Throwing herself back into her chair, Maria lay for a time looking thoughtfully at the hickory log, which crumbled and threw out a shower of red sparks.Her face was grave, but there was no hint of indecision upon it, and it struck Carraway very forcibly at the instant that she knew her own mind quite clearly and distinctly upon this as upon most other matters.
"It may surprise you," she said presently, speaking with sudden passion, "but by right the Hall ought not to be mine, and I do not want it.I have never loved it because it has never for a moment seemed home to me, and our people have always appeared strangers upon the land.How we came here I do not know, but it has not suited us, and we have only disfigured a beauty into which we did not fit.Its very age is a reproach to us, for it shows off our newness--our lack of any past that we may call our own.Will might feel himself master here, but I cannot."Carraway took off his glasses and rubbed patiently at the ridge they had drawn across his nose.
"And yet, why not?" he asked."The place has been in your grandfather's possession now for more than twenty years.""For more than twenty years," repeated Maria scornfully, "and before that the Blakes lived here--how long?"He met her question squarely."For more than two hundred."Without shifting her steady gaze which she turned upon his face, she leaned forward, clasping her hands loosely upon the knees.
"There are things that I want to know, Mr.Carraway," she said, "many things, and I believe that you can tell me.Most of all, Iwant to know why we ever came to Blake Hall? Why the Blakes ever left it? And, above all, why they have hated us so heartily and so long?"She paused and sat motionless, while she hung with suspended breath upon his reply.
For a moment the lawyer hesitated, nervously twirling his glasses between his thumb and forefinger; then he slowly shook his head and looked from her to the fire.
"Twenty years are not as a day, despite your scorn, my dear young lady, and many facts become overlaid with fiction in a shorter time.""But you know something--and you believe still more.""God forbid that I should convert you to any belief of mine."She put out a protesting hand, her eyes still gravely insistent.
"Tell me all--I demand it.It is my right; you must see that.""A right to demolish sand houses--to scatter old dust.""A right to hear the truth.Surely you will not withhold it from me?""I don't know the truth, so I can't enlighten you.I know only the stories of both sides, and they resemble each other merely in that they both center about the same point of interest.""Then you will tell them to me--you must," she said earnestly.
"Tell me first, word for word, all that the Blakes believe of us."With a laugh, he put on his glasses that he might bring her troubled face the more clearly before him.
"A high spirit of impartiality, I admit," he observed.
"That I should want to hear the other side?""That, being a woman, you should take for granted the existence of the other side."She shook her head impatiently."You can't evade me by airing camphor-scented views of my sex," she returned."What I wish to know--and I still stick to my point, you see--is the very thing you are so carefully holding back.""I am holding back nothing, on my honour," he assured her."If you want the impression which still exists in the county--only an impression--I must make plain to you at the start (for the events happened when the State was in the throes of reconstruction, when each man was busy rebuilding his own fortunes, and when tragedies occurred without notice and were hushed up without remark)--if you want merely an impression, I repeat, then you may have it, my dear lady, straight from the shoulder.""Well?" her voice rose inquiringly, for he had paused.
"There is really nothing definite known of the affair," he resumed after a moment, "even the papers which would have thrown light into the darkness were destroyed--burned, it is said, in an old office which the Federal soldiers fired.It is all mystery--grim mystery and surmise; and when there is no chance of either proving or disproving a case I dare say one man's word answers quite as well as another's.At all events, we have your grandfather's testimony as chief actor and eye-witness against the inherited convictions of our somewhat Homeric young neighbour.For eighteen years before the war Mr.Fletcher was sole agent--a queer selection, certainly--for old Mr.Blake, who was known to have grown very careless in the confidence he placed.When the crash came, about three years after the war, the old gentleman's mind was much enfeebled, and it was generally rumoured that his children were kept in ignorance that the place was passing from them until it was auctioned off over their heads and Mr.Fletcher became the purchaser.How this was, of course, Ido not pretend to say, but when the Hall finally went for the absurd sum of seven thousand dollars life was at best a hard struggle in the State, and I imagine there was less surprise at the sacrifice of the place than at the fact that your grandfather should have been able to put down the ready money.The making of a fortune is always, I suppose, more inexplicable than the losing of one.The Blakes had always been accounted people of great wealth and wastefulness, but within five years from the close of the war they had sunk to the position in which you find them now --a change, I dare say, from which it is natural much lingering bitterness should result.The old man died almost penniless, and his children were left to struggle on from day to day as best they could.It is a sad tale, and I do not wonder that it moves you," he finished slowly, and looked down to wipe his glasses.
"And grandfather?" asked the girl quietly.Her gaze had not wavered from his face, but her eyes shone luminous through the tears which filled them.
