Ewing's Lady

by Harry Leon Wilson

"It's foolish," he insisted, and replaced it with elaborate care. Then he ran to join his ruddy cicerone. He found the girl a good comrade, who helped him to forget those things he wished to forget. Somehow in the quiet air, that nameless secret thing that had been eating his heart drew off a little. Almost he could believe it had all been some hideous mistake.

He tried at first to join Virginia in her sports. Tennis looked foolishly easy, but after sending four of the balls beyond recovery he suspected that the game might demand something more than willingness and strength, and relinquished his racquet to watch the girl. He felt the glow of the sport in following her swift movements, and he envied the young men who could play with her.

Golf looked not only easy but useless; and it was with only half a heart that he essayed it. He splintered a driver at his first attempt, and he did not venture a second. Still, he liked golf better than tennis, he decided, for he could carry the bag of things she played with and hunt lost balls, and wander over the course alone with her. He was never able to believe that a stroke more or less in holing the ball could be a matter of real moment, but the girl was worth watching while she believed it. He had never seen a real girl near before, and he was surprised to find it so fine a sight.

In the canoe he was more successful, contriving to accomplish by sheer strength of arm what the girl did more adroitly. They would paddle far up the little river, to float down in the late afternoon. The river, too, was a stage river, running between low, willow-fringed banks, or winding among hay fields that sloped back to the upland, or lush green meadows where cows were posed effectively. The girl became part of the picture when they turned to float homeward, facing him from the bow, her hair glinting yellow and her skin crystal clear against the crimson cushion she leaned upon.

They rode together, too—he could join her there—over the upland and far into the little hills, between tangled hedge rows, past little farms with orchards of ripening fruit. They passed many deserted places, mournful in their stagnation, overgrown with wild things, the houses forlornly dismantled, perhaps with the roof sunken, the chimney toppled, and the weather-beaten walls in ruinous decay. He was touched by these places. The houses must have been built with high hope, and once have been alive with full-hearted effort. Their walls had enclosed dreams and joyous dramas. Then discouragement had fallen and the search for another place of beginning. He wondered what had become of all the people who had built these homes. He hoped they had begun in another place with undimmed resolve and had found peace. Yet there were sinister hints that their ghosts haunted these spots of their first failures, beseeching of the ruins something of the first freshness of impulse.

He tried to tell Virginia Bartell that he, too, was like a deserted farm, falling into ruin. But this only made her laugh. She could not believe in failure, it seemed. And he laughed with her, after a little. It was not possible, after all, to suppose that he could go on being a ruin forever. These frustrated home makers must have succeeded at last, and so would he. In some manner the girl herself became an assurance of this. Her mere buoyancy uplifted him.

These times alone with the girl were not always to be had for the asking. There abounded other youths who prized her companionship; able, dauntless youths and skilled with accomplishments.

There was one of these, a tall young man, spectacled, of a high shiny forehead, a student of a youth, who haunted the gray house like a malignant wraith of erudition, and condescended to the girl almost as flagrantly as he did to Ewing. His talk, whether of machinery or morals, socialism or chemistry, was meant to instruct. Wherefore the girl slunk from him, not always so skilfully as might have been wished—with far less subtlety, indeed, than her aunt wished.

"I'm almost certain you offended him this afternoon," she remarked on a day when they had fled flagrantly to the river, "though why you should wish to avoid him is beyond me. You know that he's from one of the very oldest families in West Roxbury." The girl's tone was penitent as she answered: "But I'd promised to go in the canoe with Mr. Ewing." There was no penitence, however, in the look she flashed at Ewing over her aunt's shoulder, daring him to prove if he were a man. He nerved himself in the glance.

"But you see, Mrs. Ranley, I'm from one of the very oldest families in Hinsdale County, Colorado." The girl applauded him with her eyes, and the incident was closed with a word of mild gratification from the old lady. She was pleased to observe that he felt a family pride, even though any county in Colorado was, of course, beyond consideration.