XVII
A VISIT TO VIRGINIA
Not until he was settled in the car did Laine let himself take in the meaning of the journey he was taking. The past few hours had been too hurried to think; but as he sat in the smoking-compartment thought was no longer to be held in abeyance, and he yielded to it with no effort at restraint.
Sleep was impossible. The train, due at Washington at seven-twelve, would there have to be changed to a local for Fredericksburg, but the early rising was no hardship. To sit up all night would have been none. Each turn of the wheel was taking him nearer and nearer, and to listen to them was strange joy. Only that morning he had wished Christmas was over, had indeed counted the days before business could again absorb, and now every hour would be priceless, every moment to be held back hungrily.
One by one, the days in which he had seen Claudia passed in review before him. The turn of her head, the light on her hair, the poise of her body on her horse, bits of gay talk, the few long quiet ones, the look of eyes unafraid of life, light laughter, and sometimes quick frown and quicker speech, and, clearest of all, the evening in which she had told him the story, with Channing in her arms and Dorothea in his. There had been few waking moments in which it had not repeated itself to him, and in his dreams the scene would change and the home would be theirs—his home and hers—and she would be telling him again what life should mean.
He had long known the name of the land in which he lived. It was, indeed, a Lonely Land; but that it was of his own choosing he had not understood, nor had he cared to think all people were his people. There was much that he must know. He needed help, needed it infinitely. If she would give it— A man, reeling slightly, came in the compartment, and, getting up, Laine went out quickly. For a few moments he stood in the vestibule and let the air from a partly open door blow over him, then, with a glance at the stars, turned and came inside.
At Fredericksburg the next morning Laine turned to the negro hackman, who, with Chesterfieldian bows, was hovering over his baggage and boxes, and made inquiries of the boat, the time of leaving, of a hotel, of what there was to see during the hours of waiting; and before he understood how it happened he found himself and his paraphernalia in the shabby old hack and was told he would be taken to the boat at once. He had never been to Virginia, had never seen a specimen of human nature such as now flourished a whip in one hand and with the other waved a battered and bruised silk hat toward the muddy street that led from the station to the town above, and with puzzled eyes he looked at the one before him.
"Yas, suh! I knows jes' exactly what 'tis you want to be doin', suh. You jes' set yourself right back in the carridge and I'll take you and the baggige right down to the boat and put 'em in for you, and then me and you'll go round and see this heah town. I reckon you ain't never been to this place before. Is you all right now, suh?" The once shiny hat was put on the back of the grizzled gray head, a worn and torn robe was tucked around Laine's knees, and before answer could be made the driver was on the box, the whip was cracked, and two sleepy old horses began the slight incline of the long street out of which they presently turned to go to the wharf and the boat tied loosely to it.
Half an hour later, bags and boxes having been stored in a state-room, a hasty survey of the boat made, and a few words exchanged with a blue-coated man of friendly manners concerning the hour of departure, Laine again got in the old ramshackle hack and for two hours was shown the honors and glories of the little town which had hitherto been but a name and forever after was to be a smiling memory. Snow and slush covered its sidewalks, mud was deep in the middle of the streets, but the air went to the head with its stinging freshness, the sun shone brilliantly, and in the faces of the people was happy content.
Reins dropped loosely in his lap, Beauregarde, the driver, sat sideways on the box and emitted information in terms of his own; and Laine looked and listened in silent joy to statements made and the manner of their making.
"Yas, suh, this heah town am second only in historic con-se-quence to Williamsburg, suh, though folks don't know it till they come and find it out from me. I been a-drivin' this heah hack and a-studyin' of history for more'n forty years, and I ain't hardly scratch the skin of what done happen heah before a Yankee man was ever thought of. They didn't use to have no Yankees 'fore the war, but they done propogate themselves so all over the land that they clean got possession of 'most all of it. They's worse than them little English sparrows, they tell me. Marse George Washington he used to walk these streets on his way to school. He had to cross the river from Ferry Farm over yonder"—the whip was waved vaguely in the air—"and he wore long trousers till he got to be a man. Young folks didn't use to show their legs in those days, suh, jes' gentlemen. That place we're comin' to is Swan Tavern, and if it could talk it could tell things that big men said, that it could. This heah house is where Mis' Mary, the mother of Marse George Washington, used to live when she got too old to boss the farm. Some society owns it what was originated to preserve our Virginia iniquities, and they done put up a monument to her that's the onliest one ever put up to a woman for being the mother of a man. They was bus head people, the Washingtons was, but so was a lot of others who didn't do nothin' to prove it, and so is now forgot, and quality folks in them days was so thick there warn't enough other kind to do 'em reverence. Governor Spottswood and his Horse-Shoe gentlemen took dinner once in this heah town, and President James Monroe used to live heah. I'm a-goin' to show you his home and his office, presently, and the house where Marse Paul Jones used to live in. I reckon you done heard tell of Marse John Paul Jones, ain't you?"
Laine admitted having heard of him, but historic personages did not interest as much as present-day ones. The occupants of certain quaint and charming old houses, with servants' quarters in the rear and flower-filled gardens in the front, the rose-bushes of which were now bent and burdened with snow, appealed, as the other places of famous associations failed to do, and he wondered in which of them Claudia's relatives lived.
At Marye's Heights Beauregarde waxed eloquent. Half of what he said was unheard, however, and as Laine's eyes swept the famous battle-fields his forehead wrinkled in fine folds. Could they have been settled in any other way—those questions which had torn a nation's heart from its bosom? Would the spilling of blood be forever necessary? He ordered Beauregarde to drive to the hotel. There was just time for lunch, and then the boat which would take him down the river to where Claudia would be waiting.
As the boat swung off from the wharf and slowly made its way down the narrow river, curving like a horse-shoe around its ice-bound banks, Laine, standing in the bow, scanned the scene closely, and wondered if it were but yesterday that he had been in the rush and stir of city life. Straight up from the water the bluff rose boldly. Rays of pale sunlight sent threads of rainbow colors on the snow which covered it, and through the crystal-coated trees, here and there, a stately mansion could be seen overlooking the river. Skimming the water, a sea-gull would now and then dip and splash and rise again in the clear, cold air, and, save for the throb of the engine, there was no sound.
Until the sun had set and darkness made farther scanning of banks and bluff and winding river impossible, Laine walked the deck, hands in pockets, and thought of the morrow and the days ahead. The boat would tie up for the night at Pratt's Wharf and was due at ten the next morning at Brooke Bank if there was no unusual delay. Suddenly he remembered she had said other friends would be on the boat. Most of the passengers were obviously returning home from a shopping trip to the city, package-laden and bundle-burdened, but two city men he had noticed and then forgotten in the thought of other things. Who were they? He opened the door of the stuffy little cabin and went in. Five minutes later he was at the supper-table and next to the two men who were talking in undertones of former Christmases at Elmwood. They were young, good-looking, and of Claudia's world. He got up and again went out.