Chapter XXIV: A Perfect Woman--And a Man

When his hostess presented him to Millicent Danvers, Westover could scarcely believe that this was the young woman he had been invited to meet. He had constructed a portrait of her in his imagination and she did not satisfy any of the details of the picture. He had expected to find her tall, bony, Roman-nosed, and sallow. She was instead of moderate height, plump, with delicately moulded Grecian features, and a complexion of pink and white that had no suggestion of sallowness in it. He had expected spectacles; instead he found a pair of gray-blue eyes that looked into his own with candor and fearless trustfulness, like those of a child of four or five years of age, and yet with the confidence and courage that come only of good breeding allied to perfect innocence. He had prepared himself to meet an aggressive, self assertive manner; instead he found all the shyness of young girlhood, all the modesty of maiden inexperience, allied with a frank, self-respecting truthfulness that was fearless because of its confidence of right intent.

They talked, of course, about the young woman's impressions of Virginia.

"It is lovely," she said. "You know it is all a surprise, an astonishment to me."

"How so? Would you mind explaining that?"

"I cannot exactly explain it. You see it's like a pleasant dream. You know it made you happy while you were dreaming it, and you know it makes you happy after you're awake, but you can't tell just what it was you dreamed or just why it made you happy. It is so elusive that you can't grasp it and put it into words. I'm still dreaming Virginia, and I know I shall never be able to tell anybody why the dream is so delicious. I try to think it out sometimes, but I can't. Whenever I make up my mind that it is because of this thing or that, I say 'No, that isn't it.' I suppose it's a thousand little things put together. But tell me about this election of yours. I'm talking too much about myself and my thoughts."

"No, you are not. The election doesn't interest me, and what you've been saying does. Go on, please. You had more in your mind."

"How can you know that?" she asked in genuine surprise.

"Because you spoke of 'a thousand little things.' I wish you would tell me about a dozen of them, or even half a dozen."

With a world of childlike seriousness in her wide open eyes the girl responded:

"I suppose I ought not to have said a thousand. That was an exaggeration, and exaggeration is as bad as any other kind of fibbing, isn't it?"

"In some cases, yes--in some, no. Certainly it was not so in this case. Your phrase carried to my mind precisely the thought you had in your own, and so it was perfectly truthful."

"I'm glad you think so. I try always to tell the truth."

"So I should imagine. Now will you not go on and tell me some of the things that please you in our Virginia life? Is it so different from your life up North? You see I have never been North."

"Oh, yes, so different! I think most of us up North are good people, just as I suppose most people are everywhere. But there's a difference--a something, I don't know just what. Yes, I do, too, in part at least, though I'm not sure I can put it into words. We live within ourselves, and you don't. We love our friends and are kind to them, but we aren't close to them, as people down here are. It is because we are shy, I suppose. Our attitude toward money values is different. I don't know that our people care more about money than you do, but--well, we take it into account as you do not. But that isn't what I mean. There is a certain graciousness in your ways of living, a warmth, a color--I don't know what to call it--that fascinates me. We are scrupulously polite to each other; you are cordially courteous instead. I suppose that too is because we are shyer than you are. We shrink from self revelation as you do not. I think we are really as warm-hearted as you Virginians are, but we are more reserved."

"You are doubtless right. I've observed that temperamental peculiarity in the Northern men I've met. At the University there was a young man from Boston who became my chum under rather peculiar circumstances, and I studied him closely. Because of a certain delicacy of constitution which rendered your Boston winters dangerous to his health, he was sent to the University of Virginia instead of Harvard. He didn't know our ways, and as a 'Yankee'--you know how unjustly that word has come to have evil significance with us--he was a good deal shunned, and things were said, and--well, it so came about that he and I became chums and occupied a room together on the lawn."

"Yes, I know," she answered dreamily, as if recalling a story. "But you are suppressing the truth, Mr. Westover."

In an astonishment that well nigh made him spring from his chair, he asked:

"How do you know that?"

"Our hostess is rising," she replied with a calm dignity that was fascinating to the young man. "We ladies must leave you gentlemen to your wine and cigars."

"I do not take wine," he replied, "and as for cigars I shall gladly give them up in favor of a further conversation with you. If you permit, I will quit the table with you."

"There!" she exclaimed. "That's one of the 'thousand' things I spoke of. In Virginia you gentlemen manifest a certain deference toward women that I have seen nowhere else. It is gallantly protective, respectfully, not servilely submissive, a tribute of strength to weakness which carries with it no reflection upon the weakness, and to women it is the most fascinating thing imaginable. I've expressed it lamely, but--" and with that she took a handful of cigars from the passing box and added:

"At any rate your courtesy to me shall not cost you your smoke. We won't go into the drawing room, but into the porch. The day is mild, and I want to tell you that story."

"Tell me first," he said as they passed into the porch, "how you happen to know anything about it."

"It is simple enough. I've heard my brother tell the story with enthusiasm many, many times."

"Your brother?"

"Yes. Holmes Wentworth is my elder brother. My mother was married twice, you know."

"I see. I didn't know. If I had known--"

"If you had known you wouldn't have spoken of the matter at all. And as it was, you were suppressing all the interesting facts. Now I'm going to relate them according to the gospel of Holmes Wentworth. In a debating society one night he expressed some opinions that gave offence to certain of the students, and some proposal of censure was made and hotly advocated. You opposed it, declaring that debate without absolute free speech must be a mockery. Your impassioned utterance won approval, and the resolution was voted down with only three or four men voting for it. They were not Virginians and--"

"They were the sons of negro traders, every man of them," interrupted Westover; "and for the negro trader and his belongings Virginia gentlemen have neither recognition nor tolerance. They are the vilest--"

He paused in search of a more effective epithet, and she spoke.

"I know all about that," she said, "and you needn't bite an inch off your next cigar by way of expressing yourself. Let me go on with the story. Those 'lewd fellows of the baser sort' went down into Charlottesville and organized a crew of ruffians to drive Holmes Wentworth out of the University and out of Virginia. You heard of the thing, and arming yourself with all the Colt's revolvers you could borrow, you hurried into the town. There you found Holmes sorely beset by a dozen armed ruffians and a crowd of other jeering dissolutes. You pushed him up into a corner, thrust a pair of the pistols into his hands, and took your place beside him, saying: 'If they rush us, shoot with both hands, and _shoot to kill_; there's no good in wasting ammunition.' Then you called out to the mob: 'Now do your worst, you cowards! But the first man that crosses that curbstone dies the death of the dog that he is, and we'll send some others to--' really you used some dreadful language, Mr. Westover, which I can't repeat, though I know it all by heart. And a little later, after the mob had quailed before you, you swore worse than ever, ordering them to disperse or you'd fire into them and send some of them to the place you had already mentioned. Oh, it was glorious! But the sheriff came and drove the crowd away. You see I know the whole story. Do you wonder that I find things to like in Virginia? Then you took Holmes to live in the same room with you, and after you learned to understand him as well as he already understood you, he and you became bosom friends."

"Thank you," he replied, throwing away a cigar that he had forgotten to light; "but really Holmes's imagination is creative and he has made too much of a trifle."

"He hasn't any imagination at all," she replied; "he's the most prosaic, literal, realistic fact mongerer imaginable, as you very well know. But now I'm going to turn woman again and talk about myself."

Westover thought that about the most tactful turning of a conversation that he had ever known. But she gave him no time to wonder over it.

"I'm staying at The Oaks, you know, with Margaret Conway. She's the very sweetest, truest, loveliest girl I ever knew. She's fit to be the wife of the noblest man in Virginia."

Westover winced, and the girl observed the fact without recognizing it in any way. Instead she went on:

"You see she was my guest for six weeks a year ago, and I'm returning her visit and incidentally enjoying life better than I ever dreamed that one could do. By the way, there's to be a dance at Dr. Carver's over at Fighting Creek, wherever that is, to-morrow night--no, it's the next night, and as there is to be some sort of public meeting near there that day, I suppose I shall see you at the party."

At that moment there was a double irruption from the dining room on the one side and the drawing room on the other, into the porch to see an autumn sunset of peculiar gorgeousness. A little later Boyd Westover took his leave, and bidding Jack Towns follow at his convenience, set out for Wanalah.

As he went he found himself thinking of Millicent Danvers with far more admiration and greatly tenderer sentiment than he had believed himself capable of feeling toward any woman since Margaret had been lost to him.

"She is certainly charming," he said to himself; then correcting his thought he said, "No, that is not the word; it is commonplace, conventional, cheap, and nothing commonplace, conventional or cheap can describe Millicent Danvers. She is all woman--that's it, and I can't imagine anything better as belonging to this world or the next. She is honest, truthful, genuine, but those are ordinary virtues, and her virtues are not confined to the ordinary. She is sympathetic with all things that are essentially right and of good report. Still, that is not the secret of her charm, for many women--perhaps most women--are all that. She has high ideals and she is loyal to them. She's the sort of woman Jephtha's daughter is supposed to have been, and at the same time she has all the qualities that make the story of Ruth the greatest masterpiece of all literature. Heroism is hers, and gentleness not less. She is a Joan of Arc and she is the most trusting child that was ever gently dandled on one's knee. I have it! She has faith; she believes; she trusts, and in her belief she dares and honors daring. Heroism is to her an object of worship; devotion a divine inspiration; truth an inborn characteristic. It is just as I said before--she is all woman, and in all God's work he created nothing else so good or so great as that."

As he reached this point in his meditations he was passing the outer gates of The Oaks plantation, and suddenly his thought reverted to Margaret.

"She, too, is a woman of that type," he reflected. "I do not understand her silence, but I should be unworthy of any woman's love if I doubted her truth. I will not doubt her. I will let no other take her place in my heart so long as I live. She is all that Millicent Danvers is, and to me she is more and always must be. She is the woman who gave me love for love, and even in an estrangement that can now never be undone, I cannot forget the troth we plighted before Fate interposed to spoil my life. I shall not attend the dance at Dr. Carver's."