Holly: The Romance of a Southern Girl

by Ralph Henry Barbour

“Quite so, sir, quite so. And now, sir, I should be delighted if you would take dinner with me at the hotel, if you will be so kind.”

But Winthrop declined and, thanking the other for his kindness, shook hands and turned his steps homeward, or, at least, toward Waynewood; he had begun to doubt his possession of that place.

VIII.

Winthrop had been at Waynewood a week—a week of which one day had been so like the next that Winthrop remembered them all with impartial haziness and content. It was delightful to have nothing more startling to look forward to than a quail-shoot, a dinner at Sunnyside, or a game of whist in town; to have each day as alike in mellowness and sunshine as they were similar in events, pass softly across the garden, from shadow to shadow, the while he watched its passage with tranquilly smiling eyes and inert body from the seat under the magnolia or a chair on the quiet porch.

The past became the flimsiest of ghosts, the future a mere insignificant speck on the far horizon. What mattered it that once his heart had ached? That he was practically penniless? That somewhere men were hurrying and striving for wealth? The sky was hazily blue, the sunlight was wine of gold, the southern breeze was the soothing touch of a soft and fragrant hand that bade him rest and sleep, for there was no yesterday and no morrow, and the taste of lotus was sweet in his mouth. The mornings danced brightly past to the lilt of bird song; the afternoons paced more leisurely, crossing the tangled garden with measured, somnolent tread so quiet that not a leaf stirred, not a bird chirped in the enfolding silence; the evenings grew from purple haze, fragrant with wood-smoke, to blue-black clarity set with a million silver stars whose soft radiance bathed the still world with tender light. Such days and such nights have a spell, and Winthrop was bound.

And Holly? Fate, although she was still unsuspecting of the fact, had toppled the stone into the stream and the ripples were already widening. Winthrop’s coming had been an event. Holly had her friends, girls of her own age, who came to Waynewood to see her and whom she visited in town, and young men in the early twenties who walked or drove out in the evenings, when their duties in the stores and offices were over, and made very chivalrous and distant love to her in the parlor. But for all that many of the days had been long with only Aunt India, who was not exactly chatty, and the servants to talk to. But now it was different. This charming and delightfully inexplicable Northerner was fair prey. He was never too busy to listen to her; in fact, he was seldom busy at all, unless sitting, sometimes with a closed book in one’s lap, and gazing peacefully into space may be termed being busy. They had quite exciting mornings together very often, exciting, at least, for Holly, when she unburdened herself of a wealth of reflections and conclusions and when he listened with the most agreeable attention in the world and always said just the right thing to tempt her tongue to more brilliant ardor.

And then in the afternoons, while Aunt India slept and Holly couldn’t, just because the blood ran far too fast in her young veins, there were less stimulating but very comforting talks in the shade of the porch. And sometimes they walked, but,—for Holly had inherited the characteristic disinclination for overindulgence in that form of exercise,—not very frequently. Holly would have indorsed the proverb—Persian, isn’t it?—which says, in part, that it is easier to sit than to stand and easier to lie down than to sit. And Winthrop at this period would have agreed with her. Judged by Northern standards, Holly might have been deemed lazy. But we must remember that Holly came of people who had never felt the necessity of physical exertion, since there had always been slaves at hand to perform the slightest task, and for whom the climate had prohibited any inclination in that direction. Holly’s laziness was that of a kitten, which seldom goes out to walk for pleasure but which will romp until its breath is gone or stalk a sparrow for an hour untiringly.

By the end of the first week she and Winthrop had become the very good friends they had agreed to be. They had reached the point where it was no longer necessary to preface their conversation with an introduction. Now when Holly had anything to say—and she usually did—she plunged right in without any preliminary shivers. As this morning when, having given out the supplies for the day to Aunt Venus, she joined Winthrop under the magnolia, settling her back against the trunk and clasping her hands about her knees, “I reckon there are two sides to everything,” she said, with the air of one who is announcing the result of long study.