Part 4

But Frances' eyes were diligently searching the square below for old Ike. He was not there. Ike, venturing on a little original business, had driven first to one or two houses of "de quality," where he hoped to make some sales. The venture had prospered. He came driving back gleefully, his best wares sold, the money in the pocket of his patched vest. The morning air was chill to his old bones and he had wrapped himself up well in his wife's best quilt when he climbed into his shaky "jersey" before his cabin door back on the mountain side; but the sunshine and his success had warmed him. He had loosened the wrappings of the quilt about his limbs, though it still flopped about his shoulders, pinned with his wife's bonnet-pin under his lean and bristly chin.

As he drove with a showy spurt of speed close by Frances the wind caught the quilt end and slipped it squarely in Starlight's face. With a snort Starlight was off. He plunged the length of the "jersey" and darted past the other vehicles too swiftly for any of the men to act. Frances sitting carelessly was taken unawares and slid half way from the saddle; for a blinding moment she saw nothing but a fall which might be fatal before her, then by a superhuman effort she regained her seat; but her hands were fairly nerveless. Starlight, head down, was racing along the street which crossed the railroad; in one bewildering flash she saw the running people, the opened doors and windows, the long white guards across the street and the heavy freight train on the far track drawn off to make way for the western express.

Fear nerved her. She tugged at the bridle. Starlight gave no heed. She was close upon the guards. She felt a strong grasp, she was pulled from her seat; for one dizzy moment she knew nothing. When she was again conscious she looked up into an anxious face above her, and looked on. In fear, excitement, anxiety, all thought of environment had burned away. It was a second's space she looked, a breath's space, when the soul, oblivious of the body, sees and seizes the great things of life. The face bending over her was fair, frank, and young, strong and serious, the eyes blue.--Then she came back to the everyday knowledge that she was leaning on his shoulder, his arm holding her close against him, his face bent above her; that she was on his horse before him, that he must have snatched her from the saddle at the last moment. She struggled to sit upright.

"You are not hurt?" he questioned anxiously.

"Starlight?"

"I don't know." He smiled as he looked at her, a little flash of consciousness showing in his own face. They were riding up a narrow side street.

"You see I had to race after you and I couldn't pull up at once though I managed to turn off up here. Wait!"

In some fashion, awkward enough with her there on the horse before him, he dismounted and held up his hands to lift her down. Frances allowed herself to be taken down meekly. Her eyes were dim with tears of mortification. She stood on the sidewalk, which was black with cinders from the ever passing trains, and saw the curious faces at the doors and windows of the small, sooty houses, saw the crowd running up from the station, and hated the whole adventure to its smallest detail. But before the crowd ran a man with Starlight tugging at the bridle rein he held.

"Bring him here!" Frances begged the stranger.

The young man flung the rein of his own horse across a paling's point, knotted it hastily and ran forward.

"So! so!" he cried, smoothing Starlight down the face and talking to him softly as he brought him to his rider.

"Give me your hand!" she demanded quickly.

"Surely--"

"Before they are all here! I'm not afraid! Don't you see?" Her hands were on the pommel; she was in mad haste to escape the crowd almost upon her.

The stranger knelt, held out his hand, tossed her in the saddle and she was off, Starlight trotting decently and quietly, the quivering of his flesh and an indignant snort alone betraying his rashness.

But close behind her and then abreast of her rode her rescuer.

"I must see how he goes at first," he apologized, and the mastery of his tone added to Frances' discomfiture.

She rode with crimson cheeks and downcast eyes, a square--two; she could stand it no longer; she drew rein at the corner.

"I thank you very much," she said as courteously as she could; "I am going this way," and she turned off.

She took the quietest way home in bitterness of spirit. Never could there have been a worse moment for such adventure. The affair would be known from town to farm, from farm to mountain top, by sunset. There was the spice of danger in it that would insure its telling, and the talk would lose nothing by its many recitals. It would be told to the young man's advantage, too. None of the glory would redound to her. There was no excuse for her being where she had been, no pardon for such an escapade. It would be made the point even for a parent's caution. The thought was maddening.

She crept to her room, glad to close the home doors about her. Susan found her there.

"Yo' pa done 'phoned up dis bery minute he's gwine bring company home ter dinnah."

"Very well!" said Frances spiritlessly.

"Wants ter hab anything 'ticular?"

"Oh, whatever you want, Susan; you know as well as I do."

"Hm!" said Susan going down the stairway, "ain't no talk of floating islan' an' cake now, but I'se gwine hab sumpin' good all de same. Marse Robert he laks good things ter eat, ef he doesn't mek any fuss. I'se gwine see dey's dyar on de table as long as de meal holds out in de barrel."

Frances sat down in her room. There was no fire there and she was chilled and miserable. The physical discomfiture chimed with her mood and she was resentful of the bright sunshine that came streaming to her feet. When she got up and took off her riding habit, she dressed without a thought of the guest her father was bringing to dine with him. She heard the opening of the heavy front door, footsteps in the hall, and her father's voice in pleased tones of cordial hospitality. She went down to the library. The door was opened, but the portière hung in heavy folds across the inner side; when she pulled it away she looked full into the face of her hero of the morning, who stood in the middle of the room, looking back at her with the amazement on his face which must have shown on hers.

"Frances," the professor was saying, so full of his own pleasure he was not noting their embarrassment, "this is Edward Montague. You've heard me talk of Tom Montague, went to school here when I did, settled out in Rappahannock; this is his son." He laid his hand affectionately on the young man's arm. "He has bought the old Northrup place, you know; I hope he'll make a good neighbor. He has made a fine beginning. Some girl's horse was running away with her in town and he raced up behind and snatched her out of the saddle just before she got to the railroad guards; funny he doesn't know the girl's name."

"I rode on to the post-office," said the young man, looking at neither.

"And some one there knew of the adventure. He was glad enough to get away. Came up to me as soon as he saw my mail,--the names on the envelopes I mean."

"I had intended visiting you to-day," but, strangely enough, the young man's voice was past courtesy, it was fairly pleading.

"Well, well, I wonder--" the professor's gaze, comprehensive at last, fell on Frances, shrinking back against the portière.

"Frances!"

There was dead, unbroken silence. In the tense awkwardness of the moment the young man, not knowing what to say, was noting shyly the curl of the girl's dark lashes against her scarlet cheek and the droop of her red mouth.

"_Was it you?_"

The girl raised her eyes and gave the visitor one swift look, indignant, imploring; her impulse was to run from the room back to her own, but she could not; she walked quickly to the window and half turned from them instead.

"It was the strangest thing you ever saw," began the young man so hurriedly, his words tripped over one another. "I was just behind her. I saw her riding down the street. It was a curious sight--the farmers, the negroes with their tobacco for sale, you know. Just as she stopped"--another break he felt; she would think he had been watching her all the time--as he had from the moment he caught sight of her across the crowd at Roxie's wheel. "Just as she stopped, an old darkey rattled close by her; he was a sight!" the young fellow laughed nervously; "he had a quilt flopping all around him and as he passed the wind flapped it squarely in her horse's face and he was off, I after him. Pluckiest thing I ever saw, I thought she was gone down on those cobbles there." The professor made a little smothered exclamation. "She was half out of the saddle but she got back somehow, got control of the reins, too. But the horse was headed for the railway. I got up to her just in time."

Frances was facing him, gratitude in her eyes, not for the rescue but for the telling.

"Frances--Edward--" began the professor brokenly. He covered his face with his hand for a moment and then he went up close to the young man and spoke his gratitude in such warm words as brought a flush to his guest's face and to his daughter's.

"Frances, you have thanked him?"

Frances glanced at the young man shyly. He smiled back at her reassuringly.

"Of course!" he said quickly, and for the first time she felt a feeling of warm kindliness to him. She had been on the verge of quite the opposite feeling before.

It was some time after this that the professor, who had been quiet and thoughtful, and limited his conversation largely to table affairs, said suddenly, as if he had at last arrived at a conclusion of his thoughts, "Frances, this is the third accident you have had in less than a year."

"So it is sure to be the last, father," said Frances gayly from the head of the table. She had been growing steadily more cheerful as he went on talking with young Montague, "Ask Susan!"

Susan was hurrying with delight about the table. She had known Edward's father and his mother. He was one of "her folks."

"If a thing that never happened before happens once, it's bound to happen three times. It's all over; I'm safe!"

The professor began some remonstrance. He had intended then and there to lay down a severely strict law. Instead, "I think I'll look you up a safe horse," he said lamely.

"Perhaps Miss Frances will let me ride with her sometimes," ventured young Montague.

"Not to take care of me," said that young woman wilfully.

"For the pleasure!"

"In that case, I shall be glad to go," sedately, "but I shall not wait for you."

"There will be no waiting!" They were going into the library and he was holding the curtain to let her pass. Frances looked up at him laughingly, and in that instant she forgave him for playing the hero's part.

VII

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.