Mrs. Erroll stepped out upon the front porch at Caryston with the ruffle at her throat, and a little damp, and the plumes in her bonnet somewhat limp; but Mary’s dress of white wool was soaked through and through, and her hat a sodden mass of white lace and straw.
Roden relapsed at once into the agonies of alarm in which newly engaged men are apt to indulge when the health of their fiancées is called into question. He went again to Virginia, and overwhelmed her with instruction and entreaties. Miss Erroll was conducted to a bedroom bright with blue chintz and many wax-candles, and Virginia, having provided her with some of her own clothes, went off to dry the soaked garments. That, however, Roden would not hear of. It was too far to Windemere to send back for dry garments. Then Virginia must lend Miss Erroll one of her dresses.
Virginia had three dresses besides the one she wore. She brought them all in and laid them on the bed. Miss Mary, who had an artistic eye, chose a gown of garnet wool with plain round waist and short skirt. When she had turned it in a little at the throat, and fastened a bit of cambric, which Virginia brought her, kerchiefwise about her neck, she looked like a charming Cinderella who had resumed her humble attire to please her Prince. Mary’s throat, however, could not stand the severe test of laceless exposure. It was too slender and long. Where Virginia’s massive column of cream-hued flesh rose from the clasp of such a kerchief with infinite suggestions of mythical forests and Amazonian warriors, Miss Erroll announced that she looked “scraggy.” She took up the bit of black velvet with its buckle of Scotch pebbles which she had worn about her throat when she arrived. But the wet stuff left dark stains on her fingers, and had assumed a cottony, lack-lustre hue. “If only I had a bit of velvet to go about my throat!” she said, regretfully. “I can’t go down this way—I’m so indecently thin!” She laughed a little and sat down as in despair.
A sudden thought leaped hot in Virginia’s breast. A bit of velvet? She had no velvet of any kind, but she knew where a piece was. A bit of dark-blue velvet ribbon, just such a bit as Miss Erroll wanted. True, it had been used to loop a baby’s sleeve, but around that slender throat it would reach most amply.
“I—kin—get—you a piece,” she heard herself saying.
Her voice sounded strange and disembodied to herself, as though it did not issue from her own lips. She thought that she to whom she spoke must start up with horror for the change. But no, she only smiled blandly, sweetly, with that faint suggestion of patronage which was as perceptible, though not as palatable, as the dash of bitter in orange marmalade.
“Thank you so much!” she said. “I shall quite suit myself then.”
Virginia took a candle and went up into the attic, as ten days ago she had gone. The damp, dusty smell brought back to her that terrible memory as only a perfume can recall the past.
Her veins throbbed ever hotter and fiercer. Her time was come. Revenge was in her hands. What fever could be more virulent, more deadly, than the fever that dark-haired girl had set raging in her veins? What was the verse that she had read only last night to Aunt Tishy out of what the old negress called “de Holy Wud?” An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Joe Scott was not the only person she had ever heard speak of such a thing. It had simply served to recall it to her mind. Ha! ha! She had never liked Joe Scott before, and she had been very rude about those johnny-jump-ups. Poor Joe! She would thank him the very best she knew how when next she saw him. Poor Joe! good Joe! dear Joe! Yes, there it was, the pretty bassinet cradle, with its faded blue and pink ribbons. That little English baby had died full four years ago. She walked towards it, shielding the candle with one scooped hand from the playful assaults of the night wind. The cradle stood just in front of an old hair-covered chest. As she neared it, a consciousness of eyes regarding her came upon her. Ah! there they were. A rat, paralyzed for the moment by the sudden light, had paused on the edge of the old chest, and fixed her with his little, protruding, evil-looking eyes. She made a spasmodic, terrified movement with her hand, and he leaped down, his sleek, tight-skinned body striking the floor with a repulsive sound as of unsavorily nurtured corpulence. The girl turned with a strong, uncontrollable fit of shivering towards the cradle. It was rocking slowly back and forth in the uncertain light, its pink and blue ribbons fluttering with a ghostly and ill-timed gayety. A cry almost broke from between her gripped lips, but she remembered suddenly that the rat must have set it in motion when he leaped from the top of the chest. Setting the candle on the floor beside her, she stooped over and began lifting out the little sheets and blankets and bundles of linen and silk. One of those sudden noises which disturb sleep at night in an old house jarred through the room. She stuffed the things hastily back and looked behind her. Nothing there. But as her glance went round the room she saw before her, black, assertive, monstrous, the likeness of a huge cradle, cast by the candle against the whitewashed wall of the garret. Her heart beat with laboring, heavy thuds. If it were not quite so black, she thought, or if it had only been more the size of the real cradle; but its vast presence in the low-roofed room seemed like the presence of some presiding fate. She tore away her look from it by sheer force of will, found what she wanted, caught up the candle, and rushed headlong from the room.