SYLVIA AT LAKE WAUPEGAN
The snow lay late the next year on the Madison campus. It had been a
busy winter for Sylvia, though in all ways a happy one. When it became
known that she was preparing for college all the Buckeye Lane folk were
anxious to help. Professor Kelton would not trust his own powers too far
and he availed himself of the offers of members of the faculty to tutor
Sylvia in their several branches. Buckeye Lane was proud of Sylvia and
glad that the old professor found college possible for her. Happiness
reigned in the cottage, and days were not so cold or snows so deep but
that Sylvia and her grandfather went forth for their afternoon tramp.
There was nothing morbid or anæmic about Sylvia. Every morning she
pulled weights and swung Indian clubs with her windows open. A
mischievous freshman who had thrown a snowball at Sylvia's heels, in the
hope of seeing her jump, regretted his bad manners: Sylvia caught him in
the ear with an unexpected return shot. A senior who observed the
incident dealt in the lordly way of his kind with the offender. They
called her "our co-ed" and "the boss girl" after that. The professor of
mathematics occasionally left on his blackboard Sylvia's demonstrations
and pointed them out to his class as models worthy of their emulation.
Spring stole into the heart of the Wabash country and the sap sang again
in maples and elms. Lilacs and snowballs bloomed, and Professor Kelton
went serenely about among his roses. Sylvia passed her examinations, and
was to be admitted to Wellesley without conditions,--all the Lane knew
and rejoiced! The good news was communicated to Mrs. Owen, who wrote at
once to Professor Kelton from the summer headquarters she had
established on her farm in northern Indiana that just then required
particular attention. It ran:--
I want you to make me a visit. Sylvia must be pretty tired after
her long, busy year and I have been tinkering the house here a
little bit so you can both be perfectly comfortable. It's not so
lonely as you might think, as my farm borders Lake Waupegan, and
the young people have gay times. My niece, Mrs. Bassett, has a
cottage on the lake only a minute's walk from me. I should like
Marian and Sylvia to get acquainted and this will be easy if only
you will come up for a couple of weeks. There are enough old folks
around here, Andrew, to keep you and me in countenance. I inclose a
timetable with the best trains marked. You leave the train at
Waupegan Station, and take the steamer across the lake. I will meet
you at any time you say.
So it happened that on a June evening they left the train at Waupegan
and crossed the platform to the wheezy little steamer which was waiting
just as the timetable had predicted; and soon they were embarked and
crossing the lake, which seemed to Sylvia a vast ocean. Twilight was
enfolding the world, and all manner of fairy lights began to twinkle at
the far edges of the water and on the dark heights above the lake.
Overhead the stars were slipping into their wonted places.
"You can get an idea of how it is at sea," said her grandfather, smiling
at her long upward gaze. "Only you can hardly feel the wonder of it all
here, or the great loneliness of the ocean at night."
It was, however, wonder enough, for a girl who had previously looked
upon no more impressive waters than those of Fall Creek, Sugar Creek,
and White River. The steamer, with much sputtering and churning and not
without excessive trepidation on the part of the captain and his lone
deck hand, stopped at many frail docks below the cottages that hung on
the bluff above. Every cottager maintained his own light or combination
of lights to facilitate identification by approaching visitors. They
passed a number of sailboats lazily idling in the light wind, and
several small power boats shot past with engines beating furiously upon
the still waters.
"The Bassetts' dock is the green light; the red, white, and blue is Mrs.
Owen's," explained the captain. "We ain't stoppin' at Bassett's
to-night."
These lights marked the farthest bounds of Lake Waupegan, and were the
last points touched by the boat. Sylvia watched the green light with
interest as they passed. She had thought of Marian often since their
meeting at Mrs. Owen's. She would doubtless see more of her now: the
green light and the red, white and blue were very close together.
Mrs. Owen called to them cheerily from the dock, and waved a lantern in
welcome. She began talking to her guests before they disembarked.
"Glad to see you, Andrew. You must be mighty hungry, Sylvia. Don't smash
my dock to pieces, Captain; it's only wood."
Mrs. Owen complained after a few days that she saw nothing of Sylvia, so
numerous were that young person's engagements. Mrs. Bassett and Marian
called promptly--the former a trifle dazed by Sylvia's sudden advent,
and Marian genuinely cordial. Mrs. Bassett had heard of the approaching
visit with liveliest interest. A year before, when Marian had reported
the presence in Mrs. Owen's house at Indianapolis of a strange girl with
Professor Kelton, her curiosity had been piqued, but she soon dismissed
the matter. Marian had carried home little information, and while Mrs.
Bassett saw her aunt often on her frequent excursions to the city, she
knew by long experience that Mrs. Owen did not yield gracefully to
prodding.
Mrs. Bassett had heard all her life of Professor Kelton and she had met
him now and then in the Delaware Street house, but her knowledge of him
and his family was only the most fragmentary. Nothing had occurred
during the year to bring the Keltons again to her attention; but now,
with a casualness in itself disconcerting, they had arrived at Mrs.
Owen's farmhouse, where, Mrs. Bassett was sure, no guests had ever been
entertained before. The house had just been remodeled and made
altogether habitable, a fact which, Mrs. Bassett had been flattering
herself, argued for Mrs. Owen's increasing interest in herself and her
family. The immediate arrival of the Keltons was disquieting.
Through most of her life Hallie Bassett had assumed that she and her
children, as Sally Owen's next of kin, quite filled the heart of that
admirable though often inexplicable woman. Mrs. Bassett had herself
inherited a small fortune from her father, Blackford F. Singleton, Mrs.
Owen's brother, a judge of the Indiana Supreme Court and a senator in
Congress, whose merits and services are set forth in a tablet at the
portal of the Fraser County Court-House. The Bassetts and the Singletons
had been early settlers of that region, and the marriage of Hallie
Singleton to Morton Bassett was a satisfactory incident in the history
of both families. Six years of Mrs. Bassett's girlhood had been passed
in Washington; the thought of power and influence was dear to her; and
nothing in her life had been more natural than the expectation that her
children would enjoy the fortune Mrs. Owen had been accumulating so long
and, from all accounts, by processes hardly less than magical. Mrs.
Bassett's humor was not always equal to the strain to which her aunt
subjected it. Hallie Bassett had, in fact, little humor of any sort. She
viewed life with a certain austerity, and in literature she had
fortified herself against the shocks of time. Conduct, she had read, is
three fourths of life; and Wordsworth had convinced her that the world
is too much with us. Mrs. Bassett discussed nothing so ably as a vague
something she was fond of characterizing as "the full life," and this
she wished to secure for her children. Her boy's future lay properly
with his father; she had no wish to meddle with it; but Marian was the
apple of her eye, and she was striving by all the means in her power to
direct her daughter into pleasant paths and bright meadows where the
"full life" is assured. Hers were no mean standards. She meant to be a
sympathetic and helpful wife, the wisest and most conscientious of
mothers.
Mrs. Bassett was immensely anxious to please her aunt in all ways; but
that intrepid woman's pleasure was not a thing to be counted on with
certainty. She not only sought to please her aunt by every means
possible, but she wished her children to intrench themselves strongly in
their great aunt's favor. The reports of such of Mrs. Owen's public
benefactions as occasionally reached the newspapers were always
alarming. No one ever knew just how much money Sally Owen gave away; but
some of her gifts in recent years had been too large to pass unnoticed
by the press. Only a few months before she had established a
working-girls' home in memory of a daughter--her only child--who had
died in early youth, and this crash from a clear sky had aroused in Mrs.
Bassett the gravest apprehensions. It was just so much money said to be
eighty thousand dollars--out of the pockets of Marian and Blackford;
and, besides, Mrs. Bassett held views on this type of benevolence. Homes
for working-girls might be well enough, but the danger of spoiling them
by too much indulgence was not inconsiderable; Mrs. Bassett's altruism
was directed to the moral and intellectual uplift of the mass (she never
said masses) and was not concerned with the plain prose of housing,
feeding, and clothing young women who earned their own living. Mrs.
Owen, in turning over this home to a board of trustees, had stipulated
that music for dancing should be provided every Saturday evening;
whereupon two trustees, on whom the Christian religion weighed heavily,
resigned; but Mrs. Owen did not care particularly. Trustees were only
necessary to satisfy the law and to assure the legal continuity of
Elizabeth House, which Mrs. Owen directed very well herself.
Mrs. Bassett encouraged Marian's attentions to Mrs. Owen's young
visitor; but it must be said that Marian, on her own account, liked
Sylvia and found delight in initiating her into the mysteries of
Waupegan life. She taught her to ride, to paddle a canoe, and to swim.
There were dances at the casino, and it was remarkable how easily Sylvia
learned to dance. Marian taught her a few steps on the first rainy day
at the Bassett house, and thereafter no one would have doubted that
Sylvia had been to dancing-school with the boys and girls she met at the
casino parties. Marian was the most popular girl in the summer colony
and Sylvia admired her ungrudgingly. In all outdoor sports Marian
excelled. She dived from a spring-board like a boy, she paddled a canoe
tirelessly and with inimitable grace, and it was a joy to see her at the
tennis court, where her nimbleness of foot and the certainty of her
stroke made her easily first in all competitions. At the casino, after
a hard round of tennis, and while waiting for cakes and lemonade to be
served, she would hammer ragtime on the piano or sing the latest lyrical
offerings of Broadway. Quiet, elderly gentlemen from Cincinnati,
Louisville, and Indianapolis, who went to the casino to read the
newspapers or to play bridge, grinned when Marian turned things upside
down. If any one else had improvised a bowling-alley of ginger-ale
bottles and croquet-balls on the veranda, they would have complained of
it bitterly. She was impatient of restraint, and it was apparent that
few restraints were imposed upon her. Her sophistication in certain
directions was to Sylvia well-nigh incomprehensible. In matters of
personal adornment, for example, the younger girl's accomplishments were
astonishing. She taught Sylvia how to arrange her hair in the latest
fashion promulgated by "Vogue"; she instructed her in the refined art of
manicuring according to the method of the best shop in Indianapolis; and
it was amazing how wonderfully Marian could improve a hat by the
slightest readjustments of ribbon and feather. She tested the world's
resources like a spoiled princess with an indulgent chancellor to pay
her bills. She gave a party and ordered the refreshments from Chicago,
though her mother protested that the domestic apparatus for making
ice-cream was wholly adequate for the occasion. When she wanted new
tennis shoes she telegraphed for them; and she kept in her room a small
library of mail-order catalogues to facilitate her extravagances.
Marian talked a great deal about boys, and confided to Sylvia her
sentimental attachment for one of the lads they saw from day to day, and
with whom they played tennis at the casino court. For the first time
Sylvia heard a girl talk of men as of romantic beings, and of love as a
part of the joy and excitement of life. A young gentleman in a Gibson
drawing which she had torn from an old copy of "Life" more nearly
approximated Marian's ideal than even the actors of her remote
adoration. She had a great number of gowns and was quite reckless in her
use of them. She tried to confer upon Sylvia scarf pins, ties, and like
articles, for which she declared she had not the slightest use. In the
purchase of soda water and candy at the casino, where she scribbled her
father's initials on the checks, or at the confectioner's in the village
where she enjoyed a flexible credit, her generosity was prodigal. She
was constantly picking up other youngsters and piloting them on
excursions that her ready fancy devised; and if they returned late for
meals or otherwise incurred parental displeasure, to Marian it was only
part of the joke. She was always late and ingeniously plausible in
excusing herself. "Mother won't bother; she wants me to have a good
time. And when papa is here he just laughs at me. Papa's just the best
ever."
Mrs. Bassett kept lamenting to Professor Kelton her husband's protracted
delay in Colorado. He was interested in a mining property there and was
waiting for the installation of new machinery, but she expected to hear
that he had left for Indiana at any time, and he was coming direct to
Waupegan for a long stay. Mrs. Owen was busy with the Waupegan farm and
with the direction of her farms elsewhere. On the veranda of her house
one might frequently hear her voice raised at the telephone as she gave
orders to the men in charge of her properties in central and southern
Indiana. Her hearing was perfect and she derived the greatest
satisfaction from telephoning. She sold stock or produce on these
distant estates with the market page of the "Courier" propped on the
telephone desk before her, and explained her transactions zestfully to
Professor Kelton and Sylvia. She communicated frequently with the
superintendent of her horse farm at Lexington about the "string" she
expected to send forth to triumph at county and state fairs. The "Annual
Stud Register" lay beside the Bible on the living-room table; and the
"Western Horseman" mingled amicably with the "Congregationalist" in the
newspaper rack.
The presence of the old professor and his granddaughter at Waupegan
continued to puzzle Mrs. Bassett. Mrs. Owen clearly admired Sylvia, and
Sylvia was a charming girl--there was no gainsaying that. At the
farmhouse a good deal had been said about Sylvia's plans for going to
college. Mrs. Owen had proudly called attention to them, to her niece's
annoyance. If Sylvia's advent marked the flowering in Mrs. Owen of some
new ideals of woman's development, Mrs. Bassett felt it to be her duty
to discover them and to train Marian along similar lines. She felt that
her husband would be displeased if anything occurred to thwart the hand
of destiny that had so clearly pointed to Marian and Blackford as the
natural beneficiaries of the estate which Mrs. Owen by due process of
nature must relinquish. In all her calculations for the future Mrs.
Owen's fortune was an integer.
Mrs. Bassett received a letter from her husband on Saturday morning in
the second week of Sylvia's stay. Its progress from the mining-camp in
the mountains had been slow and the boat that delivered the letter
brought also a telegram announcing Bassett's arrival in Chicago, so that
he was even now on his way to Waupegan. As Mrs. Bassett pondered this
intelligence Sylvia appeared at the veranda steps to inquire for Marian.
"She hasn't come down yet, Sylvia. You girls had a pretty lively day
yesterday and I told Marian she had better sleep a while longer."
"We certainly have the finest times in the world," replied Sylvia. "It
doesn't seem possible that I've been here nearly two weeks."
"I'm glad you're going to stay longer. Aunt Sally told me yesterday it
was arranged."
"We really didn't expect to stay more than our two weeks; but Mrs. Owen
made it seem very easy to do so."
"Oh, you needn't be afraid of outstaying your welcome. It's not Aunt
Sally's way to bore herself. If she didn't like you very much she
wouldn't have you here at all; Aunt Sally's always right straight out
from the shoulder."
"Marian has done everything to give me a good time. I want you to know I
appreciate it. I have never known girls; Marian is really the first
girl I have ever known, and she has taught me ever so many things."
"Marian is a dear," murmured Mrs. Bassett.
She was a murmurous person, whose speech was marked by a curious rising
inflection, that turned most of her statements into interrogatories. To
Sylvia this habit seemed altogether wonderful and elegant.
"Suppose we take a walk along the lake path, Sylvia. We can pretend
we're looking for wild flowers to have an excuse. I'll leave word for
Marian to follow."
They set off along the path together. Mrs. Bassett had never seemed
friendlier, and Sylvia was flattered by this mark of kindness. Mrs.
Bassett trailed her parasol, using it occasionally to point out plants
and flowers that called for comment. She knew the local flora well, and
kept a daybook of the wildflowers found in the longitude and latitude of
Waupegan; and she was an indefatigable ornithologist, going forth with
notebook and opera glass in hand. She spoke much of Thoreau and
Burroughs and they were the nucleus of her summer library; she said that
they gained tang and vigor from their winter hibernation at the cottage.
Her references to nature were a little self-conscious, as seems
inevitable with such devotees, but we cannot belittle the accuracy of
her knowledge or the cleverness of her detective skill in apprehending
the native flora. She found red and yellow columbines tucked away in odd
corners, and the blue-eyed-Mary with its four petals--two blue and two
white--as readily as Sylvia's inexperienced eye discovered the more
obvious ladies'-slipper and jack-in-the-pulpit. To-day Mrs. Bassett
rejoiced in the discovery of the season's first puccoon, showing its
orange-yellow cluster on a sandy slope. She plucked a spray of the
spreading dogbane, but only that she might descant upon it to Sylvia; it
was a crime, Mrs. Bassett said, to gather wild flowers, which were never
the same when transplanted to the house. When they came presently to a
rustic seat Mrs. Bassett suggested that they rest there and watch the
lake, which had always its mild excitements.
"You haven't known Aunt Sally a great while, I judge, Sylvia? Of course
you haven't known any one a great while!"
"No; I never saw her but once before this visit. That was when
grandfather took me to see her in Indianapolis a year ago. She and
grandfather are old friends."
"All the old citizens of Indiana have a kind of friendship among
themselves. Somebody said once that the difference between Indiana and
Kentucky is, that while the Kentuckians are all cousins we Hoosiers are
all neighbors. But of course so many of us have had Kentucky
grandfathers that we understand the Kentuckians almost as well as our
own people. I used to meet your grandfather now and then at Aunt
Sally's; but I can't say that I ever knew him. He's a delightful man and
it's plain that his heart is centred in you."
"There was never any one like grandfather," said Sylvia with feeling.
"I suppose that as he and Aunt Sally are such old friends they must have
talked a good deal together about you and your going to college. It
would be quite natural."
Sylvia had not thought of this. She was the least guileful of beings,
this Sylvia, and she saw nothing amiss in these inquiries.
"I suppose they may have done so; and Mrs. Owen talked to me about going
to college when I visited her."
"Oh! If _she_ undertook to persuade you, then it is no wonder you
decided to go. She's a very powerful pleader, as she would put it
herself."
"It wasn't just that way, Mrs. Bassett. I think grandfather had already
persuaded me. Mrs. Owen didn't know of it till afterward; but she seemed
to like the idea. Her ideas about girls and women are very interesting."
"Yes? She has a very decided way of expressing herself. I should
imagine, though, that with her training and manner of life she might
look a little warily at the idea of college training for women.
Personally, you understand, I am heartily in favor of it. I have hoped
that Marian might go to college. Aunt Sally takes the greatest interest
in Marian, naturally, but she has never urged it upon us."
Sylvia gazed off across the lake and made no reply. She recalled
distinctly Mrs. Owen's comments on Marian, expressed quite clearly on
the day of their drive into the country, a year before. It was not for
her to repeat those observations; she liked Marian and admired her, and
she saw no reason why Marian should not go to college. Sylvia, guessing
nothing of what was in Mrs. Bassett's mind, failed to understand that
Mrs. Owen's approval of Marian's education was of importance. Nothing
could have been more remote from her thoughts than the idea that her own
plans concerned any one but herself and her grandfather. She was not so
dull, however, but that she began to feel that Mrs. Bassett was speaking
defensively of Marian.
"Marian's taste in reading is very unusual, I think. I have always
insisted that she read only the best. She is very fond of Tennyson. I
fancy that after all, home training is really the most valuable,--I mean
that the atmosphere of the home can give a child what no school
supplies. I don't mean, of course, that we have it in _our_ home; but
I'm speaking of the ideal condition where there _is_ an atmosphere. I've
made a point of keeping good books lying about the house, and the best
magazines and reviews. I was never happier than the day I found Marian
curled up on a lounge reading Keats. It may be that the real literary
instinct, such as I feel Marian has, would only be spoiled by college;
and I should like nothing better than to have Marian become a writer. A
good many of our best American women writers have not been college
women; I was looking that up only the other day."
Sylvia listened, deeply interested; then she laughed suddenly, and as
Mrs. Bassett turned toward her she felt that it would do no harm to
repeat a remark of Mrs. Owen's that had struck her as being funny.
"I just happened to remember something Mrs. Owen said about colleges.
She said that if it isn't in the colt the trainer can't put it there;
and I suppose the successful literary women have had genius whether they
had higher education or not. George Eliot hadn't a college training, but
of course she was a very great woman."
Mrs. Bassett compressed her lips. She had not liked this quotation from
Mrs. Owen's utterances on this vexed question of higher education. Could
it be possible that Aunt Sally looked upon Marian as one of those colts
for whom the trainer could do nothing? It was not a reassuring thought;
her apprehensions as to Sylvia's place in her kinswoman's affections
were quickened by Sylvia's words; but Mrs. Bassett dropped the matter.
"I have never felt that young girls should read George Eliot. She
doesn't seem to me _quite_ an ideal to set before a young girl."
As Sylvia knew nothing of George Eliot, except what she had gleaned from
the biographical data in a text-book on nineteenth-century writers, she
was unable to follow Mrs. Bassett. She had read "Mill on the Floss," and
"Romola" and saw no reason why every one shouldn't enjoy them.
Mrs. Bassett twirled her closed parasol absently and studied the profile
of the girl beside her.
"The requirements for college are not really so difficult, I suppose?"
she suggested.
Sylvia's dark eyes brightened as she faced her interlocutor. Those of us
who know Sylvia find that quick flash of humor in her eyes adorable.
"Oh, they can't be, for I answered most of the questions!" she
exclaimed, and then, seeing no response in her inquisitor, she added
soberly: "It's all set out in the catalogue and I have one with me. I'd
be glad to bring it over if you'd like to see it."
"Thank you, Sylvia. I should like to see it. I may want to ask you some
questions about the work; but of course you won't say anything to Marian
of our talk. I am not quite sure, and I'll have to discuss it with Mr.
Bassett."
"Of course I shan't speak of it, Mrs. Bassett."
Marian's voice was now heard calling them, down the path, and the girl
appeared, a moment later, munching a bit of toast stuccoed with jam, and
eager to be off for the casino where a tennis match was scheduled for
the morning.
"Don't be late for dinner this evening, Marian; your father will be
here, and if you see Blackford, be sure to tell him to meet the 3.10."
"Yes, mama, I'll remember, and I'll try to meet the train too." And then
to Sylvia, as she led the way to the boathouse to get the canoe, "I'm
glad dad's coming. He's perfectly grand, and I'm going to see if he
won't give me a naphtha launch. Dad's a good old scout and he's pretty
sure to do it."
Marian's manner of speaking of her parents disclosed the filial
relationship in a new aspect to Sylvia, who did not at once reconcile it
with her own understanding of the fifth commandment. Marian referred to
her father variously as "the grand old man," "the true scout," "Sir
Morton the good knight," and to her mother as "the Princess Pauline,"
or "one's mama," giving to _mama_ the French pronunciation. All this
seemed to Sylvia to be in keeping with Marian's general precociousness.
Sylvia had formed the habit of stealing away in the long twilights,
after the cheerful gathering at Mrs. Owen's supper-table, for a little
self-communing. Usually Mrs. Owen and Professor Kelton fell to talking
of old times and old friends at this hour and Sylvia's disappearances
were unremarked. She felt the joy of living these days, and loved dearly
the delaying hour between day and night that is so lovely, so touched
with poetry in this region. There was always a robin's vesper song, that
may be heard elsewhere than in Indiana, but can nowhere else be so
tremulous with joy and pain. A little creek ran across Mrs. Owen's farm,
cutting for itself a sharp defile to facilitate its egress into the
lake; and Sylvia liked to throw herself down beside a favorite maple,
with the evening breeze whispering over the young corn behind her, and
the lake, with its heart open to the coming of the stars, quiet before
her, and dream the dreams that fill a girl's heart in those blessed and
wonderful days when the brook and river meet.
On this Saturday evening Sylvia was particularly happy. The day's
activities, that had begun late, left her a little breathless. She was
wondering whether any one had ever been so happy, and whether any other
girl's life had ever been so pleasantly ordered. Her heartbeat quickened
as she thought of college and the busy years that awaited her there; and
after that would come the great world's wide-open doors. She was
untouched by envy, hatred, or malice. There was no cloud anywhere that
could mar; the stars that stole out into the great span of sky were not
more tranquil than her own heart. The world existed only that people
might show kindness one to another, and that all this beauty of wood,
field, water, and starry sky might bring joy to the souls of men. She
knew that there was evil in the world; but she knew it from books and
not from life. Her path had fallen in pleasant places, and only
benignant spirits attended her.
She was roused suddenly by the sound of steps in the path beneath. This
twilight sanctuary had never been invaded before, and she rose hastily.
The course of an irregular path that followed the lake was broken here
by the creek's miniature chasm, but adventurous pedestrians might gain
the top and continue over a rough rustic bridge along the edge of Mrs.
Owen's cornfield. Sylvia peered down, expecting to see Marian or
Blackford, but a stranger was approaching, catching at bushes to
facilitate his ascent. Sylvia stepped back, assuming it to be a cottager
who had lost his way. A narrow-brimmed straw hat rose above the
elderberry bushes, and with a last effort the man stood on level ground,
panting from the climb. He took off his hat and mopped his face as he
glanced about. Sylvia had drawn back, but as the stranger could not go
on without seeing her she stepped forward, and they faced each other, in
a little plot of level ground beside the defile.
"Pardon me!" he exclaimed, still breathing hard; and then his eyes met
hers in a long gaze. His gray eyes searched her dark ones for what
seemed an interminable time. Sylvia's hand sought the maple but did not
touch it; and the keen eyes of the stranger did not loosen their hold of
hers. A breeze blowing across the cornfield swept over them, shaking the
maple leaves, and rippled the surface of the lake. The dusk, deepening
slowly, seemed to shut them in together.
"Pardon me, again! I hope I didn't frighten you! I am Mr. Bassett,
Marian's father."
"And I am Sylvia Garrison. I am staying--"
"Oh," he laughed, "you needn't tell me! They told me at the supper-table
all about you and that you and Marian are fast friends."
"I knew you were coming; they were speaking of it this morning."
They had drawn closer together during this friendly exchange. Again
their eyes met for an instant, then he surveyed her sharply from head to
foot, as he stood bareheaded leaning on his stick.
"I must be going," said Sylvia. "There's a path through the corn that
Mrs. Owen lets me use. They'll begin to wonder what's become of me."
"Why not follow the path to the lane,--I think there is a lane at the
edge of the field,--and I will walk to the house with you. The path
through the corn must be a little rough, and it's growing dark."
"Yes, thank you, Mr. Bassett."
"I had no idea of meeting any one when I came out. I usually take a
little walk after supper when I'm here, and I wanted to get all the car
smoke out of my lungs. I was glad to get out of Chicago; it was fiercely
hot there."
The path was not wide enough for two and she walked before him. After
they had exhausted the heat as a topic, silence fell upon them. He still
swung his hat in his hand. Once or twice he smote his stick smartly upon
the ground. He timed his pace to hers, keeping close, his eyes upon her
straight slender figure. When they reached the lane they walked together
until they came to the highway, which they followed to the house. An oil
lamp marked the walk that led through Mrs. Owen's flower garden.
"Aren't you coming in, Mr. Bassett?" asked Sylvia, as they paused.
Her hand clicked the latch and the little white-washed gate swung open.
In the lamplight their eyes met again.
"I'm sorry, but I must go home. This is the first time I've been here
this summer, and my stay is short. I must be off again to-morrow."
"Oh, that's too bad! Marian has been telling me that you would stay a
month, she will be terribly disappointed"
"My Western trip took more time than I expected I have a good deal to do
at Fraserville and must get back there"
She stepped inside, thinking he delayed out of courtesy to her, but to
her surprise he fastened the latch deliberately and lingered.
"They tell me you and your grandfather live at Montgomery. It's a
charming town, one of the most interesting in the state."
"Yes, Mr. Bassett. My grandfather taught in the college there."
"I have often heard of Professor Kelton, of course. He's a citizen our
state is proud of. Mrs. Bassett says you're going to college this
fall--to Wellesley, is it? Mrs. Bassett has an idea that Marian ought to
have a college education. What do you think about it?"
He smiled kindly, and there was kindness in his deep voice.
"I think girls should go who want to go," answered Sylvia, her hands on
the pickets of the gate.
"You speak like a politician," laughed Bassett. "That's exactly what I
think; and I haven't seen that Marian is dying for a college career."
"She has plenty of time to think of it," Sylvia replied. "I'm ever so
much older"; and this seemed to dispose of that matter.
"You are staying here some time?"
"Another week. It seems that we've hardly been here a day."
"You are fortunate in having Mrs. Owen for a friend. She is a very
unusual woman."
"The most wonderful person I ever knew!" responded Sylvia warmly.
He still showed no haste to leave her, though he had just reached
Waupegan, and was going away the next day.
"Your grandfather isn't teaching at Madison now, I believe?"
"No; but he lectures sometimes, and he has taught me; there was never a
better teacher," she answered, smiling.
"You must have been well taught if you are ready for college so early;
you are--you say you're older than Marian--do you mind my asking how old
you are?"
"Nearly seventeen; seventeen in October."
"Oh! Then you are four years older than Marian. But I mustn't keep you
here. Please remember me to Mrs. Owen and tell her I'll drop in before I
go." He bent over the gate and put out his hand. "Good-night, Miss
Garrison!"
Sylvia had never been called Miss Garrison before, and it was not
without trepidation that she heard herself so addressed. Mr. Bassett had
spoken the name gravely, and their eyes met again in lingering contact.
When the door closed upon her he walked on rapidly; but once, before the
trees had obscured Mrs. Owen's lights, he turned and glanced back.