“The trouble is, I don't know what to say,” continued the old woman; “but I thought I'd tell you what pride will do sometimes, when anybody calls in its aid. If—if what they all think is so—if the young man has really lost his life in—in a matter of such a questionable nature, then your womanly pride ought to back you up considerably. I have never alluded to it, Cynthia, for I haven't been much of a hand to encourage ideas of superiority in one person over another, but away back in the history of the Radcliffes and the Cuylers and the Prestons, who were our kin in Virginia, I've been told that the women were beautiful, and great belles in the society at Richmond, before and, after the Revolution. Why, honey, I can remember my grandmother telling us children about being at big balls and dinners where George Washington was entertained, and lords and ladies of the old country. I was too young to understand what it meant, but I remember she told us about the great droves of negroes her father owned, and the carriages and silver, and the big grants of land from the king to him. One of her uncles was a royal governor, whose wife was a lady of high title. I was talking to Colonel Price about a month ago at the veteran's meeting at Cohutta Springs, and he said he had run across a family history about the Radcliffes where it said all of them came down from the crowned heads of England. I believe he was right, putting all I remember to what he said, and, lying in bed just now, it struck me that maybe one of those ladies away back there would not let a tear drop from her proud eyes over—over a young man who had met with misfortune as a consequence of bad conduct. Ever since you were a little girl I have been proud of your looks, honey. You have fine, delicate features; your hands are small and taper to the end of the fingers, and your ankles are slender like a fine-blooded race-horse, and your feet have high insteps and are pretty in shape. We are poor; we have been so such a long time that almost all record of the old wealth and power has passed out of our memory, but a few generations of poverty won't kill well-grounded pride and dignity.”
“Oh, granny, granny, you needn't talk to me so,” Cynthia said, calmly. “I know what you mean, and you sha'n't be ashamed of me. I promise you that.”
“I believe you, Cynthia, for you are showing self-respect right now. Go to bed, dear, and take your mind off of it. I'm going now. Good-night.”
“Good-night, granny.” Cynthia stood up, and with her arms around the frail, bowed old woman, she tenderly kissed her on the brow and led her to the door.
“Pride!” she muttered, as the old woman's steps rang in the corridor. “Pride is only a word. This! this!”—she struck her breast—“is my soul under a knife. Why did I sit still while she was talking and not tell her that he was good—good—as good a man as ever drew human breath? Why didn't I tell her what Pole Baker's wife told me about his carrying food at midnight on his shoulder (through the swamp, wet to his waist) to her and the children, when Pole was off on a spree—making her swear almost on a Bible that she never would tell? And why didn't I tell her what Mrs. Baker said about his sitting down on the children's bed when they were asleep and talking so beautifully about their futures, and all the sadness of his own childhood and his anxiety to know who and what he was? What if he did meet that Minnie Wade, and she and he—Oh, my God!” She stood staring at her pale face in her mirror, and then tottered back to the bed and sank upon it, sitting erect, her tense hands clutching her knees, as if for support against some invisible torrent that was sweeping her away. “Dead—oh! and for that reason—he, Nelson Floyd!”
Suddenly a sound fell on her ears. She sprang to her feet, straining her hearing to catch a repetition of it, her eyes wide, the blood of new life bounding in her veins. There it was again, the soft, mellow, insistent call of the whippoorwill from down by the grape-arbor. For a moment she stood still, crying to herself with an inward voice that had no sound: “Alive! Alive! Alive!” Then blowing out her candle, she sprang to the door of her chamber, and opened it, and passed on to the outer one, that was never locked, and which opened on the front porch. But there, with her hand on the knob, she paused, clutching it tightly, but not turning the bolt. Alive; yes, alive, but why? how could it be unless—unless he had killed Jeff Wade? Ah, that was it—red-handed, and fleeing from the arm of the law of man and God, he had come to say good-bye. A memory of her past determination never to meet him clandestinely flashed through her brain, but it was like overhead lightning that touches nothing, only warns man of its power and dies away. She turned the bolt and passed out into the night, running, it seemed, almost with the dragging feet of one in a nightmare, towards the trysting-place.
“Ah, here you are!” Nelson Floyd stood in the door-way of the little arbor, his arms outstretched. She allowed him to catch her cold, bloodless hands and lead her to the rustic seat within.
They sat down together. She felt his strong arm encompass her but had not the strength or will to resist. He pressed his cheek down on her cold brow, then his lips, and clasped one of her hands with his big warm one. Still she could not put him off. It was like a perplexing dream. There was the horror, and yet here was vague reassurance that at once inspired hope and benumbed her.
“What's the matter, little girl?” he asked, tenderly. “I declare you are quivering all over.”
She sat up. Pushing him back from her, and twisting her hand from his grasp, she looked straight into his eyes.