Virginia Part 26

"Yes, but she will never be able to move herself. Do you think that poor Susan will marry John Henry now?"

"I wonder?" replied Mrs. Pendleton vaguely. Then the sound of Harry's laughter floated in suddenly from the backyard, and her eyes, following Virginia's, turned automatically to the pantry window.

"They've come home for a snack, I suppose?" she said. "Shall I fix some bread and preserves for them?"

"Oh, I'll do it," responded Virginia, while she reached for the crock of blackberry jam on the shelf at her side.

Another week pa.s.sed and there was no word from Oliver, until Mrs.

Pendleton came in at dusk one evening, with an anxious look on her face and a folded newspaper held tightly in her hand.

"Have you seen any of the accounts of Oliver's play, Jinny?" she asked.

"No, I haven't had time to look at the papers to-day--Harry has hurt his foot."

She spoke placidly, looking up from the nursery floor, where she knelt beside a basin of warm water at Harry's feet. "Poor little fellow, he fell on a pile of bricks," she added, "but he's such a hero he never even whimpered, did he, darling?"

"But it hurt bad," said Harry eagerly.

"Of course, it hurt dreadfully, and if he hadn't been a man he would have cried."

"Sister would have cried," exulted the hero.

"Indeed, sister would have cried. Sister is a girl," responded Virginia, smothering him with kisses over the basin of water.

But Mrs. Pendleton refused to be diverted from her purpose even by the heroism of her grandson.

"John Henry found this in a New York paper and brought it to me. He thought you ought to see it, though, of course, it may not be so serious as it sounds."

"Serious?" repeated Virginia, letting the soapy washrag fall back into the basin while she stretched out her moist and reddened hand for the paper.

"It says that the play didn't go very well," pursued her mother guardedly. "They expect to take it off at once, and--and Oliver is not well--he is ill in the hotel----"

"Ill?" cried Virginia, and as she rose to her feet the basin upset and deluged Harry's shoes and the rug on which she had been kneeling. Her mind, unable to grasp the significance of a theatrical failure, had seized upon the one salient fact which concerned her. Plays might succeed or fail, and it made little difference, but illness was another matter--illness was something definite and material. Illness could neither be talked away by religion nor denied by philosophy. It had its place in her mind not with the shadow, but with the substance of things.

It was the one sinister force which had always dominated her, even when it was absent, by the sheer terror it aroused in her thoughts.

"Let me see," she said chokingly. "No, I can't read it--tell me."

"It only says that the play was a failure--n.o.body understood it, and a great many people said it was--oh, Virginia--_immoral!_--There's something about its being foreign and an attack on American ideals--and then they add that the author refused to be interviewed and they understood that he was ill in his room at the Bertram."

The charge of immorality, which would have crushed Virginia at another time, and which, even in the intense excitement of the moment, had been an added stab to Mrs. Pendleton, was brushed aside as if it were the pestiferous attack of an insect.

"I am going to him now--at once--when does the train leave, mother?"

"But, Jinny, how can you? You have never been to New York. You wouldn't know where to go."

"But he is ill. Nothing on earth is going to keep me away from him. Will you please wipe Harry's feet while I try to get on my clothes?"

"But, Jinny, the children?"

"You and Marthy must look after the children. Of course I can't take them with me. Oh, Harry, won't you please hush and let poor mamma dress?

She is almost distracted."

Something--a secret force of character which even her mother had not suspected that she possessed--had arisen in an instant and dominated the situation. She was no longer the gentle and doting mother of a minute ago, but a creature of a fixed purpose and an iron resolution. Even her face appeared to lose its soft contour and hardened until Mrs. Pendleton grew almost frightened. Never had she imagined that Virginia could look like this.

"I am sure there is some mistake about it. Don't take it so terribly to heart, Jinny," she pleaded, while she knelt down, cowed and obedient, to wipe Harry's feet.

Virginia, who had already torn off her house dress, and was hurriedly b.u.t.toning the navy blue waist in which she had travelled, looked at her calmly without pausing for an instant in her task.

"Will you bind up his foot with some arnica?" she asked. "There's an old handkerchief in my work basket. I want you and father to come here and stay until I get back. It will be less trouble than moving all their things over to the rectory."

"Very well, darling," replied Mrs. Pendleton meekly. "We'll do everything that we can, of course," and she added timidly, "Have you money enough?"

"I have thirty dollars. I just got it out of the bank to-day to pay Marthy and my housekeeping bills. Do you think that will be as much as I'll need?"

"I should think so, dear. Of course, if you find you want more, you can telegraph your father."

"The train doesn't leave for two hours, so I'll have plenty of time to get ready. It's just half-past six now, and Oliver didn't leave the house till eight o'clock."

"Won't you take a little something to eat before you go?"

"I couldn't swallow a morsel, but I'll sit with you and the children as soon as I've put the things in my satchel. I couldn't possibly need but this one dress, could I? If Oliver isn't really ill, I hope we can start home to-morrow. That will be two nights that I'll spend away. Oh, mother, ask father to pray that he won't be ill."

Her voice broke, but she fiercely bit back the sob before it escaped her lips.

"I will, dear, I promise you. We will both think of you and pray for you every minute. Jinny, are you sure it's wise? Couldn't we send some one--John Henry would go, I know--in your place?"

A spasm of irritation contracted Virginia's features. "Please don't, mother," she begged, "it just worries me. Whatever happens, I am going." Then she sobbed outright. "He wanted me to go with him at first, and I wouldn't because I thought it was my duty to stay at home with the children. If anything should happen to him, I'd never forgive myself."

She was slipping her black cloth skirt over her head as she spoke, and her terror-stricken face disappeared under the pleats before Mrs.

Pendleton could turn to look at her. When her head emerged again above the belt of her skirt, the expression of her features had grown more natural.

"You'll go down in a carriage, won't you?" inquired her mother, whose mind achieved that perfect mixture of the sentimental and the practical which is rarely found in any except Southern women.

"I suppose I'll have to. Then I can take my satchel with me, and that will save trouble. You won't forget, mother, that I give Lucy a teaspoonful of cod-liver oil after each meal, will you? She has had that hacking cough for three weeks, and I want to break it up."

"I'll remember, Jinny, but I'm so miserable about your going alone."

Turning to the closet, Virginia unearthed an old black satchel from beneath a pile of toys, and began dusting it inside with a towel. Then she took out some underclothes from a bureau drawer and a few toilet articles, which she wrapped in pieces of tissue paper. Her movements were so methodical that the nervousness in Mrs. Pendleton's mind slowly gave way to astonishment. For the first time in her life, perhaps, the mother realized that her daughter was no longer a child, but a woman, and a woman whose character was as strong and as determined as her own.

Vaguely she understood, without a.n.a.lyzing the motives that moved Virginia, that this strength and this determination which so impressed her had arisen from those deep places in her daughter's soul where emotion and not thought had its source. Love was guiding her now as surely as it had guided her when she had refused to go with Oliver to New York, or when, but a few minutes ago, she had knelt down to wash and bandage Harry's little earth-stained feet. It was the only power to which she would ever surrender. No other principle would ever direct or control her.

Marthy, who appeared with Jenny's supper, was sent out to order the carriage and to bear a message to the rector, and Virginia took the little girl in her lap and began to crumble the bread into the bowl of milk.

"Wouldn't you like me to do that, dear?" asked Mrs. Pendleton, with a submission in her tone which she had never used before except to the rector. "Don't you want to fix your hair over?"

"Oh, no, I'll keep on my hat till I go to bed, so it doesn't matter. I'd rather you'd finish my packing if you don't mind. There's nothing more to go in except some collars and my bedroom slippers and that red wrapper hanging behind the door in the closet."

"Are you going to take any medicine?"

"Only that bottle of camphor and some mustard plasters. Yes, you'd better put in the brandy flask and the aromatic ammonia. You can never tell when you will need them. Now, my darlings, mother is going away and you must keep well and be as good as gold until she comes back."