But there was a possibility of both. There was vein of sentiment through the bed-rock of Lawson's worldliness which had shown brightly once or twice, had been broken off suddenly, and which, had it been worked by skilful hands, would have yielded rich returns. When he had come east, along with the powerful reasons for his doing so had flickered now and then the glimmer of his traditions of a Virginia girl. He thought in a nebulous fashion that she should be slight, dark-eyed, dark-haired, fascinating as a woman only can be, and flirtatious as a kitten. He had met one or two of the pictured type. But from the moment when he had stepped from his own room far up the corridor one day and seen a tall, supple, well-built young woman with clear cheek and ruffled hair and serene gray eyes, holding her long white gown from the worn brick-way and walking with careless gracetowards him, he had decided instantly that this was the woman of whom he had thought, and had begun to cluster his traditions about her. None would fit. If there was a grain of coquetry about Frances it slumbered; so did some other deeper feelings. He had watched, striven, for a flash of her eyes or a flush on her cheek; he had seen it, but it had been careless companionship which evoked it. And his thoughts, striving to fit her to a place she would not fill, clung about her more and more. There would be no hour for him on Sunday; it only irked him. He remembered the women he had met who were nearer the ideal of his illusions. He sought them.
Frances finding at last, and most unexpectedly, a free hour, and scarce knowing what to do with it, wandered aimlessly about the house. It was so much her custom to be abroad with her father and watching the sunset over the mountain tops, that now, when he was kept by an old friend, she could not content herself. She would have her walk alone.
The pageantry of the autumn days was veiled. The wind was whistling about the chimney-tops and bending the half bared branches of maple and oak; far away the soft gray clouds closed about the high mountain crests, shutting the vision in narrow horizons. Many of the students were loitering about corridor or cottage as she sped away from all along the road winding to the mountain top crowned by the observatory. Here, beyond the immediate environments of the many buildings, a short road across the fields led to the football grounds, where the high fence and higher stand of seats loomed weather-beaten, deserted; there, on the other side of the wide highway, rolled the golf links over the hillside, the winds moaning above them fitfully and rustling the dead vines on fence and roadside, and the scarlet fronds of sumac, and whirling the dead leaves about her feet and tossing the oak-branches overhead.
She was at the edge of the wood which ran to the mountain top. A double arch of oaks met overhead. Beyond these, wherethe grove was cleared for a space, was the resting place of the University's dead. Her father went often through the gates, but it always smote her like a blow, the sight of those grass-grown swells and gleaming marbles and white sweet roses; and in the midst the great shaft, with many names about its base of those who, when there was need, had marched from the bright dreams of their college life to the grim deeds of war—had marched, many of them, to rest in some obscure corner of their state or of others, but to be remembered each one in that list of those who had dared and done and paid the one and everlasting price of their beliefs.
Where the path under the arching oaks ended, and in sight of the white palings and clustering shafts, Frances paused. Just here she and her father had stood on many an afternoon while the sun, crimsoning the sky above the mountains, hung scarlet banners over the valley dipping sheer between them and the Ragged Mountains, dyeing in crimson and purple and clear green the heavens, against which were sharply silhouetted thecrests, red and rocky, or clothed to the top with the verdure of the pine or showing the gorgeous hues of autumn. Now the heavens shut them in closely, even the far brilliant forest showed cold against their dull leaden grays; on the other hand, beyond the links where the land rolled and dipped and climbed again upward, showed the chimney-tops of houses, the smoke-wreaths close about them telling of warmth and cheer. It was the day and hour for fireside comfort. Frances turned homeward.
So loud had been the moaning of the wind in leaf and tree that she had heard no other sound. Now as she turned she saw a smart buggy driving rapidly towards her, almost abreast of her.
The top was thrown back. A girl whom she had known as one knows some neighbors all the years of her life was in it. Her slim figure showed exquisitely against the linings of the carriage, her rich furs framed a face delicate and spirited as a miniature, her wide hat and long black plumes brought out every shifting hue of her golden hair androsy cheeks. She was known in Richmond and New York as a beauty; she was known in Charlottesville as a "students' belle." A man like her attendant was a godsend to her, already wearied, as she was, of too easily pleasing. She leaned toward him impressively. It was Lawson. His face was ruddy and his eyes alight. His bays were trotting gloriously. The girl he was driving was more than interesting, she was daring. He looked deep into her eyes. The girl's bow to some one startled him. He turned to give Frances an astonished glance as she came around the slight curve into sight. But Frances had seen the picture and its atmosphere. It was not love, and that she did not know, but it wore its guise charmingly.
Frances heard the moaning of the winds across the links and it held a deeper note, a note of desolation, fading glories, and swift-coming night.
The library looked doubly cheerful when she was within doors. The coals in the grate were glowing red, the heavy curtains of the windows were partly drawn showingbut a breadth of white lace between and through its film a glimpse of the darkening quadrangle. There was a savory smell of coffee kitchenward, as Susan came in.
"Yo' pa done sont a message," she said, "he done 'phoned up he gwine stay to de hotel for suppah." Susan had been induced to overcome her deadly fear of the telephone more by her shame at seeing "Marse Robert and Miss Frances" exposed at any time to a danger she dared not touch than by any other feeling, and had learned the mastery of the machine. "Yuh'll hab to hab yo' suppah by yo'sef. I'se fryin' yuh some ham now."
Frances pulled her chair closer to the fire. "All right, Susan."
Susan lingered. There was a look on Frances' face she did not like to see. "Yuh ain't lonesome, honey?"
The sunshine of the girl's nature flashed at once to the surface. "Not a bit! This fire is just glorious; it's cold out-of-doors, cold as Christmas, and the coffee smells delicious, and the ham—hurry up! I'm sohungry, I'll be back in the kitchen if you don't!"
Susan, satisfied, hurried off.
Frances loosened her jacket and slipped the hat-pins out of her hat and put the hat on her knee; the firelight shone on the brown velvet of it and on her trim brown gown, and her slender foot stretched out towards the hearth, and lighted up the warm tints of her scarlet waist and the rose of her cheeks reddened by wind and fireshine.
A litter of papers and magazines was on the table behind her and an electric globe overhead, but the firelight and her thoughts were best company. There was a sting back there in her memory somehow she was vaguely conscious of and resentful of; she was feeling for it with senses unused to such searching, and by and by, being unsuccessful, she wandered to other thoughts, which was the surest cure for the sting, had she but known it. She slipped her arms from her jacket and that slid to the floor, her attitude relaxed more and more, she was halfdreaming when the sharp ringing of the bell and Susan's footsteps echoing along the polished floor of the hall brought her suddenly to her feet. Before she was quite wide awake a visitor stood in the library.
"I saw you had an idle moment," he began in a tone of intense amusement.
Frances looked at him uncomprehendingly.
Lawson pointed mischievously to the half drawn curtain. Frances walked swiftly to it and sent the rings clashing along the pole.
"Good!" he cried, "if I may stay."
"Shut out the wind, shut out the weather," his heart was saying to him; he had forgotten the rest of it, but he knew the last word was perilously dear sometimes—"together."
"Together!" It was the first time he had ever really felt the significance of the word with her. Even if there were none others near she had made him feel as if there were a crowd always. Now, the dusky firelit room, the startled look on her face, the half-hesitancy of her speech, he would not missa tithe of. He stooped and picked up her gloves and hat-pins, and as he handed them to her his hand shook a trifle, awkwardly, and he pricked her.
"Oh dear!" she cried, pathetically as a child, "it's bleeding!"
"Let me see!" There was a round red drop of blood at the finger's tip. "I would not have hurt you for worlds! How stupid! Let me—there!" He was wrapping her hand in his handkerchief and stanching the slight flow at the dainty pink point of her fingers, and blessing the pin, even if it did hurt. How small her hand had seemed, how white, how warm; he unwrapped the swathings and held it palm upwards, looking solicitously and wondering inanely which finger was hurt. The pink palm was unlined as a child's. Lawson eyed it swiftly; he had some idea of palmistry.
"Shall I read your future?" he asked gayly after one quick glance at the marriage cross on the soft flesh under her forefinger.
"Why, can you?" cried Frances, flushing a little at the question and a little that he should still be holding her hand.
"Oh yes, here—"
"Suppah is raidy!" Susan, coming quietly to the door to beckon her mistress and ask advice about the serving of the meal, had come upon the tableau. She broke it up.
Lawson moved toward the door and Frances stood, uncertainty on her face. "You have just come—" she began.
"I didn't think it was so late."
"You drove too long!" she flashed.
"Oh no, not long after I saw you!" he was quick to retort. "What were you doing without your father?"
"He met an old friend—"
"Is he still away?"
"Yes, he's going to stay."
Lawson put his hand on the door-knob. He saw he must go, but Susan, impatient at even this delay and so furious at what her eyes had seen that she scarce heeded what she was doing clanged out the supper bell and then poked her turbaned head throughthe portière. "Ef yuh don't come on, eberyting will be col'!" she declared.
Frances, angered through and through at the old woman's interference, tilted her chin high. "Come out and have supper with me, Mr. Lawson," she said, "it's lonesome by myself!"
"Fo' Gawd!" muttered Susan, knowing she had overreached herself and brought about worse than she had tried to avert, "fo' Gawd!"
"Susan, put a plate for Mr. Lawson!"
Susan, plate in hand, came slowly to the table where they waited. "I ain't gwine put it at de foot, Gawd knows," she told herself, "I'se gwine put it at de side, de lef' side too, an' I hopes to de Lawd he'll burn hisself agains' de coffee-pot; it's good and hot, I knows!"
Lawson was duly satisfied where he was; he could watch her hands, shaky a little at first, hovering over the queer-shaped silver pot of coffee and the low wide cream-jug and open sugar-bowl, and he listened delightedly to her questions as to his tastes; he couldenjoy too, seeing the example of his hostess, the good food Susan had unwittingly prepared him.
There was no criticism now of house or table. The great high-ceilinged room with its heavy furniture of dark mahogany, its dusky corners, and its single light shining above his hostess' head and lighting every tint of her loveliness, seemed the perfection of home atmosphere.
When they went into the hall and heard the rain beating on the corridor roof, and Frances opened the outer door for one instant to glance out on the storm-swept quadrangle, the gleaming lights pricking the darkness here and there, and to speak uneasily of her father, before she closed the door upon the storm and came back to her seat by the library fire, he felt all the happiness he had dreamed of that other evening which had turned out so differently.
The difference was to affect other things, also, for as he rose to go he said laughingly, "You know I am asked to go on the eleven?"
"No!" Football was the only one of theUniversity sports for which Frances had any enthusiasm.
"Yes, Marsden's hurt is more serious than they thought; they want me to take his place, for the time at least."
"Yes," assented Frances as he paused.
"I used to play at home on the old college team."
"You will accept?"
"I think so; it means hard training and," with a short laugh, "abstemious living, but I think I will."
"I am glad!" cried Frances impulsively. At the warmth of her friendliness the young man's eyes spoke a warmer language yet. The girl's glances fell.
Lawson made an impulsive step forward, drew a long hard breath, his hands clenched, though he did not know it; then, "Good night!" he said quietly, "and thank you for a very pleasant evening."
"Frances," the professor had said every Court-day since she was old enough to be out on her own affairs, "Frances, this is Court-day," and that warning was sufficient.
It meant that his daughter must not be far afield on the country roads in the morning when men from farm and mountain-cabin and homes near by and nooks far away would be riding by twos and threes—a led horse, perhaps, by one, a cow driven before another, to be traded in town—or driving a wagon-load of farm produce, a calf in the rear bleating prophecies of his fate; and that she should avoid the roads when these same men were going home, some of them the worse from their visits to the saloons dotted plentifully through the town, and disposed to be quarrelsome, and none too ready to give a woman the right of way. But most of all it meant that she must avoid the congested streetsabout the Court-house. This was an unwritten law of the town.
This morning he forgot. His mind was still filled with thoughts of his visit and his friend, a man whose ways, unlike the professor's, had led him into many highways and byways of the world and taught him strange things. Their lives had not touched for many years and now the point of contact had sparkled with helpful brilliancy for both.
Frances, used to being reminded, took no thought for herself. She ordered up Starlight for a morning's ride with some gay badinage over the 'phone as to his condition.
"He's a little nervous this morning," Mr. Carver called back. "Hasn't gotten over his run-away."
"Run-away!" repeated Frances indignantly, at her end of the 'phone.
"Well, I'll tell the boy to rub him down well and bring him up. Don't ride him too hard."
"Good-by!" called Frances shortly, as she rang him off.
The town was quiet enough as she rodethrough and turned out Park street. The wide way was drifted with wet leaves; under the carpet of them on lawn and yard the grass showed vivid green; chrysanthemums flaunted their colors in every door-yard; at window or porch the rider glimpsed many a friendly face and bowed cheerily. As the houses grew more scattered the land fell away from the ridge over which the road wound showing sunlit vistas of valley and mountain to left and to right, crest upon crest towering away to the sky line. The coloring everywhere was brilliant after the storm of the night; the clay of the road, where it climbed the mountain-side far away, showed deeply red; the ruffled pools underfoot mirrored the blue sky; crows were calling jubilantly overhead; the wind blew softly against Frances' cheek. Starlight and his rider went on fast and fleet, and farther than his rider had intended.
They were crossing a ravine on the high bridge which spanned it, and Frances had drawn rein to look with delight up and down at the clear stream curving on its way througha narrow valley of rich meadow-land, where the corn was stacked in sere wigwams across the field, and to gaze down at the wild gorge below, tree-clad, with the stream foaming at its base; or just across, where the land dipped suddenly and a ruined cottage, moss-grown, tree-hidden, clung to the hillside. She was wondering whether she should try the steep hill beyond, slippery from the rain, when she saw a man riding slowly down it, another followed him, and another. Their splashed top-boots and loose-fitting coats and wide soft hats bespoke the mountaineer. But Frances, remembering the level stretch of road beyond, where Starlight could take the top of his speed, rode on. Before she breasted the hill she met a farmer driving his wagon, full to the brim with yellow ears of corn, and a man on his sure-footed mule riding carelessly by his side, talking the topics of the county. Then she remembered the day.
She looked at her watch,—it was after ten; when she got back the hubbub would be at its height, and her way, of necessity, lay bythe Court-house. She turned her horse's head.
All the way homeward she thought of her adventure gleefully; it was no fault of her own she was abroad, and as she must go through the throng, she was going to see itall. She had always wished it because it was forbidden, now she would have her wish.
About the Court-house the streets were thronged for a square on either side—horses, carriages, men. The autumn court was an important one. Farmers were not so pressed, there was leisure to look outside of their own fields; men of the town, of distant towns, of farms far and near, of mountain cabins, thronged the steps and the bit of green about the house and the street, back to the small houses and narrow pavements built about it like a court when the town was a village a century and more ago.
They made way for her as she came riding slowly through the press and eyed her curiously, but Frances, when she should have hurried, took her time. She was exhilarated. Here the men had cleared a space and anegro was trotting a horse up and down, the onlookers noting his points sagely; there, drawn close to the curb, were the small wagons of the negroes who were vending things to eat and to drink, queer and curious. And there standing straight in her wagon and looking out eagerly for chances of trade was Roxie. She spied Frances through the crowd.
"Chile, what yuh doin' hyar?" she asked, soon as Frances was abreast of her.
"Forgot! I got caught!" said Frances, just loud enough for her to hear. Starlight was close to the wagon's wheel and for the moment they were held in the crowd.
"Better go 'long home!" warned the old darkey.
"I'm going. Roxie, what have you got there?"
"La! Miss Frances, you don't want none. Dyar's a watermilyun dat's been down in de bottom o' de spring eber since Augus'! It's red as a rose an' I'se gwine sell it fur five cents a slice; 'twill fairly fly at dat. An' dyar's some 'simmon beer—"
"Roxie," said Frances, her eyes shining with amusement, "you know I want some persimmon beer."
"Miss Frances," replied the old darkey, impressively, "I'se gwine sabe yuh some and bring it up to yo' house, if yuh'll jes' buy me some 'baccer. Dyar's dead loads of it hyar to-day; yuh know whar dey sells it, right on de street below dis; 'taint no such crowd dyar as dyar is hyar. Ole Ike, he driv right befo' me terday, an' he had de prettiest lot, an' I tried ter swop him fur some all de way in. 'Lowed he didn't love watermilyun, de ole liar, and he nebber drank 'simmon beer—'cause he's honin' fur sumpin' stronger—an' de smell o' dat 'baccer blowin' back to me de whole way 'long! Go 'long, chile, de way is open clear to de end o' de square. Ole Ike, he's right 'round de corner dyar."
Frances, tingling with fun, rode on slowly. Around the corner, as Roxie said, the way cleared and around the corner from that was a scene at which Frances drew rein. Running the length of the square, wagons of allsorts were drawn close to the curb. They were stored with brown tobacco leaves, well-cut, well-dried, and now to be sold. Men were going from wagon to wagon, pricing, sorting; the buying had hardly begun. One old negro, shabbily clad, hobbled by, his face shining with happiness, his arm rounded over a big sheaf which meant comfort and cheer on many a winter's morning and night by his cabin hearth. On the square beyond were horses and cows for sale before the cattle sheds.
But Frances' eyes were diligently searching the square below for old Ike. He was not there. Ike, venturing on a little original business, had driven first to one or two houses of "de quality," where he hoped to make some sales. The venture had prospered. He came driving back gleefully, his best wares sold, the money in the pocket of his patched vest. The morning air was chill to his old bones and he had wrapped himself up well in his wife's best quilt when he climbed into his shaky "jersey" before his cabin door back on the mountain side;but the sunshine and his success had warmed him. He had loosened the wrappings of the quilt about his limbs, though it still flopped about his shoulders, pinned with his wife's bonnet-pin under his lean and bristly chin.
As he drove with a showy spurt of speed close by Frances the wind caught the quilt end and slipped it squarely in Starlight's face. With a snort Starlight was off. He plunged the length of the "jersey" and darted past the other vehicles too swiftly for any of the men to act. Frances sitting carelessly was taken unawares and slid half way from the saddle; for a blinding moment she saw nothing but a fall which might be fatal before her, then by a superhuman effort she regained her seat; but her hands were fairly nerveless. Starlight, head down, was racing along the street which crossed the railroad; in one bewildering flash she saw the running people, the opened doors and windows, the long white guards across the street and the heavy freight train on the far track drawn off to make way for the western express.
Fear nerved her. She tugged at the bridle. Starlight gave no heed. She was close upon the guards. She felt a strong grasp, she was pulled from her seat; for one dizzy moment she knew nothing. When she was again conscious she looked up into an anxious face above her, and looked on. In fear, excitement, anxiety, all thought of environment had burned away. It was a second's space she looked, a breath's space, when the soul, oblivious of the body, sees and seizes the great things of life. The face bending over her was fair, frank, and young, strong and serious, the eyes blue.—Then she came back to the everyday knowledge that she was leaning on his shoulder, his arm holding her close against him, his face bent above her; that she was on his horse before him, that he must have snatched her from the saddle at the last moment. She struggled to sit upright.
"You are not hurt?" he questioned anxiously.
"Starlight?"
"I don't know." He smiled as he lookedat her, a little flash of consciousness showing in his own face. They were riding up a narrow side street.
"You see I had to race after you and I couldn't pull up at once though I managed to turn off up here. Wait!"
In some fashion, awkward enough with her there on the horse before him, he dismounted and held up his hands to lift her down. Frances allowed herself to be taken down meekly. Her eyes were dim with tears of mortification. She stood on the sidewalk, which was black with cinders from the ever passing trains, and saw the curious faces at the doors and windows of the small, sooty houses, saw the crowd running up from the station, and hated the whole adventure to its smallest detail. But before the crowd ran a man with Starlight tugging at the bridle rein he held.
"Bring him here!" Frances begged the stranger.
The young man flung the rein of his own horse across a paling's point, knotted it hastily and ran forward.
"So! so!" he cried, smoothing Starlight down the face and talking to him softly as he brought him to his rider.
"Give me your hand!" she demanded quickly.
"Surely—"
"Before they are all here! I'm not afraid! Don't you see?" Her hands were on the pommel; she was in mad haste to escape the crowd almost upon her.
The stranger knelt, held out his hand, tossed her in the saddle and she was off, Starlight trotting decently and quietly, the quivering of his flesh and an indignant snort alone betraying his rashness.
But close behind her and then abreast of her rode her rescuer.
"I must see how he goes at first," he apologized, and the mastery of his tone added to Frances' discomfiture.
She rode with crimson cheeks and downcast eyes, a square—two; she could stand it no longer; she drew rein at the corner.
"I thank you very much," she said ascourteously as she could; "I am going this way," and she turned off.
She took the quietest way home in bitterness of spirit. Never could there have been a worse moment for such adventure. The affair would be known from town to farm, from farm to mountain top, by sunset. There was the spice of danger in it that would insure its telling, and the talk would lose nothing by its many recitals. It would be told to the young man's advantage, too. None of the glory would redound to her. There was no excuse for her being where she had been, no pardon for such an escapade. It would be made the point even for a parent's caution. The thought was maddening.
She crept to her room, glad to close the home doors about her. Susan found her there.
"Yo' pa done 'phoned up dis bery minute he's gwine bring company home ter dinnah."
"Very well!" said Frances spiritlessly.
"Wants ter hab anything 'ticular?"
"Oh, whatever you want, Susan; you know as well as I do."
"Hm!" said Susan going down the stairway, "ain't no talk of floating islan' an' cake now, but I'se gwine hab sumpin' good all de same. Marse Robert he laks good things ter eat, ef he doesn't mek any fuss. I'se gwine see dey's dyar on de table as long as de meal holds out in de barrel."
Frances sat down in her room. There was no fire there and she was chilled and miserable. The physical discomfiture chimed with her mood and she was resentful of the bright sunshine that came streaming to her feet. When she got up and took off her riding habit, she dressed without a thought of the guest her father was bringing to dine with him. She heard the opening of the heavy front door, footsteps in the hall, and her father's voice in pleased tones of cordial hospitality. She went down to the library. The door was opened, but the portière hung in heavy folds across the inner side; when she pulled it away she looked full into the face of her hero of the morning, who stoodin the middle of the room, looking back at her with the amazement on his face which must have shown on hers.
"Frances," the professor was saying, so full of his own pleasure he was not noting their embarrassment, "this is Edward Montague. You've heard me talk of Tom Montague, went to school here when I did, settled out in Rappahannock; this is his son." He laid his hand affectionately on the young man's arm. "He has bought the old Northrup place, you know; I hope he'll make a good neighbor. He has made a fine beginning. Some girl's horse was running away with her in town and he raced up behind and snatched her out of the saddle just before she got to the railroad guards; funny he doesn't know the girl's name."
"I rode on to the post-office," said the young man, looking at neither.
"And some one there knew of the adventure. He was glad enough to get away. Came up to me as soon as he saw my mail,—the names on the envelopes I mean."
"I had intended visiting you to-day," but, strangely enough, the young man's voice was past courtesy, it was fairly pleading.
"Well, well, I wonder—" the professor's gaze, comprehensive at last, fell on Frances, shrinking back against the portière.
"Frances!"
There was dead, unbroken silence. In the tense awkwardness of the moment the young man, not knowing what to say, was noting shyly the curl of the girl's dark lashes against her scarlet cheek and the droop of her red mouth.
"Was it you?"
The girl raised her eyes and gave the visitor one swift look, indignant, imploring; her impulse was to run from the room back to her own, but she could not; she walked quickly to the window and half turned from them instead.
"It was the strangest thing you ever saw," began the young man so hurriedly, his words tripped over one another. "I was just behind her. I saw her riding down the street. It was a curious sight—the farmers, thenegroes with their tobacco for sale, you know. Just as she stopped"—another break he felt; she would think he had been watching her all the time—as he had from the moment he caught sight of her across the crowd at Roxie's wheel. "Just as she stopped, an old darkey rattled close by her; he was a sight!" the young fellow laughed nervously; "he had a quilt flopping all around him and as he passed the wind flapped it squarely in her horse's face and he was off, I after him. Pluckiest thing I ever saw, I thought she was gone down on those cobbles there." The professor made a little smothered exclamation. "She was half out of the saddle but she got back somehow, got control of the reins, too. But the horse was headed for the railway. I got up to her just in time."
Frances was facing him, gratitude in her eyes, not for the rescue but for the telling.
"Frances—Edward—" began the professor brokenly. He covered his face with his hand for a moment and then he went up close to the young man and spoke hisgratitude in such warm words as brought a flush to his guest's face and to his daughter's.
"Frances, you have thanked him?"
Frances glanced at the young man shyly. He smiled back at her reassuringly.
"Of course!" he said quickly, and for the first time she felt a feeling of warm kindliness to him. She had been on the verge of quite the opposite feeling before.
It was some time after this that the professor, who had been quiet and thoughtful, and limited his conversation largely to table affairs, said suddenly, as if he had at last arrived at a conclusion of his thoughts, "Frances, this is the third accident you have had in less than a year."
"So it is sure to be the last, father," said Frances gayly from the head of the table. She had been growing steadily more cheerful as he went on talking with young Montague, "Ask Susan!"
Susan was hurrying with delight about the table. She had known Edward's father and his mother. He was one of "her folks."
"If a thing that never happened beforehappens once, it's bound to happen three times. It's all over; I'm safe!"
The professor began some remonstrance. He had intended then and there to lay down a severely strict law. Instead, "I think I'll look you up a safe horse," he said lamely.
"Perhaps Miss Frances will let me ride with her sometimes," ventured young Montague.
"Not to take care of me," said that young woman wilfully.
"For the pleasure!"
"In that case, I shall be glad to go," sedately, "but I shall not wait for you."
"There will be no waiting!" They were going into the library and he was holding the curtain to let her pass. Frances looked up at him laughingly, and in that instant she forgave him for playing the hero's part.
The professor was deeply interested in Edward Montague's plans; well as he had known his father, there was much of that father's later life of which he had no tidings. He had to learn what a house full of children was back there in the valley home, had to learn how Edward was compelled to give up his hope of college training—and this he learned between the lines—and how he had resolved instead to strike out for his own fortunes.
"I should have gone back to farming anyhow," the young man answered to some expression of the professor's, "it is my bent, you know, but it needs brains and training as well as any other profession," a little proudly, for he thought the professor would challenge it.
But it was the professor's own deep rooted belief. He listened delightedly ashis young guest went on to speak of the farm he had bought and what he hoped to make of it. The old Northrup estate, some three miles out from Charlottesville, was a well known one throughout all Albemarle. A big brick house on the sunny slope of a mountain whose crest towered to the sky-line behind it, it had held many people, loved and known in the state, and had been the centre of a gay full life. But the old life had drifted away from it; some of those who had lived in the brick walls slept in the graves under the thick oaks not far away from the house; the rest were scattered, north, south, and west. The place had gotten into the hands of speculators. A northern farmer, thinking to make his fortune on cheap lands in a sunny climate, had bought it, but to face labor conditions of which he was ignorant and to find the only hopes of the fortune he sought were in a country store. He had nearly lost his life fording one of the mountain streams, between store and farm, after a freshet, and was desperately afraid of a secondadventure. He sold it for nearly half its cost. Montague's investment had a good beginning and a better promise.
The professor kept him talking of it to the last moment he dared keep away from the lecture hall. "Come and see us," he urged when he was at last compelled to go. "It's going to be lonesome out there"—the estate was away from the beaten track—"come and take dinner with us, Sunday?"
Edward, glancing at Frances' bright face, thanked him as warmly as he had spoken. "I will walk down as far as the hall with you," he said. "I have some business in town I must attend to;" and he added shyly, "I shall be glad if you and Miss Frances will come and see me when I am established. Dr. Randall's wife will come with you, I think."
"That we will," assured the professor heartily.
"Bachelor's hall isn't very attractive," the young man went on deprecatingly; "the house is very bare."
"Pshaw! we'll come and help brighten it up, won't we Frances?"
"'A house's best ornament is the presence of a friend,'" quoted Edward, a glint of mischief in his eyes as he went to say good-by.
The professor had not been so pleased in many a day. The young man, the son of his old friend, fulfilled all his traditions; well-born, well-bred, well-read, with the advantage of a pleasing personality, and, a woman would have added, a face none the less handsome for the look of grave determination upon it. Then, too, the professor, being a student of the classics, was interested in agriculture by way of contrast, and was filled with theories concerning the farming possibilities of his own state, and most particularly those of his own county. There was not an experiment which had been tried there in the last twenty years that he had not at his fingers' ends: the Englishman with his fancy breed of sheep or cows, the stock farmer with his registered horses, the man who had turned his fields into apple orchards, the man who hadplanted his hillsides with vineyards,—he could talk of all far more fluently than the workers.
There was a vineyard on the Northrup place famed as being of the best. The professor went across the quadrangle talking eagerly of it and of the merits of Concords and Catawbas and Isabellas; and he parted with an assurance of an early visit.
He went, and came back more enthusiastic than ever; went again and carried Susan for a stay at her log cabin a half mile down the valley from the main road.
Three or four times a year Susan went "home." She would make her way through the rotting gate and weed-worn pathway, open the battered door and window to flood the cabin with air and sunshine, fling feather-bed and pillows and quilts to the sweetening winds; would war with dust within and weeds without; and then, when all was in order again, would sit in the worn doorway, her hands folded, looking down the narrow valley threaded by the mountain stream and up to the purple tops closing in the horizon.Long thoughts went through her mind, too narrow to be forgetful, bitter-sweet memories of the childish feet that had pattered about the doorway, of her strife, and her happiness. When the team to take her back was in sight she would lock her door and go down the pathway to the road, her hand on the key in her pocket. The feeling of its possession gave her strength to lose her own life in the life of others.
But always when she clambered into the trap it was with one question on her lips. "I wonder whar Bill is?" Sometimes she added, "I spec he's dead, I'se mightily feared he is!" and sometimes "He mus' be libin' somewhars; if he was dead I spec I'd aheard it somehow."
As for Frances, her father found it hard to interest her in the old Northrup estate. She had another enthusiasm. The football team was in hard training. They played every afternoon on a little plateau between the rolling hills opposite the terraces of the Rotunda. The roadway winding some twenty feet above the grounds between it and the"Gym" was crowded on practice hour with carriages and interested watchers.
It was then near the close of the short afternoon. The sunset lights, were the day fair, would be shining westward; trailing, scarlet, fleecy clouds would be floating overhead, clamorous crows flocking homeward. One by one the carriages of many drivers, going one way or another, but all returning in time to watch the team work, would pull in on the road overlooking the grounds till it was filled with champing horses and grinding wheels.
Frances was there always until the men went for a last run around the grounds, sprang up the steps, darted across the roadway and up to the "Gym." Then Starlight went spinning away for a drive in the fast closing afternoon. It was an old habit, too, of driving the horse to the stables and walking home. The tingling air made it delightful exercise. The streets were filled at the late afternoon hour with all the town, it seemed, a long procession out and in,—young girls and older women and men strolling outUniversitywards; students in pairs and groups, and crowds lounging down toward the centre of the town, and many a student promenading with a young woman beside him. It was the holiday hour of the town.
Somehow, somewhere in that procession of men and maids would be one man walking alone and searching the crowd eagerly, for all his air of careless assurance, for a young woman who walked briskly with shoulders well back and head in air, whose eyes were shining with health and content and whose lips were curving with happy thoughts, and though his life held bright days in spite of an old sorrow long past, and though there were bright days to come, there would never be any again with the intangible charm of the chilly afternoons faded well-nigh to dark, the evening star shining clearly in the pale green west, the tops of the tall trees rocking against the "primrose sky," and those two walking gayly along the paths of the University homewards.
Sometimes there was a moment's pause in the library, sometimes an evening visit; butstrangely enough, Lawson with his hard training had settled down to hard study likewise, and was giving an unexpected turn to the Faculty's thoughts of him; for those with whom he had first come in touch feared the results of his wealth and good-natured easy comradeship and not altogether admirable ways of living, upon the younger men.
Through all his intercourse with Frances there was the most delightful comradeship, the girl yielding unconsciously to a friendliness from which she had always steadily held herself.
True, Lawson was fairly irresistible. The strength of his nature which had much savagery under its gloss, the beauty of his physique, showing better each day of regular hours and cleanly living, the indomitableness of his resolve which set itself on winning always the want of the hour, were a power could scarce be turned aside.
Fresh from the keen exercise and the shower-bath, smart, immaculate, strong with the impulses of an untrained nature, the crowd faded into insignificance when Franceswould glimpse him swinging down the street.
He had ceased to ask permission to turn back with her; it was a matter of course. Their talk usually was of the lightest.
"Had a nice drive?" he might ask.
Frances would plunge into account of Starlight's misdemeanors.
"It's lovely walking," he might say inanely when she had finished, looking down at the girl's cheek, red like a rose with a clear spot of white in the centre of the red—"the rose's heart," he told himself, watching the flicker of it.
"Mr. Saunders played well to-day!" Frances would say enthusiastically, and they would plunge at once into a keen discussion of every point of the play, of the game, of the teams, and of the match games and of the first big one soon to be played on their own grounds.
Lawson began to have a feeling he was playing for more than the victory of the team game. He grew more and more anxious about it each day, and more and more set inhis resolve to win. Once only had he played a losing part in life and the thought of that when it touched him, filled him with sickening revolt.
"We'll win!" he declared one afternoon, after a discussion of the other players.
"You are sure?"
"Quite!"
They were standing at her door. The quadrangle was deep in twilight, the lights pricking the dusk here and there; some students were chaffing each other gayly far up the corridor, a negro lad was hurrying with a hod of coal for a belated fire he should have started an hour ago.
Frances was leaning back against the door, her hand behind her on the door-knob. "It's well to feel confident!" she said lightly, fighting against something she heard in the tones of his voice.
"Is it? Should one always be confident?" he asked eagerly.
"It's not a safe rule always," she fended. She heard the little exclamation he made under his breath. "But it is a helpgenerally," she added, foolishly striving to undo the hurt she scarcely comprehended.
"And there's no rule for it, like everything else, but a blind follow-your-leader," he said bitterly.
"If the leader be wise," laughing nervously.
There was a second's silence, and in it they heard footsteps hurrying along the corridor. The quadrangle was not a secluded spot even at its quietest. Frances fumbled at the door-knob.
"Let me open it for you!"
His hand came upon hers in the dusk, held it closely, tightly. The shock of the joy of its touch, the sound of her hurried breath went to his head. He followed her into the hall and shut the door behind him leaning against it, looming masterfully against its darkness. The light from the globe overhead cast a white circle on the polished floor; they were outside it. Beyond the half-drawn portière they glimpsed the professor, back towards them.
Lawson dared say no word, he only stood a second, a minute, caressing her with a longlook from head to foot, and with the look of loving, was mixed joyous delighted triumph; then he opened the door softly and was gone out into the darkness.
Frances drew a shivering sigh, as she went slowly into the library. A vague uneasiness possessed her. She dreaded even the thought of seeing him again. Next afternoon she was off for a hard ride the other way from the practice grounds. Lawson, wandering aimlessly about the quadrangle at twilight, saw her hurrying up the corridor holding her habit tightly about her. He hastened across to find a closed door and blank windows. Inside, Frances was telephoning for a boy to take Starlight to the stables and then making a gay pretence of weariness and hunger to Susan. So for a day or two.
When they met again Lawson was icy with anger. Frances had avoided the practice grounds, but the fascination of the game overcame her. She drove up at last, and sat looking down on the players below.
Lawson, for some reason, was not one of them. Frances did not see him at first, but he, sitting on the last of the steps sunken in the terrace, was chaffing the players and talking lightly to the men about him. He turned at the sound of wheels, and saw her, as she pulled up, sharply silhouetted against the hill-slope beyond. He was elaborately unconscious of her. By and by the Beauty drove in behind Frances. Lawson was at her side in an instant, doffing his cap to Frances as he passed her. She sat quite still, disdaining to turn her head at the sound of the gay voices and laughter behind her, and watched the practice below without seeing a point.
Other carriages had passed in before her and on the side; she was held prisoner to the end of the hour. Then Lawson, going by as she held Starlight's rein taut and looked to left and right for chance of escape, stopped suddenly at the wheel. He had not intended it. It was the look on her face impelled him. Had it been either sorrowful or scornful he would have read her mood and passed herby; she was neither, and, being puzzled, he paused.
"Good play!" he began, feeling for an opening to the conversation.
"Yes!" she assented, turning her head impatiently—a carriage had just pulled across the road, blocking her in.
"I didn't see much of it," he blundered. There was not a flicker of expression on her face to show she saw it, only polite interest.
The carriage pulled out of the way. Frances leaned for her whip.
The young man's haughtiness broke in an instant, "Take me in with you!" he pleaded, though his pleading startled himself as much as her. "It's delightful for a drive; I've been shut in all day."
Frances turned laughing eyes towards him. "Jump in!" she cried.
And though there were moments enough, as they spun along, for either protest or pleading, the young man dared neither.
Frances had her enthusiasms; so had Edward Montague, with the saving difference that hers were for her amusement and his were concerning his life-work. Still he found time for other things also. He accepted the invitation to dinner promptly. The University was by no means a byway homeward, but he found many an odd moment to spend there when he rode in for his mail or for other affairs. He came the following Sunday and the next, and made the round of Sabbath-school and church and mission and late walk with the professor and his daughter.
Lawson, who had not seen Frances since the short drive she permitted him, was loitering that last Sabbath afternoon before the doorway of a student in the West Range—a monkish row of rooms fashioned as those on the inner quadrangle are, but unbroken by the professors' houses and facingwestward; he was thinking nothing of what he was saying, and was noting vaguely the fading lights of sunset on the far-away mountains, and the bared branches of the trees tossing softly against the opalescent sky; but he was conscious through and through of the missed comradeship of the hour. He wondered if he dared go and ring the bell and pay a call quite boldly, setting aside the fact that the day had been debarred him. The more he dwelt on the bare chance of finding Frances alone, on the thought of the joy it would be to strive skilfully to slip again into the grooves of their delightful friendship, to fence against the cold reserve she had once more placed as a barrier between them, to see it melt, perhaps, against the strong personality he had come to know as one of his factors in any fight, the more he wished to try and see her; the very thought of it, the very remembrance that there was a test of skill, too, in it, was urging him irresistibly.
"Good-by, old fellow!" he called shortly, turning suddenly away.
"Hold on!" called the student, who had some thought of accompanying him. But when he had gotten his hat and coat, Lawson was striding far down the corridor. At the end of it the road from the mountain of the observatory curved into the wide drive through the grounds. Lawson looking upward was angered unreasonably, violently, unbelievingly. He left such moods to others, mostly. He turned instantly into the short cut across the campus. He could not hurry enough even when outside the grounds, but he must swing himself on the car clanging townward.
He left behind a gay, unconscious trio. The professor and Frances and Edward Montague were walking briskly homeward, when they glimpsed him. The professor's face, when interested, was strangely frank and boyish; Lawson was used to seeing him look a trifle bored and a trifle more absorbed. To see him, as he had done that one swift instant, alert, wide-awake, to see a tall, fair, young man talking to him with careless ease—the University men were always inawe of him—to see Frances between them, laughing, rosy, her coat collar turned high about her head, framing her bright face distractingly—the trio shut him out. They were quite sufficient to themselves, or seemed so.
"You will come in, Edward," the professor said at the door.
The young man looked at the fading sunset lights of the sky and hesitated. He thought of the ride before him and he thought of the empty house awaiting him; he looked in at the cheer of the house showing through the open door and at the young woman standing in the hall listening for his answer. Her face neither invited nor forbade; he followed the professor.
But the contrast he had drawn for a minute haunted him. He cared not a whit for fine furnishings, scarce knowing them when he saw them, except for the air of comfort and the atmosphere of home they might give; but those two were requirements. He was too busied all the days and too tired all the nights to think how they were now deniedhim, but while he had no time to bemoan a loss, he had time for dreamings. The vision of a sweet, frank face beset him oftener than he knew; he was building castles taller than he thought and frailer than the castled clouds of sunset beyond the mountains. This reality was charming.
"What's the use of going home, now?" the professor reassured him as they went in to the fireside; "it would be dark when you got there. You couldn't do anything; just have an evening all to yourself."
"And father wants to talk grapes to you," Frances added gayly; "he's just gotten some pamphlets—"
The professor looked guilty. "Well, I chanced on an advertisement—"
"And he hasn't had a chance to bring them out all day—"
"Frances!"
"Here they are," teased his daughter, "with your report on agriculture," she held up dramatically the big book she had dragged from beneath the papers on the table. "I have been listening to hear him begintalking of it every moment. He's just been waiting the right time,—you know you have," to her father.
The professor fingered the pamphlet nervously. "You know, here—the secretary says—"
"There, he has begun; I am going to see about supper."
Edward listened. There was much to awaken his keenest interest. He was devoted to his pursuit, theory and practice. But he was listening too, with all his inner consciousness, for a light footstep, and when Frances came quietly back with an amused look at the two, his eyes flashed her amusement back at her, as with much show of not disturbing them, she slipped into a chair before the fire. The professor was unconscious; he was in full swing and went on glibly.
The young man's face was turned attentively towards him; the father did not know that just so Frances' face was in the line of vision, but Edward knew. It needed but the flicker of an eyelid for him to watch thesupple figure in its careless lounging; the fluff of the dark hair above her forehead, the curve of the long black lashes as she gazed thoughtfully into the fire. A cosy fireside, an easy chair and this same occupant for it flashed for a moment on the horizon of his dreamings. It was but a dream he dared not name even to himself,—a vision that dazzled him. He put his hand over his eyes.
The professor broke the thread of his argument. "You are tired?"
"I! no—ah—" the young man stammered.
"Well, here, take this home with you when you go! Read it for yourself, and see what you think of it; I expect some others," he added shamefacedly.
"Father!" cried Frances mischievously, "Mr. Montague, he's started," she added comically, "there's no stopping him. He'll go with no particular interest for ever so long, then something attracts him," she spread out her hands as if in dismay, "we are flooded with papers and pamphlets; hewon't let me touch them. When it is all over I gather them up and—" she made a gesture as if flinging an armful of trash into the fire. "You have touched him on his most vulnerable point now. I don't know when he will stop."
"You had better stop, yourself," said the professor chafing a little under her teasing.
"I warn you, he will try—"
"Now, daughter!" he knew what she was going to say, "you know I never interfere with other people."
"It's true, every word of it!" but Frances saw that her father was hurt a trifle. She came behind his chair and put her arms about his shoulders, laughing over his head at Edward who was watching her with half envious amusement.
"Professors should be bald," she said lightly, "now look at this!" She ran her fingers through his thick, dark hair, wavy about the temples where the gray showed in the black. Her father looked up at her adoringly, his eyes—which were often stern—dark and loving.
"If they were, they would have no young woman to bother them, rumpling it up."
"You are lucky, sir, to have one; isn't he?"
Young Montague was silent, but Frances, looking up, saw his eyes. She slipped back to her chair.
When he took his leave, later in the evening, he had his own special plea.
"You've promised to come and see the old place," he began.
"Father is going to bring me some day."
"I'm going to make some day a near day," he said persistently. "Mr. Holloway, I'm going hunting Tuesday. I've a good deal of game about my woods. Come out Wednesday; I'll see you have some for dinner."
The professor reluctantly pleaded his engagements.
"It's moonlight; you don't mind driving home at night?"
"Oh, the road is familiar enough," assented the professor.
"Mrs. Randall will come."
"We'll drive by for her."
"I asked her to-day after church; she said any time this week. I shall look for you in the afternoon, as early as you can make it."
So it was they arranged. Edward watched the peaks apprehensively; but the fine weather held. His hunting was successful. There were a score of partridges and a brace of rabbits in the big basement kitchen and he was cautioning his cook fussily, when he heard the roll of wheels.
"I 'clar' I's glad dey's come!" muttered the cook, as at last she was free to go about her work.
Edward had been nervously anxious all day. The bare house was swept and scrubbed to the last point of cleanliness. He hesitated long over the propriety of entertaining them in "the chamber," over across the hall from the parlor, but it was the only furnished room of the house except the basement dining room. He got all of his belongings out of sight and locked the closet door on the disorder. He wondered if he should leave his pipe upon the mantelpiece and at thelast moment forgot it. He wondered, while he raged, why the curtains looked so awry and if the rug were the color he should have chosen. But the walls were white with whitewash, the hearth was newly reddened, and on the andirons in the huge fireplace a fire roared hot enough for Christmas; in the kitchen below was a scared cook who knew she would hear some hot language did anything go wrong in her domains.
Edward was as glad as she was to hear the wheels. He hurried out on the porch and down the long flight of steps. He had hoped to help Frances from the trap and say some pretty words of greeting, but she had already sprung out and met him at the steps. The professor was assisting Mrs. Randall.
"Father says you are going to take us all over the place," called Frances at once. "Let's go now; Mrs. Randall wants to, also!"
"Of course!" chimed that pleased matron; "we want to see all the establishment. When we come back, I'm going down in the kitchen."
"I wish you would," pleaded the host fervently.
Mrs. Randall, who had no children of her own, had a mother's heart for all: she had been longing to get out to this bachelor's establishment ever since it was set up, but the doctor was always too busy. She was going to make the best of the opportunity, and if this "boy" had any need her bright eyes could see, she was resolved to help him fill it.
"Go get your hat, Edward; we'll all come in afterwards."
And the young man ran back up the steps, all his pretty speeches unsaid.
"We'll go out to the vineyard first," suggested the professor, hurrying ahead, with Mrs. Randall close behind him, in the narrow path beaten along the tangle of yellow Jerusalem apples and prickly Spanish needles and wild grasses.
The farm was still in sorry order. The ground of the orchard close to the house was covered with tangled, browning weeds, in some of the trees the late winesaps shonered and ruddy. Frances stopped to fill her hands with them.
"Don't eat those; I have some splendid ones in the house for you."
"These are fine!" She set her white teeth in the red fruit. "I like these best, I like to pull them."
"Eve!" he bantered.
"Are they forbidden?"
"Nothing is, here; it's all yours—" he began eagerly.
"Oh, thanks! Had you a Spanish ancestor?"
"English on each side," he declared stoutly.
"You look it," she assented, with one quick look at his fair face and a swift noting of his sturdiness.
"The Saxons are truth-tellers," he urged.
But the professor had paused at the pig-pen near the orchard's edge. "Fine hogs!" he called back to his host, "Cheshire?"
Edward joined him reluctantly. "That one is," he said, pointing to the pinkish-white sides of a lazy, fat wallower.
"He'll weigh two hundred."
"I expect he will."
"Seems a pity to kill him."
"I have the mother."
"Who's going to make your sausage and dry your lard?" asked Mrs. Randall quickly.
"Lizzie."
"What, trust that darkey with it?"
"There's nothing else to do."
"Come on, Frances," called her father, for that young woman was still loitering under the apple-trees.
Mr. Holloway took the lead towards the vineyard. The Northrup estate numbered many acres, but not many valuable ones. They were too high up the mountains, which ran steeply to their crests a bare five hundred yards behind the house. This narrow valley at its base sheltered from the north was fertile, and wound straight at the foot of the peaks for nearly a mile. Close to the house was the vineyard; beyond the vines, the cornfields, above there on the mountain side, the woodland.
Frances followed, but her words of praise were for the autumn woods, the toweringpeaks, or, far down below them, the misty valley. About the house was more the women could praise.
There was the pipe bringing its clear mountain water from a far off spring to the kitchen door, there was the great ground floor room of the wing stored with apples shining redly against the white of the walls. Here Mrs. Randall paused.
"I am going into the kitchen," she announced. But the professor and Frances and Edward went up the stairway to the covered porch joining the wing to the main building, and by the rear door of "the chamber" into the house.
"You must go through the house," insisted Edward.
The professor begged off. "No, I'll sit here; it isn't often I see such a fire as this. I've been over it before, and many times, years ago."
The professor was lost in the memory of the happy days he had spent in the old house when his years were less than young Montague's, of the lives which had driftedfar away, of the strange fate that had brought the deserted homestead into the hands of a schoolfellow's son, of the odd feeling which beset him when he was being made to feel at home where he had happily been at ease so many days of his young manhood; for the professor was a dreamer, and his dreams showed him often the realities of existence, true and strange. He lived and he saw life. He knew that the strangeness of its fortunes were matched in no tale written or to be written, because at the vital truths humanity stops fear-stricken at the unveiling of the God of the innermost Holies. Still it is the God and still it is the Holy and still the veil hangs there. The Divine hand alone is strong enough to touch it, the Divine eye alone is pure enough to see within, pitying enough, merciful enough. Talk of life's shadows, its sunlights, its surface play; leave the Holiest to Him!
The man saw bright faces there in the flames which went roaring up the great chimney, read old tales in the gleamingembers on the hearth, lived old days, while the echo of gay laughter floated down to him.
Frances and her host were walking through the empty rooms upstairs, the young man pointing eagerly to views of towering peaks silhouetted against the reddening sky, their sides tawny with the russet leaves of oaks or vivid with the evergreens, or gray with bare tossing branches.
From the windows opposite those framing such vistas, she looked into a wide deep valley of clustering hill-tops, low, soft, round, green, crowding close together, running water between,—though this she could not see.
"The grass is green down between those hills the whole year through," he was telling her, "and the water never freezes; that's why it is such a splendid stock-farm. Mr. Payne is very successful. I have been wondering if I should try some stock here."
Frances was scarce heeding, she was looking down on the circle of the lawn before the door, tangled, weed-grown; noting that thelong arms of the spirea needed trimming, that the clump of jonquils should be freed from weeds, the waxberry trained, and the roses freed from their long dead branches; it was pitiful to see all this plenty of beauty run to waste.