The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding
by Annie F. Johnston · English · Gutenberg #39594 · 392,935 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding
Author: Annie F. Johnston
Illustrator: Etheldred B. Barry
Release date: May 2, 2012 [eBook #39594]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39594
Credits: Produced by David Edwards, Emmy and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE COLONEL'S KNIGHT COMES RIDING ***
Produced by David Edwards, Emmy and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
[Illustration: Cover]
THE LITTLE COLONEL'S KNIGHT COMES RIDING
Works of ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
The Little Colonel Series
(_Trade Mark, Reg. U. S. Pat. Of._)
Each one vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated
The Little Colonel Stories $1.50
(Containing in one volume the three stories,
"The Little Colonel," "The Giant Scissors," and
"Two Little Knights of Kentucky.")
The Little Colonel's House Party 1.50
The Little Colonel's Holidays 1.50
The Little Colonel's Hero 1.50
The Little Colonel at Boarding-School 1.50
The Little Colonel in Arizona 1.50
The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation 1.50
The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor 1.50
The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding 1.50
Mary Ware: The Little Colonel's Chum 1.50
The above 10 vols., _boxed_ 15.00
The Little Colonel Good Times Book 1.50
Illustrated Holiday Editions
Each one vol., small quarto, cloth, illustrated, and printed in colour
The Little Colonel $1.25
The Giant Scissors 1.25
Two Little Knights of Kentucky 1.25
Big Brother 1.25
Cosy Corner Series
Each one vol., thin 12mo, cloth, illustrated
The Little Colonel $.50
The Giant Scissors .50
Two Little Knights of Kentucky .50
Big Brother .50
Ole Mammy's Torment .50
The Story of Dago .50
Cicely .50
Aunt 'Liza's Hero .50
The Quilt that Jack Built .50
Flip's "Islands of Providence" .50
Mildred's Inheritance .50
Other Books
Joel: A Boy of Galilee $1.50
In the Desert of Waiting .50
The Three Weavers .50
Keeping Tryst .50
The Legend of the Bleeding Heart .50
The Rescue of the Princess Winsome .50
Asa Holmes 1.00
Songs Ysame (Poems, with Albion Fellows Bacon) 1.00
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
200 Summer Street Boston, Mass.
[Illustration: "WITH THE DONNING OF THE ANCIENT DRESS SHE SEEMED TO HAVE
PUT ON THE SWEET SHY MANNER THAT HAD BEEN THE CHARM OF ITS FIRST
WEARER."
(_See page 142_)]
THE LITTLE COLONEL'S KNIGHT COMES RIDING
BY ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
AUTHOR OF
"THE LITTLE COLONEL SERIES," "BIG BROTHER,"
"OLE MAMMY'S TORMENT," "JOEL: A BOY
OF GALILEE," "ASA HOLMES," ETC.
Illustrated by
ETHELDRED B. BARRY
"And sometimes in the mirror blue,
The knights come riding, two by two."
THE LADY OF SHALOTT.
[Illustration]
BOSTON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1907_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_Entered at Stationers' Hall, London_
_All rights reserved_
First impression, October, 1907
Second impression, April, 1909
_COLONIAL PRESS
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U. S. A._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE HANGING OF THE MIRROR 1
II. BED-TIME CONFIDENCES 27
III. A KNIGHT COMES RIDING 46
IV. BETTY'S NOVEL 68
V. A CAMERA HELPS 97
VI. "GARDEN FANCIES" 116
VII. SPANISH LESSONS 134
VIII. "SHADOWS OF THE WORLD APPEAR" 161
IX. MORE SHADOWS 181
X. BY THE SILVER YARD-STICK 199
XI. THE END OF SEVERAL THINGS 221
XII. SIX MONTHS LATER 242
XIII. THE MIRACLE OF BLOSSOMING 266
XIV. THE ROYAL MANTLE 285
XV. "AS IT WAS WRITTEN IN THE STARS" AND BETTY'S DIARY 308
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"WITH THE DONNING OF THE ANCIENT DRESS SHE SEEMED
TO HAVE PUT ON THE SWEET SHY MANNER THAT HAD
BEEN THE CHARM OF ITS FIRST WEARER"
(_See page 142_) _Frontispiece_
"THE OTHER GRASPED SOME DARK OBJECT THAT SEEMED TO
BE A PICTURE FRAME" 6
"DREW REIN A MOMENT AT THE GATE, TO LOOK DOWN THE
STATELY AVENUE" 47
"HE WAS BENDING ANXIOUSLY OVER A BUBBLING SAUCEPAN" 87
"MAKING A CUP OF HER WHITE HANDS" 126
"FOR ONCE THE RED AND GREEN BIRD WAS ON ITS GOOD
BEHAVIOUR" 180
"SHE POURED THE CORN INTO THE POPPER AND BEGAN TO
SHAKE IT OVER THE RED COALS" 261
"'SHE LOOKED TO ME JUST LIKE ONE OF HER OWN LILIES'" 315
THE LITTLE COLONEL'S KNIGHT COMES RIDING
CHAPTER I
THE HANGING OF THE MIRROR
IT was a June morning in Kentucky. The doctor's nephew coming at a
gallop down the pike into Lloydsboro Valley, reined his horse to a walk
as he reached the railroad crossing, and leaning forward in his saddle,
hesitated a moment between the two roads.
The one along the railroad embankment was sweet with a tangle of wild
honeysuckle, and led straight to the little post-office where his
morning mail awaited him. The other would take him a mile out of his
way, but it was through a thick beech woods, and the cool leafage of its
green aisles tempted him. A red-bird darting on ahead suddenly decided
his course, for following some quick impulse, as if the cardinal wings
had beckoned him, he turned off the highway into the woods.
"I might as well go around and have a look at that Lindsey Cabin," he
said to himself, as an excuse for turning aside. "If it's in as good
shape as I think it is, maybe I can persuade the Van Allens to rent it
for the summer. It's a pity to have a picturesque place like that
standing empty when it has such possibilities for hospitality, and the
Van Allen girls a positive genius for giving jolly house-parties. To get
that family out to Lloydsboro for the summer would be paving the way to
no end of good times."
The farther he rode into the cool woods the better the idea pleased him,
and where the bridle-path crossed a narrow creek he paused a moment
before plunging down the bank. Somewhere up the ravine a spring was
trickling out in a ceaseless flow. He could not see it, but he could
hear the gurgle of the water, as cold and crystal clear it splashed down
into its rocky basin.
"They could picnic here to their hearts' content," he said aloud,
glancing up and down the ravine at the rank growth of fern and
maidenhair which festooned the rocks.
Alex Shelby had spent only part of two summers in Lloydsboro Valley, but
the woodsy smell of mint and pennyroyal, mingling with the fern, brought
back the recollection of at least a dozen picnics he had enjoyed near
this spot, most of them moonlight affairs, and all of them so pleasant
that he was determined to bring about their repetition if possible. Of
course this summer he would not have as much time for outings as he had
had then. Now that he had finished his medical course he intended to
shoulder as much as possible of his uncle's work. The old doctor's
practice had grown far too heavy for him. But at the same time there
need be no limit to the pleasant things that the summer could bring
forth, especially if the Van Allen family could be installed in the
Lindsey Cabin.
A quarter of a mile more brought him almost to the edge of the woods and
to the beginning of the Lindsey place. The spacious, two-story log cabin
standing back among the great forest trees, might have been a relic of
Daniel Boone's day, so carefully had his pioneer pattern been copied by
skilful architects. But the resemblance was only outward. Inside it was
luxuriously equipped with every modern convenience. For a year it had
stood tenant-less, and Alex Shelby never passed it without regretting
that such a charming old place should be abandoned to dust and spiders.
The last time he had gone by it, he had noticed that it was beginning to
show the effect of its long neglect. Some of the windows were completely
overgrown by ragged rose-vines and Virginia Creeper, and a tin
waterspout that had blown loose from its fastenings, dangled from the
eaves.
Now as he came near he saw in surprise that the place seemed to have an
alert, live air, as if just awakened from sleep. The windows were all
thrown open, the vines were trimmed, and were a mass of bloom, the dead
leaves were raked neatly in piles and the cobwebs no longer hung from
the cornices in dusty festoons.
A long ladder leaning against the front of the house, rested on the sill
of an upper window, and Alex wondered if the agents had painters at
work. He hoped so. The more thorough the renovation, the more attractive
it would be to the Van Allens.
Suddenly his pleased expression changed to one of surprise and dismay,
as he saw that the place was already inhabited. Empty packing-boxes,
excelsior and wrapping paper littered the front porch. A new hammock
hung between the posts. Somebody's garden-hat lay on the steps.
Moreover, a slender girl in a white dress stood at the foot of the
ladder, evidently about to ascend, for she shook it to test its balance,
and then cautiously stepped up on the first round.
Her back was toward Alex, and he fervently hoped that she would turn
around so that he might see her face, then more fervently hoped that she
wouldn't, since it would be somewhat embarrassing to be caught staring
as inquisitively as he was doing. Unconsciously at sight of her he had
brought his horse to a standstill, and now sat wondering who she could
be and what she was about to do. It was as if a curtain had gone up on
the first scene of an intensely interesting play, and for the moment he
forgot everything else in admiration of the stage setting, and the
graceful little figure poised on the ladder.
"Probably going up for an armful of roses," he thought.
"Hold tight, Ca'line Allison! Don't let it slip!" she called in a high
sweet voice, almost as if she were singing the words, and Alex noticed
for the first time, a small coloured girl behind the ladder, bracing
herself against it to hold it steady.
The ascent was a slow one. Twice she tripped on her skirts, and with a
little shriek almost slipped through between the rounds. Only one hand
was free for climbing. The other grasped some dark object that seemed to
be a picture frame, though why one should be carrying a picture frame up
the outside of a house was more than the young man could imagine, and he
concluded he must be mistaken.
[Illustration: "THE OTHER GRASPED SOME DARK OBJECT THAT SEEMED TO BE A
PICTURE FRAME."]
The last step brought her head on a level with the second story window,
and up where the sun struck through the trees in a broad shaft of light.
Her hair had been beautiful in the shadow; a rare tint of auburn with
bronze gold glints, but now in the sunshine it was an aureole. What was
it it reminded him of? A fragment of a half-forgotten poem came to his
mind, although he was not given to remembering such things:
"Sandalphon the angel of glory,
Sandalphon the angel of prayer."
Then he almost laughed aloud at the comparison, for a dazzling flash of
light, blinding him for an instant, was reflected into his eyes from the
object she carried, and he saw that it was a looking-glass that she was
taking up the ladder with such care.
"What a very human and very feminine angel of glory it is," he
thought. But the next instant, still with the amused smile on his face,
he was spurring his horse down the road as fast as it could gallop. The
girl on the ladder had caught sight of his reflection in the mirror as
she reached up to lay it on the window sill, and had turned a startled
face towards him. Not for worlds would he have had her know that he had
been so discourteous as to sit staring at her. He had forgotten himself
in the interest of the moment.
Eager to find out who the new tenants were at the Lindsey Cabin, he rode
rapidly on, turning from the woodland road into a maple-lined avenue
leading back to the post-office. Just as he made the turn another
surprise confronted him. He almost collided with two girls who were
hurrying along arm in arm, under a red parasol.
Both Lloyd Sherman and Kitty Walton were old friends of his, but he had
to look twice to assure himself that he saw aright. They had been away
at school all year, and he had not heard of their return.
"I thought you were still at Warwick Hall!" he exclaimed, dismounting
and stepping forward with bared head, to shake hands in his most cordial
way. "When did you get home?"
"Only this mawning," answered Lloyd. "All the Commencement exercises
were ovah last Thursday, and we're school girls no longah. '_Beyond, the
Alps lies Italy!_' Kitty can tell you all about it, for she had the
Valedictory."
Kitty met Alex's amused smile with a flash of her black eyes, but before
she could deny having used the trite subject that had been so popular in
the old Lloydsboro seminary as to have become a standing joke, Alex
answered, "Well, you've certainly lost no time in starting out to
explore the wide world that lies before you. I've always heard that
there's nothing to equal the zeal of a sweet girl graduate about to
scale her Alps. You've barely reached home, haven't been off the cars
three hours, I'll bet, and yet here you are on the war-path again. What
Italy are you climbing after now?"
Ordinarily his banter would have been promptly resented by both girls,
but now it served only to recall the amazing news that had sent them
hurrying away from the post-office on an excited quest. With a dramatic
gesture, Kitty drew a letter from her belt and held it out to him.
"Think of it!" she exclaimed, her cheeks pink with excitement. "Gay
Melville's here in the Valley! Right here in Lloydsboro! Settled in the
Lindsey Cabin for the summer, and we didn't know anything about it till
ten minutes ago."
"Gay Melville," repeated Alex, instantly alert at mention of the cabin.
"Oh he doesn't know her, Kitty," interposed Lloyd. "He wasn't out in the
Valley the wintah she spent her Christmas vacation with you."
"Then you've something to live for!" declared Kitty with emphasis.
"She's one of the old Warwick Hall girls. Was in last year's class with
Allison and Betty, and she's just the sweetest, dearest--"
"Don't tell him any moah," interrupted Lloyd. "Let him find out for
himself."
"What's she doing at the Lindsey Cabin?" he asked. He kept a straight
face, although inwardly chuckling over the fact that he knew well enough
what she was doing, at least what she had been doing three minutes ago.
"They've taken it for the summer, that is, her sister Lucy and husband
have, Mr. and Mrs. Jameson Harcourt. They're from San Antonio, and you
know the Lindseys spend their winters there. It seems they interested
Mr. Harcourt in the Cabin, and of course Gay was wild to get back to
the Valley, and she persuaded them to come. She wrote to me just as soon
as it was decided, but the letter never reached me till this morning.
She thought I would get it before I started home; but it's just like Gay
to mix up her address with mine. She was so excited when she wrote that
she addressed it to Warwick Hall Station, Texas, instead of District of
Columbia. It has been travelling all over the country, and it's a wonder
that it ever reached me at all."
"And the worst of it is," added Lloyd, "of co'se she expected we'd all
be heah to meet her. But we stayed ovah in Washington two days, and when
they came in last night there wasn't a soul at the station to welcome
them. The ticket agent told me about it just now as we came past. She
seemed surprised, he said, and disappointed. She must have thought it
queah that none of us were there."
"Won't she be funny when she's found what a mistake she's made!"
exclaimed Kitty. "She's always making mistakes, and is always perfectly
ridiculous over them when she finds it out. We're going to take you to
call on her, Alex, just as soon as they're settled. She plays the violin
divinely."
"I'll go right back with you now," he offered promptly.
"No you won't," they cried in the same breath, and Kitty explained, "No
telling what sort of a mess they'll be in with their unpacking. But if
they're ready to see company by night, I'll telephone to you, and we'll
all go over."
"I shall live only for that moment," he declared, laughing, then added
as he turned to mount his horse, "I'm mighty glad I met you, and I'm
more than glad that you've both come home to stay."
A flourish of the red parasol answered the courtly sweep of his hat as
they parted. He rode on rapidly towards the post-office, wondering if
they would find the girlish, white-clad figure still perched on the
ladder, up among the roses, with the sun making an aureole of her
shining hair. He had never seen such hair. "Sandalphon, the angel of
glory"--but the quotation broke off with a laugh. Her name was Gay, and
it was a looking glass that she was carrying up the ladder. "Well, she's
an original little thing," he mused, "and if she lives up to her name
the Lindsey Cabin will be just as lively a social centre as if the Van
Allen girls had possession."
The encounter with Alex had delayed the girls but a moment or two, still
they walked on faster than ever to make up the lost time.
"What do you suppose we'll find her doing?" queried Lloyd.
"Something unexpected, I'll be bound," was the answer. "Will you ever
forget that first time we saw her, when she came out to play the violin
at the Freshman reception? Such a pretty white dress, and that rapt,
uplifted look on her face that makes you think of St. Cecilias and
seraphim, and with one foot in a white kid shoe, and the other in that
awful old red felt bedroom slipper, edged in black fur!"
"Or the time she lost her belt in Washington," suggested Lloyd.
"Probably we'll find her unpacking if the trunks came. But Gay's trunks
nevah were known to arrive on time. We may have to be lending her
shirtwaists and collahs for a month."
By this time they had reached the rustic footbridge leading over a
ravine to the Cabin, and were in full view of the front windows. Gay was
still on the ladder. She had made several trips up and down it since
Alex passed. It was hard to decide at what angle to hang the mirror on
the window casing, as she had seen them in old Dutch houses in Holland;
and in marking the place with the point of the only nail that she had
provided on which to hang the mirror, she dropped the nail. Several
minutes had been wasted in a fruitless search for it. Others were to be
had for the pulling, if one could extract them from the empty
packing-boxes, but no hammer could be found on the premises, and it was
only after much twisting and struggling that the little coloured girl
finally managed to pull one with her teeth.
Another five minutes had been wasted in searching for something with
which to drive the nail. Then Gay gingerly ascended the ladder again,
armed with a pair of heavy old tongs, taken from the porch fireplace.
She had just reached the top of the ladder when the girls caught sight
of her.
"Mercy!" exclaimed Kitty in a low tone. "It'll never do in the world to
appear at _this_ juncture. She's pretty sure to drop through the ladder
anyhow, or upset herself, or have some exhibition of the usual Melville
luck, even if she's left to herself. And if she should suddenly discover
us there's no telling what dreadful thing might happen."
"Let's slip up behind the arbour and watch till she's safely down to
earth," whispered Lloyd. "What _do_ you suppose she's trying to do, and
where do you suppose she managed to pick up Ca'line Allison?"
"Sh!" was the answer. "That's the Dutch mirror she got in Amsterdam
last summer. She wrote that it was the triumph of her life when she got
home with it whole. She carried it all the way, instead of packing it in
her trunk. Listen! What's that she's saying?"
The words floated down to them distinctly. "Ca'line Allison, you'll have
to get me something besides these tongs to drive this nail with. I might
as well try to do it with a pair of stilts. Besides it's making dents in
them, and it's wicked to spoil such beautiful old brasses. Mercy! Don't
get up _yet_!" she shrieked wildly, as the shifting of Ca'line Allison's
small body made the ladder slip a trifle.
"Wait till I poke these tongs through the window and take hold with both
hands. Now! Hunt around and find me a stone or a piece of brick."
The girls behind the arbour could not see her face, but the sight of the
familiar little figure clinging to the ladder, and the sound of the
beloved voice made them long to rush out and squeeze her.
"Isn't her hair a glory, up there in the sunshine?" whispered Kitty.
"The idea of anybody calling it plain red--such a fluff of bronzy auburn
with all those little crinkles of gold! And listen to that whistle!
You'd think it was a real mocking bird."
Wholly unconscious of her audience, Gay teetered on the ladder,
whistling and trilling like a happy bobolink, until the little black
girl climbed up after her with a brick which she had dug out from the
well curb. The girls waited until the nail was securely in place, the
mirror hung and Gay had begun to crawl down the ladder backward, before
they rushed out from their hiding-place.
They pounced upon her just as she reached the bottom round, and then
ensued what Kitty called a pow-wow--an enthusiastic welcome known only
to old school chums who have been separated so long a time as a whole
twelvemonth. Questions, answers, explanations, a bubbling over of
delight at once more being together, kept them talking all at once for
nearly ten minutes. Then Gay, remembering her duty as hostess led the
way into the house.
"Come in and see Lucy and her fond spouse," she exclaimed. "They're
still at breakfast although it's ten o'clock. None of us could make a
fire in the range. It simply wouldn't burn. But we had brought a chafing
dish in one of the boxes, and we found another in the pantry, and
they've been mussing around for the last two hours with them, having the
time of their lives. Lucy made fudge and omelette and tea for her
breakfast, being the things she knows best how to make, and brother
Jameson is trying flap-jacks and coffee."
"What did you have?" asked Lloyd.
"I? Oh I emulated the example of 'The old person of Crewd' who said
"'We use sawdust for food.
It's cheap by the ton
And it nourishes one,
And that's the main object of food.'
I munched a handful of some sort of new breakfast straw, but it wasn't
very satisfying, and I was just going in to get a cup of brother
Jameson's coffee. I told him to put my name in the pot. Come on in and
have some too."
Throwing open the dining-room door she began a series of breezy
introductions that set them all to laughing and swept away every vestige
of formality.
Both Lloyd and Kitty protested against taking a single mouthful at that
hour, but the young host poured out a cup of very muddy coffee with such
a beaming smile, and the little bride offered a very bitter cup of tea
in competition, with a merry insistence so like Gay's, that they could
not refuse.
"It's going to be lovely," Kitty managed to whisper under cover of the
bustle of bringing in more hot water. "They're almost as harum-scarum
and hap-hazard as Gay herself, and 'brother Jameson' looks as if he
might be the 'Gibson man's' youngest brother."
"These 'babes in the wood' would have perished but for me," began Gay,
who was rattling along as if she were wound up. "_I_ was the robin who
came to the rescue. I went over to Stumptown bright and early--you see I
remembered the short cut through the woods--and as luck would have it,
found some one willing to come, at the very first house where I
inquired. (But she can't come till nearly noon, hence this disorderly
feasting and rioting.) Ca'line Allison was swinging on the gate, with
her finger in her mouth. I didn't know her, but she remembered me, and
complimented me by asking if I'd done brought my fiddle along. I think
I'll engage her for the summer for my little maid-in-waiting. She's as
quick as a monkey and would look so cunning diked up in a cap and apron.
What's that rhyme Betty made about her when she was flower-girl at her
own mother's wedding? Oh by the way, where _is_ Betty? Why didn't she
come with you?"
"For the good reason that we didn't know we were coming heah ourselves
when we left home," answered Lloyd. "Betty went on to Commencement with
all the rest of the family, but it was hard for her to tear herself away
from her beloved writing. We hadn't been back at Locust half an houah
this mawning till she was at it again."
"Betty is Mrs. Sherman's god-daughter," explained Gay in an aside to her
brother-in-law. "The one who I told you is such a genius. She's writing
a book." Then turning to Lloyd. "It isn't that same old one she was at
work on at school, is it?"
"No, it's something she began last fall. Mothah wanted her to make her
debut in Louisville when she was through school, just as I am going to
do next wintah, but Betty begged to be allowed to stay in the country.
She said she'd nevah be a brilliant success socially, but that she'd do
her best to be a credit to the family in some other way."
"She will, too," prophesied Gay. "Some day we'll all be proud of the
little song-bird you rescued from the Cuckoo's Nest. Dear old Betty! I'd
like to hug her this very minute."
The grandfather's clock in the hall was striking eleven when they rose
from the table, but Gay would not listen when the girls attempted to
take their leave. "You haven't seen my room," she insisted, "nor my
mirror. Come on up stairs and look into my mirror. It's the joy of my
heart, and maybe we'll all see our fate in it. I like to pretend that
it's a sort of magic glass--that some wizard of the wood has laid a
spell on it, so that at certain times all the figures that have ever
been reflected in it must march across it again. Wouldn't it be lovely
if all the good times it is going to reflect this summer could be made
to pass over it again whenever I wanted to recall them?"
"We'd lead the procession," announced Kitty, "for we were the first
objects that crossed the path after you got it hung. If we were not 'a
group of damsels glad' we were at least a couple of them."
"But you were not the first," confessed Gay. "Just as I held it up to
adjust it, I had such a thrillingly romantic experience that I nearly
fell off the ladder. It showed me the reflection of an awfully good
looking young man on horse-back. But when I turned to look over my
shoulder at the original he was galloping down the road like a blue
streak."
"I wondah who it could have been," mused Lloyd. "We met Alex Shelby on
hawseback just a few minutes befoah we got heah, but he nevah said a
word about having seen anybody, and he seemed surprised when we told him
that the cabin had been rented."
They were up in Gay's room now, and running to the window, Kitty seated
herself in the low chair beside it. "Oh how fine!" she called. "It's at
exactly the right angle, for I can see everything along the path without
looking out. It'll be a sort of Hildegarde's mirror, won't it! Like the
Lady of Shalott's."
Half under her breath she began to recite the lines they had learned so
long ago, and from force of habit Lloyd joined the sing-song chant:
"And moving through the mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear."
Smiling to see how well they remembered it, they went on in unison down
to the couplet:
"And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two by two."
There Kitty broke off to say "I don't see how that can happen here
_this_ summer. It will be sheer luck if they come even in singles. There
never were so few boys left in the Valley, and it's too bad to have it
happen so the summer that you're here. Nearly everybody is going away.
You can count on the fingers of one hand the few who will stay."
"What about the two knights of Kentucky?" asked Gay. "You're a lucky
girl, Kitty, to have two such splendid cousins as Keith and Malcolm
MacIntyre."
"They are already gone. They sailed for England with Uncle Sydney and
Aunt Elise last week. You know I wrote you they were going and that
Allison was to be in the party too. And oh Gay! Didn't you get that
letter? Then you haven't heard the most important thing of all! _Allison
is engaged!_ It didn't happen till a few days before they sailed, and it
isn't announced yet, but of course she wanted you to know and I wrote to
you right away."
Gay bounced out of her chair as if a bomb exploded in the room.
"Oh you don't mean it!" she cried tragically, clasping her hands. "Why
she's only been out of school a year! The first of our class to go! Oh
tell me all about it! Begin at the beginning and don't skip a thing!"
Throwing herself down on the floor at Kitty's feet, she propped her chin
on her hands, and her elbows in Kitty's lap, prepared to listen.
"There isn't much to tell. You know the fortune that Mammy Easter
predicted for her was nice, but it wasn't very exciting. She was to 'wed
wid de quality and ride in her ca'iage.' Well, his family is certainly
quality, the Claibornes of Virginia, and she'll live in Washington and
have several kinds of carriages. Isn't it odd? We knew him when he was
just a boy. He was on the same transport with us when we went to the
Philippines, and we never imagined then that we'd ever see him again."
"But I thought that that young Lieutenant Logan," began Gay.
Kitty interrupted her with a laugh. "Why my dear, he is a mere _child_
compared to Raleigh Claiborne. That little affair was the mere A. B. C.
of romance. He's paying attention to our youngest now. He sends music
and bon bons to _Elise_."
"Think of Elise being old enough to receive such attentions!" groaned
Gay. "It makes me feel like a patriarch. But never mind my hoary
sensations, go on and tell me some more. She's going to get her
trousseau abroad I suppose."
"Only part of it, for the wedding isn't to take place for a year.
Allison didn't care much about going--thought she'd rather wait and take
the trip with Raleigh. But he is so busy it may be several years before
he can get off for a whole summer, and Aunt Elise persuaded her to go
with them. She said it wouldn't be so easy for her to go when she once
assumed the responsibility of a big establishment."
Gay clasped her hands around her knees and rocked herself back and forth
on the floor.
"I'm glad she's sensible enough to wait a year," she declared. "I don't
see why girls are in such a hurry to tie themselves up in a knot. I
suppose it's perfectly fascinating to be engaged and to have the
choosing of a lovely trousseau, and the opening of all the wedding
presents. Everybody takes so much interest in a prospective bride. But
the fun comes to an end so quickly. It's like Fourth of July fire works.
There's a big blaze and excitement while it lasts. Then it's all over
and they settle down to be just prosy common-place married people. I
should think that the reaction would be deadly, and that if a girl could
see past the time of the rocket's shooting up, and realize that it can't
stay among the stars, but must fall to earth again with a dull thud,
she'd profit by other people's experiences, and not give up all the good
times of her girlhood before she'd half enjoyed them."
Gay spoke so feelingly that her two listeners exchanged glances of
surprise. This was not the way Gay had been wont to talk a year ago, and
each wondered to herself if Lucy's marriage had caused this radical
change in her opinion.
Suddenly she changed the subject, with the unexpectedness of a
grasshopper's leap. "Which one of you girls is going to stay all night
with me?"
Kitty answered first. "Neither of us ought to, for we've only just
returned to the bosom of our families. You could hardly call us entirely
arrived yet, for our trunks haven't come."
Lloyd started up, and looked at her watch in alarm. "It's a good thing
you reminded me that I have a home," she laughed. "I told mothah I'd
just stroll down to the post-office and be right back, and when I met
Kitty with yoah lettah it drove everything else out of my head. She'll
be wondering what has happened to me. I'll come some night next week and
be glad to."
"No, one of you has to come back and stay with me _to-night_," Gay
insisted. "So settle it between yourselves. You may as well draw straws
to decide which is to be my victim." Then, glancing around the room--"I
don't happen to see any straws at hand, but you might pull hairs for
the honour. Here! My head is at your service, ladies."
Dropping to her knees she made a profound salaam, and waited for them to
draw. "The one who pulls the shortest hair comes back."
Laughing over the absurd manner of deciding such a matter, each girl
reached out and plucked a hair by its roots, so vigorously that the pull
was followed by a long drawn "ouch!"
"Mine's the shortest," giggled Lloyd, comparing it with the one that
Kitty held up. "But I'm suah my family will object if I propose leaving
them the very first night of my arrival, aftah I've been away at school
all yeah."
"Don't leave them then," said Gay. "Bring them all over here to spend
the evening. I'm wild for Lucy and brother Jameson to meet them as soon
as possible. Then when bedtime comes let them leave you. Tell them that
Kitty is going to bring all her family, and that everybody in the valley
who is anybody is coming to the Harcourt's Housewarming to-night at the
'Cabin in the Wood.'"
Kitty began unfurling her red parasol. "That certainly sounds alluring.
You can count on all my family, especially Ranald, and I'll go straight
home and telephone to Alex Shelby."
"Who may he be?" inquired Gay, scrambling up from the floor, to follow
her guests down stairs.
Kitty began an enthusiastic description of him, which Lloyd cut short
with the laughing remark, "Go look in your little Dutch mirror. I'm not
positive, but I _think_ he's yoah first 'Knight of the Looking-glass.'"
CHAPTER II
BED-TIME CONFIDENCES
THAT night a series of interesting shadows trooped across the little
Dutch mirror, in the moonlight, but nobody watched beside it to see how
faithfully it reflected the procession of guests, straggling up the path
below. After the first pleased glance Gay had flown down-stairs to throw
open the front door and bid them welcome. It was almost more than she
had dared to hope that the old Colonel would come, and "Papa Jack" and
Kitty's Grandmother MacIntyre. But they had needed no urging. Gay was
reaping the aftermath now, of her first visit to the Valley. They had
not forgotten the obliging little guest who had entertained them with
her violin playing, amused them with her quaint unexpected speeches, and
charmed old and young alike with her enthusiastic interest in everything
and everybody.
Ranald had more than that to remember, for he had carried on a vigorous
correspondence with Gay for the last six months, started by a "dare"
from Allison. Alex Shelby's memory of her dated back only to that
morning, but the picture of a sunny little head up among the roses, and
that line "Sandalphon the angel of glory" had been in his thoughts all
day.
Their effort to show the newcomers how cordial a Lloydsboro welcome
could be, was met by a hospitality which held them in its spell till
after midnight. Lucy was in her element. As the popular daughter of a
popular army officer, she had played gracious hostess ever since she had
learned to talk. As for Gay, so anxious was she that her friends should
be pleased with her family and her family with her friends, that she
threw herself with all her might into the task of making each show off
to the other.
An outside fire-place on the broad front porch was one of the features
of the Cabin. The June night was cool enough to make the blaze on its
hearth acceptable, and Lucy turned the picturesque old kettle, bubbling
on the crane, to practical use, making coffee to serve with the
marsh-mallows, which Jameson handed around on long sticks, that each one
might toast his own over the glowing coals.
The informality of it all, and the good cheer, made every one relax into
his jolliest mood, and Gay, hearing the old Colonel's laugh, as
stretched out on the settle by the fire, he told stories and toasted
marsh-mallows with a zest, felt that they had struck the right key-note
in this first evening's entertainment. It was the harbinger of many
others that would follow during the summer.
It was her violin that held them longest. Standing just inside the door
where Kitty could accompany her on the piano, she played one after
another of the favourite tunes that were called for in turn, till the
fire burned low on the porch hearth, and even the voices of the night
were stilled in the dense beech woods around the Cabin.
It was later than any one had supposed when Mrs. Sherman made the
discovery that the hall clock had stopped.
"She didn't know that I stopped it on purpose," confessed Gay, when the
last carriage had driven away, and Lloyd was following her sleepily
up-stairs. She paused to bolt the bed-room door behind them.
"This has been a lovely evening for me. It gives one such a comfortable
I-told-you-so sort of feeling to have everything turn out as you
prophesied it would. Of course I knew that Lucy would feel the charm of
the Valley, and like it a thousand times better than the mountains or
seashore or anywhere else, but I wasn't so sure of Jameson. Now my mind
is completely at rest for the summer. I stopped worrying when I saw him
hobnobbing with the Colonel and your father about those Lexington horses
he wants to buy. He was so tickled over those letters of introduction
they gave him. And he was so charmed to air his knowledge of the
Philippines to Mrs. Walton. He spent a month there you know. I fairly
patted myself on the back all the time he was talking. Somehow I feel so
responsible for this household. There! I forgot to remind them to bring
that bothersome old silver pitcher upstairs!"
Hastily unbolting the door she called out in sepulchral tones that
echoed through the dark house, "_Remember the Maine!_"
There was a laugh in the room across the hall, then her brother-in-law
who had just come up-stairs, shuffled down again in his slippers.
"I suppose I'll have to remind them every night this summer," continued
Gay. "I don't like to call out 'remember the silver pitcher that was our
great-great-grandmother Melville's, and the soup ladle that some old
Spanish grandee gave to one of Jameson's Castilian ancestors,' for if a
burglar were prowling around he would be all the more anxious to break
in. So the month I visited them, before we came here, I adopted that
slogan for my war-cry: '"_Remember the main_" thing in life to be saved
from burglars!' It always sends one or the other of them skipping, for
they feel the responsibility of preserving such heirlooms for posterity.
I used to wish that I were the oldest daughter, so that that pitcher
would be handed down to me on my wedding day. I didn't realize what a
bore it would be to be tied for life to such a responsibility. I asked
Jameson why he didn't put it and the ladle in a safety vault and be done
with it, and he read me such a lecture on the sacredness of old
associations and family ties that I somehow felt that his old soup-ladle
expected me to send it a written apology."
Gay had bolted the door again, and as she talked, drew the curtains
across the casement windows. Now she sat on the edge of the bed, shaking
out her wealth of sunny hair, to brush and braid it for the night. It
was a cosy room, with low ceiling and old-fashioned wall paper. With the
curtains drawn and the candles in the quaint pewter sticks lighting up
the claw-footed mahogany furniture, it was an ideal place for the
exchanging of bedtime confidences. Gay was the first to break the
silence.
"What was the matter with Betty tonight? She was as quiet as a mouse.
Hardly had a word to say, and all the time I was playing, she sat
looking out into the night as if she were ready to cry."
"No wondah! They were so beautiful, some of those nocturnes and things,
that we all had lumps in our throats. Nothing's the mattah with Betty.
It's just the last chaptah she can't get to suit her. She's gone around
in a sawt of dream all day."
"Who's playing the devoted to her now?"
"Nobody as far as I know. _All_ the boys love Betty. They've been
perfectly devoted to her ever since she came to Locust to live; but
not--not in the sentimental way you mean; for instance the way that Alex
Shelby cares for Kitty."
"Oh _don't_ tell me there is anything in that," wailed Gay, "at least on
Kitty's part, for I've set my heart on her marrying a friend of mine in
San Antonio, so she'll always be near me. You know when Mammy Easter
told her fortune, it was that her fate would come through running water
when the weather vane points _West_. I'm wild to have her visit me at
Fort Sam Houston next year, and this Frank Percival is the very one of
all others for her. He's a banker and as good as gold and--oh well,
there's no use wasting time singing his praises to _you_ when I want him
for Kitty! But about this Alex Shelby, Kitty told me this very afternoon
that it is _you_ he admires so much. She told me all about that Bernice
Howe affair, and said that ever since Katie Mallard up and told him how
honourably you acted in the matter, he has put you on a pedestal and
given you a halo. She said you could have him crazy about you if you'd
so much as lift an eyelash in encouragement."
"Don't you believe it!" cried Lloyd. "That's just Kitty's way of
throwing you off the track. We've been unusually good friends evah since
he found out why I broke my engagement to go riding with him, but he is
at The Beeches every bit as much as he is at The Locusts, and it's you
he'll be in love with befoah the summah is ovah. He was the first one
reflected in yoah looking glass, for he confessed this evening how he
sat and watched you on the laddah, and how he'd thought of you all day;
and he even quoted poetry about it, and that's a very serious symptom
for Alex to show. He nevah was known to do such things befoah! Then
tonight he was simply carried away by yoah playing. He adores a violin
and you played all his favourites. Oh I see yoah finish!"
There was a pause in which Gay kicked off her slippers and sat absently
gazing at them, while Lloyd tied the ribbons which fastened the lace in
the collar of her dainty gown. Again it was Gay who spoke first.
"Doesn't it seem queer to think of Allison's being engaged? It is such a
little while since we were all school girls together. Nobody knows whose
turn will come next. It makes me feel like a soldier on a battle
field--comrades being shot down all around you right and left and you
never knowing how soon it'll be your turn to fall. It's awful! Lloyd,
what's become of that boy out in Arizona, the one who sent you those
orange-blossoms in Joyce's letter when I was here before? He was best
man at Eugenia Forbes' wedding."
"Oh, you mean Phil Tremont!" answered Lloyd placidly, without the
conscious blush that Gay had expected to see. "He is out West again,
doing splendidly, Eugenia writes."
"I thought you wrote to him yourself."
Lloyd, stooping to pick up her dress and hang it over a chair, did not
see with what keen interest Gay watched her as she questioned.
"Oh, we still keep up a sawt of hit and miss correspondence. He writes
every few weeks and I manage to reply once in two months or so. It's
dreadfully uphill work for me to write to people whom I nevah see. It's
been two yeahs since he was heah, and I nevah know what he'll be
interested in."
"I suppose it's easier writing to some one you've known all your life,
like Malcolm MacIntyre for instance. I'm so sorry he and Keith are
abroad this summer."
Lloyd's face dimpled mischievously as she began to see the drift of
Gay's questioning. "I can't tell you how easy it is to write to Malcolm,
because I've nevah done it. Now it's my turn to ask questions. Where did
you get this new photograph of Ranald Walton on yoah dressing table? Beg
it from Kitty as you did that one at Warwick Hall, when he was a little
cadet, or get it from headquartahs?"
"Direct from headquarters," confessed Gay with a laugh. "He isn't so
afraid of girls as he used to be. Wasn't he charming tonight?"
So the questioning and answering went on for quarter of an hour longer,
each anxious to find how far the other had drifted into the unexplored
country of their dreams. Then Gay blew out the candles and climbed into
the high four-posted bed beside Lloyd, where they lay looking out
through the open window into the starlight. The moon had been down for
some time. It was so still here in the heart of the beech woods that the
silence could almost be felt. The girls spoke in whispers.
"It settles down on one like a pall," said Gay. "Are you sleepy?"
"Not very," answered Lloyd, stifling a yawn.
"Then there's one more person in the valley I want to ask about. I
believe I've heard an account of every one else. Where's Rob Moore and
what is he doing? I thought he would come over with you all tonight."
"Poah old Rob," answered Lloyd, swallowing another yawn. "His fathah
died a little ovah a yeah ago, and he's nevah been like himself since.
He seemed to grow into a man in just a few hours. It was awfully
sudden--Mistah Moore's death. The shock neahly killed Rob's mothah, and
the deah old judge, his grandfathah, you know, was simply heartbroken.
Rob just gave up his entire time to them aftah that. He was such a
comfort. Nevah left the place, and took charge of all the business
mattahs, to spare them every worry. When things were settled up they
found there wasn't as much left as they had thought there would be, and
Rob wouldn't touch a cent to finish his law course. He was afraid his
mothah would have to deny herself some luxury she had always been used
to, and he didn't want her to miss a single one she had had in his
fathah's lifetime. So he took a position in Louisville, and has been
working like a dawg evah since. He reads law at night with the old
Judge, so I scarcely evah see him. We've just drifted apart, till it
seems as if the little old Bobby I grew up with is dead and gone. I
missed him dreadfully at first, all last summah, for he'd almost lived
at our house, and was just like a brothah. I haven't seen him at all
this vacation, though to be suah I've only been home this one day."
In the dim starlight Lloyd could not see the complacent smile on Gay's
face, but her voice showed that she was well pleased with the answers to
her string of questions.
"Now I'll tell you why I put you through such a catechism," she began.
"I wanted to make sure that the coast is clear, so that you can
undertake a mission that is to be laid at your door this summer.
Jameson's brother Leland will be here to-morrow afternoon. If he takes a
fancy to the place he will probably stay as long as we do, and we are
all very anxious for him to stay. He's only three years younger than
Jameson, but the two were left alone in the world when they were just
little tots, and Jameson has been like a father to him. He feels so
responsible for him and so does Lucy. I do too, now, although he's only
my brother-in-law's brother, because I persuaded them to come here for
the summer, and Jameson wanted to go somewhere where Leland would be
satisfied to stay."
"What's the mattah with him, that he needs so much looking aftah? If
he's twenty-three yeahs old it seems to me that he might take the
responsibility of himself on his own shouldahs. Is he wild?"
"No. Jameson says he's always been too high-minded to do the things men
mean when they talk about sowing their wild oats; but he is as utterly
irresponsible as a will-o-the-wisp. He won't stay tied down to
anything--just drifts around, here and there, having a good time. It's a
pity that he isn't as poor as a church mouse. Then he'd have to do
something. He's so bright he easily could make something splendid of
himself. Now Jameson has good sensible ideas about not squandering his
money, and although he doesn't have to work any more than Leland does,
he looks after the details of his own business as a man should.
"He knows all about the mines he has stock in down in Mexico, and he
studies mineralogy and labour problems and investments, and has an
office that he goes to regularly every morning. He takes after his
father's side of the house, practical English people. But Leland is like
his mother's family (they were proud old Spaniards just a generation or
so back). He is adventurous and roving and romantic, and has the _dolce
far niente_ in the blood. Jameson says that all that Leland needs is to
be kept keyed up to the right pitch, for he is so impetuous and
headstrong that he always gets what he starts after, no matter what
stands in the way; and that if he could just fall heels over head in
love with some girl with great force of character, who wouldn't look at
him till he'd measured up to her standards, it would be the making of
him."
Lloyd yawned. "Excuse me for saying it," she began teasingly, "but I
don't see how you can get up so much interest in anybody like that, even
if he is yoah brothah-in-law's brothah. It sounds to me as if he is just
plain _lazy_ and I nevah did have any use for a man that had to be
nagged all the time to keep his ambition up to high-watah mark."
Gay sat up in bed in her earnestness. "Oh Lloyd, don't say that!" she
protested. "Don't judge him till you've seen him. He's perfectly dear in
lots of ways, in spite of his faults. You'll find him fascinating.
Everybody does. And I'm going to be entirely honest with you--I've
fairly _prayed_ that you'd like him. You are so strong yourself, the
strongest character of any girl I know, and you influence people so
forcibly in spite of themselves, that I've felt from the start it would
be the making of Leland if you'd take him in hand this summer."
Lloyd smothered a laugh in the pillow. "'Why don't you speak for
yourself, John,'" she said mischievously. "Why don't _you_ take him in
hand? You are already interested so much that you'd only be combining
pleasuah with duty."
Gay was too much in earnest to tolerate any levity, and went on in her
intense eager way. "Oh I've already worn myself out trying to influence
him, but it's of no use. He knows me too well. He's called me 'Pug' and
'Red-bird' ever since we went to kindergarten together. I'm just one of
the family. But I've showed him your picture and told him what an
unapproachable, unattainable creature you are, and whetted his curiosity
till it's as keen as a razor. Oh I've played my little game like an
expert, and he doesn't suspect in the faintest degree what I want. He
thinks I'm trying to interest him in Kitty Walton. I told him she's the
darlingest, jolliest, prettiest thing in ten states, and that I'd
guarantee he wouldn't feel bored once this entire summer if he'd make
her acquaintance.
"But you--I've painted as so indifferent and entirely above his reach,
that just to prove to me I'm mistaken, he'll nearly break his neck to
put himself on good terms with you. It's just as Jameson says, he'll
ride rough-shod over everything that stands in his way, to get what he
wants."
Lloyd raised herself on her elbow and turned a protesting face towards
her eloquent bed-fellow.
"Well of all cool things," she began, half inclined to be indignant, yet
so amused at Gay's masterly management that the exclamation ended in a
giggle. "Where do _I_ come in, pray? You say he always gets what he goes
aftah. Did it evah occur to you that I might not want to be taken
possession of in that high-handed way? That _I_ might have something to
say in the mattah? Haven't you as much interest in my welfare as in
yoah sistah's husband's brothah?"
"Of course! you blessed little goose!" exclaimed Gay, giving the arm
next hers an impetuous squeeze. "Don't I know the haughty Princess well
enough to be sure that all the king's horses and all the king's men
couldn't budge her against her will? I'm not looking ahead any farther
than this summer. But if you could just shake him up and put him on his
mettle that long, that's all I ask of you. And seriously, dear, you
might go the world over and not find one who measures up to your ideals
in more ways. He's well born and talented and rich and fairly
good-looking. He's so entertaining one never tires of his company,
good-hearted and generous to a fault, and--Oh Lloyd, _please_ say you'll
take enough interest to keep him keyed up to the right pitch for awhile.
It's all he lacks to make a splendid man."
"Do you know, I think that's a mighty big lack," said Lloyd, honestly.
"I've had strings on my harp that wouldn't stay strung. It's the most
exasperating thing in the world. You know how it is, with a violin.
Right in the midst of the loveliest passages one will begin to slip
back--just a trifle, maybe, not more than a hair's breadth, but enough
to make it flat and spoil the harmony. Then you stop and tune it up
again, and go on for awhile, but back it will slip just when you've
gotten to depending on it. You know I couldn't have any respect for a
man who had to be kept up to the notch that way. It would spoil the
whole thing to have him flat on a single note when I'd depended on him
to ring clear and true."
Gay had no reply ready for this unexpected argument, and her experience
with stringed instruments made it very forcible. It was several minutes
before she answered, then she spoke triumphantly.
"But you know what a master can do where a novice would fail. He can fit
the keys to hold any position he gives them. Leland has never felt the
touch of a master-hand. No one has ever controlled him. He has always
been petted and spoiled. He has never known a girl like you. I'm sure
that if you were only willing to make the attempt to arouse his pride
and ambition, you could do wonders for him."
It was the most potent appeal Gay could have made. To feel that her
influence may sway a man to higher, better things, will make even the
most frivolous girl draw quicker breath with a sense of power, and to a
conscientious girl like Lloyd this seemed an opportunity and a
responsibility that could not be lightly thrust aside.
"Well," she said finally, after a moment of hesitation, "I'll try."
Gay reached over with an impulsive kiss. "Oh you _dear_! I knew you
would. Now I can let you go to sleep in peace. 'Something accomplished,
something done, has earned a night's repose.' It must be awfully late.
Goodnight dear."
Long after Gay had fallen asleep, Lloyd lay thinking of the mission thus
thrust upon her. If this Leland Harcourt had needed reforming, she told
herself, she wouldn't have had anything to do with him. Her poor
Violet's experience with Ned Bannon had taught her one lesson--how
mistaken any girl is who thinks she can accomplish _that_. But to be the
master-hand that could put in tune some really splendid instrument (ah,
Gay's appeal was subtle and strong) _any_ girl would be glad and proud
to be _that_: the inspiration, the power for good, the beckoning hand
that would lead a man to the noblest heights of attainment.
There was something exhilarating, uplifting in the thought, that
banished sleep. Night often brings exalted moods that seem absurd next
day. Lying there, looking out at the stars, the pleasing fancy came to
her that each one was a sacred altar-flame, given into the keeping of
some unseen vestal virgin. Now she too had joined this star-world
Sisterhood, and had lighted a vestal fire on the altar of a promise. In
its constant watch, she would keep tryst with all that Life demanded of
her.
CHAPTER III
A KNIGHT COMES RIDING
NEXT morning Lloyd found that her exalted mood had faded away with the
stars. Any fire must pale before the broad light of day, and her
vestal-maiden fervour had given place to a very lively but mundane
interest in the brother-in-law's brother.
She was glad to hear at breakfast that he liked tennis, was a good
horseman, that private theatricals were always a success when he had a
hand in them. She stored away in her memory for future use, the
information that he had lived several years in Spain and Mexico, and
spoke Spanish like a native, that unlike Jameson he was prouder of his
Castilian ancestors than his English ones, and that two of his fads were
collecting pipes and rare old ivory carvings.
[Illustration: "DREW REIN A MOMENT AT THE GATE, TO LOOK DOWN THE STATELY
AVENUE."]
The more she heard about him the less sure she felt of being able to
keep her promise to Gay. It began to seem presumptuous to her that a
mere school-girl should imagine that she could exert any influence
over such an accomplished man of the world as he evidently was. All that
day she pictured to herself at intervals how she should meet him and
what she should say. It was a new experience for the haughty Princess
who had always been so indifferent to the opinions of her boy friends.
Gay's request had made her self-conscious. Fortunately she had a glimpse
of him before he saw her, which helped her to adjust herself to the role
she wanted to assume.
The morning after his arrival in the Valley, he and Ranald rode past the
Locusts, and drew rein a moment at the gate, to look down the stately
avenue which was always pointed out to strangers. Lloyd watched their
approach from behind a leafy screen of lilac bushes. The gleam of a wild
strawberry had lured her over there from the path, a few minutes before.
Then the discovery of a patch of four-leaf clovers near by had tempted
her to a seat on the grass. She was arranging the long stems of the
clovers in a cluster when the sound of hoof-beats made her look up.
So thickset were the lilacs between her and the road that not a glimpse
of her white dress or the flutter of a ribbon betrayed her presence, and
they paused to admire the avenue, unknowing that a far prettier picture
was hidden away a few yards from them, in full sound of their voices--a
girl half lying in the grass, with June's own fresh charm in her glowing
face, and the sunshine throwing dappled leaf shadows over her soft fair
hair. The mischievous light in her hazel eyes deepened as she watched
them.
"'The knights come riding two by two,'" she quoted in a whisper, closely
scrutinizing the stranger.
"He rides well, anyhow," was her first thought. The next was that he
looked much older than Gay's description had led her to imagine.
Probably it was because he wore a moustache, while Rob and Malcolm and
Alex and Ranald were all smooth-shaven. Maybe it was that same black
moustache, with the gleam of white teeth and the flashing glance of his
black eyes that gave him that dashing cavalier sort of look. How
wonderfully his dark face lighted up when he smiled, and how distinctly
one recalled it when he had passed on. And yet it wasn't a handsome
face. She wondered wherein lay its charm.
Gay's words recurred to her: "So fiery and impetuous he would ride
rough-shod over anything that stood in his way to get what he wants."
"He looks it," she thought, raising her head a trifle to watch them out
of sight. "I'm afraid I can't do as much for him as Gay expects for I'll
simply not stand his putting on any of his lordly ways with _me_."
Gathering up her clovers, she started back to the house, her head held
high unconsciously, in her most Princess-like pose.
Some one else had watched the passing of the two young men on horseback.
From his arm chair on the white pillared porch, old Colonel Lloyd
reached out to the wicker table beside him for his field-glass, to focus
it on the distant entrance gate.
"I don't seem to place them," he said aloud. "It looks like young Walton
on the roan, but the other one is a stranger in these parts."
Then as he saw they were not coming in, he shifted the glass to other
objects. Slowly his gaze swept the landscape from side to side, till it
rested on Lloyd, sitting on the grass by the lilac thicket, sorting her
lapful of clovers.
Something in her childish occupation and the sunny gleam of the proud
little head bowed intently over her task, recalled another scene to the
old Colonel; that morning when through this same glass he had watched
her first entrance into Locust. Was it fourteen or fifteen years ago? It
seemed only yesterday that he had found her near that same spot coolly
feeding his choicest strawberries to an elfish looking dog. Time had
gone so fast since his imperious little grand-daughter had come into his
life to fill it with new interests and deeper meaning. Yes, it certainly
seemed no longer ago than yesterday that she was tyrannizing over him in
her adorable baby fashion, making an abject slave of him, whom every one
else feared. And now here she was coming towards him across the lawn, a
tall, fair girl in the last summer of her teens. Why Amanthis was no
older than she when he had brought her home to Locust, a bride. And no
doubt some one would be coming soon, wanting to carry away Lloyd, the
light of his eyes and the life of the place.
It made him angry to think of it, and when she stopped beside his chair
to give him a soft pat on the cheek her first remark sent a jealous
twinge through him.
"So _that's_ who the stranger was with young Walton," he responded.
"_Humph!_ I don't think much of him."
"But grandfathah, how could you tell at such a distance?" laughed Lloyd.
"It isn't fair to form an opinion at such long range. You'd bettah come
with us tonight again ovah to the Cabin, and make his acquaintance.
There's to be anothah housewahming, especially for him. Kitty and Ranald
are engineering it. They've invited all the young people in the
neighbourhood--sawt of a surprise you know. At least they call it that,
although Gay and Lucy are expecting us. Even Rob is going, for Kitty
waylaid him as he got off the train yestahday evening, and talked him
into consenting."
"I'm glad of that," answered the old Colonel heartily. "'All work and no
play makes Jack a dull boy.' This last year has been hard on the lad.
The Judge tells me he's never left the place a single night since his
Daddy died. He just grinds along in that hardware store all day, and is
into his law books as soon as he gets home. He's getting to be an old
man before his time. I'm glad your little friend Gay is here this
summer, on his account, if for no other reason. She'll draw him out of
his shell if anybody can. I remember how much he seemed to be taken with
her that Christmas Vacation she spent in the Valley."
Lloyd gaped at him in astonishment. "Why grandfathah! I nevah dreamed
that you noticed things like _that_!"
"I certainly do, my dear," he answered playfully. "I was young myself
once upon a time. It's easy to recognize familiar landmarks on a road
you've travelled. But why," he said suddenly in a changed tone, "if I
may be so bold as to ask, _why_ is this young Texan to be ushered into
the valley with this blare of trumpets and torchlight effect? Is he
anything out of the ordinary?"
"No, but it will make him feel that he hasn't dropped down into a poky
inland village with nothing doing, but into a lovely social whirl
instead. They want him to be so pleased with the place that he'll be
satisfied to stay all summah."
It was almost on the tip of her tongue to tell why his family were so
desirous of keeping him with them, but another scornful "_humph!_"
checked her. For some unaccountable reason the old Colonel seemed to
have taken a dislike to this stranger, and she knew that this
information would deepen it to such an extent, that he would not want
her to have anything to do with him.
"He'd be furious if he knew what I promised Gay," she thought, "for he
takes such violent prejudices that the least thing 'adds fuel to the
flame.' He might not want me to let him call heah or anything."
"What do you keep saying '_humph!_' to me foh?" she asked saucily,
"when I'm trying to tell you the news and am so kind and polite as to
ask you to go to the pahty with us. It's dreadful to have such an old
ogah of a grandfathah, who makes you shake in yoah shoes every time he
opens his mouth."
Her arm was round his neck as she spoke, and her cheek pressed against
his. The caress drove away every other thought save that it was good to
have his little Colonel home again, and he gave a pleased chuckle as she
went on scolding him in a playful manner that no one else in the world
ever dared assume with him. But all the while that she was twisting his
white moustache, and braiding his Napoleon-like goatee into a funny
little tail, she was thinking about the evening, and the indifferent air
with which she intended to meet Leland Harcourt. She would have to be
indifferent, and oblivious of his existence as far as she could
politely, because Gay had told him that she was unapproachable and
unattainable. She would talk to Rob most of the evening, she decided.
She was glad that she would have the opportunity, for she had not seen
him since coming home. He had called at The Locusts the night after her
return from school, but that was the night she had stayed at the Cabin
with Gay, and she had missed him.
"Did you know that your trunks came while you were at the post-office?"
asked the Colonel presently. Owing to some mistake in checking their
baggage in Washington, Lloyd's trunks had been delayed, and she had been
wearing some of Betty's clothes the two days she had been at home.
"Why didn't you tell me soonah?" she asked, springing up from her seat
on the arm of his chair. "I've been puzzling my brains all mawning ovah
what I could weah tonight." Hastily gathering up the handful of clovers
that she had dropped on the wicker table, she ran upstairs. Everything
in her pink bower of a room was in confusion. Her Commencement gown lay
on the bed like an armful of thistledown, with her gloves and lace fan
beside it. On the mantel stood the little white slippers in which she
had tripped across the rostrum at Warwick Hall to receive her diploma
from Madam Chartley's hands. Now the diploma with its imposing red seals
and big blue satin bow, was reposing on top of the clock on the same
mantel with the slippers, and from the open trunks which Mom Beck was
unpacking, a motley collection of books, clothing, sorority banners and
school-girl souvenirs flowed out all over the floor.
The old coloured woman was garrulous this morning. Her trip to
Washington "with all her white folks, to her baby's Finishment" (she
couldn't understand why it should be called Commencement), had been the
event of her life; and when she could get no one else to listen, she
talked to herself, recounting each incident of her journey with unctuous
enjoyment.
She was on her knees now before one of the trunks, talking so earnestly
into its depths, that Lloyd, entering the room, looked around to see who
her audience could be. At the sound of Lloyd's step the monologue came
to a sudden stop, and the wrinkled old face turned with a smile.
"What you want me to do with all these yeah school books, honey, now you
done with 'em fo' evah?"
"Mercy, Mom Beck! don't talk as if I had come to the end of every thing,
and am too old to study any moah! I expect to keep up my French and
German all next wintah, even if I am a debutante. Don't you remembah
what Madam Chartley said in her lovely farewell speech to the
graduating class? What's the good of taking you to Commencement, if
that's all the impression it made?"
A pleased cackle of a laugh answered her. "Law, honey, I couldn't listen
to speeches! I was too busy thinkin' of Becky Potah in her black silk
dress that ole Cun'l give me for the grand occasion, an' the purple
pansies in my bonnet. The queen o' Sheby couldn't held a can'le to me
_that_ day."
She was off on another chapter of reminiscences now, but Lloyd paid no
attention. As she picked up the books and found places for them on the
low shelves that filled one side of the room, she felt as if she were
assisting at the last sad rites of something very dear; for each page
was eloquent with happy memories of her last year at school. Every
scribbled margin recalled some pleasant recitation hour, and most of the
fly-leaves were decorated by Kitty's ridiculous caricatures. She and
Kitty had been room-mates this last year.
In order to find place for these books, which she had just brought home,
she had to carry a row of old ones down to the library. They were
juvenile tales, most of them, which she laid aside; girls' stories that
had once been a never failing source of delight. She could remember the
time (and not so very long ago, either) when it had seemed impossible
that she could out-grow them. And now as she trailed down stairs with an
armful of her old favourites, she felt as if the shadowy figure of her
childhood, the little Lloyd that used to be, followed her with
reproachful glances for her disloyalty to these discarded friends.
On her way back to her room for a second armful, she stopped outside
Betty's door for a moment, hoping to hear some noise within, which would
indicate that Betty was not at her desk. There was so much that she
wanted to talk to her about. One of the things she had looked forward to
most eagerly in her home-coming was the long, sisterly talks they would
have together. Now it was a disappointment to find her so absorbed in
her writing that she was as inaccessible as if she had withdrawn into a
cloister.
"I'll be glad when the old book is finished," thought Lloyd impatiently
as she tip-toed away from the door. To her, Betty's ability to write was
a mysterious and wonderful gift. Not for anything would she have
interrupted her when "genius burned," but she resented the fact that it
should rise between them as it had done lately. Even when Betty was not
shut up in her room actually at work, her thoughts seemed to be on it.
She was living in a world of her own creating, more interested in the
characters of her fancy than those who sat at table with her. Since
beginning the last chapter she had been so preoccupied and
absent-minded, that Lloyd hardly knew her. She was so unlike the old
Betty, the sympathetic confidante and counsellor, who had been
interested in even the smallest of her griefs and joys.
If Lloyd could have looked on the other side of the closed door just
then, the expression on Betty's face would have banished every feeling
of impatience or resentment, and sent her quietly away to wait and
wonder, while Betty passed through one of the great hours of her life.
With a tense, earnest face bent over the manuscript, she reached the
climax of her story--the last page, the last paragraph. Then with a
throbbing heart, she halted a moment, pen in hand, before adding the
words, _The End_. She wrote them slowly, reverently almost, and then
realizing that the ambition of her life had been accomplished, looked up
with an expression of child-like awe in her brown eyes. It was done at
last, the work that she had pledged herself to do so long ago, back
there in the little old wooden church at the Cuckoo's Nest.
For a time she forgot the luxurious room where she sat, and was back at
the beginning of her ambition and high resolves, in that plain old
meeting house in the grove of cedars. Again she tiptoed down the empty
aisle, that was as still as a tomb, save for the buzzing of a wasp at
the open window through which she had climbed. Again she opened the
little red book-case above the back pew, that held the remnants of a
scattered Sunday-school library. The queer musty smell of the
time-yellowed volumes floated out to her as strong as ever, mingling
with the warm spicy scent of pinks and cedar, from the graveyard just
outside the open window.
Those tattered books, read in secret to Davy on sunny summer afternoons,
had been the first voices to whisper to her that she too was destined to
leave a record behind her. And now that she had done it, they seemed to
call her back to that starting place. Sitting there in happy reverie,
she wished that she could make a pilgrimage back to the little church.
She would like to slip down its narrow aisle just when the afternoon sun
was shining yellowest on its worn benches and old altar, and dropping on
her knees as she had done years ago in a transport of gratitude, whisper
a happy "Thank you, God" from the depths of a glad little heart.
Presently the whisper did go up from her desk where she sat with her
face in her hands. Then reaching out for the last volume of the white
and gold series that chronicled her good times, she opened it to where a
blotter kept the place at a half written page, and added this entry.
"June 20th. Truly a red-letter day, for hereon endeth my story of
'_Aberdeen Hall_.' The book is written at last. Two chapters are still
to be copied on the typewriter, but the 'web' itself is woven, and ready
to be cut from the loom. I am glad now that I waited; that I did not
attempt to publish anything in my teens. The world looks very different
to me now at twenty. I have outgrown my early opinions and ideals with
my short dresses, just as Mrs. Walton said we would. Now the critics can
say 'Thou waitedst till thy woman's fingers wrought the best that lay
within thy woman's heart.' I can say honestly I have put the very best
of me into it, and the feeling of satisfaction that I have accomplished
the one great thing I started out to do so many years ago, gives me more
happiness I am sure, than any 'diamond leaf' that any prince could
bring."
Such elation as was Betty's that hour, seldom comes to one more than
once in a life-time. Years afterward her busy pen produced far worthier
books, which were beloved and bethumbed in thousands of libraries, but
none of them ever brought again that keen inward thrill, that wave of
intense happiness which surged through her warm and sweet, as she sat
looking down on that first completed manuscript. She was loath to lay it
aside, for the joy of the creator possessed her, and in the first flush
of pleased surveyal of her handiwork, she humbly called it good.
She went down to lunch in such an uplifted frame of mind that she seemed
to be walking on air. But Betty was always quiet, even in her most
intense moments. Save for the brilliant colour in her cheeks and the
unusual light in her eyes there was no sign of her inward excitement.
She slipped into her seat at table with the careless announcement "Well,
it's finished."
It was Lloyd who made all the demonstration amid the family
congratulations. Waving her napkin with one hand and clicking two spoons
together like castanets, she sprang from her chair and rushed around the
table to give vent to her pleasure by throwing her arms around Betty in
a delighted embrace.
"Oh you little mouse!" she cried. "How can you sit there taking it so
calmly? If I had done such an amazing thing as to write a book, I'd have
slidden down the ban'istahs with a whoop, to announce it, and come
walking in on my hands instead of my feet.
"Of co'se I'm just as proud of it as the rest of the family are," she
added when she had expended her enthusiasm and gone back to her seat,
"but now that it's done I'll confess that I've been jealous of that old
book evah since I came home, and I'm mighty glad it's out of the way.
Now you'll have time to take some interest in what the rest of us are
doing, and you'll feel free to go in, full-swing, for the celebration at
the Cabin tonight."
All the rest of that day seemed a fete day to Betty. Her inward glow
lent a zest to the doing of even the most trivial things, and she
prepared for the gaieties at the Cabin, as if it were her own
entertainment, pleased that this red-letter occasion of her life should
be marked by some kind of a celebration. It was to do honour to the day
and not to the Harcourt's guest, that she arrayed herself in her most
becoming gown.
Rob dropped in early, quite in the old way as if there had never been a
cessation of his daily visits, announcing that he had come to escort the
girls to the Cabin. Lloyd who was not quite ready, leaned over the
banister in the upper hall for a glimpse of her old playmate, intending
to call down some word of greeting; but he looked so grave and dignified
as he came forward under the hall chandelier to shake hands with Betty,
that she drew back in silence.
The next instant she resented this new feeling of reserve that seemed to
rise up and wipe out all their years of early comradery. Why shouldn't
she call down to him over the banister as she had always done? she asked
herself defiantly. He was still the same old Rob, even if he had grown
stern and grave looking. She leaned over again, but this time it was the
sight of Betty that stopped her. She had never seen her so beaming, so
positively radiant. In that filmy yellow dress, she might have posed as
the Daffodil Maid. Her cheeks were still flushed, her velvety brown eyes
luminous with the joy of the day's achievement.
Lloyd watched her a moment in fascinated admiration, as she stood
laughing and talking under the hall light. Then she saw that Rob was
just as much impressed with Betty's attractiveness as she was, and was
looking at her as if he had made a discovery.
His pleased glance and the frank compliment that followed sent a thought
into Lloyd's mind that made her wonder why it had never occurred to her
before. How well Betty would fit into the establishment over at Oaklea.
What a dear daughter she would make to Mrs. Moore, and what a joy she
would be to the old Judge! Rob seemed to be finding her immensely
entertaining. Well, there was no need for her to hurry down now. She
could take her time about changing her dress.
Lloyd could not have told what had made her decide so suddenly that her
dress needed changing. She had put on a pale green dimity that she liked
because it was simple and cool-looking, but now after a glance into the
mirror she began to slip it off.
"It looks like a wilted lettuce leaf," she said petulantly to her
reflection, realizing that nothing but white could hold its own when
brought in contact with Betty's gown. That pale exquisite shade of
glowing yellow would be the dominating colour in any place it might be
worn.
"I must live up to Gay's expectations," she thought, "so white it shall
be, Senor Harcourt!"
His dark face with its flashing smile rose before her, and stayed in the
foreground of her thoughts, all the time she was arraying herself in her
daintiest, fluffiest white organdy. Clasping the little necklace of
Roman pearls around her throat, and catching up her lace fan, she swept
up to the mirror for a last anxious survey. It was a thoroughly
satisfactory one, and with a final smoothing of ribbons she smiled over
her shoulder at the charming reflection.
"Now I'll go down and practise my airs and graces on Rob and Betty for
awhile. But I'll leave them in peace after we get to the Cabin, for if
there should be any possibility of their beginning to care for each
othah, I wouldn't get in the way for worlds. Now _this_ is the way I'll
sail in to meet Mistah Harcourt!"
Thus it happened that the hauteur with which she intended to impress him
was in her manner when she swept in to greet Rob. It was not meant for
Rob but it had the same effect as if it were, making him feel as if she
wished to drop the friendly familiarity of their school days, and meet
him on the footing of a recent acquaintance. He had been looking forward
all year to her home-coming, and now it gave him a vague sense of
disappointment and injury, that she should be as conventionally
gracious to him as if he were the veriest stranger. His eyes followed
her wistfully, as if looking for something very precious which he had
lost.
Wholly unconscious of the way she was spoiling the evening for him Lloyd
went on playing the part of Serene Highness, laid out for her. Never to
Gay's admiring eyes had she seemed more beautiful, more the fair
unattainable Princess, than she was in her meeting with Leland Harcourt.
Gay wanted to pat her on the back, for she saw that she had made the
very impression expected of her. Long practice had made Gay quick in
interpreting Leland's slightest change of expression, and she was well
pleased now with what she read in his face.
But to Lloyd, the dark, smiling eyes, regarding everything with a
slightly amused expression, showed nothing more than the superficial
interest which ordinary politeness demanded of him. He made some pretty
speech about the Valley and his pleasure in meeting its charming people,
and then stood talking only long enough to make her feel that Gay was
right in her estimate of him. He was entertaining, even fascinating in
his manner, more entertaining than any man she had ever met. But just as
she reached this conclusion she found herself handed over in some
unaccountable way to some one else, and that was the last of his
attention to her that night.
He seemed immensely entertained by Kitty, and much interested in Betty
and the fact that she had finished writing a book that very day. Gay
heralded her advent with that news. Lloyd could overhear little scraps
of conversation that made her long to have a share in it. His repartee
was positively brilliant she found herself thinking; the kind that one
reads of in books, but never hears elsewhere.
For the first time in her life Lloyd felt herself calmly and
deliberately ignored, just as she had planned to ignore him.
"Maybe it's because Gay told him that I would be so indifferent," she
thought, "and he doesn't think it worth the effort to put himself out to
make me be nice to him. I don't care."
Nevertheless a little feeling of disappointment and pique crept in to
spoil her evening also, for in the limited wisdom of her school-girl
experiences she did not recognize that this worldly-wise young man was
ignoring her because he was interested; that he had only adopted her own
tactics as the surest way of gaining his end.
CHAPTER IV
BETTY'S NOVEL
IT was Gay's voice over the telephone. "Oh Lloyd, _can't_ you come? Do
arrange it some way. Lucy is frightened stiff at the thought of being
left here alone all night with just me. And she thought it would be such
a good time for Betty to read us her novel, as she promised, before she
sends it away to the publishers. There'll be no callers to interrupt us
on such a rainy day."
"Hold the phone a minute," answered Lloyd. "I'll see. It's Gay," she
explained to her mother who had come out into the hall at the first
tinkle of the bell, thinking the summons might be for her.
"Mistah Harcourt and his brothah went to Lexington this mawning to buy
those hawses, and Gay and Lucy are afraid to stay there tonight. The
cook had promised to sleep at the house, but something turned up at her
home a little while ago to prevent. So they want Kitty and Betty and me
to come ovah right away and spend the aftahnoon and night. It's raining
cataracts and I know you don't like to take the new carriage out in such
weathah, but couldn't Alec put the curtains on the old one?"
Mrs. Sherman glanced dubiously towards the windows, against which the
rain was beating in torrents.
"And leave me all alone, when I've been looking forward to this same
good, rainy afternoon with you," almost slipped from Mrs. Sherman's
tongue. But the eager desire shining in the faces of both girls kept
back the words.
"It's only a warm summer rain," interposed Betty, seeing her hesitate.
"Very well, then," consented Mrs. Sherman with a smile, but as she went
back to her room she stifled a little sigh of disappointment. "I suppose
it's only natural they should want to be going," she thought. "But if it
wasn't so selfish I could almost wish that Gay hadn't come to the Valley
for the summer. She will take Lloyd away from home so often, and I have
looked forward so long to the companion she would be when her school
days were ended."
Wholly unconscious of her mother's disappointment Lloyd was answering
merrily, "We'll be ovah right away! Ring up Kitty again, and tell her
we'll drive by for her."
An hour later the five girls (for the bride of a year seemed the
youngest of them all at times) were seated in an upstairs room at the
Lindsey Cabin, each in a comfortable rocking chair. Lucy had taken them
to her room saying it was cozier up near the roof where they could hear
the rain patter on the shingles. Also her dormer windows faced the West,
and they would have daylight longer there.
It took a little while for them to get settled for the reading. Lucy
brought out the family darning with a matronly air, when she saw that
Lloyd had brought a square of linen to start a piece of drawn-work, and
Kitty had some napkins to hem. Mrs. Walton had turned over the
management of the house to Kitty only that day (Allison had had it the
year before) and with house-wifely zeal she had begun with an
exploration of the linen closet where she had found a pile of unhemmed
linen.
Not wanting to be idle while all the rest were occupied, Gay kept them
waiting while she burrowed through her trunk for an intricate piece of
knitting work which she had begun two years before. It had been
intended for a Christmas present, and she had brought it with her
intending to finish it before another Christmas or perish in the
attempt. "Don't pay any attention to me," she warned. "There'll be
places where I have to stop and count stitches and fairly wrestle with
it, but I'll be listening in spite of my bodily contortions."
They were all ready at last, so Betty picked up the first chapter and
cleared her throat. She had been anxious to read her novel to the girls,
she had been so sure of its merit. But now as she glanced down the page
she was assailed by misgivings. After all she might not have been an
impartial judge, and maybe it wasn't as good as it seemed to her.
"You'll recognize some of the incidents," she explained, "and one
character is a composite portrait of three Lloydsboro people. He looks
like Mr. Jaynes, stutters like Captain Bedel and has experiences that
once happened to Doctor Shelby. I've put Miss Marietta Waring's romance
into it too."
Betty read well. She loved the characters she had fashioned, and with
her sympathetic voice to interpret them, they became almost as real to
her listeners as they were to herself. Presently the girls began to
exchange approving nods. She watched them from the corner of her eye.
Now and then there were low murmurs of approbation at some particularly
pleasing incident or turn of expression, and at the end of the first
chapter there was outspoken applause. They complimented enthusiastically
while Betty rested and took breath for the next.
As she felt the genuine pleasure she was affording them, all her fears
as to its short-comings fled. She began to see that her story was even
better than she had thought it. She saw it in better perspective through
their eyes. Its plot moved so smoothly. There was more life, more _go_
in it than she had been conscious of in her solitary readings. It was
certainly worth all the painstaking effort it had cost her. She could
look at it now and no longer humbly, but confidently call it good.
When in one scene she stole a furtive glance around to note the effect,
and caught Lucy stealthily slipping out her handkerchief, Gay looking up
with tears on her lashes and Lloyd with the peculiar tightening of the
lips that showed she was trying to swallow the lump in her throat, she
was so happy she could have sung for joy. She read on and on, and they
forgot the rain beating against the windows, forgot everything but
their interest in the story.
Lucy pushed her darning basket aside and leaned back in her chair, her
hands clasped behind her head. The work over which Lloyd had been
bending, dropped in her lap and her little gold thimble rolled away into
a corner unheeded. There was a personal interest in the story for each
of them. Lloyd saw herself as plainly in Betty's heroine as she could
see her reflection in the mirror door of the huge mahogany wardrobe
opposite her. Some of Kitty's ridiculous speeches that had become
historical in her family, found a place here and there, and once Lucy
laughed outright, exclaiming, "Why that's just like Gay! You must have
been thinking of her when you wrote it."
The reading went on without interruption until it was so dark that Betty
had to hold her manuscript close to the window. "I'll ring for lights,"
thought Lucy, "just as soon as she comes to the end of this chapter."
But with the end of the chapter came Ca'line Allison with a message from
the kitchen. Lucy started up in dismay.
"There! I forgot all about that salad. How could I be so careless when
I'm to have a real live authoress to dinner? I was so interested I
hadn't a thought for anything but the story."
"Such appreciation is a thousand times better than salad," laughed
Betty, so jubilant over her triumph that her eyes were full of a happy
light. "This is a good place to stop until after dinner. I've read until
my throat is tired."
Lucy hurried down stairs to hasten the dinner preparations, in order
that they might get back to the reading as soon as possible. The four
girls folded their work, and sat in the twilight, talking.
"What does this make you think of?" asked Lloyd.
"I know what's in your mind," answered Kitty. "I was just about to speak
of it myself; that rainy day at Boarding School, when Ida Shane read
'The Fortune of Daisy Dale' to us, behind locked doors. Wasn't it
thrilling?"
Gay who had heard the incident mentioned many times at Warwick Hall,
said plaintively, "You girls always make me feel that I have missed half
my life, because I wasn't with you when Ida Shane read that story. I'd
certainly like to get my hands on such a wonderful piece of literature."
"But it wasn't wonderful," Betty hastened to explain. "It made that deep
impression on us simply because it was the first novel we had ever
read. It was sentimental and melodramatic and trashy as we've since
discovered, but then it seemed all that was lovely and romantic. It gave
us thrills up and down our spines and sent us around with our heads in
the clouds for days. We were seeing embryo Guy Wolverings in every boy
we met. As I listened to Ida I thought that if I could only write a book
that would hold my listeners spellbound as that held us, I'd ask no more
of life. I could die happy."
"Well, you've done it, dear," said Gay warmly. "We scarcely breathed
during the last two chapters, and I'm so eager to know how it ends that
I'd willingly cut dinner to go on with it."
"Now how does that make you feel, Miss Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis?" asked
Kitty teasingly. "Fair uplifted, I've nae doot."
"Yes, it does," was the honest answer. "It's what I've hoped for and
worked for and prayed for these last ten years. Can you wonder that it
makes me radiantly happy to have you girls think that I have in a
measure succeeded?"
Dinner was announced a little later, and when the girls went into the
dining-room, they found Lucy herself bringing it in.
"Poor Sylvia had another message from home," she explained, "so I told
her and Ca'line Allison to go on; that we'd wait on ourselves and clear
the table, and they could wash the dishes in the morning. It's not
raining quite so hard now, but it is dark as a pocket outside."
As she placed the soup tureen on the table, they heard the outer kitchen
door close, and Sylvia turn the key in the lock.
"Ugh!" exclaimed Lucy with a shiver. "Now we're abandoned to our fate! I
wish you'd pull that window-shade farther down, Gay. There's just room
for somebody to peep under it, and there's nothing more terrifying to me
than the thought of eyes peering in at one from the outer darkness."
"'The gobelins will git you if you don't watch out,'" sang Gay. "Do for
pity's sake put your mind on something else, Lucy, and don't spoil this
festive occasion with a case of high jinks!"
Seeing that their little hostess was really nervous and timid, Kitty
began to divert them all by impersonating different characters in the
Valley. She was a fine mimic, and kept them laughing all through the
first course. Lucy carried out the plates, and hurried back with the
second course.
"You've got to get the salad when the time comes," she said to Gay.
"It's so spooky out there in the kitchen with Sylvia gone, that I was
afraid to look over my shoulder. Queer, isn't it! For it's just as warm
and well-lighted and cheerful now as when she was there. I wouldn't go
into the pantry alone for a fortune."
"Nonsense!" cried Kitty. "Five valiant females are enough to keep any
Lloydsboro foe at bay. We'll be your brave defenders."
Gay, who had risen to circle around the table with a plate of hot
biscuit, paused dramatically beside Lucy's chair to say in a stage
whisper, "Hist! I have a weapon of defence ye wot not of. One that a
doughty knight did leave behind him."
"Oh," said the literal Lucy. "I suppose you mean Mr. Shelby's
boxing-glove that he left on the piano, when he came in yesterday to
bring you those books. It was awfully funny, girls, the way he _seemed_
to leave it by accident. I couldn't help laughing, for it was so evident
he did it on purpose, to have an excuse to come again sooner than he
would have done otherwise."
Gay smiled knowingly. It was not a boxing-glove she meant, but for
reasons of her own she did not enlighten Lucy as to the kind of weapon
she had in reserve. It was after eight when they rose from the table,
and they made such a frolic of carrying out the dishes, that the
grandfather clock on the stairs chimed the half-hour as they finished.
Before Ca'line Allison left she had started a cheerful blaze in the
fireplace of the huge living room, for the night was chilly as well as
damp. But Lucy partly covered it with ashes, and proposed spending the
evening up-stairs.
"Somehow one feels so much safer up-stairs when there are no men in the
house," she explained. "We'll light two big lamps, and that will make it
as warm and cosy as if we had a fire."
So in a body they made the rounds of the down-stairs rooms, bolting
windows and locking doors. Then satisfied that every entrance was
securely fastened, they went up-stairs to resume the reading. This time
there was no attempt to do any needlework. With folded hands they waited
in expectant silence, while Betty found her place. But just as she
raised the sheet of paper, the great door of the mahogany wardrobe swung
slowly and stealthily open. Not a sound did it make, and there was
something so ghostly in its silent undoing that Lucy gave a little
shriek and hid her face in her hands. Each one of them acknowledged to
a queer chilly sensation just for an instant, even Gay, who explained
that it was only a little habit that the wardrobe had. "I don't mind it
in the day-time," she added, "but it _is_ spooky at night when
everything is still to have it unexpectedly pop open, and swing out with
that slow gliding motion."
"It's because the latch is worn and the catch works loose," said
matter-of-fact Kitty, who had crossed the room to examine it. She turned
the key. "Now it will not interrupt us for awhile. Go on with the story,
Betty."
Again the manuscript was raised and again Lucy stopped her with the
wail, "Oh, Gay! We've forgotten to bring up the silver pitcher and
Jameson's ladle. I put them on the dining-room table after I'd washed
them, and then marched off and forgot them."
"Well, I'll go down for them," volunteered Gay. "There's no use in your
doing it and getting another fit of shivers."
The other three sprang up, but Gay waved Betty back.
"Save your breath for the reading. Kitty and Lloyd will be enough. I
don't mind acknowledging that I'll be glad to have both a rear and a
vanguard going through that dark hall."
Lighting a candle and holding it high above her head, Lloyd led the way
down-stairs. Gay was inwardly quaking, for she was almost as timid as
her sister, but the fearlessness of her two companions made her keep up
a pretence of bravery. As the three pairs of little heels clattered down
the dark polished steps, Lloyd and Kitty kept time in a singsong chant:
"There was a man and he had naught
And robbers came to rob him.
He got up on the chimney top
And then they thought they had him.
But he got down on the other side
And then they couldn't find him
He went _fourteen miles in fifteen days_
And never looked behind him."
It was almost cruel of Kitty to seize that opportunity to tell the
scariest burglar tale that she had ever heard, but a fine appreciation
of dramatic situations urged her to it.
"Ugh! Don't!" begged Gay, as they filed into the dining-room and began
looking around for the silver heirlooms. Lucy was mistaken. It was the
kitchen table on which she had left them.
"The goose-flesh is standing out all over me! That's the most gruesome
tale I ever heard."
"But I'm in the most interesting part," insisted Kitty. "When she saw
the black face leering over the transom--"
"Hush!" chattered Gay. "I won't listen to another word. It's so creepy I
can feel things grabbing at my ankles. Let me have the candle a minute,
please, Lloyd, I want to get something out of the hat-rack drawer."
There was a faint glow on the hearth from the few embers Lucy had left
uncovered, and the two stood within it as they waited for Gay to come
back with the candle. Kitty went on with her tale, for Lloyd was as
fearless as herself. She did not get further than a sentence or two,
however, before Gay came hurrying back. To their astonishment she blew
out the candle as she reached them, and in the brief glimpse they had of
her face they saw that it was ghastly white. In the dim glow of the
embers they were scarcely visible to each other. She clutched them with
trembling fingers.
"There's some one prowling around the house!" she whispered. "Some one
was creeping around under the windows, and then up on the porch. I
heard them plain as day. I blew out the light so they couldn't see in!"
"Pooh!" began Lloyd, but enough of Gay's excitement had been
communicated to both her listeners to make their hearts thump a little
faster, when they, too, heard a noise at the window. There certainly
were steps on the porch. Then the knocker on the front door was lifted
and a hollow clang echoed through the hall.
"Burglars don't knock," said Lloyd with a sigh of relief. "Let's all go
to the doah togethah and ask who's there. We needn't open it."
"No, don't!" begged Gay, almost in tears. "It's just like that awful
story Kitty started to tell--the knock at the door, the lone woman's
voice answering, and the burglar forcing his way over the transom! Our
only safety is in keeping perfectly still. If worst comes to worst,
_then_ I'll make them think there's a man in the house, but I won't do
it till I'm driven to it."
"If it's one of the neighbours he'll knock again," said Kitty.
For a moment they waited, their hearts in their mouths, as they
remembered what a lonely place was this dark beech woods, and how near
it was to Stumptown, with its many drunken negroes. The knock was not
repeated, but the steps sounded as if the intruder were prowling back
and forth on the porch. Then the slats of the window-shutters turned
stealthily.
"Thank heaven the shades are down!" chattered Gay hysterically. "Oh,
girls, I'm growing gray-headed. I can't stand this suspense another
second." Then as the steps once more crossed the porch, "Cut up-stairs!
Quick! Both of you! I'll follow."
She darted out of the dim circle of light on the hearth, and they could
not see what happened, but almost instantly a pistol shot rang out. Up
till that moment neither Kitty nor Lloyd had been much alarmed. Now they
clutched each other wildly.
"It's some crazy man escaped from the Lakeland asylum," began Kitty, but
her words were cut short by another shot, then another and another and
another, in such rapid succession that they lost count. A series of
piercing screams from Lucy, up-stairs, made their blood run cold, but
the shrieks were not half as terrifying as the sight of Gay staggering
back out of the hall. As they sprang towards her she leaned against them
limply.
"Is she shot?" gasped Kitty in a horrified whisper. "Oh, _where's_ the
light?"
With shaking hands Lloyd caught up the daily paper, left lying on the
settle, and threw it on the coals. It blazed up instantly, and by its
light she found the candle.
The shrieks were still going on up-stairs and Betty was calling out
frantically to know what was the matter. She could not come down to see
for herself, for Lucy had caught her in a hysterical grasp and was
holding her like a vise. As the candle flared up something fell from
Gay's nerveless hand to the floor. The girls looked at each other in
blank astonishment. It was a revolver. Gay herself had fired the shots.
Now in the midst of their bewilderment they became conscious of shouts
outside. Some one was calling: "Mrs. Harcourt! Miss Melville! Don't be
alarmed! It's only Alex Shelby!"
Recognizing the voice, Lloyd flew to open the door, candle in hand.
"Oh, you gave us such a scare!" she began in a tone of relief. "We
thought it was a burglar doing the shooting. We nevah dreamed that _Gay_
had a revolvah."
"It was mine," explained Alex, laughing so that he could hardly close
his umbrella. "I loaded it for her and loaned it to her yesterday, but I
had no idea it would come back at me in that boomerang fashion. She
popped loose and shot at me bang through the front door. The first shot
whistled just over my head, and if I hadn't dodged behind a post I
surely would have stopped them all. Hottest welcome I ever had."
Then as he came on in, he continued, apologetically, "I'm mighty sorry I
gave you all such a fright. I ought to have gone away without knocking
when I saw there was no light down-stairs, but I knew you were all here,
and it was so early, I never dreamed of being taken for a burglar."
He kept on with his apologies after he came into the hall, but Gay was
not there to hear. Mortified that she had been so rash, and horrified by
the thought of how serious the consequences of her wild shooting might
have been, she could not face him. At the first sound of his voice she
ran for the stairs, her wild dash almost upsetting Lucy and Betty on
their way down. When repeated callings failed to bring her back, Kitty
went up to look for her and found her in a woebegone heap on the foot of
her bed.
"Oh, you mustn't take it to heart that way," she said soothingly, in
response to Gay's tearful protests that she could never look him in the
face again, never, _never_! That he'd always think what a fool she was
and how near she came to killing him.
"Nonsense!" was Kitty's brisk answer. "He insists that it is all his own
fault, that he ought to have known what to expect when he called on a
native Texan. He says he's always heard that they punctuate their
remarks with bullets and will shoot at the drop of a hat. Hereafter he
will herald his approach by telephone or else come in a coat of mail
warranted to turn even the fire of a Gatling gun. He's making a joke of
it, and it's silly of you not to do the same. Get up this minute and
come down-stairs, and make him have such a good time that he'll gladly
risk another shooting to come again."
[Illustration: "HE WAS BENDING ANXIOUSLY OVER A BUBBLING SAUCEPAN."]
It was a long time before Gay could screw her courage to the point of
following Kitty meekly down-stairs, and in the meantime Lucy took an
effective way to make him forget his inhospitable reception. Her chafing
dish was her panacea for many ills. She had tried it at the Post too
many times with the different boys who flocked there, not to know its
full value. So when Gay came into the room she found Alex already
being initiated into the mysteries of candy-making. With a white apron
tied around his waist, and a big spoon in his hand, he was bending
anxiously over a bubbling sauce-pan.
Heretofore his calls at the Cabin had been of the most formal kind; but
this little escapade was doing more to further their acquaintance and
put him on the same privileged footing that the boys at the Post
enjoyed, than dozens of casual meetings could have done. It was a novel
experience to Alex, and he made the most of it, exerting himself to be
entertaining, in hopes of having the occasion repeated.
After the first painful moment of greeting and apology, Gay subsided
into a corner of the old settle, but she did not stay there long. It was
impossible to resist the infection of Alex's high spirits. When the
reaction began it swung her to the farthest extreme, into an
irresistible gale of merriment.
Betty's thoughts turned regretfully to the manuscript up-stairs. She was
sorry that the reading had been interrupted. She knew the girls would
have gained a better impression of the book if they could have heard it
without this interruption. There was no telling when there would be an
opportunity to finish it as good as this would have been. Once she had
a hope that Alex would not stay long and that there would still be time
to finish the reading after his departure. But while the candy cooled
Gay started Lloyd and Alex to singing duets, she and Kitty accompanying
them with violin and piano, and she knew that it was useless to hope any
longer. So she settled down to enjoy the sweets and the music as
heartily as the rest of them.
In one of the pauses, while they were searching through a pile of songs
for some duet they wanted, Lloyd crossed over to the settle where Lucy
was sitting beside the candy, and helped herself to a piece.
"I'm sorry Leland is missing this," said Lucy. "It was a time like this
that gave him his nickname of 'Brer Tarrypin.' He used to be devoted to
candy-pulls, and came up to the Post every time he thought we were going
to have one; and he always was like Brer Tarrypin, you know, in the
Uncle Remus stories."
"How is that?" inquired Lloyd, keenly interested. She knew the Uncle
Remus stories by heart and wondered in what way this one had been
applied to the elegant and fastidious Mr. Harcourt.
"Why, you know, Brer B'ar he helped Miss Meadows bring the wood, Brer
Fox he mend the fire, Brer Wolf he kept the dogs off, Brer Rabbit he
greased the bottoms of the plates to keep the candy from sticking, but
'Brer Tarrypin he klum up in a cheer an' say he watch an' see dat de
'lasses didn't bile over.' The boys always used to say that the only
part in the game Leland would take was _watching the lasses_. He'd talk
to their girls while they did the work."
Gay, over at the piano, drew her brows together in a little frown. She
wished that Lucy would be more discreet in her reminiscences, for she
felt that Lloyd was already prejudiced against Leland more than was
desirable. She called out suddenly, "Sister, can't you find that duet
for us? You had it last."
Lucy rose obediently, but lingered a moment to add, as Lloyd laughed,
"Leland doesn't mind it a bit. The boys all got to hailing him in Uncle
Remus fashion, 'Heyo, Brer Tarrypin, wha'r you bin dis long-come-short?'
and he'd answer as a matter of course, 'Lounjun roun', Brer Fox, lounjun
roun'."
"It's mighty interesting to know the history of a nickname," observed
Lloyd, with an amused smile, which Gay interpreted as meaning that this
bit of history was being tucked away for future use.
It was late when Alex went home, taking his revolver with him. He would
be staying all night near by, with a friend of his, he told them, and if
anything else frightened them they were to telephone. He'd come
post-haste to their rescue. Then he made the rounds of all the
down-stairs windows and doors, seeing that each was properly fastened,
and started Lucy on her way up-stairs with the silver pitcher and ladle
safe in her hands. He seemed to leave the sense of his strong protecting
presence behind him. As they bolted the door and heard him go whistling
cheerily down the road, Lucy declared enthusiastically: "He's a nice boy
and he's made us have such a jolly evening that I'm all wound up and
don't feel a bit sleepy. Let's make a night of it and hear the rest of
Betty's story. It doesn't make any difference if it is nearly midnight.
We can sleep as late as we please in the morning, for Jameson isn't
here, and we won't have to consider his convenience."
For once they were of the same mind, all loath to go to bed. So Betty
slipped into a borrowed kimona, shook down her hair and settled herself
comfortably in a cushioned chair beside the lamp.
"If they keep awake to the end," she thought, "that will be a good test.
I'll know then that it has real interest and I'll not be afraid to give
it to the public." So she kept an anxious watch out of the corner of her
eye, intending to stop at the first sign of weariness. But the attention
of her audience was as profound as it had been during the afternoon.
Stifling an occasional yawn herself, she read on and on. It was
half-past two when she laid aside the last page of her manuscript and
looked up timidly to receive the verdict. Lloyd spoke first.
"Betty Lewis, it's perfectly splendid! I'm so proud of you--I've always
been suah you'd make a name for yoahself some day, but I nevah dreamed
you'd do it so early in life, at only twenty!"
"I haven't made it yet, you know," Betty reminded her smiling. "My
friends may be willing to 'pass my imperfections by,' but I've still to
run the gauntlet of the critics."
There was a chorus of protests from the other girls, and Betty's heart
grew warm as she listened to their cordial praise and predictions of
success.
"I'm dying to have a finger in the launching of this little bark," said
Gay. "Let's wrap it up tonight and have it all ready to send off in the
morning. It would be so fine to be able to brag to my grandchildren
that _I_ helped. I have a strong flat box just the size of the
manuscript. I'm sure it will fit it exactly. Wait and I'll go and get
it."
She ran out of the room, and, while she rummaged through a trunk to find
it, Lucy climbed up on a chair to look on the wardrobe shelf for some
heavy wrapping-paper which she had folded away.
"Let me have some part in it too," cried Kitty. "Although I've no idea
what it can be when I'm so far from the source of supplies. Oh, I know
now," she said after an instant's thought. "You'll need a string to tie
around the box. Here's something that will do."
Opening the wicker satchel she had brought with her she took out a
dainty nightgown. It was the work of only a moment to slip out the
fresh, new pink ribbons that had been run through the lace beading.
"Now let me tie it!" she insisted. "See what an artistic bow I can
make!"
When the manuscript had been placed in Gay's box, tied with Kitty's
ribbon and wrapped in Lucy's paper, it was gravely handed over to Lloyd,
who had suggested that as it was to be sent by express it ought to be
sealed.
"There's a stick of sealing-wax in the drawer of the library table,"
said Lucy, "if anybody's brave enough to go down and get it at this 'wee
sma' hour.' It must be nearly three o'clock."
Before she had finished her sentence Lloyd had lighted a candle to carry
down-stairs. She was back in a moment. They all stood around in a circle
while she melted the red wax in the heat of the candle. "Somebody ought
to say an abracadabra charm ovah it," she suggested. "You do it, Kitty."
Then she looked around her helplessly. "What am I going to do for a
seal? Quick, somebody, hand me something off the dressing-table. The
stoppah of that vinaigrette will do."
Before Lucy could hand her the bottle Gay caught up the old silver ladle
and pressed the end of its handle down on the soft wax.
"There's a crest on it," she explained, holding it firmly in place. "The
motto will read backwards, but that won't make any difference. There!"
She lifted the ladle, and they all crowded around to see the clear-cut
impression left in the red wax, of a dagger thrust through a crown. The
tiny reversed letters of the motto were undecipherable, but Gay
translated them.
"Jameson says it's the Latin for 'I strive till I overcome,' and that's
a fine war-cry for Betty. She's striven so long it's bound to bring a
crown, only that other thing ought to be a pen instead of a dagger."
"Let me put one seal on, just for luck," begged Kitty when Lloyd had
carefully fastened both ends of the package. She held the wax to the
flame. "Everybody make a wish," she ordered. "Wish _hard_."
They wished in silence. In silence they looked on while Kitty dropped
the third red drop on the package and pressed into it the crown and the
dagger of the ladle's crest. Then they stood over Betty while she
addressed it to the publisher to whom long ago she had decided to send
it. Then Gay laid it solemnly beside the silver heirlooms as one of the
things "to be carried out first in case of fire."
"Three o'clock and all is well," called Kitty as the chime on the stair
began its warning. "The deed is done and all the omens are auspicious."
"That will be a scene to remember always," thought Betty gratefully,
looking around at the four pretty girls in the candlelight, as they made
a ceremony of the launching of her little ship, their faces filled with
loving interest.
The chickens were crowing for daylight before she fell asleep, for she
could not hinder her happy thoughts from straying off to the future,
when this same little ship should come home from sea with its cargo of
fame and fortune that the girls had predicted. She had dedicated the
book simply "To my Godmother," and she pictured to herself the supreme
moment when she could lay the published volume in her hands. She would
send one to Madam Chartley, she decided, and one to Miss Chilton, whose
instructions in English had been such an inspiration to her. Then, of
course, each one of the girls must have one.
Strangers would write to her, people would thrill with pleasure over her
pages as she had thrilled over other authors, and--oh, yes! _Davy_ must
have one of the very first copies of the book, since he had been the
first lover of her stories. She almost sat up in bed in the excitement
of her next thought. She wondered why it never had occurred to her
before. If the book should be really successful it would bring her money
of her own. She could be the good fairy of the Cuckoo's Nest. How many
comforts she could slip into it to make life easier for poor tired,
over-worked cousin Hetty! And--_Davy could go away to school_!
That last thought sent a warm glad tingle over her. How good God had
been to give her this delightful way of making a Road of the Loving
Heart in every one's memory--with her pen! She felt that her whole life
ought to be a perpetual Thanksgiving, and when she fell asleep with a
smile on her lips, she was repeating drowsily: "My lines have fallen to
me in pleasant places. Yea, I have a goodly heritage."
CHAPTER V
A CAMERA HELPS
SEVERAL days after his return from Lexington, Leland Harcourt sauntered
out of the house, after a late breakfast alone. The bored expression on
his face showed plainly what he thought of the Valley as a summer
resort. His brother and Lucy were off somewhere about the grounds, and
for more than an hour the faint sound of Gay's violin had been floating
up from the rustic arbour, which she claimed as her private domain.
It was a pleasant little retreat, far back from the road in the dense
beech shade, and at such a distance from the house that her energetic
practising could disturb no one. Here every morning before the
distractions of the day began, she religiously devoted an hour to her
music. The time always slipped past that limit if no one came to stop
her, for an absorbing devotion to her work made her oblivious to
everything else when her beloved violin was once tucked under her chin.
Scales and trills and chords, all the finger exercises that kept her
touch supple and sure, were gone through with in faithful routine. Then
the new music she was mastering had its share of careful attention, and
after that she played on and on, as a bird sings, from sheer love of it.
She was improvising when Leland came out on the porch, a light
rollicking little tune, to fit a verse from an Uncle Remus song. It was
a verse which Alex Shelby had repeated as he escorted them over to The
Beeches, the time they spent the night there, the next night after their
burglar scare at the Cabin. Lucy had been so frightened that she gladly
accepted Mrs. Walton's invitation to stay with her until the men of the
family returned.
They had had such a good time. Now the recollection of it was finding
voice in the tune which Gay was trying to manufacture for the words
which Alex had laughingly sung when Lucy stuck in the barb wire fence on
the way over:
"Hop light, ladies, Oh, Miss Loo,
Hit take a heap er scrougin'
Fer to git you throo.
Hop light, ladies, oh, Miss Loo!"
Gay recalled the straggling little procession through the woods with a
smile, as her bow quavered again through the refrain. They must have
looked ridiculous. There was Lucy lugging the heavy silver pitcher and
Jameson's ladle because she was afraid to leave them behind, and she
herself with her violin case, and Alex carrying the Lindsey spoons and
forks and the enormous seven-branched silver candle-sticks, because Lucy
felt responsible for their safety, since she had rented them with the
house. And there was Ranald bringing up the rear with their suit-cases,
and Kitty laughing at them all for bringing these household gods. She
called Lucy "Ephraim joined to his idols," because she would not put
down the pitcher and ladle even while she crawled through the barb wire
fence. They had cut across lots in the twilight, instead of going around
by the road, not wanting to be seen with a load which looked so much
like burglar's booty.
"If Leland only could have been with us then!" thought Gay regretfully.
"And the night before that when we had such a jolly time with the taffy
and the duets. He would have been on a real friendly footing with them
all by this time. But he's beginning to find it dull. I know he is.
He'll be off again before long if we can't get him interested in
something."
While she was worrying over his evident restlessness and discontent, the
odour of his cigar came floating out to her, and she knew by that token
that he had finished breakfast and needed to be amused. Locking her
violin in its case, she carried it back to the house, prepared to
shoulder her share of this responsibility.
"Good morning, Brer Tarrypin," she called as she came in sight of him
lolling in the hammock. "Lounjoun' roun' as usual, I see. Well, the mail
train is in, so you can come with me to the post-office as soon as I get
my hat."
"Good heavens, Pug!" he groaned. "I vow you're worse than a little
volcano--always in action."
Nevertheless he got up, as she knew he would, and strolled along beside
her. The road in front of the post-office was almost blocked with
carriages. On summer mornings like this nearly every one in the Valley
found some excuse to be at the station when the mail train came in; for
while they waited for the delivery window to open, there was time not
only to attend to the day's marketing, but to meet all one's friends. At
such times the little box of a post-office was the very centre of
neighbourhood sociability, and since everybody knew everybody else, the
gathering was as informal as a family reunion.
Even Gay felt like an old settler. Her previous visit to the Valley had
given her so many acquaintances. As she passed down the straggling line
of men and boys who were leaning against the fence or sitting on the top
rail while they waited, hats were swept off as if a sudden breeze had
scurried along the path. Several of the old Confederate soldiers spoke
her name as they saluted. She had played for them up at the Home twice
on that former visit.
"Oh, the dear little, queer little Valley," she began, but was
interrupted by Leland's calling her attention to the Sherman carriage,
which was moving in and out at a snail's pace through the blockade of
vehicles, stopping repeatedly as greetings were called out to it from
the other carriages. Gay's face brightened as she saw Lloyd on the back
seat, looking as fresh as a snowdrop in her white linen dress.
"Oh, if she'd only ask us up to Locust to spend the morning!" thought
Gay so earnestly that it seemed to her that Lloyd must feel the force of
the "thought-wave" she was trying to project. "It's high time for her
to remember her promise if she expects to accomplish anything."
Lloyd was remembering her promise. It recurred to her the instant that
she caught sight of Leland's dark interesting face as he turned the
corner. As instantly she had looked away, remembering how pointedly he
had ignored her that night at the Cabin. This was the first time she had
seen him since. Now Gay's request seemed utterly absurd. The colour
surged up in her face as she remembered her high resolve about lighting
a vestal fire on the altar of a promise. How ridiculous of her to have
worked herself up into such an exalted mood over nothing. A positive
dislike for the man who had been the cause of it took possession of her,
and she wished heartily that she need never meet him again.
But an encounter could not be avoided long. Gay was pushing eagerly
through the crowd towards the carriage. She would call her in a moment,
then she would have to turn around and at least be decently polite. Just
then a stylish little runabout stopped opposite the carriage, and a lady
leaned out to accost Lloyd. Thankful for the opportunity, Lloyd turned
her back squarely on the post-office and plunged into an animated
conversation. Without glancing in their direction she was conscious
that Gay and Mr. Harcourt were on the curbstone directly behind her, and
would come up the moment that she stopped talking.
"Yes, of co'se, Miss Jennie," they heard her say. "I'm going to town on
the next car, and I'll be glad to get it for you. Yes, we're all going
in for a day's shopping. Mothah and Betty are ovah at the trolley
station now, waiting for me to get the mail."
Miss Jennie, giving voluble directions, began hunting through her
pocketbook for a sample of ribbon which she wanted matched. Gay's hopes
fell. She had counted confidently on taking Leland up to the Locusts to
spend the morning. But just then Lloyd waved her handkerchief to some
one coming down the avenue, and turning, Gay's face brightened. It was
Kitty Walton to whom Lloyd had waved. Strolling along under a white
parasol, in a pale pink dress and with a great bunch of sweet peas in
her hand, she looked so attractive, that Gay felt that Leland would find
The Beeches fully as entertaining a loafing-place as The Locusts. She
decided to take him up there. Again she was doomed to disappointment,
for Kitty's cordial greeting was followed by the almost breathless
announcement that she was about to take her departure from the Valley.
"Oh, when?" called Lloyd, turning to the girls with the friendliest of
smiles, and acknowledging Mr. Harcourt's greeting with a frosty little
bow. "When, where and whyfoah?"
"This evening," answered Kitty, "over to the Martinsville Springs in
Indiana, and because mother is firmly convinced that they are the
panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to. Really they do help her
wonderfully, and she needs the change, and I like the place myself so
I'm not sorry to go for some reasons. But I do hate to take ten whole
days out of your visit, Gay."
"You can't hate it half as much as I do," answered Gay gloomily, who had
not overlooked Lloyd's cool little bow to Leland. For Lloyd to act
snippy and Kitty to be away ten whole days right in the beginning of
things was fatal to all her plans.
It was just then that help came from a most unexpected source. Not that
she realized then that it was help, but weeks afterward she traced back
several important things to that small beginning.
Miss Katherine Marks came out of the post-office with a handful of
letters. She was about to pass the group beside the Sherman carriage
with only a brief "good morning," when the sight of Kitty's sweet peas
made her pause.
"That reminds me, Kitty," she said. "I've finished mounting that garden
photograph. You may see it now, whenever you come over."
"I'll come right now, Miss Katherine," was the eager response. "I'm wild
to see it, and as we're going to Martinsville this evening this will be
my only chance."
Seeing the unspoken wish in Gay's eager eyes, Miss Marks included all of
them in the invitation. Lloyd glanced at her watch and excused herself,
finding that the car she wanted to take was almost due. She would have
to hurry to reach the station she said. But even in her haste she
noticed that Leland did not join in the regret which the others
expressed, and grown unduly sensitive in regard to his opinion, she
fancied that he looked pleased when she refused. He lifted his hat
perfunctorily, not even glancing at her as he moved away, seemingly
absorbed in adjusting Kitty's parasol, which he had taken possession of,
and was holding over her.
Gay walked on with Miss Marks. Kitty had to stop a moment at the Bisbee
cottage, to leave the sweet peas with a message from her mother. Leland
waited for her at the gate.
"What is this you're getting me into?" he asked, nodding towards Miss
Marks and Gay, who were almost out of sight.
If he had asked the question of Gay she would have explained eagerly
that they were on their way to Clovercroft, to see a collection of
amateur photographs which had taken prizes and gold medals all over the
country, and among them were three at least, that she knew he would want
so desperately, that he would fall all over himself trying to get them.
But it would be of no use to try. He could neither beg, borrow, buy nor
steal them. He might thank his lucky stars that he was permitted just to
stand afar off and gaze at them in hopeless admiration.
But Kitty, instead of enlightening him in any such way turned the talk
into channels of more personal interest, and made the short stroll so
agreeable that it came to an end entirely too soon. He followed her
through the gate wishing that he could invent some excuse whereby to
prolong the pleasure of making her blush and seeing her dark eyes look
up laughingly at him from under the white parasol. At the same time he
wanted to escape the bore of being expected to grow enthusiastic over
some amateur collection in which he felt no interest.
Something of this he expressed in an undertone to Kitty as they stepped
up on to the porch.
"Don't flatter yourself," she advised him, dropping into a seat, "that
you'll be allowed a peep into Miss Katherine's studio. Strangers never
get any farther than the Court of the Gentiles."
"Gay has gone in," he answered, "and her introduction antedates mine not
more than two seconds. Why shouldn't I?"
"Gay is one of the elect. She has the artist soul herself, and Miss
Katherine recognizes the earmarks."
"You insinuate that I haven't them?"
Kitty smiled tantalizingly, and swung her parasol back and forth by its
ivory crook. "No, indeed. I'm not insinuating anything. I'm simply
stating a broad truth. You can't get in. She'll bring out dozens of
pictures for your inspection, but she'll not invite you inside that
studio. Very few people are so favoured."
Up to that moment he had not had the faintest wish to set foot inside
the studio, but her provoking assertions suddenly seemed to make it the
one desirable spot for him to enter. "I'll show you," he declared
rashly. "I'll see it before we leave here. I always get what I want. Now
watch me."
Miss Marks came out with a large photograph exquisitely tinted. So
artistic it was, both in colouring and composition, that Leland's
admiration was as great as his surprise. He had expected to see some
little snap shots such as he had made himself when he had the kodak
fever, the kind that are interesting only to those who take them and
those who are taken. This was so beautiful that no sooner was it in his
hands than he was fired with a desire to possess it. It was the picture
of a rose garden, every bush a glory of bloom, and in the path, her pink
dress caught by a clinging brier, was Kitty herself like another rose,
looking down over her shoulder at the bramble which held her a prisoner
in its thorny clasp.
"It is to illustrate a fairy-tale," explained Miss Marks. "When naughty
Esmerelda runs away from the good prince, everything in the garden is in
league to help him, and Brier Rose catches at her skirts as she hurries
by, and holds her fast."
"Isn't it lovely?" cried Gay, flashing out of the studio with an armful
which Miss Marks had given her permission to show. "Here's Betty taken
as a nun--_Sister Doloroso_--and Lloyd as an Easter angel. It's
perfectly fascinating to hear Miss Marks tell how she got that effect of
flying. Arranged the draperies with Lloyd lying on the floor, and
photographed her from a trap door above. Tell him how you added the
doves' wings please."
Much to her surprise Miss Marks found herself telling things to this
young man that she would not have dreamed of telling to another
stranger; some of the remarkable makeshifts she had used in costumes and
backgrounds. His flattering air of interest drew these confidences from
her as irresistibly as a magnet draws steel.
"You ought to do a series of these garden pictures," he declared, "and
call them 'Garden Fancies' after that poem of Browning's. By the way,
there is a couplet in that which would lend itself charmingly to
illustration, and I saw the very garden that you should use for it,
while I was out driving yesterday. It was one of those straight walk
prim bordered affairs that go with old English cottages."
He could have found no surer path to Miss Marks's good graces. Gay, not
knowing that he had a purpose to gain by it, listened in amazement as he
proceeded to outline picture after picture for the series of Garden
Fancies, even planning costumes and suggesting clever means by which
various obstacles might be overcome. Her astonishment showed itself in
her face, when he even consented to pose himself, as a Spanish
troubadour in a moonlit garden with a guitar.
Kitty, who knew the object of this sudden interest in photography,
laughed outright, but nobody noticed her irrelevant mirth. Miss Marks
was too interested in the new plan, and Gay was too puzzled over his
rapidly growing enthusiasm. Presently, darting a triumphant look at
Kitty, from the corner of his eye, he rose to follow Miss Marks. She was
actually taking him into her inner courts. Kitty made a little grimace
behind his back. She resented his I-told-you-so air, but she could not
help admiring the masterful way in which he had gained his end.
One hasty glance around the studio changed his assumed interest into
real. Impressed by the wonderful results Miss Marks had obtained by the
combination of brush and camera, he was seized by a wish to do something
in the same line himself. Accustomed to the impulsiveness of his
enthusiasms, Gay was not surprised when he began to persuade Miss Marks
to start to work on the Garden Fancies then and there.
The English garden was too far away for them to attempt that morning,
but Miss Marks finally agreed that the moonlight scene might be managed.
It was just the right time of day to take a moonlight picture, while the
sunshine was so direct that it would cast the blackest of shadows. She
could retouch the plate to give it the right effect, and paint in a
moon.
"You'll have to hurry if I'm to be in it," ordered Kitty, "for Mother is
waiting for me this blessed minute. I've a world of things to do in the
next few hours."
"Give us just a quarter of one of them," begged Leland. "I'll attend to
the balcony part if Miss Marks will look after the costumes and tell me
where to find a step-ladder."
"Leland has plenty to amuse him now," thought Gay happily, as she
watched him giving directions to Frazer, the coloured man, who came in
answer to Miss Marks's call. "His foot is on his native heath and his
name's 'McGregor' when it comes to a thing of this sort."
Ten minutes later Kitty found herself looking out of an improvised
balcony, a charming affair outwardly, but most laughable within. A tall
step-ladder had been dragged into the bay window of the music room, and
the upper sash of the middle window pushed down from the top. The thick
vines that grew over it were pulled back to leave an oval opening. It
was out of this leafy oval she leaned from her seat on the top of the
ladder, to smile down on the troubadour below. There was a rose in her
dark hair, a half-furled fan in her hand, and a coquettish glance in her
laughing black eyes.
Leland's costume had been hastily constructed from scraps of stage
property kept for such occasions. It took but a moment to drape a long
cape over one shoulder in graceful folds, twist a piece of velvet into a
little cap and pin a white plume on one side. A row of potted plants
laboriously put in place by Frazer hid the fact that he wore modern
trousers instead of the more picturesque knee breeches which such a
costume demanded.
"Fire away," he ordered, adjusting the guitar to a more comfortable
position.
"Suppose you sing a verse of a real serenade," suggested Miss Marks, "so
as to get into the proper spirit of the thing. Then just as you finish,
while you're looking soulfully into each other's eyes, I'll squeeze the
bulb."
Kitty, seeing the seamy side of his improvised cap, and feeling the
absurdity of her position on the top of the step-ladder, could only
giggle when she tried to look soulful. But Leland had taken part in too
many private theatricals to be disconcerted now. With as impassioned a
gaze as any Romeo ever fixed on his Juliet, he struck the soft chords of
a Spanish serenade, and began to sing so meaningly that Kitty's giggle
was silenced, and she looked down with a conscious blush:
"Thine eyes are stars of morning,
Thy lips are crimson flowers.
Good night, good night, beloved,
While I count the weary hours."
"There! That ought to be perfect," cried Miss Marks, emerging from under
the black cloth which covered the camera. "Mr. Harcourt, you're the most
satisfactory man I've ever had pose for me. It's easy enough to get a
score of pretty girls any time I need them, but it isn't once in a
decade one finds such an altogether desirable model of a man. You seem
to know by intuition exactly the right positions to fall into. I'm sure
the series will be a success now."
Leland bowed his appreciation of the compliment, and Gay, knowing his
vulnerable spot and how secretly pleased he was, could have danced a
breakdown in her delight.
As they were all eager to see the result, Miss Marks took herself at
once to the dark room with the plate, promising they should have a proof
before time for the Martinsville train. Then Gay and Leland walked home
with Kitty, and stayed talking awhile on the shady porch.
"It's been a very decent sort of morning," Leland admitted on his way
home to lunch. A siesta in the hammock shortened the afternoon. He was
in a most agreeable mood when they drove over to the station to see the
Waltons off on their train.
Better than her promise, Miss Marks had sent a finished picture instead
of a proof. It was fully as good as the one of Brier Rose and Esmerelda,
and Leland was enthusiastic in his admiration of the balcony he had
improvised, and the Spanish beauty within it. When it had passed around
the circle he coolly took possession of it, although Kitty claimed it,
as Frazer had brought it up to The Beeches.
"I'll keep it till your return, Miss Kitty," he said. "You have your
mirror, so you don't need this. It may inspire me to run over to the
Springs myself a few days to see the original if you stay away too
long."
Something in the light tone made Gay glance up quickly. She groaned as
she saw the admiration his expressive eyes showed so plainly.
"Now he's gone and done it!" she thought in dismay. "He's taken a fancy
to Kitty instead of Lloyd, when I've set my heart on saving Kitty for
Frank Percival. May blessings light on those old Martinsville Springs
for taking her out of the way for awhile! Maybe I can get him switched
off on the other track before she comes back."
CHAPTER VI
"GARDEN FANCIES"
"OH, where are you going, my pretty maid?" It was Alex Shelby who called
out the question, leaning forward from the doctor's buggy, to look down
the locust avenue. Lloyd was coming toward the gate, swinging a hunter's
horn back and forth by its green cord. She waved it gaily as she sang in
response:
"I'm going a posing, sir, she said."
He turned the wheel and sprang out, asking eagerly, "Is it anywhere that
I can take you?"
"No, you're going in exactly the opposite direction, for I'm bound for
the spring in the Lindsey woods. Miss Marks asked me to meet her there
at eleven o'clock, but her note didn't come until aftah mothah had gone
out with the carriage."
Alex glanced at his watch. "If you could wait till I take this case of
instruments up to Uncle, I could drive you over as well as not. It would
detain you ten minutes, but even then you'd get to the Spring much
sooner than if you were to walk."
"I'll certainly accept yoah offah," exclaimed Lloyd gratefully, looking
down the long hot way that lay between her and the Lindsey woods.
"No, I'll not drive ovah to the doctah's with you, thanks. That is such
a hot, dusty stretch of road. I'll just sit heah in the shade and wait."
Laying the hunter's horn on the stone bench near the gate, she sat down
beside it and began to fan herself with her hat.
"What's going on at the spring?" he asked as he climbed back into the
buggy.
"I can't tell you. All I know is that old Frazer came up with a note
asking me to pose as Olga, the Flax-spinnah's maiden. Miss Marks is
always illustrating some old fairy-tale. She wanted me to bring
grandfathah's hunting hawn for the prince. I've been wondering evah
since who she's found to take that paht."
"Harcourt, I'll bet you anything!" was Alex's emphatic answer as he
gathered up the reins. "I saw him over at Clovercroft yesterday morning,
setting up a tripod in front of the bay window. Well, here goes. I'll be
back in ten minutes."
As Lloyd watched the cloud of dust whirling along behind the rapidly
disappearing buggy, the impulse seized her to call out after him that he
needn't come back to take her to the spring, for she was not going.
Several times that morning the suspicion had crossed her mind that Miss
Marks's new model might prove to be Leland Harcourt, and Alex's emphatic
answer seemed to confirm her misgivings. If that were the case she felt
that she could not possibly go. He had made such a point of avoiding her
that night at the Cabin, that even Betty had noticed it, and she was
very sure she didn't want to have her picture taken with a man who had
showed his aversion to her so plainly as all that. It would be horribly
awkward, she thought, if Miss Marks had asked him to pose with her. He
would have to stoop and drink out of her hands as the prince had done
out of Olga's. Of course he couldn't refuse, and it would be
disagreeable to him and embarrassing to her, knowing as she did how he
felt towards her.
It was unlike Lloyd to be sensitive over little things, and to magnify
trifles, and she had been unhappy for several days because she had done
so in this instance. If she had met Leland Harcourt like any other
stranger, she would not have given his manner toward her a second
thought; but Gay's plea beforehand in his behalf made her
self-conscious. Of course he couldn't possibly know that she had lain
awake, looking at the stars, picturing herself as a sort of guardian
angel, who should lead him to great heights of achievement (as Gay had
assured her she could do). But she felt that he must have divined her
intentions toward him, and was secretly amused at her presumption. Her
face burned every time she thought of the regal manner in which she had
swept into the room, trying to make her entrance impressive, and then
the polite way in which he had handed her over to some one else as if
she were a mere child to whom he must be civil, but whose school-girl
prattle bored him.
"I can't _beah_ him!" she said in a disgusted tone to a black ant, which
was crawling along towards the stone bench where she sat. But the little
ant, intent on its own affairs, hurried past her as unheedingly as if
she had been part of the bench.
"And I suppose my opinion is of no moah impawtance to him than it is to
you," she added, with a shrug of the shoulders. Then she laughed, for
the comparison suddenly seemed to put the affair in a different light.
"I'm certainly glad you happened along this way, Mistah Ant," she said,
bending over to stop him with a stick while she made her whimsical
speech. "Because I'm going to profit by yoah example from now on. Heah
me? I'm going to quit worrying over what people may think of me and go
along about my business just as you are doing. _You_ nevah think about
yoahself, do you! You don't even know that you _have_ a self, so of
co'se you can't feel slighted and sensitive."
Lifting the stick so that the little creature might go on its eager way
again, she watched it disappear, and then began idly tracing figures in
the dust at her feet.
"I wish I had an enchanted necklace like Olga's," she mused, recalling
the old fairy-tale for which she was soon to pose. "Not one that could
give me gorgeous dresses whenevah I repeated the charm, but one that
would sawt of clothe my mind--put me into such a beautifully serene
mental state that I wouldn't mind slights, and would be as unconscious
of self as that little old ant."
Then a surprised, pleased expression lighted her face, as a sudden
recollection seemed to illuminate the old fairy-tale, and give it a new
meaning.
"Why, it's like that lovely verse in the Psalms that Miss Allison read
to the King's Daughters, the first time I went to a meeting of the
Circle. '_The King's Daughter is all glorious within. Her clothing is
of wrought gold._'" Sentences from Miss Allison's earnest little talk of
long ago began coming back to Lloyd like fragments of forgotten music.
Something about being anointed with the "oil of gladness" and wearing
garments that smelled of myrrh and aloes and cassia "out of the ivory
palaces whereby they have made thee glad."
Now in the story when Olga would change her gown of tow to one befitting
her royal station, she had only to clasp a bead of her magic rosary and
whisper:
"For love's sweet sake, in my hour of need,
Blossom and deck me, little seed,"
and straightway she would be clad in a garment, fine and fair as the
shimmer of moonbeams. And Lloyd, casting about in her mind for a like
charm that would make her "all glorious within" as Olga's made her
glorious without, suddenly bethought herself of her little necklace of
Roman pearls. She had not taken it back to school with her in her Senior
year, for she felt that she had outgrown its childish symbolism. She
could "keep tryst" with life's obligations now without the visible
reminder of a little white bead, slipped daily over a silken cord.
Still, it had helped her to remember, so many times in the past, that
she was strongly tempted to try the efficacy of her little talisman just
once more. Glancing at her watch, she saw that Alex had been gone only
five minutes. Then dropping the stick with which she had been writing in
the dust, she ran lightly up the avenue, into the house and up to her
room.
"Maybe it is sawt of childish," she thought as she opened the
sandal-wood box and clasped the rosary around her neck. "But I don't
care, if it will only help me to remembah not to be snippy and sensitive
and to go about my business like that little black ant. It's funny how
such a little thing started me on the right path."
When Alex came back she met him with such a shining face that he glanced
at her curiously. "You look as if you had heard good news," he said as
he helped her into the buggy. "What's happened?"
"Oh, nothing," she laughed. "I've just been practising my paht while I
waited for you. I'm the Princess Olga, and I've gotten rid of my gown of
tow, and I'm so relieved to find the real King's-daughtah attire, that
I'm as happy as a June-bug."
He did not understand her allusion, but it would have made no difference
if she had talked to him in Greek, with that charming dimple coming and
going as she laughed. It was a pleasure just to sit and watch her, while
she rattled on in her inimitable way about June-bugs, wondering how
happy they were anyhow, and why people chose them as the unit of
measurement when they were measuring joy.
* * * * *
Over at the spring while they waited for Lloyd to come, Miss Marks and
Leland Harcourt experimented at picture-making with Gay for a victim.
Stretched out on the rocks of the creek bank, with her hands lying in
the shallow water and her hair streaming over her shoulders, she was
obligingly trying to obey instructions to "look as wet and dead as
possible."
Lloyd and Alex, coming on her unexpectedly as they picked their way up
the ravine, having tied the horse where the woodland road ended, were
horrified to find her lying there so limp and still. But the next
instant Leland's voice sounded somewhere up among the bushes: "That's
great, Pug. Try to keep the pose a little longer till we get one more
plate. With a sea-gull and some rolling waves painted in in the
background, it will be a perfect copy of that painting I saw in
Brittany."
"Well, hurry, please!" called Gay plaintively. "I can't stand it much
longer. The sun on my wet face is burning it to a blister, and the rocks
are cutting my elbow, and I know it's a spider that's crawling over the
back of my neck."
Lloyd gave a toot of the hunter's horn to warn them of their approach
and the extra plate was never made. For with a little shriek the
"Drowned Fishermaiden" scrambled up from the rocks in embarrassed haste,
and when she caught sight of Alex, fled away into the bushes to gather
up her dishevelled hair and otherwise put herself to rights. She was too
agitated to notice Lloyd's meeting with Leland, but while she made
herself presentable the sound of laughter floated in among the bushes to
her most reassuringly.
"They're laughing at me," she thought, "but I don't care how ridiculous
I looked. _Anything to_ break the ice between them and put them on a
friendly footing."
At the sight of Leland's dark face with its cynical, slightly amused
expression, Lloyd's resentment returned, but the touch of the little
necklace recalled her resolve. "I'll _not_ be snippy and sensitive," she
repeated to herself, clasping one of the beads in her fingers as if it
really held some potent charm to help her change her mental attitude.
So when Gay joined them she found that Lloyd had dropped her distant,
disdainful manner of the day before and was her own sweet, winsome self.
It was with a sigh of relief that Gay left them to the discussion of
poses and costumes, and turned to Alex, who was about to take his
departure. The one word, picnic, was enough to stop him. It was what he
had been hoping for ever since the Harcourts had taken the Cabin. Gay's
appeal for help set him to work with the zest of a truant school-boy.
While he made a fire and carried water from the spring, Gay emptied the
baskets they had brought, and spread the contents out on a great flat
rock. Then while the water boiled for the coffee, and the potatoes were
roasting in the ashes, she sent him to look for a wild grape-vine.
"I want a lot of grape-leaves to make into little baskets to serve the
berries in," she told him. "And bring them up here where I can keep an
eye on what is going on at the spring. There seems to be a hitch in the
performance somewhere."
The difficulty was with the prince's costume. Nothing they had brought
gave quite the effect they wanted, so finally Leland proposed bringing
the story down to date.
"The modern Princess is the Summer Girl," he said. "So take Miss
Sherman just as she is, and I'll go back to the Cabin and put on a
bicycle suit."
[Illustration: "MAKING A CUP OF HER WHITE HANDS."]
"They are getting on famously," thought Gay as she listened to Lloyd's
merry response to something he called back, as he went crashing away
through the bushes. The last little basket was made and filled with
berries before Leland came back, dragging his wheel up the ravine. Gay
and Alex, having finished their preparations, climbed up the bank to
watch the pretty tableau, Lloyd making a cup of her white hands and
catching the water in them, that the prince might stoop and drink.
"Let's try it again, Miss Marks," cried Leland enthusiastically. "How is
this pose?" He dropped gracefully to one knee, baring his head as he
bowed it over Lloyd's hands.
"Is the change in him or is it in me?" thought Lloyd as the dark eager
face smiled up at her, with its quick flashing smile that she found so
peculiarly attractive. "He certainly is the most entahtaining man I evah
talked to."
"The show is over," called Gay as Miss Marks began to put up her camera.
"If your royal highnesses will deign to descend, dinner will be served
immediately." It was an attractive table she led them to, the red
berries shining in luscious heaps in their little green baskets,
mounds of fresh watercress beside every plate, and a big bouquet of
wildflowers in the centre of the rock table.
"What is the peculiar charm of a picnic?" queried Alex as he fished an
ant out of the sugar and opened a half-cooked potato.
"At home one would send such a dish back to the kitchen in red-hot
wrath. Here one eats it in a sort of solemn joy."
"It's the spell of the June woods," suggested Miss Marks.
"No, it's youth in the blood," said Leland. "All the Junes in the world
and all outdoors wouldn't make a half-baked potato fit for the gods
unless one has 'the sun and the wind in his pulses.'"
"No," insisted Gay. "It can't be that, for Jameson isn't much older than
you, and he despises prowling around in the woods, as he calls it. He
made so much fun of it that Lucy went driving with him instead of coming
with us, and she adores such outings, just as much now as she did before
she was married."
"Maybe no one feels the charm unless the gods have given him a sort of
Midas touch that will turn everything disagreeable, like ants and
underdone potatoes, into golden experiences," said Alex. "The Midas
imagination let us call it. And the way to keep it in good working order
is to give it constant practice. Let's have a picnic every day."
"To-morrow," announced Leland, "I'll take you all over to that old
English garden that I discovered, to take that Garden fancy of
Browning's we were discussing."
Gay looked up quickly. It had been understood only yesterday that they
were to wait for Kitty's return for that picture. His taking it for
granted that Lloyd would assume the part augured well for her hopes.
"You know that poem of Browning's, don't you, Miss Sherman?" he asked,
smiling across at her.
Now Lloyd had never cared for Browning. In fact she frankly admitted
that she had never got far enough into many of his poems to know what he
was talking about. At Warwick Hall Miss Chilton had been such an
enthusiastic interpreter of his that ten of the girls in Lloyd's class
had formed a Browning club. Although she declined their invitation to
join them, she was more complimented by that invitation than any other
of that school term, and envied them their apparent enjoyment of what to
her was a tangle of vague meanings. Now when, she saw Leland take a well
worn copy from his pocket and flip over the leaves to find the place,
with an ease that showed long familiarity with it, she wished that she
had joined the club. It made her feel childish and immature to think
that she could not discuss this subject with him as any one of those ten
girls could have done. But it was one of the simple poems to which the
book opened. From her seat opposite, Lloyd could see the marked margins
and underscored lines, as he read aloud:
"'Here is the garden she walked across
Arm in my arm such a short while since.
* * * * *
Down this side of the gravel walk
She went, while her robe's edge brushed the box.
And here she paused in her gracious talk
To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.'"
"Oh, I can just _see_ that picture," cried Miss Marks enthusiastically.
"I wish we had time to take it to-day."
"But wait, here's a better one," he added, turning the page.
"'This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
Stooped over in doubt, as settling its claim,
Till she gave me with pride to make no slip,
Its soft, meandering Spanish name.
What a name! Was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish one of these days
Only for that slow, sweet name's sake.'"
Lloyd picked up the book open at the place where he laid it, face
downward, on the rock.
"I wondah what flowah Browning meant," she said, "that had such a 'soft,
meandering Spanish name. Speech half-asleep or song half-awake--' It
must have been something exquisitely beautiful or he wouldn't have been
willing to learn a language just for the sake of knowing that one name."
Farther down the page were other underscored lines. She read them
softly, almost under her breath.
"'Where I find her not, beauties vanish.
Whither I follow her beauties flee.
Is there no method to tell her in Spanish
June is twice June since she's breathed it with me?'"
"Isn't that sweet?" cried Gay. "Say it for us, Leland. Say it in Spanish
so we can hear how it sounds."
With an indulgent smile, as if amused at her childishness, he lazily did
Gay's bidding, then as she began exclaiming over the musical syllables
to Alex, he turned to Lloyd and repeated the line with an emphasis which
made it altogether personal. Of course she could not understand it, but
the words were like bird-notes, and there was no mistaking the language
of those dark expressive eyes that held hers a moment in their admiring
gaze. They said as plainly as if they had spoken aloud, "June is twice
June, since _you've_ breathed it with me."
Lloyd felt the colour surge up into her face, and to hide it, turned
quickly and began examining a grass stain on the hem of her skirt, with
apparent concern. But an exultant little thrill flashed over her. He
liked her. She was sure of it, and it made her glad, so glad that it
amazed her to think that only two hours before she had confided
emphatically to a little black ant crawling over her path, that she
couldn't bear him.
When she had finished a critical examination of the grass stain she
glanced back again, hoping that Gay had not seen her embarrassment. To
her relief Gay's entire attention was absorbed in an argument with Alex
as to the exact meaning of the quotation, whether twice June meant a
lengthening of the calendar or an intensifying of its pleasures. Miss
Marks, like a good chaperone, could not have noticed, for she was busy
gathering up the dishes, and Lloyd sprang up to help her.
Presently, as they started away from the spring, Leland came around to
Lloyd's side. "You must let me teach you Spanish, Miss Sherman," he said
in his masterful way which seemed to leave her no choice in the matter.
"An hour a day wouldn't take much of your time, and would be enough to
give you some idea of the charm of the language. Gay tells me you play
the harp. Some of the songs are exquisite."
"Oh, I nevah in the world could learn it, I am suah!" she answered
lightly, with a shrug that seemed to indicate the uselessness of
undertaking such a task.
"You don't know," he answered authoritatively. "You've never had me for
a teacher."
Again that flashing look that made his eyes deepen so wonderfully and
curved the cynical lips into an altogether gentle and winning smile. It
seemed to photograph itself on Lloyd's memory, recurring to her again
and again in the most unexpected moments. She saw it on the way home
with Alex, all the time she was laughingly recounting some of her
Warwick Hall escapades. It came between her and her book when she tried
to read herself to sleep that afternoon, and the last thing that night
when her eyes were closed and the lights were out she saw again that
glance that said as plainly as the slow music of his Spanish words,
"June is _twice_ June since _you've_ breathed it with me."
CHAPTER VII
SPANISH LESSONS
THE Harcourt carriage swung rapidly along the road, for the Little
Colonel held the reins, and was testing the speed of the new horses,
just sent down from Lexington.
"Isn't it glorious?" she cried, with a quick glance over her shoulder at
Gay and Miss Marks on the back seat. "It's like flying, the way they
take us through the air, and they're the best matched team in the
country."
Leland, on the seat beside her, watched with growing admiration her
expert handling of the horses, and Gay watched him. Swathed in a white
chiffon veil, she was paying the penalty for being so obliging the day
before. She had lain so long on the rocks in her pose of the drowned
fishermaiden, that her face was burned to a blister, and she could not
touch it without groaning. But she would willingly go through the ordeal
again, she told herself, in order to bring about the present desirable
state of affairs.
"Now which way?" asked Lloyd as they came to a turn. "I feel like a
Columbus on an unsailed sea. I thought I knew every gah'den around heah
within a radius of five miles, but I've nevah seen any that fits the
description of the one you're taking us to."
"Turn to the right," Leland directed. "Then it's just a short way down a
woodland road. You'll come to an old-fashioned wicket gate and a
straight, box-bordered walk leading up to the back of such a quaint
vine-covered old house with a red door, that you'll expect to see a
thatched roof and hear an English skylark."
"Well, of all things," laughed Lloyd, "why didn't you say little red
doah in the first place. That would have located it for me. You've
simply discovahed the back premises of old Doctah Shelby's place, and
yoah wondahful English gah'den is their kitchen gah'den. We could have
reached their front gate in ten minutes from our house, and heah you
have led us all around Robin Hood's bahn to find it. That loop around
Rollington took us a good two miles out of the way."
"Well, that's the only way I knew how to reach it," he answered, with
the flashing smile she had learned to look for. "I hope that you don't
feel that it has been time wasted. _I_ don't."
"Not behind hawses like these," she answered. "We'll forgive you for the
sake of the ride. I nevah get tiahed of driving when I can go this
fast."
She turned into a narrow lane leading around to the front of the house,
and waited for Leland to open the gate.
"How natural everything looks," she exclaimed. "I haven't been heah for
yeahs, and when I was a little thing of six or seven I used to be a
weekly visitah. I'd bring my dawg Fritz, and stay from breakfast till
bedtime. I called Doctah Shelby 'Mistah-_my_-doctah' and his wife 'Aunt
Alicia,'" she went on as Leland resumed his seat in the carriage. "They
said that I reminded them of their only daughtah, who was dead, and they
used to borrow me by the day. They spoiled me so that it was perfectly
scandalous the way I acted sometimes."
"Why did you stop coming?" asked Gay.
"Mrs. Shelby had a fall that made an invalid of her, and she has been
away at sanitariums and hospitals most of the time since. I've seen her
often, of co'se, but not heah. It's only lately that they've opened up
the house and come home to live."
Places exercised a strong influence over Lloyd. Just as she felt the
challenge of the locust-trees in the avenue at home, and could not pass
those old family sentinels without an unconscious lifting of the head
and that pride of bearing which they seemed to expect from all the
Lloyds, so this old homestead had its peculiar effect upon her. As she
went up the path she had the same feeling of absolute sovereignty that
she had had a dozen years before when her slightest wish was law in this
adoring household, and where every act of hers, no matter how
outbreaking, passed unchided. If she chose to empty the sugar into the
middle of the garden walk and fill the bowl with pebbles, "Aunt Alicia"
took her afternoon tea unsweetened, rather than ring for more, and thus
call Mom Beck's attention to the naughtiness of her little charge.
Once, some babyish whim prompting her to order every picture turned to
the wall, the doctor meekly obeyed, and when some chance caller
remonstrated, he protested that it was a very small thing to do to give
a child pleasure, and that there was no reason why she shouldn't have
them upside down if she wished. So strong was the old spell now, that
as she stepped up on the porch and saw the same ugly little Chinese
idol sitting against the front door to prop it open, that had sat there
on all her former visits, she stooped and stood it on its head.
"Why on earth did you do that?" gasped Gay.
"Simply fo'ce of habit," laughed Lloyd. "I used to hate it so because it
was such an ugly old thing that I always stood it on its head to punish
it for staring at me. I did it this time without thinking."
Leland laughed. Never in the short time he had known her had she seemed
quite so adorable as she did at this moment, relapsing into the childish
imperiousness of her Little Colonel ways. While they waited for Mrs.
Shelby to come down he watched her going around the room, renewing her
acquaintance with all the old objects that had once held a fascination
for her. She called his attention to the tapestry on the wall, a
shepherd and shepherdess beside a trellis on which hung roses as big as
cabbages, and told him the quaint fancies she had once had about the
romantic figures. The stuffed birds under the glass case on the mantel
each had a name she had given it. She remembered them all, from the
yellow canary, to the mite of a humming-bird, poised at the top.
Stopping before a queer old whatnot, filled with bric-a-brac and shells,
she caught up a round china box. A gilt eagle, hovering over a nest of
little eaglets formed the lid, and her face began to dimple as she
lifted the china bird by its imposing beak.
"There ought to be peppahmints inside," she said. "There always used to
be, because I'd howl if there wasn't, and they couldn't beah to have me
disappointed. Well, I wish you'd look! Deah old Aunt Alicia! She's
remembahed all these yeahs and kept it ready for me."
She held the box out towards him, and he saw that it had been freshly
filled with delectable little striped drops.
"It hurts my conscience," she said, looking up wistfully, as the
familiar odour of the peppermint greeted her, "to think how I have
neglected her. Heah I have been going to picnics and pahties and all
sawts of things evah since I came home from school, and have nevah been
neah her. I'm going to find her this minute, and not wait for her to
come down as if I were some strangah."
The quaintly furnished old room straightway lost its charm for Leland
when she left it, but Gay, pushing aside her veil to taste the contents
of the eagle's nest, which Lloyd had deposited in her lap, scrutinized
everything with interest. This was Alex's home now, and she wondered how
he would look in the midst of such surroundings. She couldn't imagine
him with such an antiquated background. Miss Marks picked up a basket of
daguerreotypes from the marble-topped table, and began examining them.
They could hear Lloyd calling at the top of the stairs, "Aunt Alicia,"
and then Mrs. Shelby's voice, tremulous with pleased surprise: "Why it's
the Little Colonel! Oh, my dear! My _dear_! what a joy it is to have you
here again!" Then they heard Lloyd laughingly explaining their mission,
and after that they seemed to pass into another room, for a low hum of
voices was all that could be distinguished.
Presently Mrs. Shelby came down alone. She was a gentle little old lady,
with faded blue eyes, and a sweet patient face. She wore a bunch of gray
curls over each ear in the fashion of her girlhood. There was a
lingering charm of youth about her, just as there was a faint suggestion
of lavender still clinging to the fine old lace that fell over her
little hands. Almost as soon as she had finished welcoming them an old
coloured man followed her into the room, bearing a huge tray with
tinkling glasses, a decanter of raspberry shrub, and a plate of little
nut-cakes. While he served the guests she explained Lloyd's delay with
almost girlish eagerness.
"I have taken a great liberty with your model, Miss Marks, but Lloyd
assured me you would be perfectly willing. This last day of June is a
very happy anniversary of mine and the doctor's. I have been thinking of
it all morning, and when Lloyd came up the stairs just now, so glowing
and bright, it seemed to me I saw my own lost youth rising up before me,
and I asked her to put on a gown I have treasured many years, and be
photographed in that.
"It is the one I had on when Richard proposed to me," she explained, a
faint pink tingeing her soft old cheeks. "Fifty years ago to-day, in
that same old garden. This was my grandmother's place then. Richard
bought it afterwards. And a year from to-day if we live, we will keep
our golden wedding. If you can use the gown in the photograph it will
make me very happy, for it is falling to pieces, despite my care of it.
Lloyd thought it very picturesque and appropriate."
While Miss Marks was expressing her delight over the privilege, for the
unearthing of old costumes was one of her pet diversions, Lloyd came
down the stairs and stopped shyly in the doorway. She had tucked up her
shining hair with a tall ivory comb, and it hung in soft curls on each
side of her glowing face, in the old fashion of Mrs. Shelby's girlhood.
The thin, clinging dress enveloped her like a pale blue cloud, and a
flat, wide-brimmed garden hat swung from her arm by its blue ribbons.
With the donning of the ancient dress she seemed to have put on the
sweet shy manner that had been the charm of its first wearer.
A long-drawn "oh!" of admiration from Gay and Miss Marks greeted her
appearance, and she turned a timid glance towards Leland, who had risen
quickly. His glance and his silence were more eloquent than their words,
for she turned away blushing.
"Now if I may have a bit of paper to make a moth to pin on the
milk-white phlox," began Miss Marks, but Mrs. Shelby stopped her
eagerly.
"Oh, my dear, we will have the picture perfect in every way. Richard has
a case of butterflies and moths in his office. I shall send a servant to
bring it and to call him over, for he will want to see Lloyd in that
gown I am sure. How I wish Alex were here to be photographed with her.
He is so broad shouldered and erect he reminds me daily of what his
uncle was at his age."
"Maybe he will come before we are through," suggested Miss Marks. At the
mere thought of his coming, Gay pulled her veil down hastily over her
blistered face. Behind its protecting screen she watched the old couple
keenly, when the doctor arrived. They had eyes for nothing but Lloyd,
and their gaze followed her tenderly wherever she went.
"They're just _daffy_ about her," thought Gay. "It's plain to be seen
they'd give anything in the world to get her into the family. I hope
Doctor Alex won't come in time to be photographed with her. If he'd
never fallen in love with her before he'd have to do it now. He couldn't
help himself when she looks like that, and then where would all my plans
be for poor Leland?"
But Leland was taking care of his own interests. As soon as Miss Marks
had taken enough plates to satisfy herself he led Lloyd off to the end
of the garden to show her a flower which he had found with a soft
meandering Spanish name.
"We'll begin the lessons to-morrow," he said, as if it were all settled.
The masterfulness of his tone had pleased her the day before, but here
in the place where she had done all the dictating and others had
obeyed, it aroused a feeling that Mom Beck would have labelled "the
Lloyd stubbo'ness." She didn't want to consent, simply because he had
taken it for granted that she would, so she laughingly contradicted him.
"We'll begin to-morrow," he repeated, smiling down at her so insistently
that she dropped her eyes before his. Then to her surprise she found
that her opposition had completely vanished. She felt that it would be
one of the pleasantest pastimes that could be devised, to study such a
musical language under such a teacher. But she had no intention of
letting him know how she felt about it for a long while, so she was
thankful for the interruption which came just then.
Miss Marks, who was exploring the rest of the premises in search of
further possibilities, sent Gay to summon her to the front of the house.
"She says to 'come into the garden, Maud.' She is going to add a
Tennysonian pose to her series of Fancies, and she's found a place where
there's a bit of terrace for you to come tripping down, a la Maud, to
the tune of 'She is coming, my own, my sweet!'"
Catching up her long filmy blue skirt, Lloyd hurried away, leaving Gay
and Leland to follow as they chose. Leland finished the verse in a
clear tenor voice as if singing to himself, but it followed Lloyd down
the walk as if meant for her alone:
"'She is coming, my own, my sweet!
Were it ever so airy a tread
My heart would hear her and beat
Though 'twere earth in an earthy bed.
Would start and tremble under her feet
And blossom in purple and red.'"
Then he hummed it almost under his breath, the entire verse again,
forgetful of Gay at his elbow until she spoke.
"Wouldn't Kitty have looked adorable in that darling old hat tied under
her chin? It's too bad she couldn't have been here to pose as Maud."
"Oh, I don't know," he answered absently. "She's too dark for the part.
Miss Lloyd looks it to perfection."
Gay's eyes shone delightedly behind the white veil, and for a few steps
she could not help skipping, as she blessed the Martinsville Springs,
which had taken Kitty off in the nick of time to save her for a
different fate. By the time Maud's picture was taken Alex arrived, and
Miss Marks was promptly seized with an inspiration.
"I am going to have two pictures of _Darby and Joan_," she exclaimed,
"to add to the series. Alex, you take Lloyd down into the garden again
beside the phlox, and turn so that I'll get your profile. It is so like
your uncle's. I'll call that one '_Hand in hand when our life was May._'
Then I'll take Mrs. Shelby and the doctor in exactly the same position
as a companion piece, and call that '_Hand in hand when our hair is
gray._'"
They made a joke of it, the two old people, and obligingly took the
places that Lloyd and Alex left, but a mist sprang to Lloyd's eyes a
moment later, watching the devoted old couple who for fifty years had
been lovers and for forty-nine years had been wed. Marriage like that
seemed a beautiful thing; she wondered if such an experience would ever
be hers. She wished Mammy Easter had found a better fortune for her than
the one she told over her tea-cup.
It was noon by the time the pictures were all taken, and Leland took
Miss Marks home in the carriage while Lloyd went up-stairs to change her
dress. She wanted Gay and Leland to stop at The Locusts for lunch, but
Gay refused because she couldn't go to the table in a veil and under the
circumstances she couldn't go without one. She got out of the carriage,
however, and sat on the porch while Leland took the old Colonel for a
short spin down the road, to try the new horses.
"It's been a mighty nice morning," she said. "I wish Lucy could have
been with us. She adores discovering old places like that and doing
unexpected things. It almost spoiled my good times thinking of the
wistful way she looked after us when we drove off."
"But she's married!" exclaimed Lloyd. "I shouldn't think she'd care for
those things in quite the same way as she did before. I should think
she'd rather stay with her husband."
"Bosh!" said Gay. "Being married doesn't change a person's disposition
and make tame old hens out of lively little humming-birds. That's just
what Lucy was, a dear little humming-bird, always in a flutter of doing
and going; and you needn't tell me that she enjoys poking there at home
with nobody but Jameson, as much as she would enjoy going out with us
and doing things."
"But he's her husband!" insisted Lloyd, as if that term covered all that
could be desired of human companionship. Then she hummed meaningly:
"'Hand in hand when our life was May,
Hand in hand when our hair is gray!'"
Gay shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "Oh, that Darby and Joan
business is all right when your hair _is_ gray, but Lucy is only a year
older than I am, and Jameson doesn't interest himself in a single thing
that she likes. He's devoted to her, so devoted he doesn't want her out
of his sight; but it's the kind of devotion that has taught me a lesson.
If ever I tie myself up that way it will not be while life is May. I'll
have a good time first."
Lloyd had no answer for such heresy. She was going over in her mind the
list of people from whom she had unconsciously taken her exalted
impressions of married life: her mother and Papa Jack, the old Colonel
and Amanthis, Doctor Shelby and Aunt Alicia, Rob's father and mother.
She felt that Gay was mistaken. To be sure there were old Mr. and Mrs.
Apwall, who quarrelled like cats and dogs, but somehow even they had
given her the impression that they enjoyed their little encounters, and
quarrelled to pass the time, rather than because they bore each other
any ill-will. Then she reflected that these were all people of an older
generation than Lucy, and maybe there was a difference in the times.
Surely Gay must have good reason for speaking so feelingly. This was not
the first time that she had spoken of Lucy with tears in her eyes, and
when she did that, Lloyd, recalling Mammy Easter's tea-cups, was vaguely
glad that it had been foretold that hers would be empty.
The old Colonel came back in a few minutes loud in his praise of the new
horses, and to Lloyd's surprise, in high good humour with their owner.
Evidently Leland had improved his opportunity and had exerted himself to
make friends with the old Colonel, for to Lloyd's amazement he cordially
insisted on Leland's considering The Locusts a second home as long as he
should be in the Valley, and to come at any hour he chose. The
latch-string would be out for him.
"I shall certainly avail myself of the privilege very soon," he
responded, "for to-morrow I have the honour to begin giving Miss Lloyd
lessons in Spanish. So few young ladies nowadays play the harp, that
when one has the ability she owes it to the world to learn the Spanish
songs. Don't you think so?"
Lloyd opened her mouth to protest that she had not yet given her
consent, but closed it again as the old Colonel began expressing his
pleasure at such an arrangement. She felt trapped. It was to please him
that she had learned to play on her grandmother's harp. Any reference to
it always put him in a gentle humour. She wanted him to be cordial and
friendly with Leland, and was glad that he was no longer prejudiced
against him, so she held her peace; but it exasperated her to have her
consent taken for granted in such a high-handed way. He had ridden over
her objection as regardlessly as if she had never made any.
She had boasted to herself, "He needn't put on any of his lordly ways
with _me_!" and here she was submitting meekly, without a word. It
worried her after they had driven away. All the time she was up in her
room, getting ready for lunch, she kept thinking about it.
"I'll just give him to undahstand that it was on grandfathah's account,"
she decided finally. "Instead of my influencing him as Gay expected, it
looks as if _he_ were winding _me_ around his fingah. But he isn't! He
sha'n't! I'll take the lessons, but I'll have no foolishness about it.
I'll surprise him by sticking strictly to business, and I'll set him a
good example of the way to live up to his own family motto."
Mrs. Sherman, who made no objection to the lessons since the old Colonel
approved of them so heartily, was on the front porch with her embroidery
when Leland came up the next morning, the first of July, to give the
first lesson. She smiled to see how energetically Lloyd threw herself
into it, thinking it was a matter of pride with her to show him what
rapid progress she could make.
It certainly was a matter of pride with the Colonel, who enjoyed being
waylaid to hear how beautifully she could count to one hundred or name
the months of the year. It became his habit to take the book, while,
perched on the arm of his chair, she rattled off the vocabulary for the
day's lesson, and reviewed all the others.
"That's right! That's right!" he would say encouragingly. "At this rate
you'll soon be ready for a trip to the Alhambra, and I'm blessed if I
don't take you some of these days. I've always wanted to go."
When Kitty came home from the springs Lloyd insisted on her joining the
class, but she declared she was too far behind to attempt catching up.
Besides she was in charge of affairs at home now, and Elise was to have
a house-party soon. There were half a dozen good reasons why she could
not take the time. The principal one, which she did not give however,
was that it was plain to be seen that Leland was more interested in
studying Lloyd than in teaching her a language, and under such
circumstances, Kitty preferred not to make the third party.
So while Kitty's mornings were filled with her housekeeping duties,
Betty's with her writing and Gay's with her music and plans to keep Lucy
occupied, it gradually came about that Leland spent more and more of his
time at The Locusts. The lessons lasted only an hour, but after that he
usually found some excuse to stay: there was a new song that he wanted
to hear, or a game of tennis, or a stroll down to the post-office.
Sometimes when he had no excuse at all he lingered anyhow, lounging on
the shady porch, and talking of anything that happened to come
uppermost. Then at night he was often there again, either because The
Locusts was the gathering place of the Clan, and a frolic was afoot, or
he went to escort Lloyd and Betty to the Cabin or The Beeches to some
entertainment the other girls had planned.
"My oh! What a buttahfly I'm getting to be!" laughed Lloyd one evening
as she went into her mother's room to have her dress buttoned. "A
hawse-back ride this mawning, a picnic this aftahnoon, and now the
rustic dance in the Mallards' barn to-night. But nevah mind, little
mothah," she added with a hug, as she caught a wistful look on Mrs.
Sherman's face. "It'll all be ovah soon. This is the last summah of my
teens. When I am old and twenty I'll nevah leave yoah side. 'I'll sit on
a cushion and sew a fine seam' and take all the housekeeping cares off
yoah shouldahs as a dutiful daughtah should."
Mrs. Sherman gave her shoulder a caressing pat as she fastened the last
button. "I'm glad to have you go, dear," she answered, "especially to
all the out-door merry-makings. They keep you young and well. Papa Jack
and I will walk over after awhile and look on."
"The Mallard barn dances are always so much fun," said Lloyd, lingering
to give a final touch to her mother's toilet. "Wait! Yoah side combs are
in too high, and yoah collah isn't pinned straight in the back. How did
you evah manage to dress yoahself right befoah I grew up to tend to
you?"
As she made the changes with all a young girl's particularity about
trifles, she went on, "That last one they had three yeahs ago was
lovely. Will you evah forget the way Rob cake-walked with Mrs. Bisbee?
It makes me laugh to this day, whenevah I think of it."
"I suppose Rob will hardly be there to-night," said Mrs. Sherman,
smiling as she recalled the ridiculous appearance he had made. His
cake-walk had been the feature of the evening.
"No, indeed," answered Lloyd. "He's no moah likely to be there than the
man in the moon. I wish he would though. He used to be the life of
everything. We saw him this evening as we drove home from the picnic. He
had just come out from town, and he looked so hot and dusty and ti'ahed
it made me feel bad. He's like a strangah now, didn't stop to speak,
only lifted his hat and turned in at the gate at Oaklea, as if he hadn't
gone on a thousand drives with us. He ought to have been interested in
what we were doing for old times' sake."
Lloyd had not thought of Rob for days, but she was reminded of him many
times that evening, the affair at the Mallards' barn was so much like
the one to which he had taken her three years before. The same old negro
fiddlers furnished the music. The same flickering lantern light made
weird shadows on the rough walls, and the same sweet smell of new hay
filled the place. As the music of the Virginia reel began she thought of
the way Rob had romped through it that other time, and wished she could
see him once more as jolly and care-free as he was then.
"Why can one nevah have two good times exactly alike?" she wondered
wistfully. She was standing near the wide double doors, looking out
across the fields as she thought about it later, recalling how many
things were alike on the two occasions, even the colour of the dress she
wore. She remembered that because Rob had said she looked like an
apple-blossom, and it was rare indeed for him to make such complimentary
speeches. It wasn't best for girls to hear nice things about themselves
often, he said. It made them hard to get along with, too uppity.
The music stopped and Leland Harcourt came to find her. She was looking
so pensively past the gay scene that he bent over her, humming in a low
tone:
"'What's this dull town to me?
Robin Adair?
What was 't I wished to see?
What wished to hear?'"
She started with a little laugh, blushing slightly because he seemed to
have read her thoughts. "Robin Adair" was one of Mrs. Moore's old names
for Rob, and she _had_ been wishing for him.
Over at Oaklea, Rob sat scowling at a book spread out before him on the
library table. He was thinking of Harcourt as he had seen him on the
front seat beside Lloyd, in his cool-looking white flannels, the very
embodiment of gentlemanly leisure. No doubt she noticed the contrast
between them, he all dusty and dishevelled from his day's work and the
trip home on the hot car. Not that he would change places, not that he
regretted for an instant the part he had to take in the grimy working
world. But the chance encounter had suddenly opened his eyes to all that
he had had to sacrifice for that work. Until now it had not even left
him time to realize how much he had given up. Now to find this stranger
enjoying all that was once his, stung him to envy. He smiled grimly as
he recognized it as envy. He had thought himself free from such a
childish trait. But he could not smile away the feeling. It persisted
till it accomplished more than the old Judge's advice and his mother's
pleadings, that all work and no play was bad for him. Closing his book
he announced his intention of walking over to The Locusts.
As he went up the avenue he heard the distant scraping of fiddles and
the rhythmic beating of feet in the Mallard barn. He had forgotten that
it was the night of the rustic dance.
He was disappointed at finding no one at home but the old Colonel. But
his welcome was so cordial that he stayed even longer than he had
intended. The Colonel always had the latest news of every one, but
to-night he had to talk first of the wonderful progress Lloyd was making
in Spanish, and what a fine fellow that young Harcourt was.
"Didn't like the chap at all at first," he confided. "Thought he was too
much of a confounded foreigner; but I'm a big enough man I hope to
acknowledge a mistake, and I own up I was prejudiced."
When Rob finally rose to start home, the Colonel would not let him go
until he had promised to come again the next night, when Lloyd and Betty
should be at home. Afterwards he regretted having made the promise.
Although he went early Harcourt was already there, seemingly as much at
home as if he were a member of the family. It made Rob feel like a
stranger to see this newcomer usurping the place that he had always
filled in the Sherman household.
It grated on him also to hear Lloyd saying, "Si, senor" and "gracias"
when she addressed Harcourt, and grated still more for Harcourt to turn
to her as he did continually with some aside in Spanish. Never more than
a phrase or a word, and "just for practice," they laughingly explained,
but it seemed to emphasize a tie that had drawn them together,
and--Rob's remoteness.
He left early. Walking slowly down the avenue he thought of the hundreds
of times he had passed under those old locust-trees on sweet starlighted
summer nights like this. What a goodly company of old friends they were!
The kind that never change. He looked up, vaguely grateful for the soft
lisping of leaves above him. They seemed to understand why he was going,
why he could not stay.
Half-way down the avenue he heard the tinkle of Lloyd's harp, and then
her voice beginning to sing. The seat beside the measuring tree was just
ahead and he made his way to it, quietly, on tip-toe almost, that he
might lose no note. But it was an unknown tongue she was singing, a song
that Harcourt had taught her, and Rob could not understand a word. It
was so symbolical of the change that had come between them that a fierce
impulse seized him to rush back to the house and throw the interloper
out of the window. Then he smiled bitterly at his own vehemence. What
right had he to be so savage over her friendship? He was her big brother
only, and even that merely in name, because she had chosen to call him
so in those years that they had been such loyal good chums. It was
little and mean and selfish of him to begrudge her the slightest thing
that would give her pleasure. This man with his fortune, his
accomplishments, his rare social gifts had everything to offer, while
he,--he had not even _time_ to put at her disposal. Time to find bypaths
to happiness for her--
The sweet clear voice sang on, the old locusts rustled softly as the
night wind stirred them. Then the song stopped, and for a long time he
sat staring ahead of him with unseeing eyes. At last he rose, and taking
a step towards the tree beside the bench, passed his hand over the bark,
groping for the notches he knew were there but could not see.
He paused at the one a little higher than his shoulder, and then his
fingers found the four leaf clover he had carved beside it, the last
time Lloyd had stood up to be measured. He could almost see her standing
there again like Elaine, the lily-maid, fair-haired and smiling while he
repeated the charm of the four leaf clover:
"'Love be true to her--
Joy draw near to her--
Fortune find what your
Gifts can do for her--'"
He had forgotten how the lines went but it made no difference. Anyhow
they voiced what had always been his dearest wish for her, and standing
there in the dark he vowed savagely that any man who stood in the way of
the old charm's coming true, should have him to reckon with.
When he swung off down the path, taking the short cut to Oaklea, his hat
was pulled grimly down over his eyes, and his mouth was set in a firm
hard line. He did not open his books again that night. Lying on the
couch by his open window, he watched the lights at The Locusts shining
through the trees, till the last one went out, and he knew that Harcourt
had gone.
CHAPTER VIII
"SHADOWS OF THE WORLD APPEAR"
THE long July days slipped by, and Lloyd, looking back on them as
Hildegarde looked into her magic glass, saw only pleasant scenes
mirrored in their memory. The fortunate things, the smiling faces, the
pleasant happenings were hers, and for a time even other people's
troubles, those shadows of the world that are always with us, left her
daily outlook undimmed.
Like Hildegarde, too, she went on with her weaving, but wholly
unconscious that the shuttle of her thoughts was shaping her web to fit
the shoulders of the dark-eyed knight who came oftenest. Mrs. Sherman
saw it and was troubled.
"Jack," she said to her husband one afternoon, when he had come out from
town earlier than usual, and they were wandering around the shady
grounds together, planning some improvements, "I'm afraid those Spanish
lessons are a mistake. Lloyd is seeing entirely too much of Mr.
Harcourt. He is here morning, noon and night."
Mr. Sherman gave a quick glance towards the tennis court where the two
were finishing a lively game. "Don't you worry, Elizabeth," was his
placid answer. "It isn't as if she'd never been used to such devotion.
She's never known anything else. Malcolm and Keith used to spend fully
as much time with her, and Rob Moore fairly lived over here."
"Yes, but this is different," protested Mrs. Sherman. "They were mere
boys, and she dominated them, but Leland Harcourt is a man, and an
experienced one socially, and he is dominating her. I can see it in her
quick deference to his opinions, and her evident desire to please him.
Not evident to him, perhaps, but plain enough to me. I've been thinking
that it might be a good thing for us to go to the springs for awhile or
to the sea-shore or some place where she'd meet other people. In a quiet
little country place like this a man like Leland Harcourt looms up big
on a young girl's horizon; a girl just out of school, eager for new
interests. It isn't wise in us to allow her to be restricted just to his
society, when we could so easily give her the safe-guard of contrasts."
Mr. Sherman looked down at his wife with an indulgent smile.
"Don't you worry," he repeated. "Lloyd will do a lot of romantic
day-dreaming probably, but she has my 'yard-stick' and I have her
promise."
"But Jack, I verily believe the child thinks he measures up to all your
requirements. And really there is nothing one can urge against his
character. It's more a matter of temperament. I am sure she couldn't be
happy with him. She's just at the romantic age now to be very much
impressed with that kind of a man. If she were older she would see his
shallowness--his lack of purpose, his intense selfishness. I don't think
that we ought to shut our eyes to the possible outcome of this constant
companionship we are allowing."
"Well," he answered hesitatingly, slow to acknowledge his wife's
distrust of Lloyd's judgment, yet quick to see the wisdom of her point
of view. "Maybe you are right. But," he added wistfully, "I had hoped to
keep her home this summer. She has been away at school so long--and
she'll be in town so much next winter if she makes her debut. Wait till
I have had a talk with her before you plan any trips."
"But don't you see," urged Mrs. Sherman, "it is something too
intangible to discuss. To speak to her about it now, to make any
opposition to him at all, may quicken her interest in him and make her
champion his cause. That would be fatal, and yet it's just as dangerous
to wait. Love at that age is like a fog. It comes creeping up so
gradually that you don't realize what is enveloping you, till you're
completely lost in it, and all the rest of the world shut out."
"You speak from experience?" he said teasingly.
"You know very well," she confessed laughingly, "what a befogged state
_I_ was in. All papa's breathing out of 'threatening and slaughter'
didn't make the slightest difference. I was blind and deaf to everything
but you. And I'd want Lloyd to be the same," she added hastily, "if you
were as unreasonable as papa was then. But the circumstances are too
different to be compared. I'm simply warning you that the Little
Colonel's name was not lightly given. She has not only all my
determination in her makeup, but her grandfather's as well."
Here the gardener met them, and the conversation dropped. The next half
hour was spent in consultation over some changes to be made in the
conservatory.
When they went back to the house Leland Harcourt had gone, and Lloyd was
just stepping into Doctor Shelby's buggy, which was drawn up in front of
the house. The old doctor waited for them to come within hearing
distance before he leaned out and called:
"I'm just borrowing the Little Colonel for awhile. There's a case over
at Rollington that needs the attention of her King's Daughters Circle,
and I'm taking her over to investigate it. We'll be home before dark."
"All right," called Mr. Sherman, waving his hat as Lloyd looked back at
them with a smile and a flutter of her handkerchief. During the winter
that Lloyd had joined the Circle, and in the summer vacations following,
it had been a matter of frequent occurrence for the old doctor to take
her with him on such errands. Remembering how interested Lloyd had
become in many of the cases, Mrs. Sherman breathed a sigh of
thankfulness, hoping that this might prove to be one that would enlist
her sympathies and occupy so much of her time that it would make a
serious break in the Spanish lessons.
It had been a happy afternoon for Lloyd. If she had stopped and tried to
recall what made it so, she could not have mentioned any particular
thing. To be young and well and filled with the same glow that made the
summer day a joy was enough, but to feel that some one whose opinion she
valued very much found her charming, and said so with every glance of
his dark eyes, was more than enough. It made her cup of happiness
complete and brimmed it over.
The doctor was pouring out a tale of somebody's woes, but the trace of a
smile lingered on her lips as she made a polite attempt to listen. She
could not quite shut out the thought of that last game of tennis, and
the trivial pleasantries that had gone to make up the sum of her great
content. There was a dreamy, far-away look in her eyes as she listened.
The Spanish serenade that Leland Harcourt had sung before he left kept
repeating itself over and over, a sort of undercurrent to what the
doctor was saying. She beat time to it with her finger-tips on the side
of the buggy. Once it rose so insistently that she lost what the doctor
was saying, and came to herself with a start when a familiar name
arrested her attention.
"Ned Bannon's wife!" she repeated in astonishment. "You suahly can't
mean that it's Ida Shane who's sick ovah in that tumbledown cottage of
the McCarty's!"
"I surely do," he answered. "She didn't want to come back to this part
of the country, goodness knows. She remembers what a commotion it raised
when she eloped from the Seminary with Ned, five years ago. But Ned has
scarcely drawn a sober breath for the last year. She's sure of getting
needlework here, and with little Wardo to consider there was nothing for
her to do but put her pride in her pocket and come."
"Little Wardo!" breathed Lloyd wonderingly. The ride seemed full of
surprises.
"Yes, she has a little son about four years old, I judge. And it is on
his account that I have asked the help of the King's Daughters. He'll
have to be taken away from her till she's better, for she is morbidly
sensitive about keeping Ned's failings from him. She has never allowed
him to find out that his father is a drunkard. She makes a hero of him
to the little fellow. Seems to think that he'll blame her for giving him
such a father by marrying a man whom she had been warned would bring her
nothing but trouble and disgrace. She's desperately ill, and of course
in her weak condition she magnifies the matter. It has become a mania
with her."
"Poah Violet!" exclaimed Lloyd in distress, her thoughts flying back to
the scene in the school orchard five years ago, when watching the
glimmer of the pearl on Ida's white hand in the moonlight she had been
thrilled by her whisper: "He says that's what my life means to him--a
pearl; and that my influence can make him the man I want him to be. Oh,
Princess! I'd give my life to keep him straight!"
Not even an echo of the serenade was in her memory now. Her knowledge of
Ida's nearness seemed to bring her old school-friend actually before
her: the faint odour of violets, the shy glance of her appealing violet
eyes under the long lashes, the bewitching dimple at the corner of her
mouth, the flash of her rings, the sweep of her long skirts, the soft
hair gleaming under the big-plumed picture hat, more than all the air of
romance and mystery that surrounded her because of the pearl and the
secret engagement to her "Edwardo."
"I hadn't intended for her to see you," said the doctor, when her
exclamations and questions revealed to him the intimacy that had once
existed between them. "But under the circumstances it will be the best
thing I can do. I'll go in first and prepare her for the meeting,
however. She thinks she hasn't a friend
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/39594