On Frances' face was a look it warmed the heart of the old woman to see,—the flushed, faint flickerings of the beginnings of a great happiness.
XXIII
Lawson's hard study was bringing its own reward. There were high opinions forming of him on quadrangle and in hall. But he gave no heed to them. He was holding to a grim determination, and the interest he felt growing stronger and stronger in his work was an incentive he had not expected. It was not often his mind went back to idle memories, or forward to visionary hopes; he lived as he swore he would do when he came back to the University, and he kept to his purpose with the self-will he had used in every other pursuit. As the days lengthened and the grass greened on the quadrangle and the maple blossoms drifted on the thick sward, the contest with himself grew harder. He had followed the bent of his humor always, and, with spring-tide abroad, the old desire for wandering came upon him. He had tramped, driven, roamed, lived out-of-doors; had known a camp life in the Rockies, and the long lazy days by the ocean's swell at Santa Barbara, and the lazy loungings in foreign cities. Now when soft winds brought through his opened window a breath of fresh fields and opening leaf-buds, and the languorous odor of violets and hyacinths, and the hum of bees and the songs of mocking-birds, his room, with its worn floor and ashy hearth and dusty hangings, seemed stifling. The outside world called him.
He pushed his books from him, and his thoughts ran idly into a channel forbidden. He got to his feet and picked up his cap. He would have a long tramp up the sides of Mount Jefferson. As he opened the door the postman, going his afternoon rounds, called to him, "Mail for you," and held up a bunch of cards and papers and a letter.
Lawson glanced at them, stepped back into his room and closed the door. The letter was from his father, in his own handwriting. He wrote seldom. There was little he would say to his son through his secretary; and what he said in his own style was ill-spelt, and his son was college-bred.
His son tore the letter open, devoured it with quick eyes. "My God! My God!" he half sobbed, as he leaned against the mantel, his face hidden on his arms. But it was not anguish which drew the cry, nor joy; for sorrow he would have set his lips and gone his way; and joy he dared not yet name this feeling which surged in his heart. He was suffocating. He opened his door, looked quickly up and down—he would see no one—almost ran down to the Serpentine walk and so out beyond West Range to the road, mountainward. Now he knew that the sun shone, that flowers were in bloom and birds a-wing, that winds were soft and skies were blue.
He pushed his cap back from his forehead so that the wind might blow across it, and he felt as if bands of torture and bitterness were melting at its touch.
Overhead, the buzzards floated in lazy luxury of flying, the crows called loudly; beyond the football grounds the farmer was planting the red, fresh-ploughed field in corn; the golf links were green with new growth. He leaned his arms on the fence and watched some distant players, the opening buds of the wayside bushes making a screen about him. Then his gaze strayed to the oaks beyond, their red buds tossing softly. Farther on, the chestnuts showed pale leaves no bigger than a squirrel's ear, and up the mountain-side the forest ran in delicate waves of color, green upon green, and gray and red.