent.

"Free? Yes. She is free now to do as she pleases, and she regulates me with the high hand, just as she did when I was a baby. Why she even dominates my dress. Not long ago I came to breakfast with a blue cravat on, and she made me change it on the ground that I had a murder case to defend that day and she thought black would be more appropriate. When I get ready to go to the club in the afternoon, she inspects me, and if any detail of my costume fails to meet the exigent requirements of her code, I have to make a change, no matter how hurried I am. Oh, she's free. Why, she took away the breakfast I had ordered the cook to prepare for me the other day because it included fried eggs, and she was persuaded that fried eggs didn't agree with me. She is absolute mistress in my establishment, and every darkey there recognizes the fact. Her authority is supreme; mine is utterly subordinate. If I want any change made in the household arrangements, I must appeal to her to order it. Fortunately she always gives the order because she still regards me as her 'precious chile,' for whom everything must be done, and whose uttermost whim is to be gratified, regardless of the convenience of other folk, high or low."

"But she is a slave," answered Millicent, "and--"

"In a way, I suppose she is," he interrupted, "but all the eloquence of all the orators of Boston could not convince her that her condition in life could be improved. She is absolute mistress of an establishment and of the poor fellow who owns it. She has everything that her heart desires, everything that her imagination can conjure up as a want. Her present is provided for, and her old age is secure. I don't know any device of freedom that can match that."

"Neither do I," Millicent answered; "but I cannot approve slavery as an institution. I am prejudiced, perhaps, but--"

"I am not prejudiced," he answered, "but I thoroughly agree with your dislike of slavery as an institution. All our great Virginians, Thomas Jefferson, John Randolph, George Wythe, Henry Clay, and the rest, have regarded the institution as an inherited evil to be got rid of in any way that might be practicable, in any way that might give to the negroes a chance to become self-supporting citizens. Thomas Jefferson put the Virginian thought into an apt phrase when he said that in freeing the negroes we must not 'arm them with freedom and a dagger.' He might have added, as many Virginians have done in practice, that we must arm them with a hoe and a plow."

"I see," she said, "and history teaches us that Virginia has done more for the restriction of slavery than any other State. It was in her cession of the Northwest territory that a clause was written forever excluding slavery from that region; and we cannot forget that in the convention which framed the constitution, the Virginia delegates fought vigorously for a provision to stop the African slave trade in the year 1800, and the New England delegates fought to continue it for eight years longer. I think these things are not understood, and I think I sympathize with your Virginian resentment of outside interference by people who do not understand. At any rate I shall carry back to Boston with me a very different impression of your attitude from that which I had before. I shall be honored to have you for my escort, Mr. Towns, and delighted to be coddled all the way home by your dear old Mammy."

At that moment one of the young men who had secured a place on Millicent's card came to claim his dance, and the conversation was at an end.

But Jack Towns had a problem to solve. He had promised to bring Millicent and Westover together without seeming intention, and he did not know how he was to do it. Suddenly a thought came to him, and, as he had exhausted his claim upon Millicent's dancing card, he took French leave, mounted his mare and set off for Chinquapin Knob, whither Carley Farnsworth had preceded him many hours before. He arrived there about breakfast time and entered at once into negotiations.

Carley Farnsworth, as Jack Towns knew, was in close touch with Judy Peters; for these two friends of Boyd Westover had many confidences with respect to the campaign, of which Westover himself knew nothing, and Towns had learned all about Judy's attitude and initiative in Boyd's campaign.

"Of course Boyd's election is secure," said Jack, as he buttered a slice of the hot breakfast bread; "and now that Butler has withdrawn and Colonel Conway has endorsed his candidacy, his support will include a large majority of the vote down here."

"Yes, and that is what Judy and I have been working for. Her influence in the mountains, when she gets ready to give the word, will settle the question of election. But Judy is practising psychological therapeutics. She wouldn't recognize the words, but they represent the facts. Her sole interest in this thing is to brace Boyd up by showing him that his fellow men believe in him. To that end she has planned to secure as heavy a vote for him as possible down here among the planter people. To that end she has held back all intimations of her purpose in the mountains. To that end she arranged with Butler to withdraw from the senatorial contest and run for the lower house instead. Of course you understand that she means to elect him to that."

"No, does she?" asked Towns in astonishment. "I hadn't thought of that. How astonishing!"

"Well, it is only a conjecture of mine, but it is what is going to happen. Judy always pays her debts to the last cent. In this case, by his own withdrawal Butler throws every Democratic vote in the district to Boyd, and you don't imagine, do you, that he did that without prospect of a recompense? Of course Judy negotiated it, and it is my conjecture that the price she is to pay is the mountain vote for Butler's election to the House of Delegates, which, with the Democratic vote down here, will elect him. Of course I know nothing about the matter. It is only that I can see through a millstone if there is a hole in it. And besides I know Judy's ways. She doesn't care a fig for this election except to make it serve her purpose of setting Boyd up again and making him feel that he is Westover of Wanalah."

"I see," answered Jack; "and the old woman would do anything in reason, I suppose, to aid in the accomplishment of that purpose?"

"Anything in reason? Yes. And anything out of reason too. What is it you have in mind?"

"Well, I want Judy to give a frolic of some kind, and I'll take Miss Danvers to it. Can you arrange that?"

"Easily, if it is likely to benefit Boyd. But I don't see--"

"Of course you don't. But I tell you it will do more for his rejuvenation than would his unanimous election to the Senate. Of course he must be there, and so must Miss Danvers. I will take care of the rest."

"What is it you're up to, Jack?" asked Farnsworth in not unnatural curiosity.

"I shall not tell you, except that I want Miss Danvers and Boyd Westover to meet casually. Besides, Miss Danvers is an interested and sympathetic student of Virginia life, and I want to show her the mountain side of it before she goes back to Boston. How soon can you arrange the thing, Carley?"

"Well, let's see. Edgar Coffey, who is not supposed to know me by sight or by name is to be here to-night. He will see Judy tomorrow, some time, and deliver my messages about Butler's withdrawal and the rest of it. Will next Saturday do for the party?"

"Yes, if you can arrange it so soon."

"Judy does things promptly, when she is minded to do them at all, and in this case she is sure to be so minded. You may safely invite Miss Danvers to be one of the guests at next Saturday's frolic. Now you must go to bed. You had a hard day yesterday, and made a brilliant speech, and of course you danced all night with Miss Danvers. Since then you have ridden fifteen miles with a load on your mind. It is time for you to take some rest. The front room in the west wing is prepared for you. Go!"