I
Because there was so little else left him to be proud of, he clung the more tenaciously to his pride in his gentle blood and the spotless fame of his forefathers. There was no longer wealth nor state nor position to give splendor to the name, but this was the less sad in that he himself was the sole survivor of that distinguished line. He was glad that he had no sisters—a girl should not be brought up in sordid, ignoble surroundings, such as he had sometimes had to know; as for brothers, if there had been two of them to make the fight against the world shoulder to shoulder, life might have seemed a cheerier thing; but thus far he had gotten on alone. And the world was not such an unkindly place, after all. Though he was a thousand miles away from the old home, in this busy Northwestern city where he and his were unknown, he was not without friends; he knew a few nice people. He had money enough to finish his legal studies; if there had not been enough, he supposed he could have earned it somehow; he was young and brave enough to believe that he could do anything his self-respect demanded of him. If it sometimes asked what might seem to a practical world fantastic sacrifices at his hands, was he not ready to give them? At least, had he not always been ready before he met Virginia Fenley?
She reminded him of his mother, did Virginia, though no two women in the world were ever fundamentally more different. Nevertheless, there was a likeness between the little pearl-set miniature which he cherished, showing Honora Le Garde in the prime of her beauty, and this girl who looked up at him with eyes of the self-same brown. Surely, Virginia should not be held responsible for the fact that a slender, graceful creature with yellow hair and dark-lashed hazel eyes, with faint pink flushes coming and going in her cheeks, and the air of looking out at the world with indifference from a safe and sheltered distance, was Roderick Le Garde’s ideal of womanhood, and that he regarded her, the representative of the type, as the embodiment of everything sweetest and highest in human nature. Virginia’s physique, like Roderick’s preconceptions of life and love and honor, was an inheritance, but a less significant one; it required an effort to live up to it, and Virginia was not fond of effort.
His feeling for her was worship. Virginia had not been looking on at the pageant (Roderick would have called it a pageant) of society very long, but she was a beautiful girl and a rich one; therefore she had seen what called itself love before.
As an example of what a suitor’s attitude should be, she preferred Roderick’s expression of devotion to that of any man she knew. He made her few compliments, and those in set and guarded phrase; except on abstract topics, his speech with her was restrained to the point of chilliness; even the admiration of his eyes was controlled as they met hers. But on rare occasions the veil dropped from them, and then—Virginia did not know what there was about these occasions that she should find them so fascinating; that she should watch for them and wait for them, and even try to provoke them, as she did.
Worship is not exactly the form of sentiment of which hopelessness can be predicated, but Roderick was human enough to wish that the niche in which his angel was enshrined might be in his own home. He let her see this one day in the simplicity of his devotion.
“Not that I ask for anything, you understand,” he added, hastily. “I could not do that. It is only that I would give you the knowledge that I love you, as—as I might give you a rose to wear. It honors the flower, you see,” he said, rather wistfully.
She lifted her eyes to his, and he wondered why there should flash across his mind a recollection of the flowers she had worn yesterday, a cluster of Maréchal Niels that she had raised to her lips once or twice, kissing the golden petals. She made absolutely no answer to his speech, unless the faintest, most evanescent of all her faint smiles could be called an answer. But she was not angry, and she gave him her hand at parting.
In spite of her silence she thought of his words. The little that she had to say upon the subject she said to her father as they were sitting before the library fire that evening.
John Fenley was a prosperous lumberman, possessed of an affluent good nature which accorded well with his other surroundings in life. Virginia was his only child, and motherless. She could not remember that her father ever refused her anything in his life; and certainly he had never done so while smoking his after-dinner cigar.
“Papa,” she began, in her pretty, deliberate way—“papa, Roderick Le Garde is in love with me.”
Her father looked up at her keenly. She was not blushing, and she was not confused. He watched a smoke-ring dissolve, then answered, comfortably,
“Well, there is nothing remarkable about that.”
“That is true,” assented Virginia. “The remarkable thing is that I like him—a little.” Her eyes were fixed upon the fire. There was a pause before she went on. “I have never liked any of them at all before, as you know very well. I never expect to—very much. Papa, you afford me everything I want; can you afford me Roderick Le Garde?”
“Do you know what you are asking, Virginia, or why?” he said, gravely.
“I have thought it over, of course. Couldn’t you put him in charge at one of the mills or somewhere on a comfortable number of thousands a year? Of course I can’t starve, you know, and frocks cost something.”
“My daughter is not likely to want for frocks,” said John Fenley, frowning involuntarily. “You did not take my meaning. I wish your mother were here, child.”
“I am sufficiently interested, if that is what you mean,” said Virginia, still tranquilly. “He is different, papa; and I am tired of the jeunesse dorée. Perhaps it is because I am so much dorée myself that they bore me. Roderick has enthusiasms and ideals; I am one of them; I like it. You, papa, love me for what I am. It is much more exciting to be loved for what one is not.”
Her father knit his brows and smoked in silence for a few minutes. Virginia played with the ribbons of her pug.
“Marylander, isn’t he?”
“Something of the sort; I forget just what.”
“H’m!”
“Le Garde isn’t a business man,” John Fenley said, at length.
“Isn’t he?” asked Virginia, politely smothering a yawn.
“Is he? You know enough about it to know how important it is that any man who is to work into my affairs, and ultimately to take my place, should know business and mean business, Virgie. It is a long way from poverty to wealth, but a short one from wealth to poverty.”
“Yes,” said Virginia, “I know; but I also know enough about it to be sure that I could manage the business if it became necessary. You and I are both business men, dear. Let us import a new element into the family.”
Fenley laughed proudly. “By Jove! I believe you could do it!” A little further silence; then, “So your heart is set on this, daughter?”
“Have I a heart?” asked Virginia, sedately, rising and leaning an elbow on the mantel as she held up one small, daintily slippered foot to the blaze.