The next instant—I don’t know to this day how or when it began—I was aware that the apparition had drawn nearer, and that the dread and fear, the evil purpose, were no longer a part of her. I saw her clearly for a moment—saw her as I had never seen her before—young and gentle and—yes, this is the only word for it—loving. It was just as if a curse had turned into a blessing, for, while she stood there, I had a curious sensation of being enfolded in a kind of spiritual glow and comfort—only words are useless to describe the feeling because it wasn’t in the least like anything else I had ever known in my life. It was light without heat, glow without light—and yet it was none of these things. The nearest I can come to it is to call it a sense of blessedness—of blessedness that made you at peace with everything you had once hated.
Not until afterwards did I realize that it was the victory of good over evil. Not until afterwards did I discover that Mrs. Vanderbridge had triumphed over the past in the only way that she could triumph. She had won, not by resisting, but by accepting; not by violence, but by gentleness; not by grasping, but by renouncing. Oh, long, long afterwards, I knew that she had robbed the phantom of power over her by robbing it of hatred. She had changed the thought of the past, in that lay her victory.
At the moment I did not understand this. I did not understand it even when I looked again for the apparition in the firelight, and saw that it had vanished. There was nothing there—nothing except the pleasant flicker of light and shadow on the old Persian rug.
WHISPERING LEAVES
PART I
It was fifteen years ago to-day; yet I can still see that road stretching through vine-like shadows into the spring landscape.
Though I was never in Virginia before, I had been brought up on the traditions of my mother’s old home on the Rappahannock; and when the invitation came to spend a week with my unknown cousins, the Blantons, at Whispering Leaves, I was filled with a delightful sense of expectancy and adventure. None of my family had ever seen the present owner of the place—one Pelham Blanton, a man of middle age, who was, as far as we were aware, without a history. All I knew of him was that his first wife had died at the birth of a child about seven years before, and that immediately afterward he had married one of his neighbours, a common person, my mother insisted, though she had heard nothing of the second wife except that her name before her marriage was Twine. Whether the child of the first wife had lived or not we did not know, for the letters from the family had stopped, and we had no further news of the place until I wrote from Richmond asking permission to visit the house in which my mother and so many of my grandmothers were born.
The spring came early that year. When I descended from the train into the green and gold of the afternoon, I felt almost as if I were stepping back into some old summer. An ancient family carriage, drawn by two drowsy black horses with flowing tails, was waiting for me under a blossoming locust tree; and as soon as my foot touched the ground I was greeted affectionately by the coloured driver, who still called my mother “Miss Effie.” He was an imposing, ceremonious old man, very nearly as black as the horses, with a mass of white hair, which is unusual in a negro, and a gay bandanna handkerchief crossed over his chest. After an unconscionable wait for the mail, he brought the dilapidated leather pouch from the office, and tossed it on the floor of the carriage. A minute later, as he mounted over the wheel to his seat, he glanced back at me and remarked in an encouraging tone, “dar ain’ nuttin’ to hinder us now.”
“How far is it to Whispering Leaves, Uncle Moab?”
The old negro pondered the question while he flicked the reins over the broad swaying backs of the horses. He was so long in replying that, thinking he had forgotten to answer, I repeated the words more distinctly.