Читать книгу Sunlight Patch - Credo Fitch Harris - Страница 18

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Uncle Zack's watchful eyes discerned the returning riders and busily he went to prepare juleps, while, at the same time, a company of little darkies dashed past the house eager to lead the horses stableward.

This aroused a man who had been day-dreaming on the deep, cool porch. His feet were comfortably perched on the seat of an opposite chair, and an open book lay face down on his lap. Within convenient reaching distance stood a silver goblet topped with sprigs of mint. He was dressed in immaculate white, a suit which showed the character of expert tailorship when subjected to the arm and leg stretch of the frantic yawn he now deliberately enjoyed. For young Mr. Brent McElroy was as well groomed as he was good to look upon. Although Bod had called him the laziest chap in clothes, and Miss Liz had berated his lack of ambition, and all had sometimes resented his ironies, a very critical glance at his face would have belied these faults. For his chin was cast in a good mould, and his eyes looked at one with steady, honest interest. They were spirited, but tender, and a trained observer would have found in them a deep, lingering hunger for something which seemed not to have come. He would also have found strength in the mouth, ordinarily too cynical.

Brent managed to get along pretty well with everything but work, and in severing diplomatic relations with this he usually found himself persona non grata with Jane and her strongest ally, Miss Liz. For Jane, more than all of them, realized the blessings a railroad would bring to her people in that wild area beyond Snarly Knob. She knew how each artery leading from the virgin heart of those mountains, carrying to the world its stream of warmth, would return twofold riches to the benighted denizens of their antiquity. She knew that through each vein from the distant centers of the world's culture would flow back a broader understanding of life, its responsibilities, ambitions, opportunities. To her, the little road was a savior, to such a degree God-sent, that it seemed a sacrilege to let it halt. Moreover, since Brent came, she felt that the Colonel had been given fresh inspiration to imbibe. It had not occurred to her to reverse this indictment, which might have been done with an equal amount of truth. At any rate, she had lost patience with the good-looking engineer, while the Colonel was finding him more and more attractive.

He arose now as the men dismounted, stretched again, and smiled down at them.

"Ah, sir," the Colonel cried, "I'm glad you are home in time to join us!"

"I've just been joining," he laughed, "but, of course, if you can't get along without me—" he waved a hand toward his empty goblet. Uncle Zack had made provision for this—Uncle Zack, who believed that a thoroughbred gentleman should always be "jes' a li'l bit toddied up."

Dale stood at the bottom step staring with the open curiosity characteristic of his kind, and convinced that he was gazing upon the most elegant gentleman in all creation. No detail of the toilette escaped his minute scrutiny—from the white buckskin shoes to the white cravat, from the immaculate linen to the flashing teeth; and for a second time that day his eyes lowered to pass slowly over the crudeness of his own attire.

The Colonel saw this and smiled, but it was not a mirthful smile. His former interest had become quickened by this helpless and pathetic look, and mentally he strengthened a previous resolution.

"Brent," he said, "I want you to know Dale Dawson! Mr. McElroy," he turned to the still staring mountaineer, "is staying with me, and making a survey for the railroad we hope to see running through here before long, sir."

"I hain't never seed a train but onct," Dale exclaimed, shaking hands with more open admiration. "Then hit 'most scared the gizzard outen me! How do ye make 'em?"

"Oh," Brent laughed, "screws, and nuts, and hammers, and things. But I don't make trains, old fellow; I'm just making the survey!"

"Good-bye everybody!" Bob gurgled, swinging into the saddle. The Colonel called him sternly back.

"Now, Bob," he whispered, stepping out to the tanbark drive, "you've no right to leave me like this, sir. I can't put up with it, I tell you! Why, God bless my soul, the fellow hasn't a rag except what's on his back! Must I ask him to sleep in the stable, sir? Those mountain people are sensitive to the very core, you know that, and his feelings would be immeasurably hurt if he suspected I complain of his clothes. But, Bob, it's impossible! You're both of a size; help an old man out—there's a good fellow!"

"I'll do anything but stay here and disgrace myself," Bob assured him.

"Tactfully, sir, tactfully," the Colonel warned.

"Trust me to do it tactfully," Bob whispered. "I'm not out to get shot." And turning to the porch he called: "Dale, like to ride over and meet my family? You might get a word with Miss Jane about the school, too!"

There was no reply to this except a quick step toward the old white mare.

"Will hit be all right ter leave my rifle hyar, Cunnel?" he asked, with one foot in the stirrup.

"Certainly, sir," that gentleman gave cheery acquiescence. "But take my horse. Your own seems tired."

"Yourn air faster," he nodded, passing unnoticed Lucy's invitation to be caressed and rising into the Colonel's saddle. There was something pathetic in the wistful way she looked after him, whinnying twice or three times in a sudden panic of apprehension. The old gentleman stroked her nose, murmuring:

"I don't think he ought to have done it just that way, old faithful. But if I read the signs correctly you'd better get used to it now. There'll be plenty more times."

Bob called from the gate: "Send Zack over; I want my hair cut!" And the Colonel, understanding, waved his hand as they again cantered away—Dale in advance, and the young planter evidently cautioning him to spare his horse in the noon hour heat.

"Who's Bob's anthropoid friend?" Brent asked, as he and the Colonel now stretched in their chairs.

"A young man from the mountains, violently in search of an education. He will be asking you every question in the range of thought, Brent, and I hope you will have patience with him. It's such a pity to see one so hungry for knowledge—really starving for it—while the whole wide board before him holds more than enough for all!"

"He's welcome to banquet on my feast of reason, but he'll get mighty tired of it. Do you think he's serious?"

The Colonel smiled at this from Brent.

"It has been my observation that believing in people usually brings out their best," he answered, "and so I think he is serious. I hope you will, also."

"You bet I will," Brent cordially agreed, burying his nose in the mint. "He's all right;—I like him!"

After a moment of affectionate contemplation of his own julep, the Colonel said:

"Bob's household will be over to dinner tonight. I trust you can be with us, sir!"

Before he could reply, Miss Liz appeared in the doorway, and both men arose with courtly bows. When Brent had arranged a place for her—and the Colonel had slipped into the house holding the telltale goblet under his coat—this severe lady, balancing on the chair with prim nicety, raised her lorgnette and observed:

"You have come home early!"

It was not hospitably done. Indeed, Miss Liz, sister of the Colonel's angelic wife, inherited few of that departed lady's endearments. While both had passed their girlhood in the Shenandoah, this one alone managed to absorb and retain all the stern qualities from the surroundings of her nativity. Now a spinster of perhaps sixty years, this firmness had become imbedded in her nature as unalterably as the Blue Ridge rock; her eyes and hair were as gray, and her voice—unless she were deeply moved—as hard; also was her sense of duty as unyielding. Before her sister's death she regularly visited Arden, and afterwards the Colonel had insisted upon her making it a permanent home.

He paid the price for this, as he knew he would pay; but without a word, and with as few outward signs as possible. For Miss Liz could not have been termed in sympathy with the easy-going Colonel, nor, in her self-righteous moods, sympathetic with any man. From long practice and research she had at her fingers' tips the measurements of every male transgressor from Cain to Judas Iscariot, and could work up about as unhappy an hour for gay Lotharios as might be found this side of the Spanish Inquisition. At any rate, Miss Liz did come to Arden, finding rest and quiet and peace—not imparting them.

The little darkies never tired of twisting pieces of bale-wire into an imitation of lorgnettes and airily strutting in her wake when she visited the garden—being careful to keep their carousal well away from the danger zone. At the same time, all who had been allowed peeps into her gentler side were gripped with tentacles of affection as firm as was her own relentless adherence to duty. In just one respect might Miss Liz have been rated below par, and this was a hopeless incapacity to see when others were teasing her. She took all in good faith when they looked her straight in the eyes and told the most flagrant absurdities.

Brent now smiled blandly into her face and accepted the implied rebuke a moment in silence.

"Isn't it extraordinary," he said at last, "that I guessed you would be having on that becoming gown, and looking just this cool and attractive?"

In spite of her stiffening shoulders and frown of extreme displeasure, an echo of color crept slowly into her cheeks. For it is a curious fact that, while stern and self-denying people may be found who are impregnable to the fiercest attacks of passion, indifferent to the most insidious lures of avarice, unmoved by the most convincing whispers of jealousy, and impartial in every act toward fellowman—all, all will yield an inch to the smile of flattery.

"Fiddlesticks!" she exclaimed. "I am old enough to be your grandmother!"

The lorgnette never faltered, and Brent's eyes lowered in feigned distress.

"Yes, I suppose so," he quietly admitted. "The fact is, when you come out on the porch this way and begin to talk so pleasantly, I'm always forgetting that you're so—so terribly old as you insist. I'll try to remember, Miss Liz."

"I am not inviting old age," she smiled, with a freezing lack of mirth; but yet she may have yielded the inch, for one of her thin hands went timidly up to the iron gray curls which hung before her ears, and her eyes turned to gaze dreamily over the fields as though in search of some long past, golden memory.

His own eyes took this opportunity to cast another sly look at the tell-tale goblet, hoping to light upon some method of spiriting it away.

"Mr. McElroy," she suddenly exclaimed, "I have been talking to brother John, and have told him my views about you!"

Brent's mouth opened a moment in surprise and then he frankly began to laugh.

"I'm glad I wasn't in hearing distance!"

"You might have heard to your advantage. I told him that I considered marriage to some determined girl your only chance of reformation."

"Marriage!" he almost rose out of his chair. "Heavens, Miss Liz! I've got an alarm clock that does that sort of thing!"

"Alarm clock?" she gasped. "Pray, what do you suppose marriage is?"

"I've never tried to suppose! I don't want to suppose"

She arose with dignity and went toward the door. There was another minute, while he stood making humble apologies to which she seemed indifferent, and then her voice came like the crackling of dry twigs. "I bid you good morning, Mr. McElroy!"