I
"Good morning!" The voice was cheery, insistent. It brought the young
girl on the porch above to the white wooden rail about its edge.
"Good morning!" she called back lightly.
"Beautiful day!" persisted the young man saying inanely the first words
he could think of for the sole purpose of keeping her there in sight.
"Lovely!" cried the girl enthusiastically, leaning a little further over
the rail. A vine, which had climbed the round pillar and twined its
tendrils about the porch's edge, set waving by the slight motion, sent a
shower of scarlet leaves about the young man below; one fluttered upon
his breast, he caught it and held it over his heart as if it were a
message from her to him; and then he fastened it in his button-hole.
The young woman laughed carelessly as he did so; she was too used to
students to exaggerate the meaning of their words or deeds, and there
was no answering flash in her gray eyes as she looked down on him.
"Don't you think it too fine to stay indoors?"
"I'm not in," answered the girl turning her head to look up at the blue
arch of the sky overhead.
"Oh, well"--the young fellow bit his lip, and flushed hotly,--"you know
it's--Come, take a walk across the quadrangle," he added boldly.
"There's no one around."
Frances leaned further for a survey of campus and corridor. "All right!"
she cried, and he could hear her footsteps as she ran down the polished
stair in the big old house. When she opened the great hall door she was
charmingly demure. "Glad to see you Mr. Lawson!" she exclaimed
mischievously to the young man, who stood hat in hand by the wide step.
"Delighted, I'm sure!" he flashed back, holding the hand she extended as
long as he dared,--so long that the young woman had drawn herself up
quite straight and was looking gravely along the corridor when he
released it.
"You haven't mailed your letter!" she said looking at the missive he
still held.
"Oh! and I came--"
"There's the box, don't forget it!"
"Which way are you going?"
"Up to the Rotunda, of course."
"See how it commands everything else," said Frances, pausing at the
sunken, well-worn steps in the terraced corridor to look about her. The
morning shadows of the maples on the quadrangle stretched to the brick
pavement at their feet, scarlet and yellow leaves, blown across the
green grass, rustled about them; the picturesque buildings on the other
side the campus loomed in deep shadowings, for the sun was yet behind
them. A late student slammed his door and went hurrying down the
corridor, his footsteps echoing along the way.
"It is beautiful!" said Frances softly, as she went up the few steps.
"Beautiful, yes, and you don't appreciate it half as much--"
"Appreciate it!"
"Don't you hear the men raving over it everywhere? Those from a good
long distance especially--Oregon, for instance, that's my state you
know; but you Virginians--"
"Are not given to boasting!" said the girl proudly.
"There you are! You are"--"a queer lot," he was about to say, but
remembered himself in time. "You are--" he blundered; "one scarce knows
how to take you."
"Don't take us!" said the girl quietly.
"Now, Miss Holloway," deprecated the young man, "you see, the things
other people think you would be proudest of, you don't care for at all,
and the things other people don't care for--"
"Perhaps there are some people who don't talk about the things they care
for most. Perhaps," she went on, her flushing cheek and darkening eye
belying her light tone, "that's a secret you haven't found out, and it
may be the reason you don't know how to take us," she repeated.
"I'm not going to quarrel about it a morning like this," declared the
young man as they went up the wide steps to the Rotunda and along the
marble floor of the east wing which roofed over the rooms devoted to the
learning of law.
"No, nothing is worth it," answered the girl as she leaned against the
balustrade at the edge and looked off towards the mountains, and they
both were silent.
It was a scene the young man had not yet gotten used to, nor the girl
either, though she was born in its sight. Beyond the stretch of the
outer grounds of the University, beyond the far-reaching roofs and
spires of Charlottesville and the narrow valley of the Rapidan, rose,
high and bold, the last spur of the Ragged Mountains. The blue haze
veiled it even at this early hour; the frost clothing much of it showed
all colors save those of sombre hue; and, set on its crown, just where
it began to dip downwards, shone the whiteness of Monticello.
"He was a great man!" said the young man presently.
The girl nodded. No one ever sat thus, the buildings of the University
stretching at their feet, Monticello gleaming on its mountain crest and
asked the name of the man they lauded.