Ashville spent less than a day under the shock of its loss. Virgie and Virgie's future became the whole topic of conversation ere another sun had set, and the consideration shown in every man's or woman's desire to do something for her was the greatest evidence of their love. As the days went by, and no change was made, each household became more hopeful of its chances to secure her. Martin remained a firm companion through all the ordeal, but when the week had ended and all was over Virgie was made to see how near impossible it would be for her to return to her lonely home to live in solitude. She accepted the fact with an agonizing, last struggle against her desires. Her home seemed to be going from her forever. That she could make arrangements for companions and return to it in the spring seemed not to impress her at all. Beyond the fact that she was leaving, her grief-dimmed vision could not go, and it was with a terrible struggle that she yielded. Next to her own home no thought of other abode than Dole's place occurred to her. The only solace she could give herself was the kindness she would find there, and, while she was rebelling against the change, she was also struggling between these two—her home and Aunt Faribee. Thus it was that she began and lived out her deepest mourning within the walls of the hostelry.
The winter days dragged with almost interminable slowness, and after her first grief she watched them from her room, alone, dry-eyed and calm. Those who called obtained a moment of sweet gratitude and then prompt dismissal. Her mind was inscrutable. Ashville, sympathetic, became at last curious to discover the reason of her calm and quiet grief. That her father's death should be the heaviest blow of all sorrows that could have reached her they well knew, but, though they were in one mind in this, they were widely divided as to why she should show outwardly so little sign of suffering.
"Si" was questioned and cross-questioned, yet he could only shake his head solemnly, significantly. Aunt Faribee made more effort to explain.
"I know she's takin' it right hard, God bless her. Mebbe she don't show it, but she be," she said loyally, though her words held no more information than her husband's silence did.
Ashville was feverishly interested. Visitors became so numerous that Virgie begged not to see them, and " Si," respecting her wishes, became a diplomat in guarding her. Then they turned to the parson as a last resort, trusting to his intelligence to understand, and hoping that through him they might learn enough to re-assure themselves of her state of mind.
Kent had not been to call on her since she came in to the hotel. Twice he had seen her at the window—once when she ran away quickly on perceiving him pass, and again, when she had acknowledged his salute distractedly. Her position had caused him the deepest anxiety. The fact of her being alone was sufficient cause for him to reason that he must not force himself upon her. He knew of the bewilderment of her friends and of their inability to fathom her condition. That their sympathy was well meant he accepted without debate, but that it was coarse and rough he also knew, and it hurt him that he could in no way help to soften her suffering or console her grief. A week he watched and listened silently to all that came from that strange chamber—a hope growing within him that a change might occur. Still another week and another went by, but things remained the same. As Ashville became more puzzled Kent came to understand. Intuitively he gathered from the things he heard that she was suffering, not as the world is used to sorrow, but quite alone. Hers was a living coal burning within, away from all the balm of sympathy or of love. No words or caress could reach her grief and assuage because she could not reach it herself. It lay too deep, and, if it were not yet evident in her face, it was none the less there. Kent felt that the time must come when her strength would yield. It was marvelous, though, through these terrible days. He listened eagerly until the suspense was overwhelming for the final news to come. That it would come he knew. It was not a question with him of how he knew. He simply lived in a torment of fear lest the outbreak should delay until her sustaining powers were gone, and then—"what then?" he asked himself.
Oh! how eagerly he listened and waited to hear that she had succumbed to her grief and buried her face in lamenting relief. The nights were too long—a hundred times too long—for in them he could learn nothing of her. The days found him about where he was nearest in touch with those likely to know.
It was more than a month that she remained thus at the hotel, and he found himself so pressed by his desire to go to her that he feared his self-restraint would soon weaken under the continued requests of her friends that he should go. As their urgings grew his strength waned. A subterfuge occurred to him, and he prevailed upon "Doc" Murray to go. The experiment, however, was only wasted, and he was at last forced against his will to make the call.
Taking yet another half day, after his decision had been made, to prepare himself for the visit, he rehearsed those things that he had best say to make the time less uncomfortable for her and, if possible have it prove of some benefit.
When he did go to see her "Si" showed him to the front room on the second floor with all of the solemn regard Kent's call inspired in him. Virgie sat beside the centre-table as the men entered the room, her arm over an album that lay with its clasp turned from her. She had been loosening and refastening it slowly as she awaited their coming, and when they approached her only change was a discontinuance of this nervous toying. She was still outwardly calm though evidently defiant. "Si" opened his lips as though he would speak, but closed them again and withdrew awkwardly, leaving the door partially open behind him. Kent bowed seriously, and paused under the restraint of her questioning, suspicious gaze. She did not rise to greet him, neither did she speak, only acknowledging his arrival with the slightest bow as she regarded him closely.
"Am I unwelcome?' he asked, venturing no further toward her than he had already gone.
"You may come in," she said quietly, dropping her eyes and resuming the fumbling of the album clasp.
"I have not come of my own will,' he said, apologetically.
"Why, then, have you come at all?" she asked, with some resentment.
"It was not that I have not wanted to come," he replied quickly. "Not that. But I would not force myself upon you until they compelled me to."
"Quite like your old self," she responded with a sigh.
"Don't—please don't, Virgie," he said, pleadingly. "I have not used that excuse to ease my path to your good-will; I have rather tried to show you that of my own volition I would never have come. I am merely the agent of your friends and mine, seeking to influence you to receive their well-meant kindnesses. All Ashville is grieving for you to know that you are suffering, and suffering alone, and you will not let them show their love. You will not accept their sympathy or let them lighten your burden. Have you forgotten all that they once were to you and all that you are to them?"
Through the obstinate determination behind which she had fortified herself her perception penetrated to the things that he was saying and gathered new traits that she had never known him to possess. His independence, his apparent disregard for her opinion of himself—both of these surprised her out of her first determination, and, while she made no reply, she listened attentively.
"The time is going by," he resumed argumentatively, on observing that she intended not to answer. "The time is going by in which they might have reasonably expected you to seclude yourself, and yet you are getting farther from them instead of coming back. Your ways are yours to do with as you please. No one realizes that more than I, and far be it from me to attempt to induce you to do other than that which is best. Knowing your right to do as your inclination dictates, I have respected it, but Ashville—our simple Ashville friends—they know not what to make of your self-estrangement. Each individual rebuff that you have given has been taken home to them all. You owe them more than this. Ah! I see you know that you do," he said condemningly, as she turned her head impatiently from him.
"You do not understand," she said, and there was an unusual hardness in her voice.
"I do not," he repeated solemnly; "nor does anyone else."
"And if you did, what then?"
"It might relieve us and you," he replied.
"You have changed much," she said, as she surveyed him calmly, and he frowned at the implied compliment. There was a pause then, but soon she continued: "Once you were all for Royal Kent, but now you are for your friends first, then me, and yourself not at all. Would you have come if they had not made you?" she asked quietly.
"Why?" he questioned in turn, too surprised for the instant to answer.
"Would you?" she repeated.
"No, I would not," he said, much disconcerted, and Virgie became very thoughtful.
He watched her with a growing conviction of his preconceived solution of her actions. She was steeling herself against her grief by constantly building about it all of the bitterness and resentment against people and events that she could lay hold upon. Her happy life had been a love-filled life. In sorrow she could derive no comfort from the well-springs of those other days. Each happy incident marked too sharp a contrast; each love was an added pang, and she would not think of them because of their hurtfulness. This, then, was the inflicting upon herself other sorrows to cover the one she would most care to forget, and, innocent as she had hitherto been to seeing things in a sear light, she was becoming rapidly adept in nourishing the seed of bitterness.
Kent watched her pityingly, his deep regard for her self-imposed suffering almost forcing him to withdraw. He was scrutinizing her face carefully for some sign of relenting, all of the tender compassion and love he held for her being evident in his own, when she turned quickly and met his eyes.
"Why don't you go?" she asked waveringly.
"Because I cannot," he replied passionately.
They heard Dole's heavy tread on the uncarpeted stairway, and Kent, anticipating an interruption, stepped over and closed the door.
"Now listen!" he said, coming to where she sat, and standing over her he talked feverishly. Virgie bowed her head, and with a deathlike whiteness upon her face invited, yea, craved his bitter words of denunciation, for the fire within her had consumed all her own, and she was thirsting for others that differed from the mellow, sweet tones of her previous callers.
"Listen to me, Virgie. I must tell you of yourself. I must tell you of the things I see that you cannot see," he said. "You would have it that I think of our friends first and then of you. You know better than this, and it is only with your words that you reverse the two. It is of you first—you always—that not only myself, but all Ashville is thinking, and for our regard we are receiving the cultivated ugliness of a once beautiful mind. Is it unreasonable of your people—your people and mine—to expect now, when sorrow has come to you, that they may share it? In the old days, when there was naught but sunshine for you, the darkness of sadness came to them from time to time in their turns, shutting out all of the gold and blue of the heavens. In those days you were everywhere, and everything that was good and bright came with you.
You lifted their sorrows, and the radiance of your sweet heart shone through their trials and withered them with its good and cheering warmth. To-day, yesterday—for many days and weeks you have been bearing a sorrow that is changing you. Your friends suffer for you, but they cannot suffer with you because you will not let them. Think of what their tender love for you means to them. It was a God-given grace that led you into their affections; it is a bad side of yourself, hitherto unknown, that is leading you out of them."
"I do not want to lose their love," she said, deeply moved.
"No, but you would wound them and turn them away from you though. I cannot understand what it is that makes you do it. Do you think that you can do that and retain their love?" he asked.
"But I did not mean to do that," she replied, sorrowfully.
"And yet you have done that and nothing else. Are you blind? Is your heart turned to stone that you cannot see and feel these things?" he asked, impatiently. "What strange motive was it that caused you to wish yourself so completely alone in your sorrow? No matter what it was, you have near reached the fulfillment of your desires. Do you realize," he said, impressively, "that you are alone, utterly, solely alone, and all the world has about turned from you?"
"Oh! not that," she said, looking up into his face wistfully, as tears sprang to her eyes at the thought of her isolation.
Kent saw instantly that the flood-gates of her long-restrained grief were breaking, and he held to his untrue statement with fixed resolve. Looking full in her eyes he echoed her words impressively. "Just that," he said, and then went on, while she lowered her head again and began to cry softly.
"The love that they have given you merits a better return than the mean one you have given, Virgie. You have been cruel to their kindnesses, ugly to their sympathy and hateful to their love. Think! think—not as you have been thinking—of yourself alone, but of them and yourself! And then you must humble your head at their very feet, for you have proven yourself unworthy, utterly unworthy. In this you have indeed grievously sinned. For shame, Virgie; for shame! You should bury your face and weep for a deeper sin than ever you were permitted to know.
Relentlessly he had continued, while her sobs had grown deeper and more pitiable. Even though the pain at sight of her tears was choking his voice, and he must frequently clear his throat of its excited huskiness, he went on laboriously shaming her. To break the spell of her stony, unfeeling condition had cost him the pangs of bitterest suffering. To attain his object, with the remedy he thought best for her, he had had to wield an implement of denunciation as painful to him in its construction as his honest conscience could make it. It was doubly hurtful. In wielding it he had cut himself more deeply because it was hurting her. Her tears were as salt upon his open wounds, and he writhed inwardly under their smarting; and yet he bore the pain as stoically as she had earlier borne her own self-inflicted bitterness, and would not yield himself for his own relief because her outburst must result beneficially for her. He sacrificed her for her ultimate good. He sacrificed himself for—he knew not what. It was not a time in which he could think of himself, therefore he had gone on and attained his end in view without a faltering thought.
"I am going," he said, very low, taking up his hat from the table beside her.
She made no sign of having heard him, only crying quietly, her sobs swaying her whole frame as they racked every fibre of her being, and with a last backward glance he withdrew.
She heard the door close gently after him, and with the sound she was overwhelmed by a sudden loneliness. Her heart felt isolated from the world. Her mind fancied the ranks of her hitherto friends breaking and falling away from her, their footsteps chiming hollowly with those of Kent. When she could hear him no longer she checked her sobs and listened. All about her was absolute quiet. In the full glare of midday light she was overcome by the horror of a complete loneliness, physical and imaginative; and she stood erect for an instant, agonized in mind, broken in spirit, her hold on life struggling to support her; but the long strain had been too much. Slowly swaying she gave one last, inarticulate gasp as she would have called for aid, then sank to the floor and consciousness left her.
For many moments she lay where she had fallen; no one had come to find her. Half dazed she found herself, prostrate. She would have risen, but her strength refused the dictates of her uncertain will, and she moved not so much as an arm. Quietly then and slowly her consciousness returned, and with it came all of the broken-hearted understanding of her terrible grief. She moved her arm under her face and cried with the bitterness of her whole torn heart. Her tears were first a balm, but her weakness permitted not their ceasing; and from the tears of sorrow she came to those of frantic uncontrol, that grew momentarily fiercer.
Aunt Faribee came into the room at dusk and would have left again, surprised at not finding her, had not a sob caught her ear. In quick alarm she ran to the prostrate girl, stooping and lifting her head into her lap.
"My little lamb," she said soothingly, to which only a low moan responded. Lifting Virgie into her chair she hastened to the doorway and called "Si," the excitement in her voice bringing a ready response from all the men in the office, "Doc" Murray among the rest.
"She must be got t' bed at once," "Doc" said compassionately, adding in explanation: "She's exhausted herself. Th' long strain was too much t' stand this un, an' now she's jest collapsed nacherally. She'll want care now, Aunt Faribee," he said, "an' mighty good care. Get her t' bed an' I'll be back quick 's I can get t' Orrig's an' back. Mind y'—good care is what she'll need!" he ended, in earnest caution, as he hastened away, all the others following silently.