The professor was deeply interested in Edward Montague's plans; well as
he had known his father, there was much of that father's later life of
which he had no tidings. He had to learn what a house full of children
was back there in the valley home, had to learn how Edward was compelled
to give up his hope of college training--and this he learned between the
lines--and how he had resolved instead to strike out for his own
fortunes.
"I should have gone back to farming anyhow," the young man answered to
some expression of the professor's, "it is my bent, you know, but it
needs brains and training as well as any other profession," a little
proudly, for he thought the professor would challenge it.
But it was the professor's own deep rooted belief. He listened
delightedly as his young guest went on to speak of the farm he had
bought and what he hoped to make of it. The old Northrup estate, some
three miles out from Charlottesville, was a well known one throughout
all Albemarle. A big brick house on the sunny slope of a mountain whose
crest towered to the sky-line behind it, it had held many people, loved
and known in the state, and had been the centre of a gay full life. But
the old life had drifted away from it; some of those who had lived in
the brick walls slept in the graves under the thick oaks not far away
from the house; the rest were scattered, north, south, and west. The
place had gotten into the hands of speculators. A northern farmer,
thinking to make his fortune on cheap lands in a sunny climate, had
bought it, but to face labor conditions of which he was ignorant and to
find the only hopes of the fortune he sought were in a country store. He
had nearly lost his life fording one of the mountain streams, between
store and farm, after a freshet, and was desperately afraid of a second
adventure. He sold it for nearly half its cost. Montague's investment
had a good beginning and a better promise.
The professor kept him talking of it to the last moment he dared keep
away from the lecture hall. "Come and see us," he urged when he was at
last compelled to go. "It's going to be lonesome out there"--the estate
was away from the beaten track--"come and take dinner with us, Sunday?"
Edward, glancing at Frances' bright face, thanked him as warmly as he
had spoken. "I will walk down as far as the hall with you," he said. "I
have some business in town I must attend to;" and he added shyly, "I
shall be glad if you and Miss Frances will come and see me when I am
established. Dr. Randall's wife will come with you, I think."
"That we will," assured the professor heartily.
"Bachelor's hall isn't very attractive," the young man went on
deprecatingly; "the house is very bare."
"Pshaw! we'll come and help brighten it up, won't we Frances?"
"'A house's best ornament is the presence of a friend,'" quoted Edward,
a glint of mischief in his eyes as he went to say good-by.
The professor had not been so pleased in many a day. The young man, the
son of his old friend, fulfilled all his traditions; well-born,
well-bred, well-read, with the advantage of a pleasing personality, and,
a woman would have added, a face none the less handsome for the look of
grave determination upon it. Then, too, the professor, being a student
of the classics, was interested in agriculture by way of contrast, and
was filled with theories concerning the farming possibilities of his own
state, and most particularly those of his own county. There was not an
experiment which had been tried there in the last twenty years that he
had not at his fingers' ends: the Englishman with his fancy breed of
sheep or cows, the stock farmer with his registered horses, the man who
had turned his fields into apple orchards, the man who had planted his
hillsides with vineyards,--he could talk of all far more fluently than
the workers.
There was a vineyard on the Northrup place famed as being of the best.
The professor went across the quadrangle talking eagerly of it and of
the merits of Concords and Catawbas and Isabellas; and he parted with an
assurance of an early visit.
He went, and came back more enthusiastic than ever; went again and
carried Susan for a stay at her log cabin a half mile down the valley
from the main road.
Three or four times a year Susan went "home." She would make her way
through the rotting gate and weed-worn pathway, open the battered door
and window to flood the cabin with air and sunshine, fling feather-bed
and pillows and quilts to the sweetening winds; would war with dust
within and weeds without; and then, when all was in order again, would
sit in the worn doorway, her hands folded, looking down the narrow
valley threaded by the mountain stream and up to the purple tops closing
in the horizon. Long thoughts went through her mind, too narrow to be
forgetful, bitter-sweet memories of the childish feet that had pattered
about the doorway, of her strife, and her happiness. When the team to
take her back was in sight she would lock her door and go down the
pathway to the road, her hand on the key in her pocket. The feeling of
its possession gave her strength to lose her own life in the life of
others.
But always when she clambered into the trap it was with one question on
her lips. "I wonder whar Bill is?" Sometimes she added, "I spec he's
dead, I'se mightily feared he is!" and sometimes "He mus' be libin'
somewhars; if he was dead I spec I'd aheard it somehow."
As for Frances, her father found it hard to interest her in the old
Northrup estate. She had another enthusiasm. The football team was in
hard training. They played every afternoon on a little plateau between
the rolling hills opposite the terraces of the Rotunda. The roadway
winding some twenty feet above the grounds between it and the "Gym" was
crowded on practice hour with carriages and interested watchers.
It was then near the close of the short afternoon. The sunset lights,
were the day fair, would be shining westward; trailing, scarlet, fleecy
clouds would be floating overhead, clamorous crows flocking homeward.
One by one the carriages of many drivers, going one way or another, but
all returning in time to watch the team work, would pull in on the road
overlooking the grounds till it was filled with champing horses and
grinding wheels.
Frances was there always until the men went for a last run around the
grounds, sprang up the steps, darted across the roadway and up to the
"Gym." Then Starlight went spinning away for a drive in the fast closing
afternoon. It was an old habit, too, of driving the horse to the stables
and walking home. The tingling air made it delightful exercise. The
streets were filled at the late afternoon hour with all the town, it
seemed, a long procession out and in,--young girls and older women and
men strolling out Universitywards; students in pairs and groups, and
crowds lounging down toward the centre of the town, and many a student
promenading with a young woman beside him. It was the holiday hour of
the town.
Somehow, somewhere in that procession of men and maids would be one man
walking alone and searching the crowd eagerly, for all his air of
careless assurance, for a young woman who walked briskly with shoulders
well back and head in air, whose eyes were shining with health and
content and whose lips were curving with happy thoughts, and though his
life held bright days in spite of an old sorrow long past, and though
there were bright days to come, there would never be any again with the
intangible charm of the chilly afternoons faded well-nigh to dark, the
evening star shining clearly in the pale green west, the tops of the
tall trees rocking against the "primrose sky," and those two walking
gayly along the paths of the University homewards.
Sometimes there was a moment's pause in the library, sometimes an
evening visit; but strangely enough, Lawson with his hard training had
settled down to hard study likewise, and was giving an unexpected turn
to the Faculty's thoughts of him; for those with whom he had first come
in touch feared the results of his wealth and good-natured easy
comradeship and not altogether admirable ways of living, upon the
younger men.
Through all his intercourse with Frances there was the most delightful
comradeship, the girl yielding unconsciously to a friendliness from
which she had always steadily held herself.
True, Lawson was fairly irresistible. The strength of his nature which
had much savagery under its gloss, the beauty of his physique, showing
better each day of regular hours and cleanly living, the indomitableness
of his resolve which set itself on winning always the want of the hour,
were a power could scarce be turned aside.
Fresh from the keen exercise and the shower-bath, smart, immaculate,
strong with the impulses of an untrained nature, the crowd faded into
insignificance when Frances would glimpse him swinging down the street.
He had ceased to ask permission to turn back with her; it was a matter
of course. Their talk usually was of the lightest.
"Had a nice drive?" he might ask.
Frances would plunge into account of Starlight's misdemeanors.
"It's lovely walking," he might say inanely when she had finished,
looking down at the girl's cheek, red like a rose with a clear spot of
white in the centre of the red--"the rose's heart," he told himself,
watching the flicker of it.
"Mr. Saunders played well to-day!" Frances would say enthusiastically,
and they would plunge at once into a keen discussion of every point of
the play, of the game, of the teams, and of the match games and of the
first big one soon to be played on their own grounds.
Lawson began to have a feeling he was playing for more than the victory
of the team game. He grew more and more anxious about it each day, and
more and more set in his resolve to win. Once only had he played a
losing part in life and the thought of that when it touched him, filled
him with sickening revolt.
"We'll win!" he declared one afternoon, after a discussion of the other
players.
"You are sure?"
"Quite!"
They were standing at her door. The quadrangle was deep in twilight, the
lights pricking the dusk here and there; some students were chaffing
each other gayly far up the corridor, a negro lad was hurrying with a
hod of coal for a belated fire he should have started an hour ago.
Frances was leaning back against the door, her hand behind her on the
door-knob. "It's well to feel confident!" she said lightly, fighting
against something she heard in the tones of his voice.
"Is it? Should one always be confident?" he asked eagerly.
"It's not a safe rule always," she fended. She heard the little
exclamation he made under his breath. "But it is a help generally," she
added, foolishly striving to undo the hurt she scarcely comprehended.
"And there's no rule for it, like everything else, but a blind
follow-your-leader," he said bitterly.
"If the leader be wise," laughing nervously.
There was a second's silence, and in it they heard footsteps hurrying
along the corridor. The quadrangle was not a secluded spot even at its
quietest. Frances fumbled at the door-knob.
"Let me open it for you!"
His hand came upon hers in the dusk, held it closely, tightly. The shock
of the joy of its touch, the sound of her hurried breath went to his
head. He followed her into the hall and shut the door behind him leaning
against it, looming masterfully against its darkness. The light from the
globe overhead cast a white circle on the polished floor; they were
outside it. Beyond the half-drawn portière they glimpsed the professor,
back towards them.
Lawson dared say no word, he only stood a second, a minute, caressing
her with a long look from head to foot, and with the look of loving,
was mixed joyous delighted triumph; then he opened the door softly and
was gone out into the darkness.
Frances drew a shivering sigh, as she went slowly into the library. A
vague uneasiness possessed her. She dreaded even the thought of seeing
him again. Next afternoon she was off for a hard ride the other way from
the practice grounds. Lawson, wandering aimlessly about the quadrangle
at twilight, saw her hurrying up the corridor holding her habit tightly
about her. He hastened across to find a closed door and blank windows.
Inside, Frances was telephoning for a boy to take Starlight to the
stables and then making a gay pretence of weariness and hunger to Susan.
So for a day or two.
When they met again Lawson was icy with anger. Frances had avoided the
practice grounds, but the fascination of the game overcame her. She
drove up at last, and sat looking down on the players below.
Lawson, for some reason, was not one of them. Frances did not see him
at first, but he, sitting on the last of the steps sunken in the
terrace, was chaffing the players and talking lightly to the men about
him. He turned at the sound of wheels, and saw her, as she pulled up,
sharply silhouetted against the hill-slope beyond. He was elaborately
unconscious of her. By and by the Beauty drove in behind Frances. Lawson
was at her side in an instant, doffing his cap to Frances as he passed
her. She sat quite still, disdaining to turn her head at the sound of
the gay voices and laughter behind her, and watched the practice below
without seeing a point.
Other carriages had passed in before her and on the side; she was held
prisoner to the end of the hour. Then Lawson, going by as she held
Starlight's rein taut and looked to left and right for chance of escape,
stopped suddenly at the wheel. He had not intended it. It was the look
on her face impelled him. Had it been either sorrowful or scornful he
would have read her mood and passed her by; she was neither, and, being
puzzled, he paused.
"Good play!" he began, feeling for an opening to the conversation.
"Yes!" she assented, turning her head impatiently--a carriage had just
pulled across the road, blocking her in.
"I didn't see much of it," he blundered. There was not a flicker of
expression on her face to show she saw it, only polite interest.
The carriage pulled out of the way. Frances leaned for her whip.
The young man's haughtiness broke in an instant, "Take me in with you!"
he pleaded, though his pleading startled himself as much as her. "It's
delightful for a drive; I've been shut in all day."
Frances turned laughing eyes towards him. "Jump in!" she cried.
And though there were moments enough, as they spun along, for either
protest or pleading, the young man dared neither.