"Yes, I am sorry to leave here," said Frank the next morning, shortly after his arrival in the house of the Brandts. "I got to thinking what an interesting time you have made of it for me when otherwise it might have been fearfully monotonous." "Oh! yes, it was you!" he continued, as she was about to deny the credit he gave her. "And last night when I went to my room the odor from the smoke of those leaves was still about my clothes, bringing up old memories. Strange, isn't it, how some particular thing will appeal to our senses—like that smoke did to mine—at once associating itself with some old chain of thoughts and setting them in motion again?"
"What were your thoughts?" Virgie asked simply.
"Well, I hardly know; they were so varied," he replied laughing. "The most impressive one, though, was a recollection of the fires we boys used to have. Somehow it saddened me to think that I could never have them again, but now, when I think of it, they would hardly prove interesting if I could."
"Then why regret leaving behind the things once outlived—episodes that are without further interest for you?" she asked.
"Perhaps that would be a more philosophical way of looking at it, but at times little patches of sentimentality will creep in, and when they do we are bound to wish for or regret the loss of incidents that we would probably not care to live over if we could. Would you be surprised," he asked seriously, "if I were to tell you that I much regret leaving here?"
"But you are coming back?" Virgie said, attempting to laugh, and not understanding altogether his sentiment.
"No-o" he said slowly. "It is because I shall not be able to come back that I feel, I suppose, a regret."
"You have not seen Ben yet," she suggested.
"That is true—I have not seen him," he laughed, as the introduction of the unreliable Snellins caused him to reach a happier plane. "But someone else will," he added.
"And why not you?"
"I am going to leave here for Washington."
"I believe I envy you," she said, smilingly.
"But are you in doubt?" he asked.
"Ye-yes," she replied, hesitatingly. "You know I have never been away from here, so I do not know if I should like it anywhere else."
"You would find much there to interest you."
"Yes, I know; great people, and energy and life, and all that," she said, enumerating the things that her conception of the city gave her. "I really believe I do envy you," she said, conclusively, fixing her gaze upon a button that she twisted to a tension and allowing it to unwind itself with a spring, she continued in quick explanation: "But not in the way of taking your place. I do not mean that kind of envy. Father told me that he once had a brother there—a great man."
"Perhaps I shall get to see him," Frank said, "and if I do what shall I tell him for you?" he asked.
"You need tell him nothing of us," she replied, alarmed, "for the family ties are broken quite beyond repair. They have not seen each other, let alone heard of each other, for years."
"That is too bad," Frank said, disappointedly.
"It seems so, doesn't it? But it must be as they wish it, or else they would have looked for each other long ago."
"Yet, if I do see your father's brother, your own uncle—would you like for me to tell you of him—the sort of greatness he has attained, or any of the other things I find out about him?"
"And how he looks and what he does," she added in breathless interest, "and maybe about his family—that is, if he has one. I would be delighted to know of them. But you say you are not coming back," she finished, and her face was full of disappointment at the thought.
"Yet I might write," he suggested, amusedly.
"Would that be quite right?" she asked, her sweet innocence trusting to his honor.
"If you wish it, yes," he replied seriously. "Then, too, it would be in the interests of the family," he added, more to ease his own conscience than to impress her with the correctness of it.
"So it would; and if you see them, or—I mean him—you will write to me?" she asked.
"Gladly," he replied.
Virgie was filled with an anticipation of the pleasure she would find in this news from a world as strange to her as her limited reading of it could make it. The very meagreness of her knowledge allowed her imagination full sway. She had peopled the outside world with beings so superior to those she knew that the good news seemed outside the boundaries of belief. The calmness with which this man discussed the things she had so magnified for herself brought her to realize that her enthusiasm showed in sharp contrast to his serenity, and she tried to make herself believe that that enthusiasm was in some way unwarranted. In this she succeeded in only the smallest degree, yet enough to introduce another subject, endeavoring to cover the disclosure of her own extravagant imaginings.
Their talk, from her leading, took the form of commonplace things, of which they each knew something, until her father came in.
"Hello, Harvey!" he said; "I hear you are going to leave us this morning?"
"Yes," said Frank, "I have had to give it up."
"Too bad, too bad; I cannot understand it myself, but I don't suppose that there is much use of your waiting around any longer."
"Mr. Harvey is going to Washington, father," Virgie broke in after a short pause.
"He is?" And George Brandt's face lighted up in quick recognition at the mention of Washington.
"Yes, I shall go almost directly there after leaving here," Frank explained.
"Well—" said George Brandt, and then paused musingly.
"Well, what, father?" asked Virgie, and both of the young people looked at him expectantly, each knowing what was in the old man's mind.
"Oh! nothing," was all that he would say. "Haven't seen the parson this morning any of you, have you?" To which neither replied. Virgie had hoped that her father would make some reference to his brother. She knew that he had started to, and concluded that it must have taken some strong reason for him to change his mind so quickly. She thought of the communication she had arranged with Harvey to establish between her and her uncle, and feeling, after her father's silence, that perhaps she had better ask him not to write, she decided to do so at the first opportunity. But the absent parson put in his appearance, and the looked-for opportunity did not present itself.
"So you were going to leave without bidding me good-bye?" said Kent, in a tone that held just the least reproach.
"Hardly that," Frank replied, laughing. "It would be a poor return for your kind hospitality. No, I called to see you early this morning before I left, but you were out for a walk, they told me. Such unheard-of hours as you people keep," he continued, looking around at each of them. "Why do you ever go to bed at all? Why not just stay up if you find it necessary to be about before daylight? You might save yourselves the trouble of retiring."
"You know about the early bird, don't you?" Kent laughed.
"Pretty example indeed is that," Harvey replied. "But we are not birds, nor do I think one misses any of the things that the wandering about before dawn is supposed to get, especially as one's own faculties are only partly awake at that time."
"You should make a difference in the needs of different localities," George Brandt advised.
"I had not thought of that," Frank laughed. "It suggests another bit of wisdom in keeping with Kent's. 'When in Rome,' you know—but, never having lived in your Rome, I of course did not realize your necessities. But where is this striving to be the 'early bird' going to cease? You are apt, after all, to follow my suggestion and remain up all the night!"
"Hardly that bad. I think it has reached the limit now," said Brandt, amusedly.
"I sincerely hope so," Kent added, in earnest good humor.
"Well, to realize that at least one evil has reached a limit must be a satisfaction to you who are responsible for it," Harvey replied.
"But I cannot see wherein the evil lies," Virgie said seriously, for the custom was one of her greatest pleasures, and she followed it solely for the love of the freshness that early morning contains. "I am of the opinion that your introduction of adages has given you a wrong impression, because you have let only mercenary objects apply to our customs. What have you to say against anyone's being up and about in the early dawn who enjoys its clearness and its beauties as I do?" she asked of Harvey.
"Yes, what have you to say against that?" Kent asked, immediately sliding out of any responsibility, and laughing at Harvey for the predicament he found himself in.
"Isn't it rather unfair of you to leave the whole thing to me?" he asked. And to Virgie: "I am afraid that you take me too seriously. I was arguing more to cover my own laziness than I was to find fault with your energetic lives. If you will only forgive my attributing so much to the mercenary side I promise never to be guilty of it again.'
"It it customary for worldly people to excuse themselves at the expense of someone else's achievements?" she asked, reluctant to let him off so easily; and, too, she could not immediately overcome the offense his first criticism had produced.
"Hardly customary. I should dislike to think that the knowledge of worldly people only broadened them to make them that narrow. But I am afraid that in many cases their wider understanding of people and things allows them to handle the truth in a manner to convert it to their own needs; in a measure leading you to believe an omission in themselves a virtue by comparison, while another's virtue may be distorted to appear as folly or even sin."
"But such people are insincere; they are true to none, much less to themselves," she asserted, in faint disgust.
"Most assuredly they are untrue to themselves, but when they have reached the stage of absolute self-belief in their own virtues there is no undeceiving them, as they prove everything by logic, and you can reach almost any conclusion that is desirable and agreeable to you if you will reason that way and at the same time deceive yourself."
"If worldly people are like that I do not care to know them," she said decidedly, at which the men all laughed.
"Harvey is right,' her father said, retrospectively. "There are many just such people, and in the minor details everyone is troubled that way. In a small degree I might say I was one of them once."
"But, father, you did not deceive people? You could not do such a thing as that."
"Well, I hardly know whether I deceived them or not," he smiled, "but I thought I did. Anyway, it turned out that I was the most deceived of them all, which goes to prove Harvey's theory in one case at least."
"I do not quite understand," Virgie said, in an undertone. The idea of deception filled her with disgust, and at Frank's having suggested its being general she could have laughed, disbelieving his reasoning in its entirety. But for her father to claim it as truth—yes, and give the support of his own—to her—perfect and sincere life, forced her to accept the subject, repellant as it was, and try to reason it out for herself. For many days afterward she reviewed the thought, giving her imagination full sway. Bringing to bear upon it the lives and actions of such people as she knew, she could derive nothing but her first instinctive dislike. That dominated her every self-argument, and when she concluded that her understanding of "people and things," as Harvey had called them, was too limited to aid her in the solution, she turned to wondering in what her father could be deceptive. While she felt that she could never distrust him, still the awakening in her of unpleasant truths had commenced. His words came back, always with a lack of their real meaning, that made her sad in her misconception of them and him.
As they all stood at the gate, when Harvey was about to leave, she thought of another deception—the one in which she was to take a part—and again she would have asked him not to write to her if a chance had occurred, but the farewell was so general that no opportunity came to them to speak alone. She broke off a great stalk of crimson hollyhocks and stuck them in the whip-socket, thus hoping to come near enough to speak to him alone. Her pretty thought was misunderstood. Everyone laughed at the impulsive kindness. There was no pause in their conversation, and he drove away, leaving her with a heavy heart and reproachful conscience because of her first deception.