The Fortune of the Landrays

by Vaughan Kester

On either hand were corn-fields. The long rows rooted in the rich, black loam of the flat bottom land were at right angles with the lane, down which ran the faint print of wheels, for it was little used. Beyond the corn-fields on the east was a low growth of willows, here and there overshadowed by the fantastically twisted top of some old sycamore; and beyond the willows and the sycamores was still another flat reach of bottom land, from which came the faint scent of freshly-cut hay.

The broad green leaves of the corn drooped and curled in the hot noon sun, or rustled softly where a breath of wind stirred them. There was intense, searching heat, and silence—the waiting, expectant silence of an August day when the long rainless skies are about to break their drought. A thin blue mist quivered in the level distance, and on the soft green undulations of the pasture land, which sloped up to the densely wooded heights of Landray's Hill, sun steeped and vivid; where the day first smote with light, and where in early spring the arbutus bloomed among the melting patches of snow. In the valley, in the old Indian fields, as the first settlers had called the open grass-land they found along the creek-bank, short shadows from the sycamores barred the rustling corn with slanting shafts of a richer, darker green. Then in a remote field was heard the first sound that disturbed the silent noon hour; and from the meadow beyond the corn-field, came the keen swish of scythes in the tall grass, and a sharp metallic ring tuned to a certain rhythmic beat and swing where a mower had paused to sharpen his blade.

The lane ended at a pair of bars near a clump of trees which clustered about a spacious brick farm-house. This was the Landray home. Back of the farm-house could be distinguished the queer, high-hipped roof of Landray's mill; and from it now, mingling with the other sounds, came the rush of water and the droning splash of wheels.

The young man in the cart glanced about him with a quick sense of pleasure. He was in the second generation away from the soil himself; his father had been a trader, and he was a lawyer; but the peace of it all, the promised plenty of the great corn-fields, the distant droves of cattle in the shaded pasture lands, the scent of the hay, stirred him to something very like envy.

“And he'll be leaving all this!” he muttered under his breath at last; then he added: “And he'll be leaving her—I cannot understand it!”

A woman emerged from a path that led off across the fields, and came down the lane toward him. He did not see her until she was quite close; but when he became aware of her presence he rose hastily from his seat in the cart, and hat in hand, sprang to the ground at her side.

“Mrs. Landray,” he said, and drew the reins forward from the bit so that he could walk beside her and lead his horse.

She was Stephen Landray's wife, and it was of her he had been thinking but the moment before, for he thought of her more often than he realized. To him she had always seemed a most majestic person, strangely mature, and with a dignity and repose of bearing that was the consequence neither of age nor any large experience.

He was vaguely aware that in actual years he must be older than she; but nevertheless on these not frequent occasions when they met, she made him feel conscious and ill at ease; he was oppressed by a sense of his youth and inexperience; and the fact that his acquaintance with life went no further than Benson, and the three abutting counties, became a thing to regret and realize even with shame. But why she, whose life had been quite as limited as his own, should seem to carry with her this breath as from a larger world, was something he could not explain, reason it out as he would.

Her beauty was of the generous Southern type. The soft waves of her hair gleamed like polished brass in the sunlight; it clustered in soft rings on her low, broad brow; her skin was like creamy satin. He allowed his eyes to rest on the masses of her hair, then on the strong beautiful face, her full round throat, and the lovely lines of her perfect figure.