Are you awf’lly busy, Hugh? I want to see you. Meet me at the schoolhouse at five-thirty to-day. Be sure and come. It is very important.
Vicky Lowell.
If Vicky said it was important for him to meet her, he knew she was not overstressing it. That young woman was impulsive and sometimes imperious, but it was not in her character to call a busy man from his work without a valid reason. It was her custom to stay at the schoolhouse and prepare the lessons for next day so that she might have the evenings free to read or to go out with friends. Twice he had gone out to the schoolhouse and walked home with her in order to talk over some difficulty that had arisen in regard to the leasing of her claim. But he had gone of his own volition and not at her request.
There were moments during the afternoon, while he was talking over business matters with the people who poured into his office, when his pulses quickened delightfully, when he was aware of an undertug of excitement coursing through his blood. Was it possible that Vicky sent for him because—because she cared for him?
He rejected this, too, as out of character, as a kind of treason to her. She was proud and held her self-respect in high esteem. Even if she cared for him she would let him travel the whole road to her. Her lover must come out into the open and ask for all he hoped to gain.
There had been hours of late when Hugh’s heart had been lifted with hope, hours when their spirits had met in the mountain tops and they had rejoiced in the exploration of each other’s minds. The mentality of girls was a terra incognita to him. He had lived among men from his youth. Never before had he met a soul so radiant, so quick with life, so noble in texture, as hers, he told himself. The glamour of her personality coloured all his thoughts of her. The lift of her throat as she would turn the beautifully poised little head, the dark flash of her eyes so mobile in expression, the soft glow of colour in her clear complexion, even the intellectual quality of her immature thinking, went to his head like strong wine.
He was in love, with all the clean strength of his nature—and he rejoiced in his love and let it flood his life. It permeated all his actions and thoughts, quickened his vitality. Because he had gone so far in life sufficient to himself the experience was wonderful and amazing to him. His imagination halted at the threshold of his house of dreams. He dared not let it take free rein. He would tell himself humbly that this golden girl was not for him, and next moment he was planning how he might see her soon and what he would say to her.
He was detained a few moments by a business detail that had to be settled with a foreman, and after that a committee of citizens met in his office to decide about the organization of a fire department for the camp. He was on edge to be gone, but he could not very well walk out from a meeting he himself had called. When at last he got away he knew that he was nearly fifteen minutes late for his appointment with Vicky.
Knowing that he would be rushed for time, he had ordered a saddle horse to be in waiting outside the office. He cantered down the road, pretending not to hear the shout of an old prospector who wanted to discuss a lease with him. To-morrow would do well enough for Tim Murphy, anyhow. The important business of his life just now was to get to Miss Vicky Lowell as soon as his horse could cover the intervening miles.
He travelled fast. It was only a few minutes later when he rode down Turkey Creek Avenue at a gallop. He did not stop the horse in town, but passed through it to the suburb at the farther edge of which the school had been built.