"Divorced!" She felt herself reeling, hands outstretched before her, feeling for something tangible. "Divorced!"
"My God, I might have known you did not know."
"It's not true!" she whispered hoarsely.
"True!" repeated the professor with bitter emphasis.
"Then—why—" Frances put her hands up to her throat. Her father swept his arm about her and half lifted her into the dining-room and into the kitchen beyond. They would have no scene which that rascal there could look upon—the professor never varied his term again—say no wild words he could hear. The kitchen was deserted, Susan abed. The father put his daughter down in the darkey's old flag chair beside the stove where the fire yet gleamed.
"God only knows," he groaned, "how it was we never knew it."
"Did he tell you?" whispered Frances.
"Yes, he told me," grimly, "he asked me—he said he had your consent, Frances."
The girl, white, wide-eyed, nodded her answer.
"It would have been hard—but you know—you know—"
She felt for his hand on her shoulder and clasped it, she knew he would do anything he felt would make for her happiness.
"I had not thought much; I had not even—I had thought—" he blundered, daring no word of what he had borne dimly in mind. "How blind I have been! I should have known!"
There was dead silence between them, only the crackling of the dying fire in the stove. The dark was insupportable. The professor felt for the electric bulb and flashed up the light; it gave him courage.
"When he first spoke, I was dumbfounded. I asked him if"—he came back to his daughter's side. "He told me"— Againthe silence. "Then he began to speak of settlements,settlements! He hesitated along time, and then he said, 'You know, I suppose, I am a divorced man!' I felt—" He clenched his hands, the veins stood out in his forehead. No need to put the emotion into words.
Frances got to her feet and pushed back her chair.
"Where are you going?"
"To speak to him!"
"You shall not!"
"I shall!" She walked past him, drew a glass of water from the spigot above the kitchen sink and drank it.
"I must!" she said more gently, "and, father, you must trust me. No!" as he made some motion to follow her, "I shall need no help!" proudly.
She went in by the door through which she had left, went softly, and Lawson did not hear her. He stood before the fire waiting, all his soul burned and scorched with the agony he had felt when first he faced what, spite of his brave words and courage,would ever be to his inmost self a stigma—waiting!
For one instant all her heart cried out for him, as she saw the attitude, the droop of his face, unlike the bravado she had sometimes thought too gay. Then she went across to him.
He had not dared to turn. That first look, he knew, would tell him all. He had not dared. She stood near. "Mr. Lawson." Ah, that tone told the tale! He held himself upright and turned to look at her calmly.
"My father has just told me," she began; then, one look into his eyes at the suffering she saw there, "Why, oh why did you do it?" she cried, as she flung herself into a chair.
Lawson never touched her, never spoke, though she was sobbing bitterly; but when the sobs quieted, "Do what?" he asked coldly.
"Live this lie!" she accused hotly, from the shelter of her arms.
"Lie!" he strode a step closer.
"You knew—"
"I knew every paper reeked with it five years ago—that I could not pick up a sheet without seeing the shameful words. Every man I met home or abroad showed his knowledge of it. It's been branded on every hour of my life since that cursed day."
"You knew we did not know."
"How should I? Why shouldn't you?"
"You should have told—"
"Is it a pleasant tale to tell? No!" with slow bitterness, "I shouldnothave told. Then you would have married me, and I—oh God!"
"Marriedyou—you, with another wife!"
"Wife!"
"A woman bearing your name."
"She does!" sullenly.
"And I!" she cried. "And I?"
"You speak as— You! You would have been my legal, loved, idolized wife. Listen, for you shall know! My God, it's hard enough! I was a fool, young! I had to send for my father to sign my license, and he, he was taken in too. She was beautiful. Her family, her position— Well, all shewanted was money, and she got it. I paid her enough for my freedom, God knows. She fooled us both."
"Paid her! And she is bearing your name, living on your money!"
"It was what she wanted! She got both!"
"And you, you loved her!"
Lawson shrank as if struck. "It was the passion of a crude idiot!" he cried.
"And you tired of her?"
"Put it truthfully—she of me, if ever she wanted me!"
"You loved her, and you have forgotten her! How do I know," blazed Frances, "that you might not forget me?"
"Frances!" the young man raised his hand, as though to ward off a blow.
"Forget me—me!"
"Frances, you cannot dream, I cannot tell you. She—she wanted only a man to shield herself behind"—the girl he spoke to could not know what he meant, and he could not dare to make her understand, even to excuse himself—"and the money for jewels and clothes and fine living and show." He couldnot tell her of the life that woman led, which might be fast and might be worse. "I'm no saint, but I could not stand it. She took scant time to show me what she thought. Once—once—
"I tell you with truth I thought at first that you knew it. I thought every one, wherever I should go, would know. It was a spicy enough scandal for the paper's headlines; I thought it blazoned everywhere, even if it were five years ago."
"We never read such things," said Frances in indignant defence.
"So I find; but even then, there is always some one ready to speak."
"There was none here."
"So I find," he repeated wearily, "and so all this blunder."
"As to you knowing, Frances," he said gently, "I knew you did not. I tried to tell you once, and then, the opportunity gone, let myself stray in this fool's paradise." It was paradise to him, now the gates were closed. "I feared your crude views; you will never know the temptation I fought to be silent."
She started to speak, but he raised his hand deprecatingly. "Leave me no bitterer words to remember," he begged. "I shall say good-by!" He spoke with steady dignity.
She held out one hand unsteadily. He took both, and, looking down, they saw the sparkle of his ring on her finger. Without a word she slipped it off and gave it to him. He thrust it into his pocket.
"The others," she whispered.
He snapped the lid and thrust the case after the ring.
"Good-by!" he said once more. "I shall not say I will not see you again. I am not given to heroics. I," he spoke bitterly, "am commonplace, quite. It is likely I shall stay here as if nothing had happened, but this is good-by!" He raised her hand, kissed it where his ring had been, and was gone.
It was five years since he had had any word from her, that woman who bore his name out there in the West, and whom he remembered with fierce shame, or put away from his thoughts with cold bitterness.
He sat all night in the chair in which he flung himself when he came back from the professor's house to his room. The fire died in his grate, he did not heed it; he was cold as ice, he did not know it. The stars paled and faded as he sat there. He was making no plan of life, raking no old memories; he was stunned, dazed.
The negro whose duty it was to kindle his fire, hurrying in at his unlocked door, found him there asleep, his face white and ghastly under the glare of the full light. The coal scuttle the boy held fell with a clatter to the floor. Lawson stirred and opened his eyes.
"Boss," the negro chattered, "'fo' Gawd, I thought yuh was daid!"
Lawson looked at him dully.
"I'se late, monstrous late dis mornin'," he blurted, still scared at Lawson's look. "I'll mek yo' fiah in no time!" He knelt before the grate and began cleaning it out with trembling hands.
Lawson still sat, the light shining full on him, his evening clothes, the wilted rose in his button-hole, his heavy coat enwrapping him.
"Pos'man done been long," said the darkey as he slapped on the blower and squatted on his heels to wait the fire's catching, "lef' yuh a lettah." He pointed to a white envelope just under Lawson's fingers. The postman had given it a shove through the slit in the door-panel made for such uses, and it had slidden almost to Lawson's fingers.
He took it listlessly, turned it over, and dropped it as if it had scorched him. Then he picked it up again, looked at it uncertainly; as he read it, all the ghastliness fled from his face.
He sprang to his feet, searched for his suit-case and wrenched open his closet door. He thrust some few clothes in the case.
"John," he commanded, "let that fire go out, lock up, and keep everything straight! Straight, now, you hear!" He felt for a bill and flung it to him.
John's fear fled at the sight of the money. "Dat I will, Marse Lawson, dat I will. I'll tend to ever'ting. Is yuh gwine erway fur Christmas?"
Lawson was locking his suit-case; he stopped and looked at the negro a moment, strangely. "Yes," he said, slowly, "yes, I'm going away for Christmas."
The professor only knew there was another locked door on the corridor.
There were many other locked doors on the corridors and on East Range and West Range. The quadrangle looked deserted. Edward Montague had gone home. The friendly women in the other houses about the campus were too busied in household doings to have time for visiting. Frances was left to herself and to her house.
The Christmas-tide had always been a joyful holiday for her father and for herself, a time of genuine merry-making and of real rest, when Susan's cooking provided all good things, and the professor allowed himself the luxury of lighter reading, and the two of them were free to come and go as they chose. Frances was brave enough and proud enough to leave no part of any preparation neglected; but her close-shut lips and dark-circled eyes and white cheeks smote her father as nothing else could have done.
After a few brief words that bitter night there was nothing more he could say to her, and to watch her silent fight was agony.
Christmas day dragged miserably. The professor, watching his daughter furtively, felt he could bear it no longer. He laid down the book Edward Montague had sent him as a holiday gift and which he had been making some pretence of reading. "Frances," he said suddenly, "how would you like to go to Washington?"
Frances looked up astonished. "To Washington?" she repeated.
"I have been wanting to go for a long time," her father went on hurriedly. "There are some books in the Congressional library I want, and I can get them nowhere else, some manuscripts, too. I never seem to find the opportunity to go. Suppose"—with boyish impatience, now that the topic was once broached—"suppose we go to-morrow?"
There were tears in Frances' eyes she did not wish her father to see. She got up and went to the back of his chair and slippedher arms about his neck, and by and by she laid her cheek on his thick black hair where the gray showed in the waves. Neither spoke.
Then the professor cleared his throat. "Suppose you run up and see about my things and yours; we can take an early train and have part of to-morrow there."
He had much to say of rare books on the journey next day, but when he came back and met his friends and talked of his holiday, it was of picture galleries and concerts and fine new buildings he spoke. The listener would have guessed few hours with rare tomes, and would have guessed correctly. The professor had spent one day in the library he had been longing to visit for two years, and that he spent there because Frances declared she would go nowhere else.
When Edward Montague came from his home visit and brought an offering of a fine old ham from his father, over which Susan gloated in the kitchen, and a box of delicious cake from his mother, and another of geraniums and violets from the cherished plantsin her flower-pit, the professor had so much to say that the young man, lost in the brilliant flow of criticism and description, had no time to notice Frances' quiet, and thought her unwonted pallor no more than the result of the dissipation her father so gayly talked of. Montague found himself in his old position in the household. There was something in Frances he could not understand, but her manner was most kind. There was a new friendliness, too, in her intercourse with others. Her simple content no longer made a shield about her; instead, the careless happiness gone, the fight with sorrow bred no selfishness in her generous nature, but brought a thoughtfulness for others, a gratitude for the human touch and the little unnamable kindnesses that link friendly folk to their kind. She found, too, a pleasure she had not dreamed in the simple neighborliness of other households.
Lawson, back at the University, was an alien, who, failing to find his place amongst them, was again one of the student world. But he was one of the students of whom theprofessors were beginning to talk. He resigned from the eleven, doing no practice work now, and settled to grim, hard study that in a month showed good results and promised the brilliancy the Faculty had half suspected and half despaired of. The men who found the way to his room expecting something of the old cheer, found the way out again, and kept it. There was nothing in the reticent, haughty fellow, who had cut athletics and cut the women, too, and settled down to a steady grind, to attract them.
His room lay up the corridor; he changed his dining-hall, there was no duty to take him down the quadrangle, and he kept to his own way.
He avoided Frances, but he saw her oftener than she knew. When he saw what he read rightly as the heart-ache that showed upon her face, the baser part of him cried out with a great temptation. When he saw, later on, the flicker of color in her cheek, the spring in her walk, he thanked God that he had not yielded to that cry. He had never spoken more than a word of greeting. Hehad met her father somewhere on the grounds, and, though he had doffed his cap readily, his bow was as cold as the professor's was.
But when he saw Frances going about with something of her old cheerful air he ceased to avoid her. It was not necessary, he told himself, with bitter self-disdain. And when he glimpsed her one day walking in from town through the gates and along the way they had come in the autumn days, he walked straight on, bowed, and passed her. He saw her startled eyes, for she had been looking down and walking slowly, and despite his pride he turned and watched, half longing he might walk by her side along the ribbony path under the arching trees. He knew, with sudden swift memory, that so the skies had looked, primrose on the horizon and in the west clear green and far above the blue, and so the bare branches had rocked against the sky as they walked home together. But Frances' footsteps were quickened. So! he would go his way. And Frances, hurrying faster and faster, fleeingthe very memories he was recalling, and yet carrying them with her, felt her hard-won control gone at a breath. As one who strives and strives, and believes he has at last attained, faces, at some unthought-of trifle, failure,—it is not always failure; it is often fear which shakes him, and which, when it is conquered, leaves the bulwark higher and firmer.
But Frances ran past Susan at the door and up the stair. Her heavy furs were stifling her; she flung them off. What should she do? she was asking herself wildly. Own herself defeated, say to herself there was a voice in her heart stronger than all else? She threw herself face downwards on her bed, and shook with her sobbing; and though her cries were stifled, Susan, in the hall where she had stolen, startled, scared at what she had seen in Frances' face, Susan heard.
Susan went softly back down the stairway. "Lord," she moaned as she wrung her skinny hands, "Lord, what we gwine do now? Dyar's Marse Robert away, an' a goodthing too; dyar's no mother, nuthin' but me, Lord, whatisI gwine do?"
She picked up an armful of wood and went upstairs.
"Honey," she declared briskly as she opened the door, "Ise gwine mek yo' fiah, it's gittin' col', fer shuah!" She fussed about the hearth, clattering tongs and shovel, and though there were no sobs from the bed, there was no word. Susan was fairly beside herself. She swept the hearth, the fire was aglow. She walked slowly to the footboard and folded her thin arms on it and looked down at the face beneath her. The eyes were closed, the lids red with weeping, the lashes wet, and the mouth trembling pitifully. Susan looked long and searchingly. There was suffering she saw there, suffering that she knew the hall-mark of, but there was not the dumb white look of heartbreak. Frances had been nearer that a month ago.
The old woman drew a long breath of relief. She pulled Frances' own low chair to the bedside and sat down in it.
"Honey," she said, "yuh mustn't do so, 'twill brek Marse Robert's heart." But her only answer was a fresh sobbing. "I don't min' seein' yuh cry, no; 'twill do yuh good, but folks dat don't cry much, cries hard; an' when yuh's done, yuh mus' stay done!
"'Tain't meant," she went on, "fer young folks to go wid long faces, no; not till dey knows what sorrow is."
"Sorrow!" sobbed the girl.
"Sorrow, real downright sorrow; does yuh know what't is, honey? No! an' I hopes to Gawd yuh nebber will. 'Tis to see de chile on yo' lap a-dyin', a-dyin' day by day, an' yuh sittin' dyar, an' knowin' dat all yuh can do is to watch de life flutterin', 'til by an' by it's gone! an' den to know dat nobody cares but yuh; 'tis to see de man yuh done married to wo'thless, lazy; to see yo' chillun hungry, an' to feel yo' bones achin' as yuh wuks an' wuks to buy 'em vittils, an' den fer dat man what ought ter be wukkin, too, to tek dat money an' spen' it, maybe on some fool 'oman; to see him die jis' as he libed, no bettah, no wus; to see yo' chileyuh's raised go off an' sen' no word back." The old woman was rocking to and fro. She was telling the tale of sorrows which wrung her heart when she lived them and wrung it now to recall; and she was doing it purposely, with keen watchful glance, to rouse that other sorrower to thoughts beyond herself.
She could see nothing gained. She sobered herself and looked down on the knotted hands in her lap. She made up her mind.
"Miss Frances," she said, so suddenly and so decidedly that the girl there on the bed started and opened her eyes, "Miss Frances, is yuh moanin' fer yo'self or is yuh moanin' fur somebody else? If yuh's moanin' fur yo'sef, hab it out an' be done wid it!" There was a touch of asperity in Susan's voice; it had hurt her that Frances seemed so untouched.
"But if yuh's moanin' fur some man, he ain't wuth it, dat he ain't!" looking straight into Frances' startled eyes; "dyar ain't no man in dis worl' wuth breakin' yo' heart about."
"I shall not break my heart," said Frances proudly.
"I guess Ise got sense ernuff to know dat! but if yuh's a-pinin 'cause yuh's feard yuh hurt someone else, 'tain't wuth nary tear. Dyar ain't a man a-libin', spite o' all his swearin' an' tearin' aroun', dat's gwine to moan all his days, as he's eberlastin' 'clarin' he's gwine to do, ober any 'oman; an' no 'oman ain't got no bizness to, neider."
"You must think, Susan, I— I am not so conceited as to think anybody will go 'moanin'' for me," angrily.
"Ise jes' talkin'," said Susan, unshaken.
"There's father," declared Frances with sudden energy, "he never—you know he never loved any one but my mother," she said the last words very tenderly.
"He's had his books," sagely, "an' he's had his chile, an' he's had me to look after de house.
"'Long when I was a gal," went on the old darkey, as if in pure reminiscence, "an 'oman if she didn't hab 'er fambly to look after, an' was too ole to go cavortin' 'roun',didn't hab nuthin' to do but sit erroun' an' stay in de pa's house or de brother's an' be tookin' cyar of; an' dey'd be wishin' all de time dey'd took dis one or dat one or any one, so's not to come to dis. But laws-a-me! if yuh don't git married nowadays, dyar's a plenty to be a-doin'! Dyar's Miss Robin— Honey, does yuh ebber specs to be married?"
She saw the indignant flash of Frances' eyes, and chuckled inwardly. She wouldn't be crying there long at that rate. The tears were gone now, and soon the marks of them would be.
"Does yuh think yuh'd like to git married?" protested the old woman remorselessly, "'cause, if yuh do 'tis time yuh was lookin' aroun'!"
"Dyar, ef dat don't fotch her," declared Susan to herself, "nuttin' will!" But it did.
Frances sat upright. She had a wholesome respect for matrimony, and the speech had told. "What do you mean?"
"Jes' what I says!" calmly. "Dyar's twoor three young men Ise got my eye on; some o' dem is mighty nice!"
Susan knew, perfectly well, the only matrimonial danger she had ever feared for her darling had passed, but she shouldn't pine for that one, not as long as the old darkey had breath in her body.
"I tell yuh, Miss Frances," she said, "I suttenly is sorry fur young gals; dey goes erlong so bright an' so easy, eberything their way, an' when dey runs up all a-sudden on a big wall dat's got 'trouble' writ all ercross it, dey don't know how to get erroun' it nohow. Den, too, it suttenly does seem to me dey has some mighty hard questions to settle when dey know a mighty little, a mighty little."
Frances slipped to the side of the bed and put her hand lovingly on the old darkey's knee.
"Susan," she said, with a look that told the old darkey how thoroughly understood she was, "you have wasted enough time on me."
Susan was instantly conscious and embarrassed. "La, Miss Frances!"
"But I sha'n't forget it, nor all the other things—all the other things, you know, since I was so high!" spreading out her hands in a line with the height of the bed.
"I 'clar', Miss Frances—"
"And now, even if I don't want to get married—"
"La! listen to her!"
Frances got to her feet briskly, "Bring me some hot water, Susan," she said in her everyday cheerful manner, "and I know you are dying to get to the kitchen."
The breach was rebuilt. The bulwark was higher.
Susan, as she told her troubles for another's healing, thought of them as past and gone. There was a fresh sorrow at her door. She asked for an afternoon's holiday, got it, and went away. She came back, ashy and shaken.
"Marse Robert," she told him, soon as he and Frances came in the hall door, "Ise gwine leab yuh."
They stood too astonished for speech.
"Ise gwine leab yuh!" The old woman steadied herself against the frame of the library door. "Bill—he's come back!"
"He has!" said the professor testily.
"An' he's sick, an' he's got no home."
"And you feel yourself called on to take care of him?"
"Who else gwine do it? Ise gwine tek him home!"
"Out there!" exclaimed Frances, in dismay, and then she asked practically. "What's the matter with him?"
"De Lawd only knows! He's jes' all crippled up, an' his— Lawd! Lawd!" The old woman broke into loud sobbing.
"Now, Susan!" comforted Frances, "don't worry; of course you want to go, and you shall."
"I done sont word to Roxie to come hyar an' cook fur you."
"I'm glad of that!" said the professor. He had little sympathy with the prodigal who only came back to be a care.
"I'll carry you both out to-morrow," declared Frances, "but don't you think you ought to go and warm the place up and get everything comfortable?"
"He ain't so bad as he was," said Susan meekly, "he been in de horsepittle a month, he said."
"And now they have discharged him, he's come down here on you!"
"Marse Robert, he said—" She stopped, knowing the flimsiness of Bill's excuses,"He's de onliest chile Ise got," she added sullenly.
"All right! all right." The professor took off his hat and coat and hung them up carefully.
"I specs yuh thinks ernough o' yours!" blazed the old woman.
"There, father!" Frances laughed as she slipped her hand through his arm, "you haven't a word to say!"
The professor was cornered. "That's so!" he acknowledged, as he looked proudly at Frances' bright cheeks and eyes—not so careless as he had seen their glances, but with a sweeter thoughtfulness looking out of their dark, gray depths.
"Well, Susan, you'll come back some day, I suppose?"
"Soon as he gits well!"
"Then, if there's anything you need—"
Frances looked back over her shoulder and laughed. She had already begun to say, "Susan, you must take sheets and blankets—"
"I got plenty dyar."
"But they must be damp and musty."
"Bill says 'twas de rhumatiz," put in his mother.
"And take what you need right away out of the pantry."
"Miss Frances, if yuh'll jes' go into town an' buy me some things, Ise got plenty o' money, Marse Robert so good to me, an' he pays me my wages steady; Ise jis' been savin' 'em up. Here's ten dollars now." She felt in the folds of her turban and brought out the bill.
Frances' hands were full for many days; she had to take the old woman and Bill out to the cabin, to help straighten it, and air it, and stock it with provisions, to go out day by day at first, and then whenever she could; and to straighten out household affairs with Roxie at the helm.
"How dat Roxie doing?" asked Susan anxiously on one of Frances' visits.
Frances hesitated. "Fairly well!" she answered doubtfully.
"H'm! Ise glad I taught yuh to cook."
"So am I!" declared Frances devoutly, remembering some of her late experiences.
"Don't yuh let her gib Marse Robert sech po' vittels he'll git sick!"
"One pet at a time, Susan, is enough," teased Frances with a glance through the opened cabin door at Bill warming his "rhumatiz" limbs before a glowing fire and looking the picture of lazy comfort.
Susan turned away discomfited, but only for an instant. "Hi-yi!" she cried, "who's dat comin' down de lane? 'Fore de Lawd if 'tain't Marse Edward. I 'clar'," she went on, watching Frances' reddening cheek with satisfaction, "he suttinly has been good to us. We's been hyar nigh 'pon fo' weeks, an' ebery now an' den— Mornin', Marse Edward."
Frances walked quickly down the narrow pathway to where Starlight was fastened to the fence.
"Yuh needn't be in sech a hurry!" grumbled Susan.
"Wait!" called young Montague, who had seen the manœuvre. "I'm going into town for my mail!" he declared, soon as he flung himself from the horse; "don't you want toride Lady? Here, Susan, I shot this, this morning; you can make Bill his rabbit stew now!"
"La, Marse Edward, Bill suttinly will be glad."
"How is he? You will wait a moment?" he hurried into the cabin and out again. The valley below lay bathed in misty sunshine, the green of the grass by the stream and the red tips of the branches on bordering willow and shrub showed where the February sun shone longest and strongest. To young Montague, valley and hazy mountain peaks and the hillside cabin were a fair winter's scene, and the girl waiting there by the gray weather-worn fence was the heart of it.
"I will be ready in a moment," he declared, as with deft fingers he unbuckled the saddle-girth from his horse.
"Is there anything else Bill would like?" he questioned, as he fastened Starlight's saddle on his own horse.
Susan hesitated for a moment.
"Any game?"
"Bill, he did say," the old woman answered hesitatingly, "as how he was honing for a 'possum. Dey ain't good much now."
"But a 'possum he shall have. Are you ready?" to Frances.
He held his hand and tossed her into the saddle. "Good-by!" Frances called. "I'll be out again soon. Good-by!"
The old darkey stood watching them. "Lawd, if eber two folks was made fer one 'nother," she said to herself, "dyar dey is; Miss Frances she's jis' naturally born to rule some man in dat sassy, sweet way she got, an' Marse Edward he look lak he suttinly would lak to be dat man; but Miss Frances," the old darkey shook her head, "I don't know 'bout her, dat I don't."
Miss Frances was putting Lady through her paces, despite red clay and mire and shallow pools where the water yet stood. Heavy black clouds were shouldering above the mountain peaks; the wind was from the east and stung sharply against their faces.
"It's going to rain," declared Frances, anxiously.
"Oh, not to-day." Montague was seeing nothing of brown sodden fields or long stretch of red road; he was wondering, wondering if he dared translate to speech the wild beatings of his heart.
But the swift ride and Frances' gay speeches gave him little chance; the cloud, forming long out of sight and coming up with ominous swiftness, made fast riding imperative; the red clay splashed them from head to foot; the wind, strong and damp and chill, whipped the loosened tendrils of Frances' hair about her face and billowed her short riding-skirt. Before they reached town the first drops were falling.
"We had better ride straight to the stables," Frances suggested.
"No, I'll send up for Lady at once. I'm going for my mail."
"Then you'd better go that way; I'll take this road." Frances bent above the saddle; the rain was lashing her face.
When Montague reached the University the rain had become a steady downpour. Frances had to leave him to entertainhimself while she straightened the household affairs, which Roxie had tangled in her absence. The professor, coming in, was delighted to find him in the library.
"I declare," he said, "I was just wishing you were here. There are some things I want to ask you about, and I have a leisure afternoon. We can go down town after dinner."
"In this storm?" protested Frances, who had just come in through the dining-room door.
"Pooh! What does that matter? Edward is too good a countryman for that."
Truth was, the professor was intent on investing money in a new stock company forming in town for putting up an ice plant; and as he had been bitten once or twice, and as he had a good opinion of Montague's shrewd business judgment and enjoyed also the companionship with him, he had been hoping for some such chance. They were off soon as the meal was over. From office to bank, from investor to stock floater they went. Once in town the weather did notmatter; but coming back on the long walk from the cars across the grounds, the storm struck them squarely, lashed and drenched them. At his door the professor drew a long breath. "Pretty severe," he declared. "Edward, you'd better stay in to-night. Telephone to the stables about your horse, and stay. We'll take care of you gladly enough."
The wind and rain lashing along the corridor and across the quadrangle argued with him.
"I scarcely know," said Montague slowly, as they thankfully closed the door behind them.
Frances, coming down the stairway, heard. There was a line of anxiety on her forehead. "I have been thinking of Susan," she began, as she reached the last stair.
"She's safe enough."
"But it's so dreary, and the wind and rain are beating so furiously."
"Just look at us! Edward, I'd offer you a suit, only—" The older man measured the younger's height with a laughing glance.
"No matter," Montague assured him, "and as for Susan," to Frances, "you need not be uneasy. The cabin looked comfortable enough to-day, and it has weathered many storms."
Frances' real fear was of the stream at the foot of the hill that must be a raging torrent now, of the narrow bridge, and the tale her father had told her that moonlit night as she drove across.
"This is one of the most dangerous places in the country," he had said; "Mason was drowned here; he rode into town one day, and a heavy storm came up. When he rode back at dusk he saw the water out and ventured on. He was swept away. Miss Marion too; she would have gotten over safely, but she mistook the bridge;" and Frances, shivering at his side, had begged him to hush. Now she seemed to hear it over and over again, through the howling of the wind and the lashing of the rain.
"You will not venture home to-night?" she asked young Montague anxiously.
Edward, looking into her eyes, dark andgrave and troubled as they were, lost his head. "Not if you say so," he began unsteadily. Frances, startled at his tone, and the sudden flashing light of his blue eyes, shrank back.
"If you say—" he began again.
"Come into the fire, man; don't stay out there in the cold, wet as you are." The professor's knees were already smoking before the hot coals.
He had lost his opportunity; but slow to decide and swift to act, once the decision was made, he resolved to find it once more—to make it if necessary. He made it. In the evening Frances pushed back her chair. "I must go and see Roxie about breakfast," she said reluctantly. The group about the fireside, the fire, the bright lights, while the storm beat without, were very attractive.
Edward rose too. "I wanted to ask you," he began as he walked across the room and held aside the portière, letting it fall behind them, and closing the door likewise, "I wanted to ask you," as if it were aneveryday matter at first, but then his tone suddenly changed, "tomarry me!"
A ripple of laughter, half hysterical, broke from Frances' lips. She had expected a question of his domestic affairs. It was, but not of the kind she thought. She steadied herself against the dining-table. "I thought you wanted—"
"I want your—self," he insisted.
The crucial winter days had taught Frances a bitter humility and distrust of herself. Her lip trembled. "I am not worth giving."
"You will trust me to decide," coming a step nearer, a light of hope in his face, and then, seeing that her own nervous fear was greater than his, he took his reticence in both hands.
"I love you," he said very low, for remembrance of that other who might be auditor. "You know it!" She shook her head. "You should! I think I have loved you from that moment when I held you." Unconscious of the gesture, he held out his arms and looked down upon his breast. Frances, remembering how she had been sheltered, saved there,felt the hot tears stinging under her drooping lids.
"Don't think of me," she pleaded, none the less wildly for her whispering, "don't think of it. I—I will be—"
"Don't talk of friendship! Don't dare! I'll never be your friend!"
Frances shrank back, hurt, affrighted.
He came closer to her, leaned over, his eyes searching her face. "Because I shall always love you, always, and I'll never give you up either. Never! I shall always hope, strive for you, unless," he added brokenly, "the day comes when you marry some other man. But," he pleaded, "you will not, you will not." He slipped his hand over hers where it rested on the table, "And I love you, will love you always!" He waited a second in silence, straightened himself, and, though he was deathly white, smiled at her. Then he turned on his heel and went softly out of the room.
Before Frances could waken Roxie, asleep before the kitchen fire, she heard the outer door slam. She ran out into the hall. Herfather stood there, anxious perplexity in his face.
"Edward has gone!" he cried in dismay.
"Gone! Father, why did you let him? Why didn't youmakehim stay?"
"He didn't give me a chance"—the professor was thoroughly provoked—"just said he was going! Listen!" as door and window rattled in a great gust and they could hear the rain lashing across the quadrangle and beating on corridor and house-top.
Frances could find no word to say of the horror and fear which possessed her, remembering all the way he would go through the storm homewards, the desolate road and wind-whipped, bleak fields and woods, and, down there between the hills, the narrow valley, torrent-riven.
At the breakfast the professor was irritably anxious. "I wish I knew of some way of getting at Montague this morning; he ought to have a telephone put in!"
"You know why he doesn't," said Frances gently.
"I couldn't sleep last night, thinking of him."
The cup Frances held clattered in her trembling hands. Sleep! She remembered the big fire, the bright light she had kept all the night; she remembered how she had walked her room, had undressed, gone to bed, gotten up, dressed again, and sat by the fire shaking like the trees outside before the heavy blasts; remembered how she had resented the blue of the sky, and the rose of the sunrise flushing the east, while far off the fringe of heavy clouds fled away, when she flung open the shutters to the morning;and how every moment since she had held herself tense, listening, straining, for the tragedy she felt the night held.
"That old woman might attend to the 'phone," said her father, going back to his grievance. Montague had said long ago that with his all morning and all afternoon absences from the house while his work took him from field to vineyard, from vineyard to mountain-top, a telephone was useless.
"I think I'll call up Frazier," he said at last, as he pushed back his chair, "he's near and might know."
"Father, you must not; he would never understand his trying to reach home last night."
"Neither do I!"
"You'll hear soon enough, if there's anything to hear."
"I shall be uneasy until I do."
Uneasy! Frances worked that morning as she had never done in her life, swept, dusted, cleaned from one room to another. Susan would not have allowed the labor for anhour; Roxie was glad enough to get it done for her. Frances worked, piling up the moments, worked, and yet heard every footstep in the corridor outside; at each fresh footfall her heart beat to suffocation, then as they died away she drew long breaths and turned to her tasks. At last, beyond the noon, the telephone rang. Frances had the receiver at her ear, before the ringing stopped.
"Hello!" she called, "who is it?"
"Frazier!" The receiver almost fell from her hand.
"Well!" and over the long distance wire faintly was coming, "that old woman, Susan, sent a boy over here just now, and said to 'phone you to come out there right away and bring the doctor!"
"Bill," said the girl to herself, with a sobbing sigh of relief.
"All right!" she called, "I'll come at once!"
"Bill is worse," she told herself, as with trembling hands she rang up first the stables, and then the doctor.
The doctor would go; she would call for him at once.
Before she turned away, her father opened the door.
On his face she saw the tragedy she awaited.
"Montague is drowned!" he cried. "My God!" for Frances had gone down in a heap on the hall floor, the receiver swinging from side to side where she wrenched it as she fell. "Susan! Roxie! bring me some water!"
"No!" Frances was struggling upright, "let me go, father! I don't want anything!" to Roxie; "go on!" she waved her back to the kitchen impatiently. "How did you hear?" she whispered as the scared darkey shut the door behind her.
"His horse was found this morning, dripping, spent, riderless." The professor was white as his daughter. "I—I must telegraph his father!"
"Don't!" pleaded Frances, "don't; he might be safe yet somewhere!"
The professor cut her short with a motion of his hand. "If he were, don't you supposewe'd know! And he left my house!" he said bitterly.
Frances' head drooped.
"What will his father think of me?" he added.
It was not of others' words she was thinking; it was what her own heart was telling her in great heavy throbs. "You have killed him! You killed him!"
She put her hands up dully to her ears, but the sound was only the louder.
"Frances!" Something in her face, her heavy drooping as she started up the stair frightened her father, "What are you going to do?"
"I am going out to Susan's; she sent for me to bring the doctor out."
"You'd better let him go alone."
"I'm sure Susan wants me, or she would never have given such a message. If there is anything I can do for her I ought to do it!" Her broken sentences were spoken from the stair as she went up.
When she came down the trap was waiting. Her father went out with her, put herinto the vehicle and tucked the robes about her. The world was flooded with sunshine, the grass down in the folds of the hills was vividly green, the tree-tops, gray and brown, were tossing softly; the professor thrust a bill in his daughter's hand. "Tell the doctor to get whatever he thinks Susan might need."
Frances had one last word. "Don't telegraph yet!" she begged.
It seemed a senseless thing, but he did as she pleaded. The afternoon was full of duties for him. He went through them mechanically and before he was done had a sharp message from the doctor, "Come out at once!"
Frances had driven around for the doctor, told him briefly what she feared for Susan, gave her father's message, and then, white and dumb, had no other word to say through their drive. The doctor, glad of an hour's quiet, lounged in his seat, as they made what speed they could through heavy mud and mire and great pools of water; the dull sodden fields and green patches of winterwheat and far-off hazy mountains claimed scarce a glance, but once or twice he looked curiously at the face of the girl by his side. He had held her, a new-born babe, known every phase of her childhood and girlhood, and it cut him to the heart to see that stricken look. He had his own dread of the cause likewise; for the tragedy the professor told was one which had stirred the town.
Soon as they glimpsed the cabin, they saw Susan's spare figure standing on the step, the door closed behind her, while she strained her anxious eyes for help.
She hurried to the trap. While the doctor fumbled with his medicine case, Frances sprang out on the other side. She hastened at once to the door; she did not even hear Susan's anxious "Honey, maybe yuh'd bettah not go in dyar!"
She pushed it open. There sat Bill by the fire. There, on Susan's bed—
Frances gave a great cry and sank on her knees beside it.
"Great God!" cried the doctor as he pushed her roughly aside, for there, on Susan's bed,with closed eyes and no signs of life showing in his face, lay Edward Montague. The doctor ran his hand under the covers over the man's heart.
"He's libin'!" declared Susan, "he's been moanin' once or twice!"
"He's in a swoon. Bring me my medicine case! Give me a spoon! Chafe his hands and wrists!" The doctor worked anxiously; there was a faint flicker in the pulse, a slow beating of the heart. "Come away!" he commanded as they went over to the window. "Where did you find him?" asked the doctor.
"Down dyar!" Susan pointed down the valley with shaking fingers, "ebery day o' my life Ise used to comin' out an' lookin' up an' down an' ober to the hills, an' thinkin' 'bout de Bible an' de hills dat gib strength. Dis mornin'—" Frances made an impatient movement, but the doctor quieted her. He knew Susan must tell her story her own way.
"It sho' was a sight! Dis mornin' de meader was jes' as wet, an' de grass was all flat where de watah done run off it, an' decrows was flyin' an' callin' up in de sky. I kep' goin' to de do' an' lookin' an' lookin', an' by an' by I sees sumpin' down by dat little fringe o' trees, an' I knows, jes' lak dat, dat 'twas a man. I says to Bill—he 's been hobblin' roun' right smart lately—'Bill, yuh come 'long, dyar's a man down dyar.' An' when we got dyar we seed 'twas Marse Edward, an' dat's all."
"How did you get him here?"
"Oh, we got him up, eben if he is right sizable." Susan had little to say of her own feat, and of Bill's.
"I pulls off his clothes and gets him into bed wid a hot brick to his feet, an' den I runs out to de road an' de firs' pusson I sees I sends to Mr. Frazier's."
The doctor had been holding the whispered talk near the little window. He had done all he could, and while he waited he made Susan tell the tale, for the sake of the girl who leaned against the cabin side, that stricken look yet in her face.
"Why did you send for her?" he asked sternly.
"La! Who I gwine git to help me if 'tain't Miss Frances?"
"Why didn't you send for her father?"
"Ain't I been libin' in his house all dese years," whispered Susan back indignantly, "an' don't I know he's nebber to be 'sturbed when he's at his work. He's down at de hall now!"
The doctor went back to the bedside. He motioned Susan and bent to his work again.
By and by the inert figure stirred; there was a faint flush of color in the white face; the doctor put a spoon to his lips, again and again. The young man opened his eyes, looked at him without a glimpse of recognition, turned a little on his side, and fell asleep.
"He's dry—quite?" the doctor whispered to Susan.
"I stripped off ebery rag he had. He's got on Bill's shut now."
A smile twitched the doctor's mouth, but he went on gravely enough. "Is the brick hot?"
"'Tis de third one I done put in dyar!"
"Keep the fire going all you can!" to Bill. Bill before the fire piled log after log with utmost quiet. The doctor pushed a flag chair noiselessly towards Frances; Susan, used to long waiting, drooped by the footboard; the doctor walked to and fro with noiseless footsteps from bed to window. Out there, the narrow valley was flooded with sunshine, the stream running full and red with the clay of the fields it had ravaged; in here lay the victim of the flood. He took out his watch, slipped it back again, looked long out of the little window towards the distant purple peaks, went back to the bedside, looked, leaned over,—turned, his face beaming.
"Perspiration!" he whispered, as he touched the edges of the young man's forehead.
"You mean—" gasped Frances.
"He's all right, for the present, if he doesn't have pneumonia. My dear child!" for Frances went white to the lips.
"No!" she steadied herself, "I'm not going to faint! Thank God!"
The doctor laid his hand on her shoulder gently, "I shall send for your father at once, and when he comes you must go."
"Why should I?" she flashed. "He needs—"
"Nothing that we cannot do!" And he listened to no argument. He scarcely allowed the professor to stay long enough to let slip from his lips the joy that brimmed his heart, but with significant look at his daughter sent them homewards at once.
It was dusk then, and they went quietly both with joy in their hearts, and both with memory, likewise. The father, all the deep waters of his life stirred by the despair and the gratitude held so closely together, saw, as in a vision, the love of his life who had driven along this way so often by his side, and sent his whole heart out to the memory of her. His daughter saw first a pleading, earnest face, and then the white unconscious one; listened to earnest words, that pleaded more strongly now the speaker's lips wereclosed, remembered all the thoughtfulness and kindliness in which she had read only friendliness, and in which she read now deep, strong love, a love that placed her own happiness above all else. To each their vision, sweet and bitter, bitter and sweet.
Montague escaped the dreaded pneumonia. He rallied, at first it seemed rapidly. He begged a letter should be written home making light of all exaggerated rumors, and that he should be moved to his own home; but heavy cold and wrenched nerves and bitter memories were poor aids to health in his big empty house, where Susan stood guard over him and Bill kept watch in the kitchen.
The doctor went to see him and the professor. Two weeks went by, and the doctor was first surprised and then discouraged. Driving in from one of his visits he saw the professor on the sidewalk. He drew rein.
"How is Edward?" asked the professor quickly.
The doctor shifted the reins he held carelessly. "So, so," he said lightly, "not so well as I thought he would be by this time; it's dull out there."
The professor was listening, an anxious furrow down his forehead. "I will take him out some magazines."
"Hm!"
"And—what do you think he needs?"
"Company, I guess. Helen"—Mrs. Randall—"wants to go out. Every time I go I have so many other visits to make I cannot manage it."
"I'll take her!" eagerly interrupted the professor.
"Suppose you do. Beautiful weather," the doctor wandered on aimlessly; "feels like spring."
The professor listened impatiently; he was hurried, and had no time for weather comments.
"There's a honeysuckle in bloom out there!" he pulled a great sprig of it carelessly out of his button-hole, "it's sweet, smell it!" The professor sniffed at it disdainfully and handed it back. He felt it a travesty that two of the busiest men in the neighborhood should be standing on the busiest street of the town, its life surgingabout them, talking of spring weather and honeysuckle.
"Give it to Frances!" and then, as if in afterthought, "take her out too!" He had made some curious prescriptions in his practice; "It will cheer him up!" And he was off at once, driving rapidly down the street, chuckling to himself as he looked back at the professor still standing there, honeysuckle in hand.
Take the doctor's wife out, and Frances? Why not? The doctor's wife was anxiously willing; the professor was half angered that Frances was not; only he gave scant heed to her indecision. "We are going this afternoon," he said; "if you have anything you think he would like to eat, fix it up for him," and Frances was forced to hide her reluctance in active preparation.
The professor was worried, too, to notice, once they were there—and the joy of their host was pathetic to see in his white, worn face—how few words Frances had to say of their thankfulness at his recovery. He had been looking after the affairs of the farm oneach visit he made. When he got up to go out to a distant field Susan saw him. She had been talking to Mrs. Randall, who was busied in the storeroom putting away the custards and jellies she had brought.
"Marse Robert," Susan called, soon as she had nearly caught up with his rapid steps half way across the orchard. "Marse Robert, Ise comin' back soon as Marse Edward is well. He is well 'nuff now!" she sniffed, remembering some of his crossness.
The professor stood looking down on the ground. "Susan," he said, when she had finished, "I'll come for you when you are ready. As long as I have a home, there's a place for you; but I tell you now,I will nothave Bill hanging around!"
"Bill!" the old woman's big black eyes flashed. "He's gwine git married."
"In the name of sense who will have him?"
"She!" Susan pointed with dramatic forefinger to the narrow high window of the basement kitchen.
"She— Why—"
"She's ten years older dan he is if she's a day, but Bill say she can cook to beat de ban'!" The slang slipped glibly from the old woman's tongue.
"What's he going to do?" asked the professor, after a moment's astonished silence.
"First, he 'lowed as how he wanted me to give him de cabin, but, Marse Robert, I suttenly didn't want to, an' while I was projictin' roun' in my min' 'bout it, Marse Edward he want to know if Bill won't come hyar to work. His rhumatiz is most gone. An' den when he heard dey wanted to git married, he jis' laff an' say 't will suit him jis' as well; dey can lib in de out-do' kitchen.
"Marse Edward seemed mightily tickled," went on the old woman, slyly. "Seem lak he got some notions o' his own."
The blow told. The professor flushed, turned as if to go back, but turned fieldward again. Doubtless Mrs. Randall would be there even now. "Go on, Susan, into the house," he commanded.
Susan went into the kitchen. If that young man up there wanted to say anythingand ease his mind, she swore she would give him a chance; maybe he would be more peaceable if she did. She sat down by the kitchen fire quite unmindful of the fact she was spoiling the love-making Bill was clumsily striving at, while he smelled the chicken steaming and the hot rolls baking for the early supper, which Montague had ordered soon as he had caught sight of his guests.
When she heard Mrs. Randall's slow footstep up the stair and hurried up the other way, she found her charm had worked; her patient was peaceable as a lamb.
On Frances' face was a look it warmed the heart of the old woman to see,—the flushed, faint flickerings of the beginnings of a great happiness.