Wayside Courtships Part 11

"It must be heaven to live here and feed the chickens and cows," the young girl said one day when Arthur was pa.s.sing by--quite accidentally.

Mrs. Richards took a seat, wiping her face on her ap.r.o.n.

"Wal, I don't know about that, when it comes to waiting and tendin' on a mess of 'em; it don't edgicate a feller much. Does it, Art?"

"We don't do it for play, exactly," he replied, taking a seat on the porch steps and smiling up at Edith. "I can't stand cows; I like horses, though. Of course, if I were foreman of the dairy, that would be another thing."

The flowerlike girl looked down at him with a strange glance. Something rose in her heart which sobered her. She studied the clear brown of his face and the white of his forehead, where his hat s.h.i.+elded it from the sun and the wind. The spread of his strong neck, where it rose from his shoulders, and the clutch of his brown hands attracted her.

"How strong you look!" she said musingly.

He laughed up at her in frank delight.

"Well, I'm not out here for my health exactly, although when I came here I was pretty tender. I was just out of college, in fact," he said, glad of the chance to let her know that he was not an ignorant workingman.

She looked surprised and pleased.

"Oh, you're a college man! I have two brothers at Yale. One of them plays half-back or short-stop, or something. Of course you played?"

"Baseball? Yes, I was pitcher for '88." He heaved a sigh. He could not think of those blessed days without sorrow.

"Oh, I didn't mean baseball. I meant football."

"We don't play that much in the West. We go in more for baseball. More science."

"Oh, I like football best, it's so lively. I like to see them when they get all bunched up, they look so funny, and then when some fellow gets the ball under his arms and goes shooting around, with the rest all jumping at him. Oh, oh, it's exciting!"

She smiled, and her teeth shone from her scarlet lips with a more familiar expression than he had seen on her face before. Some wall of reserve had melted away, and they chatted on with growing freedom.

"Well, Edith, are you ready?" asked the Major, coming up.

Arthur sprang up as if he suddenly remembered that he was a workingman.

Edith rose also.

"Yes, all ready, uncle."

"Well, we'll be going in a minute.--Mr. Ramsey, do you think that millet has got water enough?"

"For the present, yes. The ground is not so dry as it looks."

As they talked on about the farm, Mrs. Richards brought out a gla.s.s of milk for the Major.

Arthur, with nice calculation, unhitched the horse and brought it around while the Major was detained.

"May I help you in, Miss Newell?"

She gave him her hand with a frank gesture, and the Major reached the cart just as she was taking the lines from Arthur.

"Are you coming?" she gayly cried. "If not, I'll drive home by myself."

"You mean you'll hold the lines."

"No, sir. I can drive if I have a chance."

"That's what the American girl is saying these days. She wants to hold the lines."

"Well, I'm going to begin right now and drive all the way home."

As they drove off she flashed a roguish glance back at Arthur--a smile which shadowed swiftly into a look which had a certain appeal in it. He was very handsome in his working dress.

All the rest of the day that look was with him. He could not understand it, though her mood while seated upon the porch was perfectly comprehensible to him.

The following Sunday morning he saddled up one of the horses and went down to church. He reasoned Edith would attend the Episcopal service, and he had the pleasure of seeing her pa.s.s up the aisle most exquisitely dressed.

This feeling of pleasure was turned to sadness by sober second thought.

Added to the prostration before his ideal was the feeling that she belonged to another world--a world of pleasure and wealth, a world without work or worry. This feeling was strengthened by the atmosphere of the beautiful little church, fragrant with flowers, delicately shadowed, tremulous with music.

He rode home in deep meditation. It was curious how subjective he was becoming. She had not seen him there, and his trip lacked so much of being a success. Life seemed hardly worth living as he took off his best suit and went out to feed the horses.

The men soon observed the regularity of these Sunday excursions, and the word was pa.s.sed around that Arthur went down to see his girl, and they set themselves to find out who she was. They did not suspect that he sought the Major's niece.

It was a keen delight to see her, even at that distance. To get one look from her, or to see her eyelashes fall over her brown eyes, paid him for all his trouble, and yet it left him hungrier at heart than before.

Sometimes he got seated in such wise that he could see the fine line of her cheek and chin. He noticed also her growing color. The free life she lived in the face of the mountain winds was doing her good.

Sometimes he went at night to the song service, and his rides home alone on the plain, with the shadowy mountains over there ma.s.sed in the starlit sky, were most wonderful experiences.

As he rose and fell on his broncho's steady gallop, he took off his hat to let the wind stir his hair. Riding thus, exalted thus, one night he shaped a desperate resolution. He determined to call on her just as he used to visit the girls at Viroqua with whom he was on the same intimacy of footing.

He was as good as any cla.s.s. He was not as good as she was, for he lacked her sweetness and purity of heart, but merely the fact that she lived in a great house and wore beautiful garments, did not exclude him from calling upon her.

IV.

But week after week went by without his daring to make his resolution good. He determined many times to ask permission to call, but somehow he never did.

He seemed to see her rather less than at first; and, on her part, there was a change. She seemed to have lost her first eager and frank curiosity about him, and did not always smile now when she met him.

Then, again, he could not in working dress ask to call; it would seem so incongruous to stand before her to make such a request covered with perspiration and dust. It was hard to be dignified under such circ.u.mstances; he must be washed and dressed properly.

In the meantime, the men had discovered how matters stood, and some of them made very free with the whole situation. Two of them especially hated him.

These two men had drifted to the farm from the mines somewhere, and were rough, hard characters. They would have come to blows with him, only they knew something of the power lying coiled in his long arms.

One day he overheard one of the men speaking of Edith, and his tone stopped the blood in Arthur's heart. When he walked among the group of men his face was white and set.

"You take that back!" he said in a low voice. "You take that back, or I'll kill you right where you stand!"