He would get well! The thought that perhaps she had saved his life gave her a thrill that ran over her whole body. And until yesterday she had never seen him! She kneeled in the blurred half-light, pushing her wet hair back from her forehead and smiling up in the rain that still fell fast.
In a few moments she rose and went on. The lightning came now at longer and more irregular intervals and the thunder pealed less heavily. The wan yellow murk was lifting. Here and there a soaked sun-beam peered half-frightened through the racked mist-wreaths, as though to smell the over-sweet fragrance of the wet jessamine in her arms.
At the gate of the Rosewood lane stood a mailbox on a cedar post and she paused to fish out a draggled Richmond newspaper. As she thrust it under her arm her eye caught a word of a head-line. With a flush she tore it from its soggy wrapper, the wetted fiber parting in her eager fingers, and resting her foot on the lower rail of the gate, spread it open on her knee.
She stood stock-still until she had read the whole. It was the story of John Valiant’s sacrifice of his private fortune to save the ruin of the involved Corporation.
Its effect upon her was a shock. She felt her throat swell as she read; then she was chilled by the memory of what she had said to him: “What has he ever done except play polo and furnish spicy paragraphs for the society columns?”
“What a beast I was!” she said, addressing the wet hedge. “He had just done that splendid thing. It was because of that that he was little better than a beggar, and I said those horrible things!” Again she bent her eyes, rereading the sentences: “Took his detractors by surprise ... had just sustained a grilling at the hands of the State’s examiner which might well have dried at their fount the springs of sympathy.”
She crushed up the paper in her hand and rested her forehead on the wet rail. Idiotically rich—a vandal—a useless purse-proud flâneur. She had called him all that! She could still see the paleness of his look as she had said it.
Shirley, overexcited as she still was, felt the sobs returning. These, however, did not last long and in a moment she found herself smiling again. Though she had hurt him, she had saved him, too! When she whispered this over to herself it still thrilled and startled her. She folded the paper and hastened on under the cherry-trees.
Emmaline, the negro maid was waiting anxiously on the porch. She was thin to spareness, with a face as brown as a tobacco leaf, restless black eyes and wool neatly pinned and set off by an amber comb.
“Honey,” called Emmaline, “I’se been feahin’ fo’ yo’ wid all that lightnin’ r’arin’ eroun’. Do yo’ remembah when yo’ useter run up en jump plumb down in th’ middle of yore feddah-baid en covah up dat little gol’ haid, en I useter tell yo’ th’ noise was th’ Good Man rollin’ eroun’ his rain-barr’l?” She laughed noiselessly, holding both hands to her thin sides. “Yo’ grow’d up now so yo’ ain’ skeered o’ nothin’ this side th’ Bad Place! Yo’ got th’ jess’mine? Give ’em to Em’line. She’ll fix ’em all nice, jes’ how Mis’ Judith like.”