What better to do than to give it for Mistress Evelyn Byrd? Evelyn, who
had had for all her suitors only a slow smile and shake of the head;
Evelyn, who was older than her years; Evelyn, who was his friend as he was
hers. Love! He had left that land behind, and she had never touched its
shores; the geography of the poets to the contrary, it did not lie in the
course of all who passed through life. He made his suit, and now he had
his answer.
If he did not take trouble to wonder at her confession, or to modestly ask
himself how he had deserved her love, neither did he insult her with pity
or with any lightness of thought. Nor was he ready to believe that his
rejection was final. Apparently indifferent as he was, it was yet his way
to move steadily and relentlessly, if very quietly, toward what goal he
desired to reach. He thought that Fair View might yet call Evelyn Byrd its
mistress.
Since turning into the crossroad that, running south and east, would take
him back to the banks of the James and to his own house, he had not
slackened speed, but now, as he saw through the trees before him a long
zigzag of rail fence, he drew rein. The road turned, and a gate barred his
way. When he had opened it and passed through, he was upon his own land.
He had ridden off his irritation, and could now calmly tell himself that
the blunder was made and over with, and that it was the duty of the
philosopher to remember it only in so far as it must shape his future
course. His house of cards had toppled over; but the profound
indifferentism of his nature enabled him to view the ruins with composure.
After a while he would build the house again. The image of Evelyn, as she
had stood, dark-eyed and pale, with the flowers pressed to her bosom, he
put from him. He knew her strength of soul; and with the curious hardness
of the strong toward the strong, and also not without the delicacy which,
upon occasion, he could both feel and exhibit, he shut the door upon that
hour in the forest.
He had left the woods, and was now riding through a field of newly planted
tobacco. It and the tobacco house in the midst of it were silent,
deserted, bathed in the late sunshine. The ground rose slightly, and when
he had mounted with it he saw below him the huddle of cabins which formed
the ridge quarter, and winding down to it a string of negroes. One turned
his head, and saw the solitary horseman upon the summit of the slope
behind him; another looked, and another, until each man in line had his
head over his shoulder. They knew that the horseman was their master. Some
had been upon the plantation when he was a boy; others were more recent
acquisitions who knew not his face; but alike they grinned and ducked. The
white man walking beside the line took off his hat and pulled a forelock.
Haward raised his hand that they might know he saw, and rode on.