Several times a week he saw Nora, the companion of his childhood, for she was working now in the creamery at Elmville. He had not met her that Sunday on the river road, for then he was in Chicago with Mary, and had forgotten all about Nora. But he had remembered her afterwards, and as she had lost her place in the store because she was not quick at figures, he had found a place for her at the creamery. He meant to look out for poor little Nora, had a desire to be kind to her. He had a quick sympathy for the weak and helpless, always; he was full of generous impulses, would kindle at any tale of distress or injustice and was ready to help. Part of his feeling for "the under dog" came by nature; part perhaps from his own circumstances in the years of sensitive youth.
A deep mark had been left upon him by these early hardships—he hated and feared poverty. He was ambitious in a worldly and social way, he wanted to count among men, he wanted power; and he was determined to be rich. His power was to be beneficent, his riches were to benefit others. Though he liked display and luxury, he liked better the feeling that he could be a mainstay and rock of refuge to those weaker than himself. He would be great, powerful, and generous.
These ambitions and dreams came out clearly as he talked to Mary. But she did not echo them, only listened gravely. She did not sympathize with Laurence's desire for worldly things, and she knew he would not sympathize with her indifference to them. When she expressed anything of the kind he would say with irritation that she knew nothing of the world and had better get some experience before she despised it. So after a few attempts, she gave up trying to talk to him about it. The time hadn't come, she felt, Laurence's spiritual eyes were not opened, he was bound to earthly vanities. Perhaps he would have to experience these things before he could despise them, see their nothingness. But she needn't, she felt serenely that no experience would change her point of view. She loved Laurence, but she nourished in her heart an ideal to which he did not correspond. A militant saint—that was her ideal. Not a man struggling for the goods of this world, but one who could put his feet upon them and whose vision was far beyond. A look of infinite remoteness would come into her eyes sometimes and she would fall into abstraction; and Laurence, when this happened in his presence, would resent it instinctively and drag her out of it by making love to her or quarrelling with her, or both at once.
But they had many happy hours together in the long drowsy twilights, many times of troubled exquisite sweetness in the dusk or the dark of still summer nights. Their youthful tenderness was stronger than any division of feeling; a deep unconscious bond was forming between them.
Sometimes in the evenings, the heat and mosquitos would drive them indoors. Then in the dim light Mary would sit down at the piano. She did not play very well, her fingers were strong rather than skilful, but she sang old ballads in her husky contralto, for Laurence and Judge Baxter.
The Judge had a sentimental passion for these songs, and as he sat and listened, pulling slowly at his cigar, he was happy, he had a feeling of home. His bare bachelor existence had been cushioned, or he would have said, glorified by the tender touch of a woman. He had a chivalric affection for Mary, he admired her intensely. He and Laurence would sit with their eyes fixed upon her as she sang, on the clear outline of her cheek, her thick knot of burnished hair, her young figure, strong and stately, in the light flowing gown of white muslin. She sang "Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doon," and "Oh, tell me if all those endearing young charms," and other old-world songs. The two men listened raptly, the glowing tips of their cigars gathering thick cones of ashes. In the intervals of the song, a chorus of night-insects could be heard outside, shrilling in the grass and heavy-leaved trees. Or sometimes the low rumbling of thunder heralded an approaching storm.