Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 35, Number 41, 18 December 1909 — Page 6

JUST A

WOMAN By LILY A. LONG

i" 1

HOW beautiful you are ! " said the man, impetuously. " Suppose I were not?" said the girl, slowly. "Assuming, merely to avoid argument, that I am, suppose I were not?" He smiled. " My imagination is not equal to that feat." He leaned a little toward her, speaking with a vibrating restraint that betrayed the depth of the passion beneath. "In my eyes you are perfect face of you, heart of you, soul of you. You are the ideal woman and you have come to me. It is too wonderful." "It's mighty sweet of you to say such things," she murmured, "but it frightens me a little. You say it as though you meant it." "I do mean it" She laughed, but with a little catch of the breath. She was lovely enough to justify the rhapsodies of any lover, for her somewhat serious beauty was softened when she looked at Norton with a veiling shyness that only made it more dazzling. "Still it isn't literally true, you know," she urged, with laughing deprecation. " You don't know. It if true," he answered. "Oh, I wish you wouldn't be so terribly in earnest bout it!" she cried. Virginia turned her eyes away to the lake which rippled at the foot of the lawn behind a breakwater of cannas and irises. The thud of a steam launch cut across the afternoon stillness for a moment; then the startled hush crept back to its place. The very atmosphere of peace was on the scene; but when her eyes came back to the motionless man who leaned against the veranda rail and watched her, the outer quiet was tossed into a swirl of passion by the look in his eyes. "I'm afraid," she murmured, in the voice of a child. He laughed, and came nearer, pulling a porch chair about so that he could lay a hand upon her hammock. "Afraid because I adore you?" "Yes just that." "But I can't help it. It is you who are to blame! You should not be so perfect." " You haven't known me very long," she said. " Eleven weeks day after to-morrow. And I have been a guest here, with the loveliest people and in the most beautiful place in the world. Of course the amiable side of my nature has come to light. You just ought to see me at home, in my every-day mood ! " "I hope to," he said, significantly. The color flashed over her face. " I should have supposed that a wise and conservative man would satisfy himself on such important points before before committing himself," she remarked at large. He put his hand out to touch hers, but she swayed the hammock lightly backward out of his reach. " I did not need to," he said quietly. I knew from the first moment I saw you. " I don't know that I have ever told you of a curious feeling that I had when I first saw you," Norton continued slowly. "A feeling that I had seen you before. All that day I kept wondering where, how, when. There was something I already knew in your face. It baffled me though I have a good memory for faces. Then, afterwards, I got a theory about it." " Oh, of course ! " she mocked. But he was not to be put aside by her mockery. " I feel now that it was a prophecy rather than a memory," he said, seriously. "Your face was familiar to me because it answered so perfectly to my dreams. You are the ideal I have waited for all my life my ' perfect woman, nobly planned 'only more perfect than ever poet dreamed.'' "But don't you see," she urged in a moment, "that you think me so merely because you love me ? " ; He shook his head. i "I love you because it is so." " Bat how can I trust a love founded on a mistake and a mistake you are bound to discover in time? I ' feel so unsafe ! You don't know me; your own words prove it" Her voice was urgent, almost breathless. t She was so serious about it all that a sudden fear i struck his heart. He gave her a quick, strange look, and the silence between them beat loud in the ears of ' both. ( Then she said, with a trembling little laugh : Oh, I have no buried crimes to confess. I do not think there is anything in my life which would really go beyond forgiveness. At the same time, I should rather have you see my faults and still love me forgive me for something, and still love me." The color surged back to his face. " I love you beyond the possibility of forgiveness. Whatever you do is right. To speak of my forgiving you is something like sacrilege." She leaned back in the hammock and closed her eyes to hide a sudden gush of nervous tears. "Then I just must take my chances," she murmured, with a tremulous smile. " But surely you don't want me to hold you less perfect," he protested in bewilderment "Virginia! Look at me!" She started up with a quick little laugh', and a book which had lain beside her in the hammock slipped to the floor. As it opened a photograph fell out, and lay, face upward, before Norton. He picked it up with an ex- , clamation. "Burton Warwick! However did you come to have his photograph?" "Why, did you know him?" asked Virginia. Her voice was shaken with sudden surprise. " He was the dearest friend I ever had," Norton said. He was still looking at the pictured face with self-forgetful emotion. "Where did it come from?" " It belongs to me," Virginia answered quickly. Looking up he saw thai her face was crimson to the line of her soft, dark hair, a: .1 that her fluttering eyelids drooped low over startled e . There are crises when words bclr-y their fundamental inadequacy. His eyes held hers in a questioning so pressing, so passionate, that she shrank unJer it as under a definite arraignment. "Why did you never tell me?" he asked slowly.

"I didn't know you knew him. I do not remember that he ever mentioned your name." " And I never guessed. I suppose he must have mentioned yours in his first letters, but I did not take note of it then. Afterwards it was always some fanciful name of love till that short note came, written in his heart's blood, saying that his fool's dream of happiness was over. All that year in the Philippines he never referred to '.-.hat had happened, but I knew what his silence r..ant. And when his body came back fcr burial ah ! " he caught his breath sharply, " it was the p'-.ot :- graph in his pocket-book the photograph that I buried with him, as he had asked me to do it was that that made your face so familiar that first day! And I thought " lie had spoken steadily, with cold self-control, but now he flashed upon her a look of passionate scorn, as though she were some stranger and despised. If brought out an answering flash in her dark eyes that wiped cut her shamed embarrassment as with a flame. She caught her breath hard and lifted her drooping head. "Well?" she said slowly. He dropped into the chr.ir a::d let his head sink upon his hand. "That it should be you! And I thought you oh, how could you ? " he groaned. Virginia Jackson looked down at his bent head and

The stillness lay neavy between them for a breathless second. He could hear his own heart beating. " I think I have found it out already," she said. Then on the instant she was gone. The door that swung shut behind her quivered with her impetuous touch for a moment, and then all was still on the veranda, and the afternoon quiet fell back upon the scene as before. Norton did not move. His hrr.i.i was ttill whirling as from a shock, and he was hardly conscious of his surroundings, lie was only conscious of a hurt so profound that he could net put it into words, even to himself. When, alter long waking, she still did not return, he aroused him.elf and wandered restlessly down to the dock at the foot of the lawn. If she chese to shut herself frcm him ! The launch, now on its return trip to the railway station, signaled a question, and on an impulse he answ'ercd. With scarcely a volition c:i his own part he found himself back in the parc'.ied city from which he had fled so light-heartedly a few hours before. It had the unfamiliar look of a place that hus been Ions forgotten. The next day, after freeing away some hours most improf.'cl'y at his cff;ce, his longing to somehow make Virginia suffer as he was suffering mastered him, and with sudden resolve he caught an early train for the lake. What he meant to say to her was not very clear in his own mind. Indeed, his feelings were wholly cha-

his mind to his work with dogged resolution; and he could only groan over his weakness when he found, as happened more than once, that the hands of the clock had traveled far while he must have been staring through the printed rae before him into space where a girl with a face cf hurt pride lacked out at him, crying, "His life Lis heartbreak! You think only of him!" One r.igkt his artificial composure broke beneath him. It might have been the utter weariless of his struggle, or it might have been the ba!J sentiment cf the tune which the h'.:rJy-;:rdy on the corner was grinding out. As he lis.c::ed, the love he 1 ad denied swept over him. With every repressed throb of his brain, with every beat of his heart, l e cried cut fjr her. He lcrt his head upon his hn:vJs and the kov.rs s wept on to the gray dawn before lie lifted his fe.ee. But when the wcchr.ess cf the dark hours had yielded to the accustomed pei.e of cay. he railed his heart aain upon th? crc?s of his v.-.il. lie 1 e.d viven !ur his cmirc and unqucs;io:-.i:: fai.h. .'.::d a'.I the time she had been so:r.C'..ii; tii.Vercr.t frcm v.'.:r.t site had seemed. His soul had kr.clt in homage bef-.ro her as an ideal, and all the time she was the unknown coquette who had trifled with Warwick's faith and wrecked the life of that dear comrade. However, to ease his heart, he filled out a telegraph blank: "Hay I come?" This he signed with his ini-

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her first quick Rush of resentment yielded at sight of his pain. " Richard ! " she said. There was an unconscious appeal in her voice, but he did not answer it. When she spoke again her voice was steadier and colder. " You are blaming me without knowing the whole story. It was an unhappy story, but there was no intentional wrong in it." "I knew him," he said bitterly. "You broke the truest heart that ever beat. You let him love you, and then, because you tired of him. you threw him over. That was what sent him to the Philippines. You cannot even understand what he was. And all this year I have been hating the woman who could so wreck the beautiful promise of his life who sent him to his death ! " " His death his heartbreak,"' she cried sharply. " You think only of his part. If a girl finds she has made a mistake in thinking that she loves a man should she go on in that mistake when she comes to know the truth about her own heart ? " " Mistake ! " he cried impatiently. " Can a woman play with a man's feelings, encourage him to love her as long as it amuses her, ruin his life and send him to his death, and then shelter herself behind the plea that it was merely a mistake? It is a mistake that is unpardonable ! " Her eyes flashed with a sudden light, softer than anger, eager and intense. " Richard ! Not unpardonable ! " she cried. " You cannot use that word to me you cannot ! " He did not answer. She leaned toward him lightly, speaking past his hard silence as past a tangible barrier. " Richard, last night you asked me to say that I loved you, and I could not, because the words frightened me. But I will say it now. I have given my true love to you to you out of all the world to no one, ever, but you." She waited as though the avowal must of necessity work magic, but though he quivered visibly under her words, he did not answer. " Richard ! " she cried again. He lifted his set face, but it was not to look at her. "You might find, in a year, that you had made another mistake," he said, slowly.

otic. Yet he wanted to see her. The habit of carrying his hurts to her for healing had been so easily acquired! The word awaiting him at the lake was therefore a new and unexpected blow. Virginia was gone. "Gone?" he repeated blankly. "An hour ago," Mrs. Stafford said, with a face ostentatiously clear of curiosity. " She received a telegram this morning from her mother in Richmond, asking her to come home at once. Ilcr sister is an invalid, you know, and they were alarmed about her condition. She took the first train possible, a::d esked me to explain to all her friends." "Will you express my sympathy when you write?" he said, formally. " It must be really serious," reflected Mrs. Stafford, watching him depart. As he followed the footpath to the station, where Virginia must have parsed a:i hour before, his eye wa caught by a book fallen among the brown underbrt:sh. It was the book she had been reading in the hammock the day before the book from which Warwick's photograph, with its fatal revelation, had fallen. He picked it fp. It was a collection of Browning's love-poems. Virginia Jackson's name was on the fly-leaf, in Warwick's well-known hand. The book fell open at "A Lovers Quarrel," and his eye was caught by the words : "Foul be the world or fair More or less, how can I care? 'Tis the world the same For my praise or blame. And endurance is easy there. Wrong in the one thing rare, Oh, it is hard to bear ! " He read it twice over. No words of his own could have expressed so completely his sense of wrong at Virginia's hands. It was not merely a personal hurt. She had been the one thing rare to his heart and she had failed him. It was best that she had gone. Nothing could ever restore his radiant dream, and he could not bear to accept anything lower. For htm, that part of life was forever done. So he girt up his will, went back to his law effice and the old ways of living, and tried not to see the weary difference that there was in the world. The only thing to believe in ns oneself and one's own work. He bent CO"'"

tials and locked into a private drawer in his desk. Each morning, when he came down to the office, he unlocked the drawer and looked at the waiting message. "To-day? May I go to-day?" it seemed to ask, with a flutter of eagerness. And with a stern denial he answered: "No. What you really stard for is, ' May I come and patch up a hollow pretense between us in place of the truth that is cr.e?' No. you shall not go to-day." He snapped the drawer shut and took up his work. So-rctirrcs he looked at the calendar and tried to multiply the strain of the weeks that had gone by the weeks, months, years, that lay ahead. How long could lie keep it up? Then one day a client asked him to look after some matters in Richmond. The name startled him. He said he wouid think it over, but on the instant his unleashed imagination ran r.hcad of his thoughts and pictured their possible mcetir.g i:i a hundred different ways. Suppose lie should see her in a crowd on the street at the theater alcr.c cr.d face to face? Suppose, suppose, suppose! But. in any case, what was there to say? Nt to see her, or to see her and speak as chance acquaintances either would be intolerable. It would l)c better not to go to Richmond. But he took the f.rst train possible. And at the first possible moment he walked up the street where Virginia lived, and identified the house by its number. lie came to a sudden stop on discovering that it was closed and deserted. Of all the possibilities he had canvassed in his mind, that one had not occurred to him. A passing letter-carrier gave a direction to his whirling thoughts. "Give me the address, please, to which letters for the Jackson family are forwarded." he said quickly, taking out his pencil and memorandum-book. ' And the man gave it before he had time to remember the postal rules applicable to such requests. The address was a New York hotel. Norton had business in New York. , It was not absolutely necessary that it should be attended to at this particular moment hut now that he was already away from his office in short, he fnnnd himself on his way to New York before he had qu;te formulated reason for going. A power outside of himself was carrying him forward. But in New York he found that tliey had sailed the day before for Antwerp. He told himself that settled the matter, 1rsrinta had gone completely out of his life. He filled the days with

a rush of business and left himself no idle time for brooding. It liad. therefore, somewhat the effect of a surpri.-e when he found himself aboard the steamer that was sailing for Antwerp a week later. He told himself that he had always intended to run over for a holiday when opportunity offered. It by no means followed that because he was going to Europe he would encounter Virginia Jackson. He needed a rest One night, in a storm that beat hard against 1htm through the dragging hours of the darkness he looked into the eyes of death. His life was so little, his grasp of the mighty whole was so inadequate! What part of all that he called himself would have vitality to go on into that Beyond which lay just over the blue threshold of the waiting waves? Nothing but his love. Nothing at all of him but the love he had crushed and cramped and denied. In his soul he reached out his arms to Virginia. Ah. how trivial his questioning! There was no question but this only whether they might stand together, whatever came. For the rest of the voyage Norton sat near the bow of the boat, devouring with impatient eyes the space that still stretched before him. Every moment that lay between him and Virginia seemed suddenly full of danger. This momei t. any moment, might be the last that held grace for him. and here he was, kept from her by this impassable illusion of space! When the boat reached Antwerp, he found that the party for which he had inquired had gone on to Scheveningen. But he could not risk further delay. "May I ccme?" he telegraphed. Her answer came at last by mail, not by wire. "If you have learned to love me, you may come. Otherwise, what is the use? " Even in his new humility, Norton laughed aloud. If he loved her! Had not the trouble from the beginning been that he had loved her in excess ? too idealistically, too loftily? Of his love there could be no question! Certainly the message was crypoc. but it seemed to imply a permission, however conditioned. He took the next train. But when Virginia came into the room to receive him, Norton quite forgot to ak for explanations. He forgot everything except that the universe had somehow righted itself. The sudden lifting of what had been like a physical pressure left him light-headed, and he babbled incoherencies without knowing what they were. But Virginia, with a woman's superior seamanship upon the waves of emotion, held him to the charted line. "Rut, Richard, are you sure?" " Sure that I cannot live without you ? Oh, res ! yes!" She shook her head, opposing a lifted palm to his eagerness. " No. sure that you know me for a real woman just a mere human woman?" Norton took her hands in both of his and held them fast. " When I see you, I know nothing past or present except that this is you, and that I have been starving for the sight of you for longer than I can bear to remember ! " A woman's form appeared at the French window, which opened like a door upon the garden. She had stepped inside before she saw the two in the room. Virginia started forward. "Oh. Rose, here is Mr. Norton. Will you come in? Richard, you must love my sister Rose my dear, dear sister." There was protection and defense and tenderness in her tone as well as in her words, and Norton felt the demand upon him which it conveyed, even before he saw how frail an apparition this unknown sister was. " I am glad to see you ! " Rose said, in tones so vibrantly like Virginia's that they shook him with sudden surprise. "Virginia has told me of you. She said A surge of red went over her white face and left it whiter than before "that you were a friend of Mr. Warwick's. That alone would make you welcome, if there were no other reason." She smiled at both with a sweetness that made them ache to see. and slipped away as she bad come. Virginia was watching him with a keen suspense. " You must never blame her not in your inmost thought never for one moment," she said, breathlessly. " You don't know you can't understand not that I blame you for not understanding! No one could. But I know Just how it all was I was there she was mot to blame. And she has leen so unhappy. She nearly died. It has been so bard on her for she was not to blame, any more than he was!" Norton felt his thoughts whirl. He put out his hand to hers. " It was vour sister it was your sister Warwidfc loved?" Yes." Virginia said. "It was never you at all?" "Oh. no!" "But why did you let me think it was you?" " You misunderstood ; that was all." " Rut why didn't you straighten me out at once?" "Why, at the very first," said Virginia gently. "I didn't see just what you meant. And then, when I understood. I .wasn't going to have you blaming Rose! And then I thought it was a chance to see whether row really loved me not merely adored me, you know. That was the point ! " "Virginia! Have you made me go through this agonizing summer for nothing? It isn't possible! When it wasn't so at all when there was nothing to forgive when the facts were all the other way "Oh." she broke in. "don't make the mistake .of thinking that facts have anything to do with the matter." " No ? " he murmured, in a dazed way. "Oh. no! It's the the principle that is the important thing. If we are are going to the words swayed like a dizzy bridge, but she went on bravely over them " going to live our lives out together, we must not spoil what chances of success we might have by blinding ourselves at the beginning. It is a delicate experiment at best You would hare to know some time that I was merely human, and if you Tvould not see it now, and then came to see it later, you would have felt defrauded, and I would have felt oh, don't you under stand?" "Was that what you meant all the time?" he asked. " Why. yes ! I tried to make you understand that day at the lake, but you couldn't see what I meant, or how fundamental it was. And then, the first time that yotf thought I was wrong, you blamed me. That was what I had feared. Suppose it had been I instead of Rose. It micht have been. Suppose I should say now that it was!" He laughed a little queerly. "I should nerer believe it. That will be the only safe war to treat your confessions. Virginia, would you really hare let me stay away forever?" I was afraid to trust a love that would not see me as I was," she said gravely. " I could live without you. I could not live with you if your love should slip away." "You were right perfectly and absolutely right as. of course, yot would be." he said, humbly. Then the old Richard Norton in him reasserted itself for a moment " Still, it wasn't quite right of tou to let me believe whit wasn't true. That wasnt really straightforward." Virginia clasped her hands upon her breast and lifted a radiantly joyful face. " Then "forgive me for that! Oh, don't yon tee, dearest? I don't care what yon forgive, just thai you really do forgive me xemfthing!"

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