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THE WAY OF A MAN
by
EMERSON HOUGH
Author of _The Covered Wagon_, etc.
Illustrated with Scenes from the Photoplay, _The Way of A Man_,
A Pathé Picture
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers New York
1907
[Illustration: GRACE SHOWS A LACK OF SYMPATHY.]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE KISSING OF MISS GRACE SHERATON
II THE MEETING OF GORDON ORME
III THE ART OF THE ORIENT
IV WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR
V THE MADNESS OF MUCH KISSING
VI A SAD LOVER
VII WHAT COMETH IN THE NIGHT
VIII BEGINNING ADVENTURES IN NEW LANDS
IX THE GIRL WITH THE HEART
X THE SUPREME COURT
XI THE MORNING AFTER
XII THE WRECK ON THE RIVER
XIII THE FACE IN THE FIRELIGHT
XIV AU LARGE
XV HER INFINITE VARIETY
XVI BUFFALO
XVII SIOUX!
XVIII THE TEST
XIX THE QUALITY OF MERCY
XX GORDON ORME, MAGICIAN
XXI TWO IN THE DESERT
XXII MANDY MCGOVERN ON MARRIAGE
XXIII ISSUE JOINED
XXIV FORSAKING ALL OTHERS
XXV CLEAVING ONLY UNTO HER
XXVI IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH
XXVII WITH ALL MY WORLDLY GOODS I THEE ENDOW
XXVIII TILL DEATH DO PART
XXIX THE GARDEN
XXX THEY TWAIN
XXXI THE BETROTHAL
XXXII THE COVENANT
XXXIII THE FLAMING SWORD
XXXIV THE LOSS OF PARADISE
XXXV THE YOKE
XXXVI THE GOAD
XXXVII THE FURROW
XXXVIII HEARTS HYPOTHECATED
XXXIX THE UNCOVERING OF GORDON ORME
XL A CONFUSION IN COVENANTS
XLI ELLEN OR GRACE
XLII FACE TO FACE
XLIII THE RECKONING
XLIV THIS INDENTURE WITNESSETH
XLV ELLEN
CHAPTER I
THE KISSING OF MISS GRACE SHERATON
I admit I kissed her.
Perhaps I should not have done so. Perhaps I would not do so again. Had
I known what was to come I could not have done so. Nevertheless I did.
After all, it was not strange. All things about us conspired to be
accessory and incendiary. The air of the Virginia morning was so soft
and warm, the honeysuckles along the wall were so languid sweet, the
bees and the hollyhocks up to the walk so fat and lazy, the smell of the
orchard was so rich, the south wind from the fields was so wanton!
Moreover, I was only twenty-six. As it chances, I was this sort of a
man: thick in the arm and neck, deep through, just short of six feet
tall, and wide as a door, my mother said; strong as one man out of a
thousand, my father said. And then--the girl was there.
So this was how it happened that I threw the reins of Satan, my black
horse, over the hooked iron of the gate at Dixiana Farm and strode up to
the side of the stone pillar where Grace Sheraton stood, shading her
eyes with her hand, watching me approach through the deep trough road
that flattened there, near the Sheraton lane. So I laughed and strode
up--and kept my promise. I had promised myself that I would kiss her the
first time that seemed feasible. I had even promised her--when she came
home from Philadelphia so lofty and superior for her stopping a brace of
years with Miss Carey at her Allendale Academy for Young Ladies--that if
she mitigated not something of her haughtiness, I would kiss her fair,
as if she were but a girl of the country. Of these latter I may guiltily
confess, though with no names, I had known many who rebelled little more
than formally.
She stood in the shade of the stone pillar, where the ivy made a deep
green, and held back her light blue skirt daintily, in her high-bred
way; for never was a girl Sheraton who was not high-bred or other than
fair to look upon in the Sheraton way--slender, rather tall, long
cheeked, with very much dark hair and a deep color under the skin, and
something of long curves withal. They were ladies, every one, these
Sheraton girls; and as Miss Grace presently advised me, no milkmaids
wandering and waiting in lanes for lovers.
When I sprang down from Satan Miss Grace was but a pace or so away. I
put out a hand on either side of her as she stood in the shade, and so
prisoned her against the pillar. She flushed at this, and caught at my
arm with both hands, which made me smile, for few men in that country
could have put away my arms from the stone until I liked. Then I bent
and kissed her fair, and took what revenge was due our girls for her
Philadelphia manners.
When she boxed my ears I kissed her once more. Had she not at that
smiled at me a little, I should have been a boor, I admit. As she
did--and as I in my innocence supposed all girls did--I presume I may be
called but a man as men go. Miss Grace grew very rosy for a Sheraton,
but her eyes were bright. So I threw my hat on the grass by the side of
the gate and bowed her to be seated. We sat and looked up the lane which
wound on to the big Sheraton house, and up the red road which led from
their farm over toward our lands, the John Cowles farm, which had been
three generations in our family as against four on the part of the
Sheratons' holdings; a fact which I think always ranked us in the
Sheraton soul a trifle lower than themselves.
We were neighbors, Miss Grace and I, and as I lazily looked out over the
red road unoccupied at the time by even the wobbling wheel of some
negro's cart, I said to her some word of our being neighbors, and of its
being no sin for neighbors to exchange the courtesy of a greeting when
they met upon such a morning. This seemed not to please her; indeed I
opine that the best way of a man with a maid is to make no manner of
speech whatever before or after any such incident as this.
"I was just wandering down the lane," she said, "to see if Jerry had
found my horse, Fanny."
"Old Jerry's a mile back up the road," said I, "fast asleep under the
hedge."
"The black rascal!"
"He is my friend," said I, smiling.
"You do indeed take me for some common person," said she; "as though I
had been looking for--"
"No, I take you only for the sweetest Sheraton that ever came to meet a
Cowles from the farm yonder." Which was coming rather close home, for
our families, though neighbors, had once had trouble over some such
meeting as this two generations back; though of that I do not now speak.
"Cannot a girl walk down her own carriage road of a morning, after
hollyhocks for the windows, without--"
"She cannot!" I answered. I would have put out an arm for further
mistreatment, but all at once I pulled up. What was I coming to, I, John
Cowles, this morning when the bees droned fat and the flowers made
fragrant all the air? I was no boy, but a man grown; and ruthless as I
was, I had all the breeding the land could give me, full Virginia
training as to what a gentleman should be. And a gentleman, unless he
may travel all a road, does not set foot too far into it when he sees
that he is taken at what seems his wish. So now I said how glad I was
that she had come back from school, though a fine lady now, and no doubt
forgetful of her friends, of myself, who once caught young rabbits and
birds for her, and made pens for the little pink pigs at the orchard
edge, and all of that. But she had no mind, it seemed to me, to talk of
these old days; and though now some sort of wall seemed to me to arise
between us as we sat there on the bank blowing at dandelions and pulling
loose grass blades, and humming a bit of tune now and then as young
persons will, still, thickheaded as I was, it was in some way made
apparent to me that I was quite as willing the wall should be there as
she herself was willing.
My mother had mentioned Miss Grace Sheraton to me before. My father had
never opposed my riding over now and then to the Sheraton gates. There
were no better families in our county than these two. There was no
reason why I should feel troubled. Yet as I looked out into the haze of
the hilltops where the red road appeared to leap off sheer to meet the
distant rim of the Blue Ridge, I seemed to hear some whispered warning.
I was young, and wild as any deer in those hills beyond. Had it been
any enterprise scorning settled ways; had it been merely a breaking of
orders and a following of my own will, I suppose I might have gone on.
But there are ever two things which govern an adventure for one of my
sex. He may be a man; but he must also be a gentleman. I suppose books
might be written about the war between those two things. He may be a
gentleman sometimes and have credit for being a soft-headed fool, with
no daring to approach the very woman who has contempt for him; whereas
she may not know his reasons for restraint. So much for civilization,
which at times I hated because it brought such problems. Yet these
problems never cease, at least while youth lasts, and no community is
free from them, even so quiet a one as ours there in the valley of the
old Blue Ridge, before the wars had rolled across it and made all the
young people old.
I was of no mind to end my wildness and my roaming just yet; and still,
seeing that I was, by gentleness of my Quaker mother and by sternness of
my Virginia father, set in the class of gentlemen, I had no wish
dishonorably to engage a woman's heart. Alas, I was not the first to
learn that kissing is a most difficult art to practice!
When one reflects, the matter seems most intricate. Life to the young is
barren without kissing; yet a kiss with too much warmth may mean
overmuch, whereas a kiss with no warmth to it is not worth the pains.
The kiss which comes precisely at the moment when it should, in quite
sufficient warmth and yet not of complicating fervor, working no harm
and but joy to both involved--those kisses, now that one pauses to think
it over, are relatively few.
As for me, I thought it was time for me to be going.