THE PURPLE NOTCHES
Two things greater than all things are.
One is Love, and the other War.
And since we know not how War may prove,
Heart of my heart, let us talk of Love.
--The Ballad of the King's Jest.
The summer ran its hot length of days, but it was a gay season for the
second generation in the Grass River Valley. Nor drouth nor heat can much
annoy when the heart beats young. September would see the first scattering
of the happy company for the winter. The last grand rally for the crowd
came late in August. Two hayrack loads of young folks, with some few in
carriages, were to spend the day at "The Cottonwoods," a far-away picnic
ground toward the three headlands of the southwest. Few of the company had
ever visited the place. Distances are deceiving on the prairies and better
picnic grounds lay nearer to Grass River.
On the afternoon before the picnic Leigh Shirley took her work to the lawn
behind the house.
What most ranches gave over to weed patches, or hog lots, or dumping
grounds along the stream, at Cloverdale had become a shady clover-sodded
lawn sloping down to the river's edge. The biggest cottonwoods and elms in
the whole valley grew on this lawn. A hedge of lilac and other shrubbery
bordered by sunflowers and hollyhocks bounded it from the fields and
trellises of white honeysuckle screened it from the road.
[Illustration: Leigh turned to see Thaine Aydelot looking down at her as
he leaned over the high back of the rustic seat]
In a rustic seat overlooking the river and the prairies beyond, Leigh
Shirley bent lovingly above a square of heavy white paper on which she was
sketching a group of sunflowers glowing in the afternoon sunlight. Leigh's
talent was only an undeveloped inheritance, but if it lacked training it's
fresh originality was unspoiled.
"The top of the afternoon to you."
Leigh turned to see Thaine Aydelot looking down at her as he leaned over
the high back of the rustic seat. He was in his working clothes with his
straw hat set back, showing his brown face. His luminous dark eyes were
shining and a half-teasing, half-sympathetic smile was on his lips. But
whatever the clothes, there was always something of the Southern gentleman
about every man of the Thaine blood. Something of the soldierly bearing of
his father had been his heritage likewise.
"May I see your stuff, or is it not for the profane eyes of a thresher of
alfalfa to look upon?"
Leigh drew back and held up her drawing-board.
"It's just like you, Leigh. You always were an artist, but when did you
learn all the technique? Is that what you call it? How do you do it?"
"I don't know," Leigh answered frankly. "It seems to do itself."
"And why do you do it? Or why don't you do more of it?" Thaine asked.
The girl answered, smiling:
"Just between us two, I hope to do a piece good enough to sell and help to
lift the price of alfalfa seed a bit."
"By the way, I brought the first load of seed over just now. Where's Uncle
Jim?" Thaine asked, trying not to let the pity in his heart show itself in
his eyes.
"Uncle Jim is breaking sod--weeds, I mean--for fall sowing. Wait a minute
and I'll get you the money he left for you."
Thaine threw himself down in the shade beside Leigh's seat while she went
into the house.
"I wish I didn't have to take that money, but I know better than to say a
word," he said to himself. "Thank the Lord, the worried look is beginning
to leave Uncle Jim's face, though. How could any of us get along without
Uncle Jim?"
"What little seed to be worth so much, but it's the beginning of
conquest," Leigh said as Thaine took the bills from her hand. "And it's a
much more hopeful business to reclaim from booms and weeds than from this
lonely old prairie as it was when Uncle Jim and your father first came
here."
"It's just the same old pioneer spirit, though, and you are fighting a
mortgage just like they fought loneliness, and besides, Asher Aydelot had
Virginia Thaine to help him to keep his courage up."
A sudden flush deepened on his ruddy cheeks and he continued:
"Of course you are going to the picnic? You'll have to start early. It's a
goodish way to 'The Cottonwoods.' The Sunflower Ranch needs my talents, so
I can't go with the crowd, but I may draggle in about high noon. I'll
drive over in the buggy, and I'll try to snake some pretty girl off the
wagons to ride home with me when it's all over."
"Maybe the pretty girls will all be preempted before you get there," Leigh
replied.
"I know one that I hope won't be," Thaine said.
Leigh was bending over her drawing board and did not look up for a long
minute. It was her gift to make comfort about her while she followed her
own will unflinchingly. The breeze had blown the golden edges of her hair
into fluffy ripples about her forehead and the deep blue of August skies
was reflected in her blue eyes shaded by their long brown lashes. Thaine
sat watching her every motion, as he always did when he was with her.
"Well?" Leigh looked up with the query. "And what's to hinder your getting
the pretty girl you want if she understands and you are swift enough to
cut off the enemy from a flank movement?"
"The girl herself," Thaine replied.
"Serious! Tragical! Won't you give me that chrome-yellow tube by your
elbow there?" Leigh reached for the paint and their hands met.
"Say, little Sketcher of Things, will you be missing me when I go to
school next month? Or will your art and your ranch take all your
thoughts?"
"I wish they would, but they won't," Leigh said. "They will help to fill
up the time, though."
"Leigh, may I bring you home tomorrow night? I'm going away the next day,
and I won't see you any more for a long time."
"No, you may not," Leigh replied, looking up, and her sunny face framed by
her golden brown hair was winsomely pleasing.
"Why not, Leigh? Am I too late?"
"Too early. You haven't asked Jo and been refused yet. But you are kind to
put me on the 'waiting list.'"
Thaine was standing beside her now.
"I mean it. Has anybody asked you specially--to be your very particular
escort?"
"Oh, yes. The very nicest of the crowd." Leigh's eyes were shining now.
"But I've refused him," she added.
"Who was it?"
"Thaine Aydelot, and I refused because it was good taste for me to do it.
If it's his last day at home--and--oh, I forget what I was going to say."
"I wish you wouldn't make a joke of it, anyhow. Tell me why you are so
unkind to an old neighbor and lifelong pal," Thaine insisted.
But Leigh made no reply.
"Leigh!"
"Tell me why you insist when by all the rules you are due to snake the
prettiest girl in the crowd off the wagon and into your buggy. Why aren't
you satisfied to make the other boys all envy you?" Leigh had risen and
stood beside the rustic seat, her arm across its high back.
"Because it is the last time. Because we've known each other since
childhood and have been playmates, chums, companions; because I am going
one way and you another, and our paths may widen more and more, and
because--oh, Leigh, because I want you."
He leaned against the back of the seat and gently put one hand on her
arm.
The yellow August sunshine lay on the level prairies beyond the river. The
shining thread of waters wound away across the landscape under a play of
light and shadow. The clover sod at their feet was soft and green. The big
golden sunflowers hung on their stalks along the border of the lawn, and
overhead the ripple of the summer breezes in the cottonwoods made a music
like pattering raindrops. Under their swaying boughs Leigh Shirley stood,
a fair, sweet girl. And nothing in the languorous beauty of the midsummer
afternoon could have been quite so pleasing without her presence there.
She looked down at Thaine's big brown hand resting against her white arm,
and then up to his handsome face.
"It would only make trouble for, for everybody. No, I'm coming home with
the crowd on the hayrack." She lifted her arm and began to pull the petals
from a tiny sunflower that lay on the seat beside her.
"Very well." There was no anger in Thaine's tone. "Do you remember the big
sunflower we found to send to Prince Quippi, once?"
"The one that should bring him straight from China to me, if he really
cared for me?" Leigh asked.
"You said that one was to tell him that you loved him and you knew it
would bring him to you. But he never came."
"It's a way my princes have of doing," Leigh said with a little laugh.
"If I were in China and you should send me a sunflower, I'd know you
wanted me to come back."
"If I ever send you one you will know that I do," Leigh said. "Meantime,
my prince will wear a sprig of alfalfa on his coat."
"And a cockle burr in his whiskers, and cerulean blue overalls like mine,
and he'll drudge along in a slow scrap with the soil till the soil gets
him," Thaine added.
"Like it got your father," Leigh commented.
"Oh, he's just one sort of a man by himself," Thaine declared. "A pretty
good sort, of course, else I'd never have recommended him to be my father.
Good-by. I'll see you across the crowd tomorrow."
He turned at once and left her.
"The Cottonwoods" was a picturesque little grove grown in the last decade
about a rocky run down which in the springtime a full stream swept. There
was only a little ripple over a stony bed now, with shallow pools lost in
the deeper basins here and there. The grasses lay flat and brown on the
level prairie about it. Down the shaded valley a light cool breeze poured
steadily. Beyond the stream a gentle slope reached far away to the foot of
the three headlands--the purple notches of Thaine Aydelot's childhood
fancies.
The day was ideal. Such days come sometimes in a Kansas August. The young
people of the Grass River neighborhood had made merry half of the morning
in the grove, and as they gathered for the picnic lunch someone called
out:
"Jo Bennington, where's Thaine Aydelot? Great note for him to disappear
when this Charity Ball was executed mainly for him."
"Better ask Todd Stewart. He's probably had Thaine kidnaped for this
occasion," somebody else suggested.
"I tried to do it and failed," Todd Stewart assented. "I don't need him in
my business. He can start to school today if he wants to."
"Well, you don't want him to go, do you, Jo?"
"Oh, I don't care especially. I'm going away myself, but not to the
University, but I'm not going till papa's elected," Jo replied.
"And if papa's defeated we stay home all winter, eh?" Todd questioned.
"That all depends," Jo replied.
"Of course it does. What is it, and who depends on it? Jo, I'll help you
if you must defend yourself."
Thaine Aydelot bounced down from the rocky bank above into the midst of
the company and became at once Jo's escort by common consent.
"Now life's worth living, Thaine's here. Let's have dinner," the boys
urged.
It was not Leigh Shirley's fault that Thaine should be placed between her
and Jo at the spread of good things to eat; nor Jo's planning that she
should be between Thaine and Todd Stewart. But nobody could be unhappy
today.
In the late afternoon the crowd strolled in couples and quartettes and
groups up and down the picturesque place.
Thaine had been with Jo from the moment of his coming and Leigh was glad
that she had not yielded to his request of the afternoon before. She had
become a little separated from the company as she followed a trail of
golden sunflowers down the edge of the wide space between the stream and
the foot of the headlands towering far beyond it. The sun had disappeared
suddenly and the gleam of the blossoms dulled a trifle. Leigh sat down on
a slab of shale to study the effect of the shadow.
"Are you still looking for a letter that will bring Prince Quippi back?"
Thaine Aydelot asked as he climbed up from the rough stream bed to a seat
beside her.
"I'm watching the effect of sunshine and shadow on the sunflowers," Leigh
replied.
"It will be all shadow if you wait much longer. The clouds are gathering
now and we must start home."
"Then I must be going, too. It's a lovely, lazy place here, though. Some
time I'm going to the top of those bluffs, away off there."
"Let's go up now," Thaine suggested.
"But it's too late. I mustn't keep the crowd waiting," Leigh insisted.
"It's a stiff climb, too."
"I can drive up. I know a trail through the brush. Let me drive you up,
Leigh. It won't take long. There's something worth seeing up there,"
Thaine insisted.
"Well, be quick, Thaine. We'll get into trouble if we are late," Leigh
declared.
The trail up the steep slope twisted its way back and forth through the
low timber that covered the sides of the bluffs, and the two in the buggy
found themselves shut away in its solitary windings.
"What a shadowy road," Leigh said. "And see that cliff dropping down
beyond that turn. How could there be such a romantic place out on these
level plains?"
"It was my fairy land when I was a little tot," Thaine replied. "I came
here long ago and explored it myself."
"I'd like to come here sketching sometime. See how the branches meet
overhead. The odors from the bluffside are like the odors of the woodland
back in the Clover valley in Ohio. I remember them yet, although I was so
little when I left there," Leigh said, turning to Thaine.
He shifted the reins, and throwing his hat in the buggy before him he
pushed back the hair from his forehead.
"Leigh, will you let me take you home? I didn't ask Jo after all. Todd
wouldn't wait long enough for me to do that, as I knew well enough he
wouldn't. Don't be mad at me. Please don't," he pleaded.
"Why, I'm glad if you really want me to go with you, but you shouldn't
have staid away this morning."
"I did it on purpose. I knew Todd wouldn't let the chance slip--nor Jo
neither, if I let him have it."
"You let him have it merely because you didn't want the chance today. Your
kindness will be your undoing some day," Leigh said with a smile that took
off the edge of sarcasm.
Thaine said nothing in response, and they climbed slowly to the top of the
bluff and stood at last on the crest of the middle headland.
Below them lay "The Cottonwoods" and the winding stream whose course,
marked by the dark green line of shrubbery, stretched away toward Grass
River far to the southeast. To the westward a wonderful vista of level
prairie spread endlessly, wherein no line of shrubbery marked a
watercourse nor tree rose up to break the circle of the horizon. Over all
this vast plain the three headlands stood as sentinels. In the west the
sunlight had pierced a heavy cloudbank and was pouring through the rift in
one broad sheet of gold mist from sky to earth. Purple and silver and
burnt umber, with green and gray and richest orange, blended all in the
tones of the landscape, overhung now by a storm-girdled sky.
"This prairie belongs mostly to John Jacobs now and it is just as it was
when the Indians called it the Grand Prairie and the old Pawnees came down
here every summer to hunt buffalo. Some day, soon, there will be a sea of
wheat flowing over all that level plain," Thaine said.
"And up here a home with nothing to cut off a fragment of the whole
horizon. Think of seeing every sunrise and every sunset from a place like
this," Leigh said, her face aglow with an artist's love of beauty. "It's
farther to China than I used to think when I dreamed of a purple velvet
house decorated with gold knobs beyond these three headlands."
"I always did want to live on the Purple Notches," Thaine said
reminiscently. "I'm glad we came up here today."
The sound of singing came faintly up from the valley far away.
"The crowd is mobilized. See the wagons crawling out of the grove and the
civilians in citizens' clothes following in carriages," Thaine said as he
watched the picnic party pushing out toward the eastward. "I'm so glad we
aren't with them."
Leigh sat leaning forward, looking at the majestic distances lost in
purple haze, overshadowed by purple clouds with gold-broidered edges of
sunlight.
"The world is all ours for once. We see all there is of it and yet we are
alone in it up here on the purple notches I used to dream about," she said
softly.
Thaine leaned back in his buggy and looked at Leigh with the same
impenetrable expression on his countenance that was always there when she
was present.
"Leigh," he said at last, "if you didn't have Uncle Jim what would you
do?"
"I don't know," the girl answered.
"I never knew one of the fellows who didn't like you, but you, you don't
seem to care for any of them. Don't they suit you?" Thaine asked.
"Yes, but I can't think much about them."
"Why not?"
Leigh drew a long breath.
"Thaine, you have always been a good friend to me. Some day I'll tell you
why."
"Tell me now," Thaine insisted gently.
Leigh looked up, a mist of tears in her violet eyes.
"Oh, little girl, forgive me. It's because--because," Thaine hesitated.
"Because deep down where nobody ever knew I've loved you always, Leigh. I
didn't know how much until the night of my party and the day we were at
Wykerton."
"Thaine! Thaine! you mustn't say such things," Leigh cried, gripping her
hands together. "You mustn't! You mustn't!"
"But I must, and I will," Thaine declared.
"Then I won't listen to you. You are a flirt. Not satisfied with making
one girl love you, you want to make all of us care for you."
"I know what you mean. I thought I loved Jo. Then I knew I didn't, and I
felt in honor bound to keep her from finding it out. But that's a dead
failure of a business. You can't play that game and win. I've learned a
good many things this summer, and one of them is that Todd Stewart is the
only one who really and truly loves Jo, and she cares as much for him as
she does for anybody."
"How do you know?" Leigh asked as she leaned back now and faced Thaine.
"Because she doesn't know herself yet. She's too spoiled by the indulgence
of everybody and too pretty. She wants attention. But I found finally,
maybe mother helped me a little, that if she has Todd's attention she's
satisfied. More, she's comfortable. She was always on thorns with me.
Isn't that enough about Jo?"
"Well?" Leigh queried.
"No, nothing is well yet. Leigh, let me go away to the University. Let me
make a name for myself, a world-wide name, maybe, let me fight on my
frontier line and then come back and lift the burden you carry now. I want
to do big things somewhere away from the Kansas prairies, away from the
grind of the farm and country life. Oh, Leigh, you are the only girl I
ever can really love."
He leaned forward and took her hands in his own, his dark eyes, beautiful
with the light of love, looking down into hers, his face aglow with the
ambition of undisciplined youth.
"Let me help you," he pleaded.
"It is only sympathy you offer, Thaine, and I don't want sympathy. You
said that game wouldn't win with Jo. Neither would it with me. I am happy
in my work. I'm not afraid of it. The harder part is to get enough money
to buy seed and pay interest, and Uncle Jim and I will earn that. I tell
you the mortgage must be lifted by alfalfa roots just as Coburn's book
says it will be."
There was a defiant little curve on her red lips and the brave hopefulness
of her face was inspiring.
"Go and do your work, Thaine. Fight your battles, push back your frontier
line, win your wilderness, and make a world-wide name for yourself. But
when all is done don't forget that the fight your father and mother made
here, and are making today, is honorable, wonderful; and that the winning
of a Kansas farm, the kingdom of golden wheat, bordered round by golden
sunflowers, is a real kingdom. Its sinews of strength uphold the nation."
"Why, you eloquent little Jayhawker!" Thaine exclaimed. "You should have
been an orator on the side, not an artist. But all this only makes me care
the more. I'm proud of you. I'd want you for my chum if you were a boy. I
want you for my friend, but down under all this I want you for my girl
now, and afterwhile, Leigh, I want you for my own, all mine. Don't you
care for me? Couldn't you learn to care, Leigh? Couldn't you go with me to
a broader life somewhere out in the real big world? Couldn't we come some
time to the Purple Notches and build a home for just our summer days,
because we have seen these headlands all our lives?"
Leigh's head was bowed, and the pink blooms left her cheeks.
"Thaine," she said in a low voice that thrilled him with its sweetness, "I
do care. I have always cared so much that I have hoped this moment might
never come."
Thaine caught her arm eagerly.
"No! no! We can never, never be anything but friends, and if you care more
than that for me now, if you really love me--"the voice was very
soft--"don't ask me why. I cannot tell you, but I know we can never be
anything more than friends, never, never."
The sorrow on her white face, the pathos of the great violet eyes, the
firm outline of the red lips told Thaine Aydelot that words were hopeless.
He had known her every mood from childhood. She never dallied nor
hesitated. The grief of her answer went too deep for words to argue
against. And withal Thaine Aydelot was very proud and unaccustomed to
being denied what he chose to want very much.
"Leigh, will you do two things for me?" he asked at length. The sad, quiet
tone was unlike Thaine Aydelot.
"If I can," Leigh answered.
"First, will you promise me that if you want me you will send for me. If
you ever find--oh, Leigh, ever is such a long word. If you ever think you
can care enough for me to let me come back to you, you will let me know."
"When I send you the little sunflower letter Prince Quippi never answered
you may come back," Leigh said lightly, but the tears were too near for
the promise to seem trivial. "What is the other thing?"
"I want you just once to let me kiss you, Leigh. It's our good-by kiss
forever. Hereafter we are only friends, old chums, you know. Will you let
me be your lover for one minute up here on the Purple Notches, where the
whole world lies around us and nobody knows our secret? Please, Leigh.
Then I'll go away and be a man somewhere in the big world that's always
needing men."
Leigh leaned toward him, and he held her close as he kissed her red lips.
In all the stormy days that followed the memory of that moment was with
him. A moment when love, in all its purity and joy, knew its first
realization.
The next day Leigh Shirley made butter all the morning, and in the
afternoon she tried to retouch her sketch of sunflowers as she had seen
the shadows dull the brightness of their petals in the valley below the
Purple Notches.
The same day Thaine Aydelot left home for the winter, taking the memory of
the most sacred moment of his life with him out into the big world that is
always needing men.