The afternoon before, when Mr. Sidney Graham had returned to his office
from seeing Shirley to the elevator, he stood several minutes looking
thoughtfully at the chair where she had sat, while he carefully drew on
his gloves.
There had been something interesting and appealing in the spirited face
of the girl, with her delicate features and wistful eyes. He could not
seem to get away from it. It had left an impression of character and a
struggle with forces of which in his sheltered life he had had only a
vague conception. It had left him with the feeling that she was
stronger in some ways than himself, and he did not exactly like the
sensation of it. He had always aimed to be a strong character himself;
and for a young man who had inherited two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars on coming of age, and double that amount two years later, with
the prospect of another goodly sum when his paternal grandfather's
estate was divided, he had done very well indeed. He had stuck to
business ever since leaving college, where he had been by no means a
nonentity either in studies or in athletics; and he had not been
spoiled by the adulation that a young man of his good looks and wealth
and position always receives in society. He had taken society as a
sort of duty, but had never given it an undue proportion of his time
and thoughts. Notably he was a young man of fine balance and strong
self-control, not given to impulsive or erratic likes and dislikes; and
he could not understand why a shabby little person with a lock of gold
over one crimson cheek, and tired, discouraged lights in her had made
so strong an impression upon him.
It had been his intention just before Shirley's arrival to leave the
office at once and perhaps drop in on Miss Harriet Hale. If the hour
seemed propitious, he would take her for a spin in his new racing-car
that even now waited in the street below; but somehow suddenly his plan
did not attract him deeply. He felt the need of being by himself.
After a turn or two up and down his luxurious office he took the
elevator down to the street floor, dismissed his chauffeur, and whirled
off in his car, taking the opposite direction from that which would
have taken him to the Hale residence. Harriet Hale was a very pretty
girl with a brilliant mind and a royal fortune. She could entertain
him and stimulate him tremendously, and sometimes he almost thought the
attraction was strong enough to last him through life; but Harriet Hale
would not be able to appreciate his present mood nor explain to him why
the presence in his office for fifteen minutes of a nervy little
stenographer who was willing to live in a barn should have made him so
vaguely dissatisfied with himself. If he were to try to tell her about
it, he felt sure he would meet with laughing taunts and brilliant
sarcasm. She would never understand.
He took little notice of where he was going, threading his way
skilfully through the congested portion of the city and out into the
comparatively empty highways, until at last he found himself in the
suburbs. The name of the street as he slowed up at a grade crossing
gave him an idea. Why shouldn't he take a run out and hunt up that
barn for himself? What had she said about it, where it was? He
consulted the memorandum he had written down for his father's
edification. "Glenside Road, near Allister Avenue." He further
searched his memory. "Big stone barn, wide approach like a grand
staircase, tall tree overhanging, brook." This surely ought to be
enough to help him identify it. There surely were not a flock of stone
barns in that neighborhood that would answer that description.
He turned into Glenside Road with satisfaction, and set a sharp watch
for the names of the cross-avenues with a view to finding Allister
Avenue, and once he stopped and asked a man in an empty milk-wagon
whether he knew where Allister Avenue was, and was informed that it was
"on a piece, about five miles."
There was something interesting in hunting up his own strange barn, and
he began to look about him and try to see things with the eyes of the
girl who had just called upon him.
Most of the fields were green with spring, and there was an air of
things doing over them, as if growing were a business that one could
watch, like house-cleaning and paper-hanging and painting. Graham had
never noticed before that the great bare spring out-of-doors seemed to
have a character all its own, and actually to have an attraction. A
little later when the trees were out, and all the orchards in bloom,
and the wild flowers blowing in the breeze, he could rave over spring;
but he had never seen the charm of its beginnings before. He wondered
curiously over the fact of his keen appreciation now.
The sky was all opalescent with lovely pastel colors along the horizon,
and a few tall, lank trees had put on a soft gauze of green over their
foreheads like frizzes, discernible only to a close observer. The air
was getting chilly with approaching night, and the bees were no longer
proclaiming with their hum the way to the skunk-cabbages; but a
delicate perfume was in the air, and though perhaps Graham had never
even heard of skunk-cabbages, he drew in long breaths of sweetness, and
let out his car over the smooth road with a keen delight.
Behind a copse of fine old willows, age-tall and hoary with weather,
their extremities just hinting of green, as they stood knee-deep in the
brook on its way to a larger stream, he first caught sight of the old
barn.
He knew it at once by something indefinable. Its substantial stone
spaciousness, its mossy roof, its arching tree, and the brook that
backed away from the wading willows, up the hillside, under the rail
fence, and ran around its side, all were unmistakable. He could see it
just as the girl had seen it, and something in him responded to her
longing to live there and make it into a home. Perhaps he was a
dreamer, even as she, although he passed in the world of business for a
practical young man. But anyhow he slowed his car down and looked at
the place intently as he passed by. He was convinced that this was the
place. He did not need to go on and find Allister Avenue--though he
did, and then turned back again, stopping by the roadside. He got out
of the car, looking all the time at the barn and seeing it in the light
of the girl's eyes. As he walked up the grassy slope to the front
doors, he had some conception of what it must be to live so that this
would seem grand as a home. And he showed he was not spoiled by his
life in the lap of luxury, for he was able to get a glimpse of the
grandeur of the spot and the dignity of the building with its long
simple lines and rough old stones.
The sun was just going down as he stood there looking up. It touched
the stones, and turned them into jewelled settings, glorifying the old
structure into a palace. The evening was sweet with the voices of
birds not far away. One above the rest, clear and occasional, high in
the elm-tree over the barn, a wood-thrush spilling its silver notes
down to the brook that echoed them back in a lilt. The young man took
off his hat and stood in the evening air, listening and looking. He
could see the poetry of it, and somehow he could see the girl's face as
if she stood there beside him, her wonderful eyes lighted as they had
been when she told him how beautiful it was there. She was right. It
was beautiful, and it was a lovely soul that could see it and feel what
a home this would make in spite of the ignominy of its being nothing
but a barn. Some dim memory, some faint remembrance, of a stable long
ago, and the glory of it, hovered on the horizon of his mind; but his
education had not been along religious lines, and he did not put the
thing into a definite thought. It was just a kind of sensing of a
great fact of the universe which he perhaps might have understood in a
former existence.
Then he turned to the building itself. He was practical, after all,
even if he was a dreamer. He tried the big padlock. How did they get
into this thing? How had the girl got in? Should he be obliged to
break into his own barn?
He walked down the slope, around to the back, and found the entrance
close to the ladder; but the place was quite dark within the great
stone walls, and he peered into the gloomy basement with disgust at the
dirt and murk. Only here and there, where a crack looked toward the
setting sun, a bright needle of light sent a shaft through to let one
see the inky shadows. He was half turning back, but reflected that the
girl had said she went up a ladder to the middle floor. If she had
gone, surely he could. Again that sense that she was stronger than he
rebuked him. He got out his pocket flashlight and stepped within the
gloom determinedly. Holding the flash-light above his head, he
surveyed his property disapprovingly; then with the light in his hand
he climbed in a gingerly way up the dusty rounds to the middle floor.
As he stood alone in the dusky shadows of the big barn, with the
blackness of the hay-loft overhead, the darkness pierced only by the
keen blade of the flash-light and a few feebler darts from the sinking
sun, the poetry suddenly left the old barn, and a shudder ran through
him. To think of trying to live here! How horrible!
Yet still that same feeling that the girl had more nerve than he had
forced him to walk the length and breadth of the floor, peering
carefully into the dark corners and acquainting himself fully with the
bare, big place; and also to climb part way up the ladder to the loft
and send his flash-light searching through its dusty hay-strewn
recesses.
With a feeling utterly at variance with the place he turned away in
disgust, and made his way down the ladders again, out into the sunset.
In that short time the evening had arrived. The sky had flung out
banners and pennants, pencilled by a fringe of fine saplings like
slender brown threads against the sky. The earth was sinking into
dusk, and off by the brook the frogs were tinkling like tiny answering
silver rattles. The smell of earth and growing stole upon his senses,
and even as he gazed about him a single star burned into being in the
clear ether above him. The birds were still now, and the frogs with
the brook for accompaniment held the stage. Once more the charm of the
place stole over him; and he stood with hat removed, and wondered no
longer that the girl was willing to live here. A conviction grew
within him that somehow he must make it possible for her to do so, that
things would not be right and as they ought to be unless he did. In
fact, he had a curiosity to have her do it and see whether it could be
done.
He went slowly down to his car at last with lingering backward looks.
The beauty of the situation was undoubted, and called for admiration.
It was too bad that only a barn should occupy it. He would like to see
a fine house reared upon it. But somehow in his heart he was glad that
it was not a fine house standing there against the evening sky, and
that it was possible for him to let the girl try her experiment of
living there. Was it possible? Could there be any mistake? Could it
be that he had not found the right barn, after all? He must make sure,
of course.
But still he turned his car toward home, feeling reasonably sure that
he had found the right spot; and, as he drove swiftly back along the
way, he was thinking, and all his thoughts were woven with the softness
of the spring evening and permeated with its sounds. He seemed to be
in touch with nature as he had never been before.
At dinner that night he asked his father:
"Did Grandfather Graham ever live out on the old Glenside Road, father?"
A pleasant twinkle came in the elder Graham's eyes.
"Sure!" he said. "Lived there myself when I was five years old, before
the old man got to speculating and made his pile, and we got too grand
to stay in a farmhouse. I can remember rolling down a hill under a
great big tree, and your Uncle Billy pushing me into the brook that ran
at the foot. We boys used to wade in that brook, and build dams, and
catch little minnows, and sail boats. It was great sport. I used to
go back holidays now and then after I got old enough to go away to
school. We were living in town then, but I used to like to go out and
stay at the farmhouse. It was rented to a queer old dick; but his wife
was a good sort, and made the bulliest apple turnovers for us boys--and
doughnuts! The old farmhouse burned down a year or so ago. But the
barn is still standing. I can remember how proud your grandfather was
of that barn. It was finer than any barn around, and bigger. We boys
used to go up in the loft, and tumble in the hay; and once when I was a
little kid I got lost in the hay, and Billy had to dig me out. I can
remember how scared I was when I thought I might have to stay there
forever, and have nothing to eat."
"Say, father," said the son, leaning forward eagerly, "I've a notion
I'd like to have that old place in my share. Do you think it could be
arranged? The boys won't care, I'm sure; they're always more for the
town than the country."
"Why, yes, I guess that could be fixed up. You just see Mr. Dalrymple
about it. He'll fix it up. Billy's boy got that place up river, you
know. Just see the lawyer, and he'll fix it up. No reason in the
world why you shouldn't have the old place if you care for it. Not
much in it for money, though, I guess. They tell me property's way
down out that direction now."
The talk passed to other matters, and Sidney Graham said nothing about
his caller of the afternoon, nor of the trip he had taken out to see
the old barn. Instead, he took his father's advice, and saw the family
lawyer, Mr. Dalrymple, the first thing in the morning.
It was all arranged in a few minutes. Mr. Dalrymple called up the
other heirs and the children's guardian. An office-boy hurried out
with some papers, and came back with the signatures of heirs and
guardians, who happened all to be within reach; and presently the
control of the old farm was formally put into the hands of Mr. Sidney
Graham, he having signed certain papers agreeing to take this as such
and such portion of his right in the whole estate.
It had been a simple matter; and yet, when at about half-past eleven
o'clock Mr. Dalrymple's stenographer laid a folded paper quietly on
Sidney Graham's desk and silently left the room, he reached out and
touched it with more satisfaction than he had felt in any acquisition
in a long time, not excepting his last racing-car. It was not the
value the paper represented, however, that pleased him, but the fact
that he would now be able to do as he pleased concerning the
prospective tenant for the place, and follow out a curious and
interesting experiment. He wanted to study this girl and see whether
she really had the nerve to go and live in a barn--a girl with a face
like that to live in a barn! He wanted to see what manner of girl she
was, and to have the right to watch her for a little space.
It is true that the morning light might present her in a very different
aspect from that in which she had appeared the evening before, and he
mentally reserved the right to turn her down completely if she showed
the least sign of not being all that he had thought her. At the same
time, he intended to be entirely sure. He would not turn her away
without a thorough investigation.
Graham had been greatly interested in the study of social science when
in college, and human nature interested him at all times. He could not
but admit to himself that this girl had taken a most unusual hold upon
his thoughts.