V
But there was a possibility of both. There was vein of sentiment through the bed-rock of Lawson's worldliness which had shown brightly once or twice, had been broken off suddenly, and which, had it been worked by skilful hands, would have yielded rich returns. When he had come east, along with the powerful reasons for his doing so had flickered now and then the glimmer of his traditions of a Virginia girl. He thought in a nebulous fashion that she should be slight, dark-eyed, dark-haired, fascinating as a woman only can be, and flirtatious as a kitten. He had met one or two of the pictured type. But from the moment when he had stepped from his own room far up the corridor one day and seen a tall, supple, well-built young woman with clear cheek and ruffled hair and serene gray eyes, holding her long white gown from the worn brick-way and walking with careless grace towards him, he had decided instantly that this was the woman of whom he had thought, and had begun to cluster his traditions about her. None would fit. If there was a grain of coquetry about Frances it slumbered; so did some other deeper feelings. He had watched, striven, for a flash of her eyes or a flush on her cheek; he had seen it, but it had been careless companionship which evoked it. And his thoughts, striving to fit her to a place she would not fill, clung about her more and more. There would be no hour for him on Sunday; it only irked him. He remembered the women he had met who were nearer the ideal of his illusions. He sought them.
Frances finding at last, and most unexpectedly, a free hour, and scarce knowing what to do with it, wandered aimlessly about the house. It was so much her custom to be abroad with her father and watching the sunset over the mountain tops, that now, when he was kept by an old friend, she could not content herself. She would have her walk alone.
The pageantry of the autumn days was veiled. The wind was whistling about the chimney-tops and bending the half bared branches of maple and oak; far away the soft gray clouds closed about the high mountain crests, shutting the vision in narrow horizons. Many of the students were loitering about corridor or cottage as she sped away from all along the road winding to the mountain top crowned by the observatory. Here, beyond the immediate environments of the many buildings, a short road across the fields led to the football grounds, where the high fence and higher stand of seats loomed weather-beaten, deserted; there, on the other side of the wide highway, rolled the golf links over the hillside, the winds moaning above them fitfully and rustling the dead vines on fence and roadside, and the scarlet fronds of sumac, and whirling the dead leaves about her feet and tossing the oak-branches overhead.
She was at the edge of the wood which ran to the mountain top. A double arch of oaks met overhead. Beyond these, where the grove was cleared for a space, was the resting place of the University's dead. Her father went often through the gates, but it always smote her like a blow, the sight of those grass-grown swells and gleaming marbles and white sweet roses; and in the midst the great shaft, with many names about its base of those who, when there was need, had marched from the bright dreams of their college life to the grim deeds of war—had marched, many of them, to rest in some obscure corner of their state or of others, but to be remembered each one in that list of those who had dared and done and paid the one and everlasting price of their beliefs.
Where the path under the arching oaks ended, and in sight of the white palings and clustering shafts, Frances paused. Just here she and her father had stood on many an afternoon while the sun, crimsoning the sky above the mountains, hung scarlet banners over the valley dipping sheer between them and the Ragged Mountains, dyeing in crimson and purple and clear green the heavens, against which were sharply silhouetted the crests, red and rocky, or clothed to the top with the verdure of the pine or showing the gorgeous hues of autumn. Now the heavens shut them in closely, even the far brilliant forest showed cold against their dull leaden grays; on the other hand, beyond the links where the land rolled and dipped and climbed again upward, showed the chimney-tops of houses, the smoke-wreaths close about them telling of warmth and cheer. It was the day and hour for fireside comfort. Frances turned homeward.
So loud had been the moaning of the wind in leaf and tree that she had heard no other sound. Now as she turned she saw a smart buggy driving rapidly towards her, almost abreast of her.