In the winter she went up to Richmond and he slowly forced himself to renounce her. He began to see his old dream as it was—an emotional chimera; a mental madness. As the year grew on he watched his long hope wither root and branch, until, with the resurrection of the spring, it lay still because there was no life left that might put forth. And when his hope was dead he told himself that his unhappiness died with it, that he might throw himself single-hearted into the work of his life.
VIII
The year passed and was done with—leaves budded, expanded, fell again. Eugenia watched their growth, fulfilment, and decay as she had watched them other seasons, though with eyes a thought widened by experience, a shade darkened by tears. At first she had suffered wildly, then passively, at last resignedly. The colour rebloomed in her cheek, the gaiety rang back to her voice, for she was young, and youth is ever buoyant.
There was work for her to do on the place, and she did it cheerfully. She studied farming with her father and overhauled the methods of the overseer, to the man's annoyance and the general's delight. "She tells me Varly isn't scientific," roared the general with rapturous enjoyment. "A scientific overseer! She'll be asking for an honest politician next."
"I'm sure Varly is a very respectable man," protested Miss Chris in her usual position of defence. "The servants were always devoted to him before the war—that says a good deal."
"There's not a better man in the county," admitted the general, "or a worse farmer. Here I've let him go down hill at his own gait for more than thirty years, to be pulled up in the end by a chit of a girl. I wouldn't, if I were you, Eugie. He's old and he's slow."
"Oh! I'll promise not to hurt him," returned Eugenia. "I save him a lot of hard work, and he likes it."
She drew on her loose dogskin gloves and went out to overlook the shucking of the corn.
With the exercise in the open air she had gained in suppleness and brilliancy. It was the outdoor work that saved her spirit and her beauty—that gave her endurance for the indoor monotony and magnified the splendid optimism of her saddest hour. She was a woman born for happiness; when the Fates failed to accord it she defied them and found her own.