CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
IF Virginia had been unable to influence Stephen's life as she wished, this was far from being the case with Jane and Harriett, who had wholly abandoned themselves to her care and control, which had to do, unselfishly enough, with their comfort and convenience. They were also indebted to her for their mental outlook. They echoed her opinions and acquired her convictions, by which they endured with unshaken pertinacity, and she had furnished them with such prejudices as had found a home in their gentle unworldly hearts. In sentiment they were quite as much Landray as she was herself; and their pride in the name was quite equal to her own pride in it; while their affection for her was, aside from their affection for each other, quite the deepest emotion in their simple lives.
Under these conditions Harriett had grown into young womanhood, a shy pretty girl, who looked out upon the world with soft, inexperienced eyes. But her father's death, and Stephen Landray's, and perhaps more than all, Virginia's beauty and silent devotion to her dead husband, had supplied a background of romance and mystery of which she was never wholly unconscious. Of society, as it was understood in Benson, she knew nothing; her mother had never made any friends in the town, and Virginia's own circle had narrowed; she went nowhere.
Some day Harriett knew she would teach; this Virginia and Jane had decided for her. It was their conviction that it was the one thing a young lady could do without compromising her position, it was entirely dignified, a polite and unexceptional occupation where one was so unfortunate as to have her own future to consider; and so to teach, Harriett was fitting herself, when something happened which materially changed all her plans.
Mr. Stark, who for many years had been the pioneer banker in Benson, had long since gone to his reward, and now there were several banks in the town; chief of these was the County Bank where the interest on certain loans which Benson had made for Virginia, with the money he had given her for the land in Belmont County, was regularly paid. Here Harriett often went for Virginia, and it was here she first met Mark Norton, whose uncle, Judge Norton, was interested in the fortunes of the bank; indeed, young Norton was supposed to be mastering the intricacies of the banking business under the judge's eye.
He came of an excellent family in the county, and Harriett had frequently observed the young fellow. She had even noted that after business hours, the easy hours of banks, he indulged himself in the pleasure of driving most excellent horses. His father was a rich farmer, which doubtless had much to do with the soundness of the son's judgment in the matter of horse-flesh; it also explained why it was that he was able to keep fast horses, a luxury not within the reach of the ordinary bank clerk. Harriett had seen all this, as he frequently drove past the cottage presumably on his way into the country beyond. It afterward developed that Norton had observed the slight figure of the girl on the lawn in front of the cottage with the two elder ladies, and he had noted that she was very pretty—singularly pretty, he would have said.
But it was Harriett's privilege not only to see him in his hours of recreation, but also when she went to the bank on some errand for Virginia. He never ventured on anything that could be termed conversation, though he occasionally appeared to be anxious to discover Miss Walsh's opinion on such impersonal subjects as the weather; or if it was a warm day he obligingly called her attention to that fact. He always addressed her as Miss Walsh. He had been almost the first person who found such formality necessary, and that he did, had provoked her to a new and gratifying emotion.
But on one occasion when she stopped at the bank, he was rather more disposed to talk than was usual with him, but Miss Walsh was in some haste to go, once the business that had brough her there was transacted; indeed, so great was her haste that she did not observe that she had left her check-book.
Later in the afternoon, as she sat on the lawn with Virginia and her mother, Norton appeared, striding briskly up the street. He opened the gate, and crossed the lawn to them, smiling and at ease.
“I didn't give Miss Walsh her check-book,” he said. He addressed himself to Virginia. “I thought she would find it out and come back—but you didn't”—he turned to Harriett as he spoke—“and so I've brought it.”