About five o'clock the next day, Lawson, from sheer restlessness, was
one of a crowd of University men waiting on the platform of the station
in the ravine for the trains from the west and south already due;
chaffing, singing, laughing, guying, cheering, they were waiting,
according to the daily custom of a holiday hour, for whatever fun the
arriving coaches might furnish.
The electric arcs swung white light up and down the station, the smoke
of a sidetracked freight hung low and heavy in the valley, the teams of
the afternoon drivers were rattling across the high bridge, their
occupants looking with laughing interest on the scene below. Suddenly
with shriek and roar the Southern train was in.
"Vir--gin--i--a."
"Vir--gin--i--a."
"Rah--rah--rah!"
The men gave a great yell. A young girl in one of the coaches flung up a
window and looked out.
"Rah--rah--rah!"
The young girl snapped down the window. Another face, curious and
likewise pretty, showed at the pane. The young men were wildly
enthusiastic.
"Vir--gin--i--a."
"Vir--gin--i--a--" The yell drowned all other sounds, and Lawson was
astonished to see, as it ended, Frances springing from her trap a few
yards away and hastening forward. The conductor waited gallantly at the
steps of one of the coaches, the porter came down another flight, laden
with bundles, and at the door, their cheeks showing red with suppressed
fun and excitement behind their veils, appeared the two pretty young
women.
"Vir--gin--i--a--." The yell died away as the men saw the professor's
daughter greeting the arrivals with laughing welcome. They fell to
guying each other mercilessly. But Lawson, standing not far away, came
at once to Frances' assistance.
"Let me help you!" He reached for some of the bundles.
"Oh, thank you! Mr. Lawson, these are my Richmond friends, Miss Rowan,
Mr. Lawson! Miss Martin!"
The young women held out their gloved hands and Lawson welcomed them
impressively. He assisted them into the trap with careful gallantry, the
strangers, both of them, in the back seat, the packages stored at their
feet. Frances was subduing the antics of Starlight, who after standing
quietly when there was need, took occasion to seem shocked at the engine
now that his driver was in place and he felt the touch of the reins on
his bit, and to stand protestingly on his hind feet and paw the air.
The strangers were frightened. "Can you manage him, Frances?" cried one.
"Oh, let me get out!" the other pleaded.
"We'll come up on the street car!" Miss Rowan declared, white with fear.
"Sit still!" commanded Frances, shortly. "Come down, Starlight! behave
yourself!" she reached for the whip.
"Don't strike him! There's no telling what he would do!" begged the
visitors. Lawson, near, stalwart and interested, seemed a godsend.
"Do come with us!" pleaded Elizabeth Martin, who in all emergencies
turned to the nearest man.
"There's no need," he began. Starlight had all fours on solid earth once
more.
"Jump in!" laughed Frances, nodding to the empty seat; she pulled
Starlight around, waited a second for Lawson to get in, and then came
down sharply on Starlight's flank with the whip. The horse made a
plunge, straight for the platform, the men scattered right and left, and
Starlight went snorting up the winding road to the street above.
"Let Mr. Lawson drive!" besought Miss Martin.
Frances looked laughingly at the young man beside her. That other
opportunity and this were all she could have wished to put them on a
commonplace footing. The old position and power and knowledge to hold
her own, were all she wished for. Lawson looking into the clear, gray
eyes felt a thrill of gratitude for the fortune which had befriended
him.
Still, her answer may have held some hidden meaning for him, for he
flushed a little when he heard it. "I prefer to hold my own reins
myself," she said carelessly; "you know I never would stand much
managing."
Lawson turned to talk to the young women behind him; so, he could watch
furtively Frances' face and her cheek where the rose hue flickered, the
white in the midst of it.
The streets were filled with the afternoon crowd, students in groups or
alone, young women, older women, children; fancy turnouts and farmers'
wagons, high carts, and heavy low ones filled with cordwood, young women
in short skirts and heavy boots, young women in all the finery of new
fall clothes and furs, loitering by the houses set flush upon the
street, or by box-hedged gardens, the houses far back, or by smooth
lawns.
The crowd was dense, but through it Frances glimpsed Edward Montague.
He had seen her a minute earlier and was watching her wistfully, with a
keen pang at his heart that now when he had seen her first for so long a
time, she should be one of a gay party with that handsome young fellow
at her side. She drew rein, soon as she saw him, and Edward hurried out
to her.
"So glad to see you, Mr. Montague!" She leaned and gave him her hand.
"Let me introduce you!" She named the young women. "You know Mr.
Lawson?"
"Happy to have that pleasure!" said Lawson stiffly, remembering Susan's
words.
"You must come and see us!" with a backward glance to her guests.
"I shall. I have just been out to your house."
"You have?"
"I met your father at the post-office; he told me you were home!"
"And forgot I was going to the station?"
"He did not mention it, but," quickly as if in defence of his absent
friend, "I left him waiting for you at home."
"We will hurry then; good-by!"
"Good-by!" He did not add that the professor had insisted on his return,
and that he had accepted, but he carried with him a happy consciousness
of the fact.
Frances had the same cordial invitation for Lawson, when they parted.
She knew well that the young city women visiting the University in the
middle of the term expected a good time, and a good time chiefly along
one line. So while the professor was welcoming them in the hall, she
lingered on the doorstep.
"You must help me make them enjoy their visit," she said, knowing she
could not ask a better aide.
"I will, I shall be delighted!" answered Lawson fervidly.
"And bring your friends!"
"I shall bring them this evening."
"I wonder--Elizabeth, Mary, are you very tired?" she called through the
open door.
"Not a bit!" they chorussed.
"Very well--this evening!" She gave him her hand. He stood a little to
the side of the step and they were out of sight through the half-opened
door. He held her hand closely and looked straight in her eyes,
questioningly, compellingly, but Frances looked back calmly and
carelessly, and wrenched herself free. "Good-by!" she called from the
door.
Lawson went on to his room and threw himself moodily into the chair
before the fire. It was smouldering. He punched it viciously and banged
the blower over it.
"Beastliest way of heating a fellow's room I ever saw!" he grumbled, "I
vow I'll freeze before mid-winter!"
He slipped into his smoking-jacket, turned on the glare of the light,
pulled table and Morris chair before the fire, and sat down, book in
hand, to some pretence of study, but other cases than legal thronged his
mind. He flung the note-book on the table, wrenched off the blower, and
then, with a half sigh of content at the blazing coals in the grate, he
sank back in his chair. He watched the flicker of the flames in the
chimney's mouth; yellow and white and red and violet, the tongues of
burning gas flared up the rough, black chimney's mouth, and the coals
below glowed red and redder. But Lawson, looking at them dreamingly, was
seeing the way he must go, and was growing stronger in his
determination.
He would win her, yes! He had begun merely as a diversion from the study
he sometimes liked and sometimes disliked, sometimes dreamed to win fame
through and sometimes was intolerantly impatient of, counting, in a
bitter moment, nothing worth effort.
He had begun, too, by draping traditions about Frances, every one of
which, she had freed herself from; and he had ended by unquestioning
acceptance of the fact that this woman, puzzling beyond his ken, was the
one thing of the hour he desired.
The memory of Susan's words only strengthened his obstinacy. The shield
Frances kept about her, thin as gauze, impenetrable as steel, which he
had fended aside once and once again, but made his fight the more
interesting. He had no fault to find at any point of the
situation,--only a wild impatience that he should have been thrust back
when he felt attainment within his grasp.