If Oliver would mind! The phrase still remained after the spirit which sanctified it had long departed. In her heart she knew—though her happiness rested upon her passionate evasion of the knowledge—that Oliver had not only ceased to mind, that he had even ceased to notice whether she wore his gifts or gave them to Jenny.
A light step flitted along the hall; her door opened without shutting again, and Lucy, in a street gown made in the princess style, hurried across the room and turned a slender back appealingly towards her.
"Oh, mother, please unhook me as fast as you can. The Peytons are going to take me in their car over to Richmond, and I've only a half hour in which to get ready."
Then, as Virginia's hands fumbled a little at an obstinate hook, Lucy gave an impatient pull of her shoulders, and reached back, straining her arms, until she tore the offending fastenings from her dress. She was a small, graceful girl, not particularly pretty, not particularly clever, but possessing some indefinable quality which served her as successfully as either beauty or cleverness could have done. Though she was the most selfish and the least considerate of the three children, Virginia was like wax in her hands, and regarded her dashing, rather cynical, worldliness with naïve and uncomprehending respect. She secretly disapproved of Lucy, but it was a disapproval which was tempered by admiration. It seemed miraculous to her that any girl of twenty-two should possess so clearly formulated and critical a philosophy of life, or should be so utterly emancipated from the last shackles of reverence. As far as her mother could discern, Lucy respected but a single thing, and that single thing was her own opinion. For authority she had as little reverence as a savage; yet she was not a savage, for she represented instead the perfect product of over-civilization. The world was bounded for her by her own personality. She was supremely interested in what she thought, felt, or imagined, and beyond the limits of her individuality, she was frankly bored by existence. The joys, sorrows, or experiences of others failed even to arrest her attention. Yet the very simplicity and sincerity of her egoism robbed it of offensiveness, and raised it from a trait of character to the dignity of a point of view. The established law of self-sacrifice which had guided her mother's life was not only personally distasteful to her—it was morally indefensible. She was engaged not in illustrating precepts of conduct, but in realizing her independence; and this realization of herself appeared to her as the supreme and peculiar obligation of her being. Though she was less fine than Jenny, who in her studious way was a girl of much character, she was by no means as superficial as she appeared, and might in time, aided by fortuitous circumstances, make a strong and capable woman. Her faults, after all, were due in a large measure to a training which had consistently magnified in her mind the space which she would ultimately occupy in the universe.
And she had charm. Without beauty, without intellect, without culture, she was still able to dominate her surroundings by her inexplicable but undeniable charm. She was one of those women of whom people say, "It is impossible to tell what attracts men in a woman." She was indifferent, she was casual, she was even cruel; yet every male creature she met fell a victim before her. Her slightest gesture had a fascination for the masculine mind; her silliest words a significance. "I declare men are the biggest fools where women are concerned," Miss Priscilla had remarked, watching her; and the words had adequately expressed the opinion of the feminine half of Dinwiddie's population.
From sixteen to twenty-two she had remained as indifferent as a star to the impassioned moths flitting around her. Then, a month after her twenty-second birthday, she had coolly announced her engagement to a man whom she had seen but six times—a widower at that, twelve years older than herself, and the father of two children. The blow had fallen, without warning, upon Virginia, who had never seen the man, and did not like what she had heard of him. Unwisely, she had attempted to remonstrate, and had been met by the reply, "Mother, dear, you must allow me to decide what is for my happiness," and a manner which said, "After all, you know so much less of life than I do, how can you advise me?"
It was intolerable, of course, and the worst of it was that, rebel as she might against the admission, Virginia could not plausibly deny the truth of either the remark or the manner. On the face of it, Lucy must know best what she wanted, and as for knowledge of life, she was certainly justified in considering her mother a child beside her. Oliver, when the case was put before him, showed a sympathy with Virginia's point of view and a moral inability to coerce his daughter into accepting it. "She knows I never liked Craven," he said, "but after all what are we going to do about it? She's old enough to decide for herself, and you can't in this century put a girl on bread and water because she marries as she chooses."
Nothing about duty! nothing about consideration for her family! nothing about the awful responsibility of entering lightly into such sacred relations! Lucy was evidently in love—if she hadn't been, why on earth should she have precipitated herself into an affair whose only reason was a lack of reason that was conclusive?—but she might have been engaging a chauffeur for all the solemnity she put into the arrangements. She had selected her clothes and planned her wedding with a practical wisdom which had awed and saddened her mother. All the wistful sentiments, the tender evasions, the consecrated dreams that had gone into the preparations for Virginia's marriage, were buried somewhere under the fragrant past of the eighties—and the memory of them made her feel not forty-five, but a hundred. Yet the thing that troubled her most was a feeling that she was in the power of forces which she did not understand—a sense that there were profound disturbances beneath the familiar surface of life.
When Lucy had gone out, with her dress open down the back and a glimpse of her smooth girlish shoulders showing between the fastenings, Virginia went over to the window again, and was rewarded by the sight of Harry's athletic figure crossing the street.
In a minute he came in, kissing her with the careless tenderness which was one of her secret joys.