205
PART TWOTHE SON
PART TWO
THE SON
Give me the land where miles of wheat
Ripple beneath the wind’s light feet,
Where the green armies of the corn
Sway in the first sweet breath of morn;
Give me the large and liberal land
Of the open heart and the generous hand;
Under the wide-spaced Kansas sky
Let me live and let me die.
—Harry A. Kemp.
207CHAPTER XIIIThe Rollcall
Nothing is too late
Until the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
—Longfellow.
The twilight had fallen on the prairie. Grass River, running bank full from the heavy May rains, lay like a band of molten silver glistening in the after-sunset light. The draw, once choked with wild plum bushes in the first days of the struggle in the wilderness, was the outlet now to the little lake that nestled in the heart of the Aydelot grove. The odors of early summer came faintly on the soft twilight breeze. Somewhere among the cottonwoods a bird called a tender good-night to its mate. Upon the low swell the lights were beginning to twinkle from the windows of the Aydelot home, and the sounds of voices and of hurrying footsteps told of something unusual going on within. Asher Aydelot, driving down the old Grass River trail, saw from far away the windows of his home beginning to glow like beacons in the twilight. Beyond it was the glimmer of the waters of the river and before it spread the mile-long grove, dim and shadowy in the mist-folds rising up from the prairie.
“A man can win a kingdom in the West, I told my mother one spring evening long ago,” he murmured as his eyes took in the view. “It’s surely more like a kingdom now than it was when we came down this trail a quarter of a century ago. Twenty-five good years of life, but it’s208worth the effort, and we are just now at the opening of our best years. A man’s real usefulness begins at fifty. This is more like a kingdom, too, than it was ten years ago when those old hulks of wrecks that strew the prairie down the river were banks, and hotels, and opera houses, and factories of boomed-up Cloverdale. We are doing something for the land. I hope our boy will make up his mind to want to keep it when his time comes.”
He lifted his head bravely, as if to throw off all doubt, and tightening the reins on his horses he swung away down the trail toward the home lights shining in the gathering gloom.
As he neared the house Thaine Aydelot leaped from the side porch and hurried toward him. Climbing into the moving wagon, he put one hand affectionately on his father’s shoulder.
“Don’t you know whose birthday this is?” he inquired with serious countenance, “and you’ve not spoken to me all day.”
“I know my boy is nineteen today and expects to have a birthday party here tonight, and that I left him asleep when I started to town this forenoon about nine o’clock.”
“Nine cats! You left at six sharp to go with John Jacobs over to Wolf Creek after what you never got, judging from this empty wagon. And I had half of the feeding done when you left the house here. I saw you when I was out by the old stone corral looking after the pigs, but they squealed so loud you could not hear me telling you good-by.”
“All pigs squeal alike to me,” Asher began, but Thaine choked him to silence.209
“Hurry up and get togged out for the party,” he urged. “The Benningtons will be over early. Jo’s been here all day. I’ll take care of the horses. Hike!”
“Be sure to rub them down. They had to pull hard today,” Asher called back as he went up the walk toward the house.
“Oh, fiddle! Always take care of a horse like it was a prize poodle. Farms like he was decorating chinaware. Good enough dad, but too particular. Me for the State University and the professional or military life. This ranch is all right for Asher Aydelot, but it’s pretty blamed slow for T. A. And Jo Bennington doesn’t like a farm either,” he added with a smile.
In the superiority of his youth Thaine fumed at his father’s commands, but failed not to obey them. He was just nineteen, as tall as his father, and brawny with the strength of the outdoors life of the prairie ranch. Strength of character was not expressed in his face so much as the promise of strength with the right conditions for its development in future days. His features were his mother’s set in masculine lines, with the same abundant dark hair, the same lustrous dark eyes, the same straight nose and well-formed chin. The same imperious will of all the Thaines to do as he chose was his heritage, too, and he walked the prairies like a king.
“The real story of the plains is the story of the second generation; the real romance here will be Thaine Aydelot’s romance, for he was born here.”
So Virginia Aydelot had declared on the day she had gone to visit the Bennington baby, Josephine, and coming home had met Asher with little Thaine beside Mercy210Pennington’s grave. Sorrow for the dead had become a tender memory that day, and joy in the living made life full of hope.
In Virginia’s mind a pretty romance was begun in which Thaine and Josephine were central figures. For mothers will evermore weave romances for their children so long as the memory of their own romance lives.
The time of the second generation came swiftly, even before the wilderness of the father’s day had been driven entirely from the prairie. Some compensation for the loss of eastern advantages belonged to the simple life of the plains children. If they lacked the culture of city society they were also without its frivolity and temptations. What the prairies denied them in luxuries they matched with a resourcefulness to meet their needs. Something of the breadth of the landscape and of the free sweeping winds of heaven gave them breadth and power to look the world squarely in the face, and to measure it at its true value, when their hour for action came.
The Grass River children could ride like Plains Indians. They could cut a steer out of a herd and prevent or escape a stampede. They had no fear of distance, nor storm, nor prairie fire, nor blizzard. Because their opportunities were few, they squandered them the less. Matched against the city-bred young folks their talents differed in kind, not in number, nor in character-value.
Tonight the Aydelots were to give a party in honor of Thaine’s birthday, and the farmhouse was dressed for the occasion. Thaine had been busy all day carrying furniture in or out, mowing the front lawn where the old double fireguard once lay, and fixing a seat under the white211honeysuckle trellis, “for the afflicted ones,” he declared to pretty Jo Bennington. Jo’s blush was becoming. Thaine felt sure that he must be in love with her. All the other boys were, too, he knew that well enough.
“What’s going on in the dining room?” Asher asked, as he sat at supper with Virginia in the kitchen.
“The decorating committee is fixing it up for dancing. Bo Peep is coming with his fiddle and there’ll be a sound of revelry by night.”
“Who’s the decorating committee?” Asher inquired.
“Jo Bennington is helping Thaine, and our new hired girl, Rosie Gimpke, from over on Little Wolf. She came this morning just after you left,” Virginia replied. “She acts and looks like she’d never had a kind word spoken to her.”
“Rosie Gimpke must be Hans Wyker’s granddaughter. There’s a nest of them over on Little Wolf. They give John Jacobs no end of trouble, but you must have help,” Asher said thoughtfully.
Virginia’s mind was not on hired help, however, as the sound of laughter came from the dining room.
“The bridal wreath and snowballs make it look like a wedding was expected in there,” she declared.
“Will the Arnolds and the Archibalds be up? Have you heard from the Spoopendykes and the Gilliwigs?” Asher inquired with a smile.
“Oh, Asher! What a change since the days when we invented parties for our lonely evenings here! What has become of the old prairie?”
“It’s out there still, under the wheat fields. We have driven the wilderness back; plowed a fireguard around the212whole valley; tempered the hot winds by windbreaks and groves.”
“It seems impossible that there ever was a one-room sod cabin here, and only you and I and Jim and faithful old Pilot in all the valley.”
“Since so many things have come true it may be that many more will also by the time Thaine is as old as I was when I came out here and thought the Lord had forgotten all about this prairie until I reminded Him of it. We can almost forget the hard work and the waiting for results,” Asher said.
“Oh, we don’t want to forget,” Virginia replied. “Not a season’s joy or sorrow but had its uses for us. Do you remember that first supper here and the sunflowers in the old tin can?”
“Yes, and Jim sitting outside so lonely. What a blessing Leigh has been to his life. There they come now.”
The next moment Jim’s tall form filled the doorway.
“Good evening, folks. I can’t resist the habit of the sod shack days to come right into the kitchen. I understand that we forty-niners are to have an old settlers’ reunion while the young folks dance,” he said.
There were lines of care on his face now, suggesting a bodily weariness that might never grow less. The old hopefulness and purpose seemed fading away. But the kindly light of the eyes had not disappeared, nor the direct gaze of an honest man whose judgment might bring him to tragedy, while his sense of honor was still sublime.
“Come in, Jim. Where are Pryor and Leigh? Did you take it you were all we expected?” Asher asked.
“Leigh went in the front door like a Christian. As to213Pryor,” he hesitated a moment. “I’ll tell you later about him.”
“Take this chair. I must help the children,” Virginia said cordially as she rose and left the kitchen.
Leigh Shirley was coming from the front hall as she entered the dining room, and Virginia paused a moment to look at her. Something about Leigh made most people want more than a glance. Tonight, as she stood in the doorway, Virginia could think of nothing but the pink roses that grew in the rose garden of the old Thaine mansion house of her girlhood. A vision swept across her memory of Asher Aydelot—just Thaine’s age then—of a moonlit night, sweet with the odor of many blossoms, and the tinkling waters of the fountain in the rose garden, and herself a happy young girl.
Leigh’s fair face was set in the golden brown shadows of her hair. On either side of her square white forehead the sunny ripples kept the only memory of the golden curls of babyhood. The darker eyebrows and heavy lashes and the deep violet-blue eyes, the pink bloom of the cheeks, and the resolute mouth gave to Leigh’s face all the charm of the sweet young girl. But the deeper charm that claimed the steady gaze lay in the spirit back of the face, in the self-reliance and penetrating power, combined with something of the artist’s dreams; and swayed altogether by genuine good nature and good will.
Tonight she wore a simple white gown revealing her white throat and the line of her neck and shoulder. White flowers nestled in the folds of her hair, and the whole effect enhanced the dainty coloring of cheeks and lips. Leigh had an artist’s eye in dress and knew by instinct what to214wear. She had an artist’s hand also, as her mother had had before her, and was far more skilled in the painting of prairie landscapes than any of the Grass River folk dreamed of.
Thaine was busy on the top of the stepladder and did not see Leigh as she came in. Jo Bennington, who was holding sprays of spirea for him to festoon above the window, stared at Leigh until Thaine, waiting for the flowers, turned to see the pink-cheeked living picture framed against the shadows of the hall behind her.
“I thought you were coming early to help us. This Gimpke girl doesn’t know how to do a thing,” Jo exclaimed.
If her voice was a trifle high-pitched it was not out of keeping with her brilliant coloring and dashing manners. Even the thoughtless rebuke of the Gimpke girl seemed excusable from her lips, and Rosie Gimpke looked at her with unblinking eyes.
“You can put on my apron and finish, but don’t change a thing, now mind. I’ll go and dress. I brought my whole wardrobe over early in the week,” Jo rattled on, and thrusting her gingham apron into Leigh’s hands she dashed through the hall toward the stairway.
Rosie Gimpke, the tow-headed image of her mother, Gretchen Wyker, stared at Leigh, who smiled back at her. Rosie was stupid and ignorant, but she knew the difference between Jo Bennington’s frown and Leigh Shirley’s smile. A saving thing, the smile of good will, and worth its cost in any market.
“Shall I help you too, or shall Rosie and I look after the refreshments?” Virginia asked as she greeted Leigh.
“No, run along and get dressed. Rosie knows just215how to fix things in the kitchen, and I never need anybody else if Leigh can help me,” Thaine declared. “How is this, Leigh?”
Leigh gave a quick glance and answered: “Too heavy everywhere? Can we fix it right?” “You bet we can. I’m not going to have a thing wrong tonight,” Thaine answered her. “But Jo fixed it, and you know Jo.”
Leigh made no reply, but went about the rearrangement with swift artistic skill; while Jo, who had changed her mind about being in a hurry, slipped down stairs to the dining room again. At the doorway she discovered the undoing of her work. For a minute or two she watched the pair, then passed unnoticed up stairs again. Leigh Shirley was the only girl who ever dared to oppose Jo, and she did it so quietly and completely that Jo could only ignore her. She could not retaliate.
“Jo Bennington, you are the prettiest girl in Kansas, and I claim the first dance and the last, and some in-betweens, right now,” Thaine declared when she appeared again.
Jo was tall and graceful and imperious in her manner. The oldest and handsomest child in a large family, she had had her own way at home and with her associates all her life. Her world was made to give way to her from the beginning, until nothing seemed possible or popular without her sanction. Tonight her heavy black hair was coiled in braids about her head, her black eyes were full of youthful glow and her cheeks were like June roses. She wore a pink lawn dress vastly becoming to her style, and a string of old-fashioned pearl beads was wound through her dark braids.216
“You’d better make amends for spoiling all my pretty work as you and Leigh have done,” she said in reply to Thaine’s frank compliment. “I’ll make it a few more dances, for you do dance better than any of the other boys—”
“Except Todd Stewart, Junior,” the owner of the name, who had just come in, declared. “There is to be a birthday party and an old settlers’ meeting, and maybe a French duel or two before midnight. I remember when I was the only kid in the Grass River Valley. There were others at first, but I always thought the grasshoppers or Darley Champers ate ’em. And Jo is the first white girl baby born in captivity here. We’ll lead the opening of this ball or shoot up the ranch. You can have Jo for the last dance, Thaine, my son, but me first.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” Jo declared as Thaine was about to protest. “Serves you right for spoiling my decorations. But, Thaine, I claim you for the in-betweens and the last. Let’s take one more look at the refreshments—that Gimpke girl may have them all in a mess by this time.”
There was a rush for the kitchen, where Leigh Shirley was already showing Rosie how to keep the table of dishes in order.
Meanwhile, Asher Aydelot had gone out to the seat Thaine had put up under the honeysuckle trellis.
“It is early for the crowd, Virgie. Come here and watch Boanerges Peeperville tuning up,” Asher Aydelot said as Virginia stood on the veranda a little later.
She came out to the seat under a bower of sweet white honeysuckle and sat down beside her husband.
“The same Bo Peep of the old Virginia days, only he217was a half-grown boy then,” she said, watching the Negro bending above his violin. “How faithfully he has served Dr. Carey all these years. He’s past forty now. Asher, we are all getting along.”
“With a boy nineteen tonight, how can it be otherwise?” Asher replied. “But when the Careyville crowd gets here I’m going to ask you for a dance, anyhow, Miss Thaine.”
Virginia stood in the moonlight and looked out over the prairie slumbering in a silver-broidered robe of evening mist.
“How fast the years have gone. Do you remember the night in the old Thaine home in Virginia when you were our guest—too sick to dance?” she asked.
Asher caught her arm and drew her to the seat beside him.
“I remember the jessamine vines and the arbor at the end of the rose garden.”
“We are not old until we forget our own romance days,” Virginia said. “You were my hero that night. You are my hero still.”
“Even with a son as old now as I was that night? The real romance of the prairie, you’ve said it often, Virgie, is Thaine Aydelot’s romance. There’s little chance for the rest of us.”
The coming of the guests just then called the host and hostess to the parlor, and the evening’s festivities began.
In the building of the Aydelot home there was a memory of the old farmhouse beside the National pike road in Ohio and the old Thaine mansion house of the South. The picture the mirage had revealed to Virginia Aydelot on218the afternoon when she rode the long lonely miles from Wykerton with John Jacob’s message of hope in her keeping—that wonderful mirage picture had grown toward a reality with the slowly winning years. Tonight, with the lighted rooms and the music of the violin, and the sound of laughter and the rhythm of dancing feet, and outside the May moonlight on the veranda with its vine-draped columns, and the big elm trees throwing long shadows down the lawn, with the odor of plowed fields and blossoming grain and shrub mingled with the perfume floating from the creamy catalpa blooms in the shadowy grove, all made a picture not unworthy to hang beside the painting of an Ohio landscape or an old Virginia mansion.
“Here’s where the forty-niners get the best of it,” Jim Shirley declared, as the older men gathered about the veranda steps. “We’re dead certain of ourselves now. We’re not like those youngsters in there with their battles before ’em.”
“There hasn’t been such a gathering as this in ten years. Not since the night Darley Champers herded us into the schoolhouse and blew a boom down our throats through a goosequill,” Cyrus Bennington declared.
“See that black thing away across the prairie east of Aydelot’s grove. Wait till the moon gets out from that cloud. Now!” Todd Stewart directed the eyes of all to a tall black object distinct in the moonlight.
“That’s the Cloverdale Farmers’ Company’s elevator. Looks like a lighthouse stretching up in that sea of wheat.”
“There are plenty of derelicts in that sea as well as some human derelicts left afloat,” Jim said, with a laugh. “Let’s take the census.”219
“Begin with Darley Champers,” Asher suggested.
“Not present. Who got his excuse?” Jim inquired.
“He sent it by me,” Horace Carey spoke up. “Business still keeping him busy. He’s a humane man.”
“Up to a point he is,” John Jacobs broke in. “Let’s be fair. He is a large-sized boomer and a small-sized rascal. A few deals won’t bear the light of day, but mainly they are inside the law. I’ve let him handle all but my grazing land around Wykerton. He’s done well by me. But he’s been at his line a quarter of a century and he’ll end where he began—in a real estate office over in Wykerton, trying to get something for nothing and calling it business.”
“Horace Carey?” Jim Shirley called next.
“Here,” Carey replied.
“With a big H,” Todd Stewart declared. “Same doctor of the old school. Why don’t you get married or take a trip to India, Doctor? Not that we aren’t satisfied all over with you as you are, though, and wouldn’t hear to your doing either one. You belong to all of us now.”
“I may have a call to a bigger practice some day, a service that will make you proud of your former honorable townsman. At present I’m satisfied,” Carey said, with a smile.
Four years later the men remembered this reply and the attractive face of the speaker, the sound of his voice, and the whole magnetic presence of the man.
“John Jacobs?” Shirley called next.
“The merchant prince of Careyville,” Asher Aydelot declared. “The money-loaning Shylock. Didn’t let the boom so much as turn one hair black or white. Land owner and stock raiser of the Wolf Creek Valley and220hater of saloons seven days in the week. Whatever it may mean in New York and Cincinnati and Chicago, being a Jew means being a gentleman in this corner of Kansas,” Asher was running on, till John Jacobs threw a chair cushion at his head and Jim called out:
“Cyrus Bennington.”
“Busted by the boom. Lived at the public crib ever since. Held every little county office possible to get, asking now for your votes this fall for County Treasurer. Will end his days seeking an election and go at last to be with the elected,” Cyrus Bennington frankly described himself.
“Not so bad yet as Todd Stewart,” Todd declared. “He lost everything in the boom except his old Scotch Presbyterian faith. Now head clerk in J. Jacobs’ dry goods and general merchandise store. Had the good sense, though, this old Todd did, to send his son back to the land and make a farmer out of him, and the second generation of Stewarts in this valley promises to make it yet. Why don’t you revert to the soil, too, Bennington?”
“Todd is doing well with his leases,” Asher Aydelot declared. “He’ll be a landowner yet.”
“My family, especially the girls, object to living on a farm,” Cyrus Bennington said gravely. “They have notions of city life I can’t overcome. Jo especially dislikes the country and Jo runs things round the Bennington place.”
“James Shirley, Esquire,” Jim announced and added quickly:
“The biggest sucker in the booming gang. Lost his farm to the Champers Company. Holds a garden patch and homestead only, where once the Cloverdale Ranch221smiled. All under mortgage also to other capitalists. Boys, I’d be ready to give up if it wasn’t for my little girl. What’s the use in a man as big as I am, with no lung power, keeping at it?” There was a sad hopelessness in Shirley’s tone.
“No, no!” the men chorused in one voice. “Go on, Jim, go on!”
“Asher Aydelot.” Jim pretended it was the rollcall they demanded.
“Gentlemen,” John Jacobs began seriously. But at that moment Leigh Shirley, followed by Rosie Gimpke, came from the side door with a tray of glasses and a pitcher of lemonade.
“Gentlemen, a toast to the man who stuck to the soil and couldn’t be blasted to financial ruin by a boom, the wheat king of these prairies. Our host, Asher Aydelot.”
“The clod-hopper, Buckeye farmer,” Jim added affectionately, and they drank to Asher’s health.
“Lord bless you, Aydelot. You said the money was in the soil, not on top of it. I remember you looked like a prophet when you said it,” Cyrus Bennington declared. “But I was wild to get rich quick and let my soil go. I never look at Aydelot’s spreading acres of wheat increasing in area every year without wondering why the Lord let me be such a fool.”
“Well, you’ve spent a lot of days in an easy chair in the shade of a county office since then while I was driving a reaper in the hot sunshine,” Asher insisted.
“You are the strongest man here now, for all your farm work, Aydelot,” John Jacobs asserted. “It is the store that really breaks a man down.”222
“Not in his nerve, nor in pocketbook,” Todd Stewart added. “Here’s a toast, now, to the second generation, and especially to Thaine Aydelot, son of the Sunflower Ranch. Nineteen years old tonight.”
“What is Thaine going to follow, Asher?” someone inquired. “I suppose you’ll be making a gentleman out of him, since he’s your only child.”
“My father tried to make a gentleman out of me and failed, as you see,” Asher replied.
“Tragic failure,” Jim groaned.
“Seriously, Aydelot, what’s Thaine to do?” The query came from Dr. Carey; the company awaited the answer.
“He isn’t wanting to follow anything right now. He has a notion that the earth is following him,” Asher said with a smile. “And having handled Aydelots all my life, I’m letting him alone a little with the hope that at last he’ll come back to the soil as I did. He goes to the Kansas University this fall and he has all sorts of notions, even a craving for military glory. I can’t blame him. I had the same disease once. I don’t believe in any wild oats business. I hope Thaine will be a gentleman, but I don’t wonder that a green country boy who has looked out all his life on open prairies and lonely distances should have a longing for city pavements and the busy haunts of men. How well he will make his way and what he will let these things fit him to do depends somewhat on how well grounded the farm life and home life have made him. The old French Aydelot blood had something of the wanderlust in it. I hope that trait may not reappear in Thaine. But where’s Pryor Gaines in this rollcall? We are getting away from the subject before the house.”223
Jim Shirley’s handsome face grew sorrowful.
“He was not affected by the boom. He has been the same man in spirit and fortune for twenty-five years. But we are going to lose him. That’s why he’s not here tonight,” Jim hurried on as the others were about to interrupt him. “He won’t say good-by to anybody. You can understand why. He’s going to start for China tomorrow morning—missionary! It’s the last of Pryor Gaines for us. I promised not to tell till he was gone. I’ve lied to him. That’s all. But you’ll not tell on me nor let him know. He says he’s ’called.’ And when a preacher gets that in his blood there’s no stopping him.”
At that moment Virginia Aydelot and a group of matrons came thronging out.
“Come in for the Virginia Reel,” they demanded. “The young folks are having refreshments on the side porch and Bo Peep wants us to dance for him.”
“May I have the honor?” Horace Carey said, bowing to Virginia Aydelot.
“With pleasure, Horace,” Virginia replied with a smile.
As they led the way to the dining room, Dr. Carey said:
“I congratulate you tonight, Virginia, on your son, your kingly husband, and your busy, useful life. You’ve won the West, you two.”
“Not yet,” Virginia replied. “Not until our son proves himself. He’s a farmer’s boy now. Wait five years till he is the age his father was when he came out here. The test of victory is the second generation.”
Bo Peep’s fiddle began its song and the still young middle-aged guests with their host and hostess kept time to its rhythm.
224CHAPTER XIVThe Second Generation
The younger generation does not want instruction.
It is perfectly willing to instruct if anyone will listen to it.
—The Education of Otis Yeere.
The second generation gave little thought to what was filling the minds of the first settlers tonight. The company was a large one and a dozen years later more than one young matron remembered Thaine Aydelot’s birthday party as the beginning of a romance that ended happily for her.
“Jo, you are the queen of the ball tonight,” Todd Stewart, Junior, declared, as he led her to the cool veranda after their fourth dance together.
Jo looked the part in the moonlight, as in the lamplight.
“Oh, no, I’m not. Leigh Shirley is Thaine’s favorite, and his choice is queen tonight,” Jo said coquettishly.
“Darn him! We all know who his choice is, all right,” Todd said. “But, Jo, can’t a fellow have half a chance, anyhow? You know, you can’t help knowing a lot of us would fight for you.”
He caught her hand in his and she did not resist at once.
“Oh, Jo, I know one fellow, anyhow—”
“Look at Thaine now,” Jo interrupted him, as Thaine came near the open window. “Todd, do you know why he thinks so much of Leigh Shirley?”
“Of Leigh? Does he? I hope he does. He shows good225taste, anyhow. Everybody from Little Plum Creek clear to Northfork likes Leigh.”
Jo’s eyes flashed.
“She must be very popular.”
“Oh, not as they like you, Jo. You must know the difference between you two, a real beauty and a sweet little girlie.”
“She’s not so sweet. She tries to attract and doesn’t know how,” Jo declared, for jealousy belongs to the dominant.
Todd Stewart’s sense of justice was strong, even in his infatuation.
“Why, Jo, you mustn’t be jealous of Leigh. She’s the girl the boys can’t make like them. She’s the funniest, settest little creature. And yet, she is a cute child. But you are our pride, you know, and to me—well, let me take you home tonight, and I’ll tell you about my pride.”
“I don’t care for your pride, if you all admire the cute child.” Jo withdrew her hand from his. “Here comes Thaine now. I think you’d better take Leigh home. Thaine will take me, I’m sure. But I’ll go to refreshments with you,” she added, for she knew how to play on more than one string.
“Why, Josephine, my queen, my queen, where are you hiding? I’ve danced an extra, waiting for you. Todd Stewart, I’ll have to kill you yet tonight. What do you mean by breaking up my party?”
Thaine caught Jo’s arm and with a mock thrust at Todd he whirled her into the house.
“Did you really miss me?” Jo’s big dark eyes were fastened on Thaine’s face.226“More than tongue can tell. Who wouldn’t miss you?” Thaine’s eyes were shining mischievously.
“Leigh Shirley wouldn’t,” Jo said softly and half sadly.
Something impenetrable dropped before Thaine’s face.
“Let’s go out to the honeysuckle arbor and not dance now. I’m so tired,” Jo murmured, with a sweet pleading in her voice.
“I fixed it just for you,” Thaine declared as he led the way to the moonlit lawn and shadowy seat.
“You are so good to me, Thaine. What makes you do so many things just for me? I know you don’t really care for me. You are so different from most farmers’ sons.” Jo’s head drooped a little and she put one hand on his arm.
“I can’t help being good to folks. It’s just the angel in me,” Thaine declared. Then he added seriously, “I wish I could do something for you, Jo. All the boys are wild about you tonight. You are a picture.”
She was beautiful at the moment, and as she lifted her eyes to his something in their shining depths spoke witchingly to the youth of nineteen, untrained in ways of feminine coquetry. He was only a country boy, unskilled in social tactics, but a combination of timidity and good breeding shaped his ideals and his action.
“I don’t care for all the boys,” Jo murmured.
“Then we are hopelessly bankrupt,” Thaine declared. “Isn’t this a wonderful night?”
“Yes, and father and mother are going home so early,” Jo said.
“Well, your whole wardrobe is over here; why not stay227all night? You can help Rosie and mother and me tomorrow. There are plenty of Benningtons left at your home without you, and mother will want you,” Thaine urged.
“Do you want me to?” Jo asked softly.
“Tremendously. We’ll eat all the ice cream that’s left when the crowd goes and have the empty mansion all to ourselves,” Thaine declared.
“We are to dance the last dance together too,” Jo reminded him.
“Let’s run in now. The crowd doesn’t miss me, but I’m host, you know, and they’re gasping for you. They’ll be scouring the premises if we wait longer.”
As Thaine lifted Jo to her feet there was a glitter of tears in her bright eyes. And because the place was shadowy and sweet with honeysuckle perfume, and the moonlight entrancing, and Jo was very willing, and tears are ever appealing, he put his arm around her and drew her close to him, and kissed her on each cheek.
Jo’s face was triumphant as they met Leigh Shirley at the dining room door.
“What’s the next case on docket, Leigh?” Thaine asked, dropping Jo’s arm.
Jealousy has sharp eyes, but even jealousy could hardly have found fault with the friendly and indifferent look on Thaine’s face.
“Why, it’s my first with you, Leigh. Who’s your partner, Jo?” Thaine continued.
Two or three young men claimed the honor, and the music began.
“Mrs. Aydelot, Thaine has asked me to stay all night,” Jo said, as the figures were forming.228
“It will please us all,” Virginia said graciously, and Jo tripped away.
When the strains of music for the last dance began Jo looked for Thaine, but he was nowhere to be found. She waited impatiently and the angry glitter in her eyes was not unbecoming her imperious air.
Bo Peep did not wait long, for he was getting tired. Half a dozen young men rushed toward Jo as she stood alone. But Todd Stewart let no opportunity escape him. And the dance began. A minute later Thaine came in with Leigh Shirley. Smiling a challenge at Todd, he caught Leigh’s hand and swung into the crowd on the floor.
The older guests were already gone. The music trailed off into a weird, rippling rhythm, with young hearts beating time to its melody and young feet keeping step to its measure. Then the tired, happy company broke into groups. Good-bys and good wishes were given again and again, and the party was over.
The couples took their way up or down the old Grass River trail or out across the prairie by-roads, with the moon sailing serenely down the west. Everybody voted it the finest party ever given on Grass River. And nobody at all, except his mother and Jo Bennington, noticed that Thaine had not left Leigh Shirley’s side from his first dance with her late in the evening until the time of the good-bys.
As the guests were leaving Thaine turned to Jo, saying:
“I’m sorry about that last dance, but I’ll forgive Todd this last time. Rosie cut her hand on a glass tumbler she dropped and I was helping Leigh to tie it up when old229Bo Peep started the music. Here’s the girl I’m to take home. Got your draperies on already. The carriage waits and the black steed paws for us by the chicken yard gate. Good-night, gentle beings.” And taking Leigh’s arm, he led her away.
“Gimpke is as awkward as a cow,” Jo Bennington declared, “and too stupid to know what’s said to her.”
But Rosie Gimpke, standing in the shadows of the darkened dining room, was not too stupid to understand what was said about her. And into her stolid brain came dreams that night of a fair face with soft golden brown hair and kindly eyes of deep, tender blue. Stupid as she was, the woman’s instinct in her told her in her dreams that the handsome young son of her employer might not always look his thoughts nor dance earliest and oftenest with the girl he liked best. But Rosie was dull and slept heavily and these things came to her sluggish brain only in fleeting dreams.
Thaine and Leigh did not hurry on their homeward way. And Jo Bennington, wide awake in the guest room of the Aydelot house, noted that the moon was far toward the west when Thaine let himself in at the side door and slipped up stairs unheard by all the household except herself.
“Let’s go down by the lake,” Thaine suggested as he and Leigh came to the edge of the grove. “It’s full to the bridge, and the lilies are wide open now. Are you too sleepy to look at them? You used to draw them with chalk all along the blackboard in the old schoolhouse up there.”
“I’m never too sleepy to look at water lilies in the230moonlight,” Leigh replied, “nor too tired to paint them, either. Lilies are a part of my creed. ‘Consider the lilies, how they grow.’”
“With their long rubbery stems, up out of mud mostly,” Thaine said carelessly. “I pretty nearly grew fast along with them down there, till I learned how to gather them a better way.”
The woodland shadows were thrust through with shafts of white moonbeams, giving a weird setting to the silent midnight hour. The odor of woods’ blossoms came with the moist, fresh breath of the May night. There was a little song of waters gurgling down the spillway that was once only a dry draw choked with wild plum bushes. The road wound picturesquely through the grove to a bridged driveway that separated the lakelet into two parts. A spread of silvery light lay on this driveway and Thaine checked his horse in the midst of it while the two looked at the waters.
“It’s all just silver or sable. There’s no middle tone,” Leigh said, looking at the sparkling moonbeams reflected on the face of the lake and the darkness of the shadowed surface beyond them.
“Isn’t there pink, or creamy, or something softer in those lilies right by the bank? I’m no artist, but that’s how it looks to a clod-hopper,” Thaine declared.
“You are an artist, or you wouldn’t catch that, where most anybody would see only steely white and dead black. It is the only color in this black and white woodsy place,” Leigh insisted, looking up at Thaine’s face in the shadow and down at her own white dress.
“There’s a bit of color in your cheeks,” Thaine said,231as he studied the girl’s fair countenance, all pink and white in the moonlight.
“Oh, not the pretty blooming roses like Jo Bennington has,” Leigh said, smiling frankly and folding her hands contentedly in her lap.
Thaine recalled the seat under the honeysuckle, and Jo Bennington’s pleading eyes, and bewitching beauty, and the touch of her hand on his arm, and her willingness to be kissed. He was flattered by it all, for Jo was the belle of the valley, and Thaine thought himself in love with her. He knew that the other boys, especially Todd Stewart, Jr., envied him. And yet in this quiet hour in the silent grove, with the waters shimmering below them, the gentle dignity of the sweet-faced girl beside him, with her purity and simplicity wrapping her about, as the morning mists wrapped the far purple notches on the southwest horizon, gave to her presence there an influence he could not understand.
Thaine had never kissed any girl except Jo, had never cared enough for any other girl to think about it. But tonight there suddenly swept through his mind the thought of the joy that was waiting for some man to whom Leigh would give that privilege, and without any self-analysis (boys at nineteen analyze little) he began to hate the man who should come sometime to claim the privilege.
“Leigh, don’t you ever feel jealous of Jo?” He didn’t know why he asked the question.
Leigh gave a little laugh.
“Ought I?” she inquired, looking up. “She hasn’t anything I want.”
The deep violet eyes under the long lashes were232beautiful without the flashing and sparkle of Jo Bennington’s coquettish gaze.
“That was an idiotic thing to ask,” Thaine admitted. “Why should you, sure enough?”
“I wish I had some of those lilies.” Leigh changed the subject abruptly.
“Hold the horse, then, and I’ll get them. I keep a hooked knife on a long stick hidden down here on purpose to cut them for me mummy, on occasion.”
Thaine jumped out of the buggy and ran down to the end of the driveway where the creamy lilies lay on the dark waters near the bank.
“Be careful of your dress,” he said, as he came back and handed a bunch of blossoms with their trailing wet stems up to Leigh. “Do you remember your Prince Quippi off in China, and your love letters, with old Grass River for postal service? Will you send me a letter down the old Kaw River when I go to the Kansas University this fall?”
“A sunflower letter like I used to send to Quippi?” Leigh asked.
“Any kind of a letter. I’ll miss you more than anything here, except my beloved chores about the farm,” Thaine responded.
“Jo will write all the letters you’ll have time to answer,” Leigh asserted.
“Oh, she says she’s going to Lawrence too, if her pa-paw is elected County Treasurer. We’ll be in the University together. You’ll just have to write to me, Leighlie.”
“Not unless you go to China. I’ll send you a letter233there like I used to send to Prince Quippi.” There was a sudden pathos in her tone.
“Will you? Oh, Leigh, will you?” Thaine asked, gaily, looking down into her face, white and dainty in the soft light. “Quippi never answered one of them, but I would if I was over there, and I may go yet. There’s no telling.”
Leigh looked up with her eyes full of pain.
“Why, I didn’t mean to tease you,” Thaine declared.
“Thaine, Pryor Gaines is to start to China tomorrow. He’s been planning it for weeks and weeks. He’s going to be a missionary and he’ll never come back again—and—and there is so much for me to do when he is gone. He has been such a kind helper all these years. His refined taste has meant so much to me in the study of painting, and I need him now.”
Thaine gave a low whistle of surprise. Leigh’s eyes were full of tears, but Thaine would not have dared to take her in his arms, as he had taken Jo Bennington.
“Little neighbor, we’ve been playmates nearly all our lives. Can’t I help you in some way?” he asked gently.
“Yes, you can,” Leigh replied in a low voice. “There are some things I must do for Uncle Jim and when you are doingforpeople you can’t tell them nor depend on their advice. When Pryor is gone, may I ask you sometimes what to do? I won’t bother you often.”
Asher Aydelot had declared that Alice Leigh was the prettiest girl in Ohio in her day.
The pink-tinted creamy lilies looking up from the still surface of the lakelet were not so fair as the pink-tinted face of Alice Leigh’s daughter, framed in the soft brown shadows of her hair with a hint of gold in the ripples at234the white temples. And behind the face, looking out through long-lashed violet eyes, was loving sacrifice and utter self-forgetfulness.
Thaine was nineteen and wise to give advice. A sudden thrill caught his pulse, mid-beat.
“Is that all? Can’t Idosomething?” he asked eagerly.
“That’s a great deal. And nobody candofor anybody. We have todofor ourselves.”
“You are not doing anything for Uncle Jim, then, I am to understand,” Thaine said.
But Leigh ignored his thrust, saying:
“When Pryor leaves, he doesn’t want to say good-by to anybody, not even to Uncle Jim. He says China is only a little way off, just behind the purple notches over there. I’m going to take him to the train tomorrow and then I’m going on to Wykerton on business. After that, I may need lots of advice.”
“Wykerton’s a joint-ridden place, but John Jacobs has put a good class of farmers around it. He’s such an old saloon hater, Hans Wyker’d like to kill him. But say, why not tell me now what you are about, so I can be looking up references and former judicial decisions handed down in similar cases?” Thaine asked lightly.
“Because it’s too long a story, and I must get Pryor to the eight o’clock limited,” Leigh said.
The crowing of chickens in a far away farmyard came faintly at that moment, and Thaine with a strange new sense of the importance of living, sent the black horses cantering down the trail to the old Cloverdale Ranch house.
Jo Bennington slept late. She had been up late. She had danced often and she had waited for Thaine’s235homecoming. Yet, when she came downstairs in a white morning dress all sprinkled with little pink sprays, there was hardly a hint of weariness in her young face or in her quick footsteps.
“I’m glad you stayed, Jo,” Mrs. Aydelot greeted her. “This is ’the morning after the night before,’ and, as usual, the desertions equal the wounded and imprisoned. Asher and the men had to go across the river early to look after the fences and washouts on the lower quarter. And Rosie Gimpke decided to go home this morning as soon as breakfast was done. So it is left for us to get the house over the party. Not so easy as getting ready for it, especially without help.”
“Where’s Thaine?” Jo asked carelessly, though her face was a tattler.
“He took some colts over to John Jacobs’ ranch. He had Rosie ride one and he rode another and led two. They were a sight. I hoped you might see them go by your window. Thaine had his hat stuck on like a Dutchman’s and he puffed himself out and made up a regular Wyker face as he jogged along. And Rosie plumped herself down on that capering colt as though she shifted all responsibility for accidents upon it. The more it pranced about, the firmer she sat and the less concerned she was. I heard Thaine calling out, ‘Breakers ahead!’ as he watched her bring it back into the road in front of him with a sort of side kick of her foot.”
“What made Gimpke leave?” Jo asked, to cover her disappointment.
“She cut her hand badly last night. She insisted at first that she would help me today and go home later to stay236till it gets well. Then she suddenly changed her mind. Possibly it was the spare-room bed,” Virginia said laughing. “When I told her not to wake you when she made up the other beds, she suddenly got homesick, her hand grew worse and she flew the premises. I’ll run up and attend to that bed while you finish your breakfast,” and Virginia left the room.
At that moment young Todd Stewart appeared on the side porch before the dining room door.
“Thaine stopped long enough to ask me to come over and move furniture for his mother,” Todd sang out. “He doesn’t think you were made to lift cupboards and carry chairs downstairs.”
“Oh, it’s his mother he’s thinking about,” Jo said with pretty petulance. In truth, she was angry with Thaine for taking Leigh home last night and for leaving home today.
“No, it’s his mother he’s ceased to love,” Todd said, coming inside. “He said he’d quit the old home and was moving his goods up to Wolf Creek for keeps. And with that fat tow-headed Gimpke girl sitting on the frisky bay colt as unconcerned as a bump on a log, it was the funniest sight I ever saw.”
Jo tossed her head contemptuously.
“Say, Curly Locks, Curly Locks, you ought to always sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam and wear a dress to breakfast with those little pink du-dads scattered over it.”
“Not if I was a farmer’s wife,” Jo responded quickly.
“Oh, Jo, do you really want to be a city girl?” Todd’s face was frankly sorrowful. “Could you never be satisfied on a farm?”237
“I don’t believe I ever could,” Jo said prettily.
“Thaine’s a farmer all right, Jo.”
“He isn’t going to be one always,” Jo broke in quickly. “He’s going to the Kansas University and there’s no telling after that.”
“No, he’s just going to Wykerton, that’s all. Nay, he have went. Him and him fraulein. And say, there’s another pretty fraulein went up the trail just ahead of the Aydelot horse party. A sweetheart of a girl whom Thaine Aydelot took home after all last night.”
“I don’t care where Thaine goes,” Jo cried.
“And you don’t care for a farmer anyhow,” Todd said suavely.
“Oh, that depends on how helpful he is,” Jo responded tactfully.
Todd sprang up and began to fling the chairs about with extravagant energy in his pretense of being useful.
“Let’s help Mrs. Aydelot as swift as possible. It’s hot as the dickens this morning, and the prognostics are for a cyclone before twelve hours. It’s nearly eleven of ’em now. I’ll take you home when we are through. Thaine isn’t the whole of Grass River and the adjacent creeks and tributaries and all that in them is.”