"Gayly the Troubadour touched his guitarAs he was hastening home from the war,Singing in search of thee fain would I roam,Lady love, lady love—"
"Gayly the Troubadour touched his guitarAs he was hastening home from the war,Singing in search of thee fain would I roam,Lady love, lady love—"
"Gayly the Troubadour touched his guitarAs he was hastening home from the war,Singing in search of thee fain would I roam,Lady love, lady love—"
"Gayly the Troubadour touched his guitar
As he was hastening home from the war,
Singing in search of thee fain would I roam,
Lady love, lady love—"
"Hello! What's the matter with you?" called some one through the door he had forgotten to close tightly, "it's time for practice."
"I'm getting ready; come in and wait."
The man entered. They had not been receiving many invitations to Lawson's rooms lately.
"What's the matter with you?" he repeated as he leaned against the mantel. "Good news?"
"Sure!" cried Lawson, slipping his sweater over his head.
The young fellow leaning against the mantel, though he was clad in full toggery of padded trousers and sweater and socks showing the University colors gaudily, was yet no comparison for Lawson, and they both knew it. Lawson was far and away the best-looking man on the eleven. The very garb served to show his fine physique and animal beauty, and with this look of flushed pleasure and full life—
"Come on," growled the visitor; "you've primped enough!"
"Primped! You saw me, didn't you?"
"Well, you've got your clothes on; come on!"
Lawson ran his arm through his visitor's arm and they went singing across the quadrangle—
"Hark 'twas the Troubadour, breathing her name:Under the battlement softly he came;Singing 'from Palestine, hither I come;Lady love, lady love, welcome me home.'"
"Hark 'twas the Troubadour, breathing her name:Under the battlement softly he came;Singing 'from Palestine, hither I come;Lady love, lady love, welcome me home.'"
"Hark 'twas the Troubadour, breathing her name:Under the battlement softly he came;Singing 'from Palestine, hither I come;Lady love, lady love, welcome me home.'"
"Hark 'twas the Troubadour, breathing her name:
Under the battlement softly he came;
Singing 'from Palestine, hither I come;
Lady love, lady love, welcome me home.'"
As the train rocked down the mountain-side next day, past tobacco-fields stripped bare, and orchards where no red fruit shone, and fields now brown and sere, and as it sped over the low country, Lawson had one thought. He would see, when the train pulled into Richmond, somewhere in the throng about the station Frances' bright face and serene shining eyes. She would be there with those of the city who came to welcome them. The travellers laughed and jested, sang and cheered and yelled, Lawson with them, his heart light as a boy's; but all of this outward atmosphere was like a dream to him,—the reality was the vision he saw of a girl's face. He was first out of the coach. His eager eyes searched the crowd. In all the press was not one face he knew. He was half resentful when he was hurried away, and glum and silent in the midst of the joyful hubbub around him.
Then he pulled himself together; she was out on the grounds, of course. When the game began, his inattention and wretched play fairly lost the day, until the wrath of the captain called and kept him to the work in hand. He stayed the night in Richmond, went to the play, loitered about the shopping streets next day, and saw only strangers or those who had come down from the mountains with them.
Late that afternoon, tired, disgusted, self-scornful, he took a train for home. When he passed the professor's house he saw a beam of light shine out on the quadrangle on a spot where no gleam had shone for many a night.
He walked deliberately out on the sward and looked up. He cared not who saw him or who chaffed him, and a University man has to order his life with care if he wishes it not to become a burden to him. Fortunately it was late, and there were no men about corridor or campus. He stood watching; it might be the old negress there for all he knew.
The curtains were pulled aside, the casement opening on the balcony was flung open, and a tall supple figure stood outlined sharply against the flood of light behind her. His heart seemed pulsing in his throat and choking him. Then Frances stepped lightly out on the porch and began to unfasten the heavy shutters from the clasps holding them back to the brick wall.
He walked quickly across till he stood under the balcony's edge; the vine climbing the pillar was bare, its dry branches rustling in the night wind.
"Frances!" he called softly.
There was no answer, and he heard a light footstep across the porch and a rattling at the other shutter.
"Miss Holloway!" he called distinctly.
"Who is there? Where—"
The voice called again; she leaned over the railing and saw a tall figure below looming in the star-lit dusk. "Who is it?" she asked, a quick catch in her breath.
"Do you not know me?" reproachfully.
"Mr. Lawson?" the voice was low and full,and the intonation gracefully easy, with the old ring of cheer in it. Hard riding, hard thinking, hot scorning, and firm resolving had made many changes in Frances; best of all it had restored her old manner of gay ease.
"Where have you been?" questioned the voice below.
"Ever so many places."
"When did you come back?" If there was any tender reproach in the voice, the young woman up there did not heed it.
"Yesterday."
Yesterday! when he was searching for her, longing for her,—and she was here. "Why didn't you stay for the game?"
"I couldn't; I am expecting some friends from Richmond. I had to come home and see that Susan had the house in order."
There was a second's silence. The young man below stood motionless: "I want to see you," he said firmly.
"Can't you? What a pity it's so dark!"
"To-morrow?"
"I shall not have a minute's time."
"Soon?" he insisted.
"Of course!" as if it were a matter of no consequence whatever.
"I shall expect to," and then there was silence again.
"I am glad you won!" called the girl. "Good night!"
"Oh, yes, we won!" he said, a trifle bitterly, as he strode away.
Frances leaned faintly against the rail. It was over, the moment she had dreaded unspeakably, and she was in her rightful place again. She knew it; she blessed the night whose darkness had given her assurance. She blessed the unexpected meeting when there was no time for awkward confusion. She tapped her finger-tips on the rail and smiled to herself as she stood there, but the icy touch of the frost already forming roused her to a sense of the cold and chill. She hurried in, locked the shutters and then went running down the stairs.
"Father," she said with a happy laugh, "father, I am so glad to be at home." She leaned over his chair and put her arms about his neck.
"Are you?" there was a sparkle of joy in the professor's dark eyes; "so am I!" He slipped his arm about her and pulled her down on the arm of the chair. "You mustn't run away again; I don't know what to do without you; you must never run away again, too far!"
Lawson, though he was not given to poetical comparisons, was remembering with keen pain the first hour when he stood beneath the balcony and Frances had talked with him. It was morning then, it was night now; the sunlight was in the sky, only the cold stars now; she had come down to him blithely that warm, bright day when the world was a flood of sunshine and color; he had gone alone now, and it was cold and dark, and the color had drifted from the outside world and the joy from his heart.
About five o'clock the next day, Lawson, from sheer restlessness, was one of a crowd of University men waiting on the platform of the station in the ravine for the trains from the west and south already due; chaffing, singing, laughing, guying, cheering, they were waiting, according to the daily custom of a holiday hour, for whatever fun the arriving coaches might furnish.
The electric arcs swung white light up and down the station, the smoke of a sidetracked freight hung low and heavy in the valley, the teams of the afternoon drivers were rattling across the high bridge, their occupants looking with laughing interest on the scene below. Suddenly with shriek and roar the Southern train was in.
"Vir—gin—i—a."
"Vir—gin—i—a."
"Rah—rah—rah!"
The men gave a great yell. A young girl in one of the coaches flung up a window and looked out.
"Rah—rah—rah!"
The young girl snapped down the window. Another face, curious and likewise pretty, showed at the pane. The young men were wildly enthusiastic.
"Vir—gin—i—a."
"Vir—gin—i—a—" The yell drowned all other sounds, and Lawson was astonished to see, as it ended, Frances springing from her trap a few yards away and hastening forward. The conductor waited gallantly at the steps of one of the coaches, the porter came down another flight, laden with bundles, and at the door, their cheeks showing red with suppressed fun and excitement behind their veils, appeared the two pretty young women.
"Vir—gin—i—a—." The yell died away as the men saw the professor's daughter greeting the arrivals with laughing welcome. They fell to guying each other mercilessly.But Lawson, standing not far away, came at once to Frances' assistance.
"Let me help you!" He reached for some of the bundles.
"Oh, thank you! Mr. Lawson, these are my Richmond friends, Miss Rowan, Mr. Lawson! Miss Martin!"
The young women held out their gloved hands and Lawson welcomed them impressively. He assisted them into the trap with careful gallantry, the strangers, both of them, in the back seat, the packages stored at their feet. Frances was subduing the antics of Starlight, who after standing quietly when there was need, took occasion to seem shocked at the engine now that his driver was in place and he felt the touch of the reins on his bit, and to stand protestingly on his hind feet and paw the air.
The strangers were frightened. "Can you manage him, Frances?" cried one.
"Oh, let me get out!" the other pleaded.
"We'll come up on the street car!" Miss Rowan declared, white with fear.
"Sit still!" commanded Frances, shortly."Come down, Starlight! behave yourself!" she reached for the whip.
"Don't strike him! There's no telling what he would do!" begged the visitors. Lawson, near, stalwart and interested, seemed a godsend.
"Do come with us!" pleaded Elizabeth Martin, who in all emergencies turned to the nearest man.
"There's no need," he began. Starlight had all fours on solid earth once more.
"Jump in!" laughed Frances, nodding to the empty seat; she pulled Starlight around, waited a second for Lawson to get in, and then came down sharply on Starlight's flank with the whip. The horse made a plunge, straight for the platform, the men scattered right and left, and Starlight went snorting up the winding road to the street above.
"Let Mr. Lawson drive!" besought Miss Martin.
Frances looked laughingly at the young man beside her. That other opportunity and this were all she could have wished to put them on a commonplace footing. Theold position and power and knowledge to hold her own, were all she wished for. Lawson looking into the clear, gray eyes felt a thrill of gratitude for the fortune which had befriended him.
Still, her answer may have held some hidden meaning for him, for he flushed a little when he heard it. "I prefer to hold my own reins myself," she said carelessly; "you know I never would stand much managing."
Lawson turned to talk to the young women behind him; so, he could watch furtively Frances' face and her cheek where the rose hue flickered, the white in the midst of it.
The streets were filled with the afternoon crowd, students in groups or alone, young women, older women, children; fancy turnouts and farmers' wagons, high carts, and heavy low ones filled with cordwood, young women in short skirts and heavy boots, young women in all the finery of new fall clothes and furs, loitering by the houses set flush upon the street, or by box-hedged gardens, the houses far back, or by smooth lawns.
The crowd was dense, but through it Frances glimpsed Edward Montague. He had seen her a minute earlier and was watching her wistfully, with a keen pang at his heart that now when he had seen her first for so long a time, she should be one of a gay party with that handsome young fellow at her side. She drew rein, soon as she saw him, and Edward hurried out to her.
"So glad to see you, Mr. Montague!" She leaned and gave him her hand. "Let me introduce you!" She named the young women. "You know Mr. Lawson?"
"Happy to have that pleasure!" said Lawson stiffly, remembering Susan's words.
"You must come and see us!" with a backward glance to her guests.
"I shall. I have just been out to your house."
"You have?"
"I met your father at the post-office; he told me you were home!"
"And forgot I was going to the station?"
"He did not mention it, but," quickly as ifin defence of his absent friend, "I left him waiting for you at home."
"We will hurry then; good-by!"
"Good-by!" He did not add that the professor had insisted on his return, and that he had accepted, but he carried with him a happy consciousness of the fact.
Frances had the same cordial invitation for Lawson, when they parted. She knew well that the young city women visiting the University in the middle of the term expected a good time, and a good time chiefly along one line. So while the professor was welcoming them in the hall, she lingered on the doorstep.
"You must help me make them enjoy their visit," she said, knowing she could not ask a better aide.
"I will, I shall be delighted!" answered Lawson fervidly.
"And bring your friends!"
"I shall bring them this evening."
"I wonder—Elizabeth, Mary, are you very tired?" she called through the open door.
"Not a bit!" they chorussed.
"Very well—this evening!" She gave him her hand. He stood a little to the side of the step and they were out of sight through the half-opened door. He held her hand closely and looked straight in her eyes, questioningly, compellingly, but Frances looked back calmly and carelessly, and wrenched herself free. "Good-by!" she called from the door.
Lawson went on to his room and threw himself moodily into the chair before the fire. It was smouldering. He punched it viciously and banged the blower over it.
"Beastliest way of heating a fellow's room I ever saw!" he grumbled, "I vow I'll freeze before mid-winter!"
He slipped into his smoking-jacket, turned on the glare of the light, pulled table and Morris chair before the fire, and sat down, book in hand, to some pretence of study, but other cases than legal thronged his mind. He flung the note-book on the table, wrenched off the blower, and then, with a half sigh of content at the blazing coals inthe grate, he sank back in his chair. He watched the flicker of the flames in the chimney's mouth; yellow and white and red and violet, the tongues of burning gas flared up the rough, black chimney's mouth, and the coals below glowed red and redder. But Lawson, looking at them dreamingly, was seeing the way he must go, and was growing stronger in his determination.
He would win her, yes! He had begun merely as a diversion from the study he sometimes liked and sometimes disliked, sometimes dreamed to win fame through and sometimes was intolerantly impatient of, counting, in a bitter moment, nothing worth effort.
He had begun, too, by draping traditions about Frances, every one of which, she had freed herself from; and he had ended by unquestioning acceptance of the fact that this woman, puzzling beyond his ken, was the one thing of the hour he desired.
The memory of Susan's words only strengthened his obstinacy. The shield Frances kept about her, thin as gauze,impenetrable as steel, which he had fended aside once and once again, but made his fight the more interesting. He had no fault to find at any point of the situation,—only a wild impatience that he should have been thrust back when he felt attainment within his grasp.
With the advent of visitors the professor's house became the centre of gayety in the quadrangle. The women of the other households were glad to show friendliness to the young girl, in whom they felt a warm interest, but who had seemed in her content to need no one. Visits and invitations, drives and supper parties transformed the quiet household.
The professor made one stand for himself. Susan had asked for a scullion and named a boy, who was promptly engaged. "And, Susan," the professor had commanded, "see that he keeps a good fire in the parlor; show every one who calls in there. Leave the library undisturbed."
"I must have some peace!" added the professor to himself, who found this whirl a trial, but endured it for Frances' sake. For Frances seemed to thoroughly enjoy thisdispensing of hospitality; she planned gayeties far ahead. She accepted and returned the invitations from their neighbors. She spent hours in the kitchen while her guests were dispatched on pleasures, and fought Susan's wrath for each of those hours. There was no idle moment when accusing thoughts might sting, or when some seeker for such opportunity would find her alone.
Lawson, he scarcely knew how, was made the special attendant of the visitors; and though he was restless and chafing, and keenly watchful for his chances, he yet enjoyed the gay expeditions and the presence of the pretty, fun-loving young women.
Montague, when he came, was warmly welcomed and made one of them; but it was a busy season on the farm; he was kept away enough to have something of the feeling of an outsider and to see the things one from the outside sees. He was vaguely conscious of a troubled atmosphere, and he saw, too, what no one else did, that there was a feverish restlessness about Frances and a constant guarded effort at control. Hisinstinctive thought of her warned him that in spite of her apparent blitheness she needed befriending. He was constantly alert for her, constantly watchful. Whenever he was with them Frances felt, somehow, helped and more at peace with herself. So for the allotted time of the visit. The days had nearly sped by when Frances found the professor one morning gathering up his books and papers for the day's lectures.
The contrast between the quiet room, lined with bookshelves, the grave, scholarly man standing there by the paper-littered table, and the room across the hall, from which floated the sound of chatter and laughter, smote the professor's daughter keenly.
"Does all this visiting and calling and confusion bother you?" she asked, as she slipped her hand through his arm and ran her soft palm childishly up and down the heavy wool of his sleeve.
"Not at all!" The professor looked lovingly into the eyes of his daughter, who was as tall as he was.
"Because," she went on whimsically, "they are going to stay longer!" She made a pretence of holding her breath.
The professor thought of the loved quiet of his home and the still more loved comradeship of his daughter, and was silent.
"I don't think it's altogether on my account," added Frances demurely.
The professor chuckled. "I don't think it is!" he replied.
"Theyareenjoying their visit."
"So it seems!" And then, after a short silence, "Are you enjoying it also?"
"I? Of course!"
"Then it's all right!" He slipped a rubber band about his papers and laid them on his books. "I drove out to young Montague's yesterday," he said to his daughter, standing idly before the fire. Frances had found so few moments alone with her father lately that she was making the most of these.
"It's dreary out there," the professor complained; "these winter days are going to be hard for him."
"Don't worry! I've never seen a man less inclined to be doleful!"
"Do you think so," said the professor eagerly, "now, lately he hasn't seemed so—so bright as he used to be. I thought perhaps he was finding it lonely. He is an excellent farmer, do you know," he said with sudden enthusiasm, "he has sold enough wood off the place to pay half of the cost of it."
"Oh! what a pity!"
"Pity!"
"The hills will look so bare; I shall always remember the beautiful forest sweeping up to the mountain tops."
"Oh! the wood will be cut far up the range and there is enough about there for the country not to suffer for the want of it. We went over it together."
"Then I know it is all right!" teased Frances.
"He's working too hard," the professor went on, keeping to the topic in which he was so keenly interested.
"You know this is a busy season; after awhile he can rest. You know what you often say, winter is the farmer's holiday."
"Yes, but shut up out there! I must send him some books." Frances watched in amusement as her father went to the shelves where his light literature was kept. "Pope's Iliad," he said thoughtfully, "read it in the original of course; Herodotus, I wonder how much Greek he knows; Carlyle, hm! Drummond, that will make him think at least—What?" for Frances was leaning against his shoulder and was laughing.
"What do you like yourself when you are idle or half sick, when there's a good hot fire to read and dream before?"
The professor reddened with conscience-stricken remembrance of a pile of paper-bound novels in the attic. "Get him something yourself, then!"
"I will!"
"I dare say he will like it better," retorted her father, who, blind to Lawson's attentions, had begun to suspicion Montague's, and to think with a half-pleased apprehension thatit might be a desirable thing for some far-off day.
Frances was about to answer when the bell rang insistently.
"Good Lord!" groaned the professor.
"I don't think it is a visitor," soothed Frances. "What is it, Susan?"
The old woman came briskly into the room. "I dunno! Some sassy niggah jes' poked dis box at me an' run off." Susan was always ready to find fault with the manners of the rising generation; she put the box down gingerly just on the professor's papers.
"Here!" he snatched it up and set it forcibly on the hearth. "Flowers! And the thing is wet!"
Frances, delighted, knelt by the box. "Miss Frances Holloway," she read; "give me your knife! Oh!" for the top wrenched off disclosed a sheaf of chrysanthemums, white and yellow, and a card, "Mr. Frank Lawson."
"They are for all, of course!" she filled her arms with them and got to her feet. "Take this box in the kitchen, Susan."
"Wait!" her father called, "what are you going to do to-day?"
"We are going shopping in the morning, and there is a tally-ho party to Monticello this afternoon."
"You are going?"
"This morning."
"And this afternoon?"
"I scarcely think I shall go. I have been up to Monticello so often, and I think I'll stay at home and make a cake."
"Why don't you go, Frances?" her father protested.
"It will be a chocolate cake," she was laughing at him over the sheaf of chrysanthemums, "and you shall have all you want!" And the professor was disarmed.
Some one else had noticed this same tendency of housekeeping. When Frances was busily beating eggs in the kitchen, the bell rang. She went on with her work without a thought of visitors, for the tally-ho party was large and included all their friends, the younger ones at least. Susan had gone on an errand, and the boy,hurrying carelessly through kitchen and dining-room and library, left each door open as he went through.
"T'aint no one home but Miss Frances," he said to the young man on the door-step, "and she's busy in the kitchen."
The young man went past him into the library; through the doors he glimpsed Frances, back towards him. He stepped out of the line of vision, "Very well!" he said in a low tone to the boy gaping in the doorway, "you need not tell her; I'll announce myself!"
The boy, green, untrained, as Lawson knew him to be, hastened on through the back door of the hall to his work at the woodpile. Lawson trod softly across the rooms. The swift beater in Frances' hands deafened her ears to other sounds. He came close behind her, and spoke her name before she knew the warm sunny kitchen held any but herself.
She went white to the lips with fright. "How dare you?" she cried.
Lawson had thought of some flatteringspeech to appease her; instead his anger flared as hot as hers. "Did you not know I would dare anything?"
The piteous red flushing over the pallor of cheek and forehead told him the shot had told brutally.
"Did you not know I would dare anything to see you?" He pleaded conscience stricken at his blunder. "I asked you, I told you, the night you came home, to give me an opportunity to—to see you."
"You have!" she flashed, anger once more coming to her aid.
"You know what I meant, not with a crowd about you, but when I—I—you have made a hedge of your visitors," he accused. It was exactly what she had done, and done wilfully. "You knew I longed to see you."
Frances rolled down her shirt-sleeves and buttoned them coolly. "Will you walk into the library?" she asked icily.
"No!"
"I did not know you were fond of the kitchen. Have this chair," pulling Susan's low flag chair beside the window.
Lawson took it from her. His eyes were red with wrath, but Frances took no heed.
"Does it remind you of home?" went on the young woman sarcastically.
"God forbid!" he blurted, with a flashing memory of the chef presiding there in the kitchen.
The calm was coming back to Frances' manner; she felt herself yet mistress. "Sit down; I will show you what a Virginia kitchen is like. I'll bake you a cake," she added, with a saucy air, for all the fear that was tugging at her heart, "if you are a good boy."
"I was never good!" he blazed.
"No," thoughtfully; "well, it's good to be truthful. I'll give you a cake for that."
"I want none of your cakes!"
Frances opened wide her innocent-seeming eyes, though her lip trembled.
"I want you!"
She leaned back against the table's edge as he came close to her. She clenched her hands, striving for the hot words she wanted, which would not come.
"I love you; you know it—"
Her eyes flashed blazing denial.
"Will you marry me?"
For one instant heart and pulse stopped. "Marry him—marry him—" All her fancies and conclusions were whirling in her brain; flirtations, of which she had accused him, were not apt to go so far.
"You know how I love you, long for you. Why have you kept this distance between us, Frances?" He put his hands on her shoulders and looked down into her drooping face. "You will be my wife?" but at that word a sudden swift memory smote him icy cold and speechless. Frances looking shyly up thought it anxiety for her answer. Into the gray eyes came stealing, flashing, the look he had dreamed of, had resolved to kindle there and read, himself glorified as he read. With a sob in his breath he caught her to him. "Frances," he began hurriedly, soon as speech would come, "there is something I must tell you now, you must know—" but Frances, covered with confusion, was pulling away from him. She had heardSusan's step outside, "Susan is coming," she panted.
Lawson gave her one passionate look, that hardened into triumphant love as he gazed deep into her eyes. "So be it," he said within himself; "I accept!"
He slipped through the doors, closing them as he went. When Susan came into the kitchen he was softly shutting the outer one. He went triumphant. For one instant the joy of possession had fought with a deeper and higher love, but desire had won.
Through the hours of that night Frances heard the strong north wind about the house, singing the song of vibrant trees on the mountain-tops or the low tones of the rolling hills and narrow valleys. All night she knew the world outside grew cold and colder, while the mist clouds which had condensed into rain in the early evening were swept from the sky. As the fire in her grate burned low and the insistent wind rattled at window and door and blew in gusty breaths down the chimney's mouth, the furniture contracting and snapping, made weird noises which mingled with the clashings of the maples on the quadrangle.
Whether she slept or whether she waked, it was the same mood of restless excited happiness. It seemed but a reflection of it from the world outside when she flung openher heavy shutters in the morning and saw the sky clear as crystal, bluish green at its zenith and, over above the houses opposite, flushed red as a rose. The maples rocked in the wind, along the corridor across the way the shallow rain pools in the worn pavement had turned to ice, making shimmer and shine but perilous footing. The wind and the rocking and the singing were her own restless mood, which made her vibrant to a song which she knew not for joy or for some feeling yet unnamable.
It was not wholly joy, for her first thought of others struck her with dismay. Susan, before she had dressed, came into the room, a great box in her hands.
"Dat boy done said p'intidly dis time 'twas for yuh. He 'low dat Mr. Lawson call Mr. Cook up to de 'phone las' night an' said as how dey was to be hyar befor' sun up dis mornin'."
"Oh!" cried Frances with a long ecstatic sigh, as she uncovered the sweet red roses and buried her blushing face in their fragrant hearts, "how beautiful, how sweet, how—"—"thoughtful" she was about to add, when she remembered Susan and her secret.
But Susan could read the tale of that shy, sweet delight in Frances' face and her own grew more anxious and wrinkled.
"Yuh'd bettah hurry up an' dress," she said, grumpily. "'Tis nigh upon eight o'clock and yo' pa won't eben think his breakfast taste good if yuh isn't there." It was the first shot she could think of, but it told.
Frances laid down the great handful of beauties she had been holding ecstatically close to her face. "I will be down in a moment," she said soberly, and, then, as Susan still lingered, "you had better hurry yourself and see that everything is ready."
As she brushed the rebellious dark hair into the waves above her forehead she saw her reflected face through a mist of tears; once, twice, in the happy evening before, the thought of her father had come like a stab through the joy still only half believed in and shyly dreamed of. She had not dared follow that thought to the end. It wouldshow her the deep sorrow of her own heart were she to leave him to live her life many hundred miles away amongst people and surroundings not of his kind and beyond his ken; it would show her, what was harder still, the desolation of his loneliness without her. She could not face it yet, but must put it away from her with all the tremulous uncertainties quivering into life in her heart, and must live in the moment.
She fastened a great red rose in her dainty waist and then picked up a smaller bud. "This is for you," she declared, as she hastened into the library before the breakfast bell had rung, and found her father waiting a trifle impatiently before the fire.
So it was that a young man, hurrying across the campus in gay mood, gave a start of astonishment when he met the professor, and guessed the rose in his coat to be one of those he had dedicated to this first happy day of a love striven for against long odds and won.
It was not the better part of him that had triumphed the day before, and it may havebeen the fight within which made him so readily resentful and so quick to show it, when he paused at the window of the professor's house to greet the gay trio there. And it was some baser part of him which, when he read Frances' tell-tale face, the faint flush, the droop of the lids, while he talked gayly with Elizabeth Martin, urged him to see how far he might torment her. Having played the daring game once, he must play it again and again in the few short stormy days which followed. Prompted by some unknown devil within him, bred of the fight which he lacked the courage to face and to decide, he must watch her tell-tale face to see how he had aroused feelings Frances had never dreamed of and hated while she suffered them—must laugh and talk with Elizabeth Martin with admiration in his eyes and flattery on his lips, and to see, meanwhile, the wonder in Frances' eyes, and the pride which in the end concealed it—must seek, at last, some hour alone with her, manœuvre for that hour, and watch the resentment she disdained to name,die away beneath the magnetism of his love-making.
Even then a fierce joy ruled him, prompting him to a lavish generosity in which the whole household shared.
"Ise done sick o' seein' dat flower boy," declared Susan, savagely, to Frances, in a kitchen interview. "Sho' as de brekkus bell rings, he rings de nex', an' he's gettin' sassy as if he run de whole business an' brung 'em heself."
Frances only laughed.
"An' if yuh eats much mo' dat candy layin' erroun', I'll be plumb scared o' yuh eatin' yo' vittles."
"You shall have a box for yourself," teased Frances.
"Me! De Lawd knows I don't want none! I'd ruther hab one o' dem plump partridges Marse Edward brought yestiddy dan all de choclits yuh can rake and scrape."
"You shall have that, too; broil them for supper."
"Who's gwine be hyar?"
"No one but us."
"Humph! dyar'll be jes' ernuff." Susan was not going to serve the game one young man had taken a long tramp to shoot, for another who did not stand so high in her graces. Young Montague had been in the day before.
With some intuitive understanding of Frances, her excited mood and Lawson's manner, when he saw them together, left him desperately anxious and heart-sick. It was a story he could not read, nor the actors themselves. But he divined that, in spite of the brilliancy he had never seen so great in her before, Frances was unhappy. He saw enough, also, to fear the drift of her life was to a love which would not bring her peace, and which would leave him desolate. He saw that the professor was just beginning to wake to a vague uneasiness, and his resolve to befriend her, no matter at what cost to himself, was strengthened.
The next day he came in for the observatory party, which was to be the last gayety of the visitors, who were going on the early train of the morning following. Lawsonhad arranged the expedition, and had ordered the big drag from the stables for the ride up the mountain in the moonlight just beginning to tinge the highest peaks. A whispered word placed Elizabeth Martin on the driver's seat beside him; Montague was quick to seize the opportunity of seating himself by Frances' side, and was thankful for the chance. Frances, herself, was wrapt in the beautiful moonlit world through which they rode. Her dreamy eyes saw the rolling hills and the distant lights bespeaking home; her fine listening heard the song of the night winds in the oaks, as they wound up the mountain side, and the music of the rustling leaves under wheel and hoof-beats. As the road mounted higher she turned to watch the lights in the valley, the clustering sparkle of them in the town, and, above the crests of the Ragged Mountains, the moon, swinging over all and flooding the world with mystic light.
On the mountain crest the world seemed strangely hushed. The observatory gleamed ghostly in the shadowings of the oaks; thered light shining from the window of the work-room and the young man it shone on inside were a human touch distinctly needed. His welcome, the glowing stove in the room, the bright lamp-light shining on book-shelves and easy chairs and tables, were a cheer for which the chilled visitors were grateful.
"You had better keep your wraps on," he cautioned them, as the women began to unfasten furs and coats, "I think it is a little colder in the observatory than outside."
An icy blast through the door he opened confirmed him. The metallic sides of the great telescope gleamed in the cold white light as they entered. Frances waited as her visitors mounted the frail-looking stairs and peered through the great instrument at the moon they had seen rising over the mountain, so small, so far away, now, through this medium, swinging in space a great globe of light.
She herself was never tired of the marvel, nor of the long look through the huge telescope at the circling rim of the luminary,broken with deep craters and wrapped in luminous mists.
The student, seeing her enthusiasm, dropped his alphabetic talk, and began telling of some juxtaposition of the stars they were watching.
"Would you care to see it?" he asked, as he commenced to swing the top of the great dome about and the telescope with it.
"You are not going to stay long?" questioned one of the young women.
"It's so cold, Frances, we'll wait in the other room by the fire."
Frances, deeply interested, scarcely knew when they were gone or how long she lingered; for there were other things to be shown eager eyes, writ in such entrancing language on the heavens, that the young man whose duty it was to keep watch of them was glad to show the manner of their writing.
When, half frozen, they hurried back to the working-room, they found a comfortable group waiting them. Mary Rowan and Edward Montague and one other man were huddled together about the stove. Furtheraway, apart, by one of the tables were Elizabeth Martin and Lawson. The lamp-light shone full on her face. She was looking up at him. It might have been coquetry that brought the expression Frances saw as she opened the door, but at least it was in response to something of language or look in the man who leaned over her. So much Frances told herself instantly. The thought sent a sickening feeling from head to foot. She reeled slightly; Montague, watching her, sprang to her assistance.
"How cold you are! You can hardly walk! Sit here!" as he pulled forward an easy chair. "Take off your wraps as soon as you are warm," he cautioned, "or you will not feel them when you go out."
Lawson, hearing the solicitous speech, frowned and turned so as he could see them; but he saw only a supple figure cuddled in the depths of a chair, the face turned from him. He came up to the fire. "It's beastly cold," he declared, "I don't see how you stood it so long."
Frances never lifted her lids. She wasabsorbed in warming her icy, trembling fingers. Once and again he strove for a word with her, but she was coldly indifferent. At the side of the drag he took matters in his own hands. "You are going to drive down with me," he declared.
"No!" said Frances, coldly.
"But there is something I want to say to you; Miss Martin, Miss Frances is going to drive back on the seat with me." He was frightened, and anxious to make his peace; there was something he had just settled with Elizabeth, and she was frightened too.
"Of course," she assented quickly; "Mr. Montague, I am going back with you." She gave Frances no time for remonstrance, as she claimed Montague's help at once and sprang into the drag. The others were already seated. Frances must go as Lawson demanded, perforce. She was angered at the scene she had come upon and angered at being so managed.
The young man beside her found her simply and icily civil, and that the words he must say to her were most difficult to frame; butwell down the mountain-side, the rest talking gayly, he felt he must seize his chance. With his free hand he felt for hers under the buffalo robe, and found it. Frances did not withdraw it, nor was there a thrill of life or love in its touch.
He was manly enough to be quite open as to what he had to say. "I am going to Richmond to-morrow." The fingers quivered slightly; from the lips came no sound.
"Do you know how near Christmas it is?" he questioned.
Montague, behind him, caught the tone and clenched his fists, even while he was answering Elizabeth Martin's raillery.
"I am going to search the shops."
There was still no answer.
"I am going to see what the jewellers have—"
He left her to find out for herself what she had already divined. When she drove with her guests to the station next morning she found him waiting.
He took the same train.
When Frances drove from the station, for the first time in all her healthy young life she found herself dreading the day which stretched before her. She tied Starlight outside the quadrangle and walked up the corridor slowly. Every window of her house was opened wide. Susan, beturbanned, met her at the door.
"Honey," she said, "don't yuh want to go in yo' room dis damp day an' res' yo'self?"
Frances gave a little shiver at the idea of being shut in her room all the morning. Her expression was answer sufficient.
"Den yuh bettah dribe in town an' git sumpin' to eat; we's cleaned clar out."
"What do you want?" asked Frances, glad of the errand.
"Want! Yuh jes' step in hyar one minute." The old woman pointed withdramatic hand towards the empty shelves, and began a list of all the eatables she could think of.
"We needs 'em fur shuah!" she ended. "Ise gwine begin my Christmas cake termorrer; Ise jes' been waiting to git de place clar, an' I tell yuh fer a fac' I wants dis house all to myself dis one mornin'. Ise tiahed o' dried-up flowers an' empty boxes an'—an'—sich! Honey," she wheedled, "if yuh gits through early, yuh might go visitin'."
Frances was laughing at Susan's earnestness, when she went out again. There was nothing in the day, though the mist dripped from shrub and tree and bespangled the grass and veiled the mountains, to foster heartache. The streets were filled with carriages, mud-splashed and encrusted, the horses red with clay above their fetlocks. The stores were bright with holly and cedar. Before the grocers' shops were coops of turkeys and strings of hams and barrels of oysters. The confectioners' windows were piled high with oranges and dates and nuts and raisins and candies. The dry-goodswindows showed alluring furs and coats and breadths of cloth. Waiting at the curb was a string of carriages, their occupants calling gay greetings from one to another. Frances pulling close into the press felt herself one of the Christmas crowd. A shopper stopped at her wheel for a word or two; the busy clerk, when he at last found time for her order, had a ready jest: there was store after store to be visited. Frances felt the cheer of the blessed commonplaces. She was as bright as any of the crowd. Her cheeks were reddened with the soft damp air, her hair curled rebelliously about her forehead under the brim of her big hat.
It was long past noon when she turned homeward. She went slowly. The crush of carriage and cart, of farm wagons loaded with cedar and holly, and ox-carts piled with cord-wood, demanded careful driving. She was nearly out of the shopping district when she heard her father call her.
"I thought you were at home," she called back.
"And I thought you were there."
"You can drive up with me." She pulled as close to the curb as she could.
"I don't know; Edward is in here," pointing to the store before which he stood.
"What have you been doing?" The professor flushed with a guilty knowledge of the Greek cameo in his pocket.
"Oh, I have been helping him select some Christmas presents. He's going home, you know, for the holidays. Here he is now. Can't you go out with us?" asked the professor, soon as the young man had greeted Frances.
"I am afraid I ought not."
"I'll drive you up by the stables," suggested Frances.
"I wish you would. Have you time to see my new horse?" he asked, as Frances drove slowly and skilfully along the crowded street.
"I didn't know you had a new horse."
"No? I have been intending to ride her in when you could see her, but you have had so little time—"
"But I have time now," said the young woman, enthusiastically, as she stoppedbefore the stables. "Can't we go in and see her?" to her father.
"Certainly."
The young man put his mare through her paces up and down the stable aisle. "I want you to ride her some time," he declared, as Frances waxed eloquent over the horse's slender head and liquid eyes and shapely legs.
"When can you bring her in? She's a beauty! I'd like to ride her now."
"Shall I put your saddle on?" questioned Mr. Carver, who stood with the group admiring the animal.
"I am afraid Mr. Montague has not time," faltered Frances.
Edward had one fleeting vision of the work awaiting him, then he put it out of his mind. "Certainly," he said, "if you will allow me to reconsider. I will go out with you, and Mr. Carver can send the horse to the house."
"Oh!" said Frances, softly.
"You had better go with her," declared the professor, who was never quite sure of his daughter when it was a question of horses. "Can't you ride Starlight?"
Montague's eyes were questioning Frances' face; he saw the quick look of pleasure, as she cried, "I shall be delighted."
They went up the long street together. As they crossed the high bridge above the railroad, there was to each of the young people a quick unwelcome memory. Frances recalled a young man's debonair manner as he made his adieux that morning, and Edward had a swift remembrance of the still, frosty morning when he stood there, unconscious, and watched the glittering coaches slipping away, Frances in one of them; and he thought of all the tangle since.
Frances had wondered with secret amusement what Susan would say to the guest. The old darkey was the soul of affability. The house was in its regular, quiet order, and was spotless. She waited on the table, brisk good humor in every movement. The boy was out of sight.
Soon as the dinner was over she asked "Marse Robert" to step into the kitchen. "I done discharged dat boy," she announced briefly.
"Why, Susan, what was the matter?" the professor asked carelessly.
"I got no need o' him nohow, an' Ise tiahed o' his sass, an' Ise tiahed o' seeing so many folks aroun'."
The professor secretly agreed with her.
"He wants his money," went on the old darkey, shamefacedly. "He 'low as how he's comin' back dis ebenin'."
"All right. How much is it?"
Susan named a sum, and the professor handed it to her, and hurried on into the library. He had had no such opportunity for days for a talk with Montague, but he found that young man so inattentive a listener that he was not sorry when Frances pulled aside the portière and called that she was ready and the horse was there.
Frosts and rains had made the roads rough, but here and there by wayside path or sandy stretch, the mare showed her gait, swift and smooth. It was a beautiful world through which they rode, the mists closing about them shutting in the distant peaks and clinging to the bare fields' breast andcondensing in jewelled drops on fence and bush and dried brown grasses; and the exhilaration of movement, the comfort of thoughtful, watchful companionship which roused no hateful mood, cheered the young girl to forgetfulness of all else.
But there was the next day for remembrance, when the rain shut her in, and the storm lashed along the mountains and beat across the quadrangle; and the next, when the clouds held sullen guard over the hill-tops. Three days had gone by, and Lawson had not returned. It was the evening of that third day that, sitting in her old chair before the library fire, while her father was reading absorbedly not far away, Frances heard the bell ring sharply. She did not know that every nerve in her was tense as she heard the voice in the hall when Susan opened the door.
"Mr. Lawson," said Susan, coming into the room; "he walked straight on into the parlor."
Frances kept her face turned away; she felt the hot flush there, as she got to her feetand pulled her fleecy scarf about her bare neck. There was a strange feeling of suffocation in her throat, but she set her lips firmly and held her head high as she walked across the hall, her gown rustling about her.
"Frances!" Lawson sprang to meet her as the portière dropped behind her.
What she saw in his face and what she felt in her own heart held her speechless, but to Lawson it looked adorable confusion,—the warm flush and lowered lids, and red, proud mouth.
"Frances!" He strode across to her and would have put his arms about her, but that she shrank back.
His eyes showed quick amusement. He loved her a hundred times better so, with all her changeableness; he was never quite sure of her or of her mood.
"You do not know how I have longed to see you," he whispered. Her eyelids fluttered up, he had one searching look from darkened eyes, and then he knew he must make his peace.
"In Richmond," he began—"but you are not going to stand here?" He stood aside as she went past him, her scarlet skirt swishing against his feet, and he watched her with a delight he would not let her know for worlds. So she was angry!
He followed her and leaned against the mantel. She, too, was standing, as if to intimate that what he had to say were best said quickly.
"In Richmond," he began again, and hastened on, "I didn't see—you don't know what I wished for you,"—he would act as if there were no possible shadow between them,—"I searched the stores and searched. I went to Washington—" Surely this were explanation enough, though he had a swift and guilty remembrance of the one brief day in Washington, of the theatre party and the supper at the Jefferson when he came back to Richmond that night, which Elizabeth Martin had been so quick to arrange at his invitation and to promise not to write of, and then of the german next night. They had trusted to Frances not hearing, and she had not, nor ever did.
He drew from a pocket of the overcoat he still had on, a satin case and laid it on the table, watching Frances with keen delighted eyes. The mouth was drooping a little now, the cheek paling, there was even a suspicion of tears about the lowered lids.
"Are you not going to look?" he asked softly as he touched the spring and threw back the lid.
Frances scarcely turned her head, though the sparkle under the electric light was magnetic. The young man made a step closer to her, put his hand upon her shoulder as if to turn her face toward the table; but Frances shrank back into the chair close by and hid her face against the cushions.
All her anger, her jealousy, were but a part of her own wretched self, and he was innocent, her generous heart accused; she was shamed to the quick.
But Lawson had no key to this. He was genuinely frightened, and quick as the fear was the old ungovernable will to win. He knelt by her, striving to pull her hands fromher face, whispering all the endearing words he could muster.
He cursed his folly and the insanity that had beset him. He knew, why had he ever thought of it lightly, that she was the one thing the world held for him desirable. He was wild with fear. He would try one other way.
"Frances," he pleaded finally, as he got to his feet, "if you do not look at me, speak to me, I shall—I shall know you do not wish to at all," his voice was as firm as he could command it.
And Frances stumbling to her feet with face averted, held out her hands.
It was many minutes later that he began to talk to her of the jewels. They were magnificent. Frances' simplicity was affrighted. It was a part of his composite nature to remember her with passionate devotion while he was outwardly forgetful and to search for the finest gems he could find.
"I can never wear them," faltered Frances.
"But you will, and many others," he assured, as he went on ardently to tell her ofall he should do for her, not obtruding his wealth, yet not losing sight of it; but when he was done he was astonished at Frances' answer. She was looking at something in her own heart and striving to show it to him.
"Do you know," she began falteringly, "there is something I must tell you. You must be quite sure—you may think you do, but you must be sure you—you"—the voice sank very low—"you love me!"
"Love you," pleaded Lawson, "there are no words to tell you how I do!" and there were none for the depth and height of the love he felt then as he looked into her wistful eyes.
"But I am afraid I am unreasonable—or—or— Let me tell you," her voice was distinct and decided now. "I cannot stand a half-hearted devotion, a devotion to be shared with—"—"every pretty face" her heart said, but her lips—"with any one. Better nothing at all. Don't offer it to me!" She was speaking wildly, perhaps, remembering some things. "A man's whole love I should demand, pure, sincere, unshared, or nothing.I—" she faltered, seeing Lawson had grown white to the lips.
"I love you!" he said hoarsely.
"Yes, now," the girl insisted; "but a year from now—ten?"
Lawson turned away, strode back to her and looked questioningly, sternly, into her eyes. Even in her excitement she knew he was white as his shirt, that his eyes glowed strangely and his hand as he grasped her arm was cold as ice. She felt herself trembling as she leaned against the mantel, awaiting his words breathlessly. As she had appealed from the depths of her being, so she expected the truth from his. Were he given to wavering it were better, it were the only manly thing to do, to tell her even now and free her. She could live through that. The other were impossible.
But he made no answer. She saw his chest heave as a woman's might in anguish, she saw the set of his face, strong, determined, though the pallor lingered. Then he spoke suddenly.
"Your father is in there?" he questioned, motioning across the hall.
"Yes," she said, her eyes wide with wonder.
"I am going to speak to him, Frances." He took her hands gently, "I am going to ask him to give you to me."
This, then, was his answer. Her lips trembled. Lawson looked long and searchingly, saying no other word. He bent, kissed her, almost as if in consecration, and walked with quick step across the room.
Frances leaned, shaken with tremulous happiness; she saw the glitter of jewels on the table and smiled happily, she took from its case the hoop of diamonds and ran it on her finger, her eyes too dim to watch its sparkle aright. The others she left untouched. She heard the voices across the hall, and she remembered again, with a shock of sorrow, what this would mean to her father. How could she leave him; how could he let her go? She walked across the room restlessly, she heard a chair pushedback—Lawson's footstep. A sudden shyness possessed her.
Down at the end of the room was another door, opening on the hall behind the stairway, she closed it softly, and stood there hidden as Lawson's quick step rang across the hall; then she slipped into the dining-room, and pulled aside the portière.
Her father's head was sunken on the table, his arm flung above it. She ran up to him. "Father," she pleaded as she bent over him.
But he never moved.
"Father, don't think I love you less," she whispered.
He pushed back his chair and faced her. "Did you know," he demanded, "did you know Lawson was a divorced man?"