It was ten days later that, as Lawson hurried down the corridor past the
professor's house, the curtains of the library window were stirred
slightly and a skinny finger beckoned him.
He was still scornfully angry, but he was anxious; he stopped. The door
was set ajar and Susan's face peered through the crack. She was grinning
joyously.
"Come inside!" she whispered.
He frowned, but he obeyed her. With one lightning glance about him and
one swift memory of the last moment he stood there, he shut the door
behind him and waited to hear what the bent and shrivelled old woman had
to say.
She drew a paper from the folds of her dress. "Hyar 'tis!" she
exclaimed, handling the envelope lovingly. "I cyarnt read, but I'd know
dis writin', anywhars; 'tis straight up an' down, an' clear an' hones'!"
Lawson seized it quickly. The envelope was directed to Mr. Robert
Holloway. He gave a smothered exclamation. The writing was clear and
decided, the postmark, "Keswick." The glance he flashed Susan was
scathing, but she stood innocently attentive; her manner might have
deceived a man of her own State; it did deceive Lawson with his western
ignorance of her race.
"She don't write much, Miss Frances don't." Susan had no word to say of
the daily message over the telephone, and Lawson himself never thought
of that way of communication.
"She allus was mighty kerles 'bout writin'."
"And she's there, as near as that?"
Susan nodded. "Dat's whar she was when she writ, but she 's visitin'
'roun', an' we nebber did know jes' whar she was; but dat's all right."
Lawson hurried into the library. The daily paper of the town lay on the
table; he turned the pages to the railroad schedule, Susan eyeing him
watchfully from the door.
His morning lecture was important, he could not cut it. There were no
trains he could make down and back in the afternoon; he would drive. His
mind full of the determination he came out in the hall. He did not even
notice Susan, eagerly expectant, as she stood there, of another bill to
add to her hoard. His eyes were fixed on the carved newel post where
Frances' trembling hand had lain when last he had seen her. Could the
distrustful old darkey have read his heart she might have forgiven him
and befriended him, for at that moment it held nothing but strong,
intense love for the girl she herself idolized, and the resolve to see
her, to make his peace with her, to overcome whatever barrier, ghostly
or real, had risen between them. He was not a whit afraid of any rival.
The only effect such declaration had had was to crystallize his dreaming
to decision for action, and to fairly madden his impatient nature that
was held in leash, action being impossible.
He was the first in the dining-hall that noon. While the sun was still
overhead, he was driving behind his bays out of town, over the dusky
bridge where the rafters were draped with cobwebs, fold upon fold and
dusty and gray,--and where the Rapidan ran deep and yellow far
underneath, up the long winding hill from whose top he might see the
rolling hills, the house-tops and spires of the far-stretching town, and
circling peaks, and, there to the right, the crest of Monticello. But he
never turned his head. He saw his horses and the hard red clay road,
perfect in this season as a stretch of asphalt; hills closed about him,
as he sped on, or opened showing valley and mountain, bare washed
hillsides vividly red, or fresh-plowed fields, or pale green shoots of
wheat over fields of brick-dust hue, or sere pasture lands, or stubble
fields. Beyond the care for his driving he saw nothing but a vision of a
drooping face, the rose-red of confusion flushing it, downcast eyes and
tremulous mouth. He dreamed of it, but it was something more than
dreaming, it was dreaming translated to resolve. He saw nothing ever
that he wanted, without reaching out strong hands for its possession.
He was doubly resolved, doubly strong for this, according to the
intensity of his desire.
At the village of Keswick, where the road crossed the railway, he
stopped for information, and, having gotten it, rode on. Soon he was off
the main road and driving along a way which led through thick woods with
many branching roads right and left. His directions were confused. Far
down in the forest he paused before one of the branchings, wondering if
this were the way, and in the silence he heard wheels and waited. The
tread of the team was slow. He could hear the creaking of the wheels,
the joltings of a farm wagon and a boy's voice, fresh and clear, urging
on the horses. Over and above it all was the low resonant song of the
pines and of the bare branches of the forest trees, and the sound of
dead leaves rustling in the wind; and for a moment the young man's mood
was in sympathy with the mood of nature, sad and solemn, there in the
heart of the woods in the hush of a November day. Then the wagon came in
sight.
"Hello!" he called out cheerily, "is this the way to Mr. Carroll's?"
"Yes!" cried the boy, "drive straight ahead until you get to the big
pine tree; there are right many turns and wood roads in there; you'd
better let me go first."
"Going this way?"
The boy nodded. Lawson pulled out of the road and the boy drove abreast
of him. He had a wagon-load of dead branches he had been gathering up
through the woods. He reined in to say, "Mr. Carroll is my father."
Lawson looked his friendly interest.
"I've been getting wood for the kitchen stove; it burns better than the
green wood," the boy volunteered by way of conversation as he drove
ahead.