第33章

Olivia felt a slight tugging at the bag she was carrying.She looked--an English groom in spotless summer livery was touching his hat in respectful appeal to her to let go."Give Albert your checks, too," said Pauline, putting her arm around her cousin's waist to escort her down the platform.At the entrance, with a group of station loungers gaping at it, was a phaeton-victoria lined with some cream-colored stuff like silk, the horses and liveried coachman rigid."She's giving Saint X a good deal to talk about," thought Olivia.

"Home, please, by the long road," said Pauline to the groom, and he sprang to the box beside the coachman, and they were instantly in rapid motion."That'll let us have twenty minutes more together," she went on to Olivia."There are several people stopping at the house."The way led through Munroe Avenue, the main street of Saint X.

Olivia was astonished at the changes--the town of nine years before spread and remade into an energetic city of twenty-five thousand.

"Fred told me I'd hardly recognize it," said she, "but Ididn't expect this.It's another proof how far-sighted Hampden Scarborough is.Everybody advised him against coming here, but he would come.And the town has grown, and at the same time he's had a clear field to make a big reputation as a lawyer in a few years, not to speak of the power he's got in politics.""But wouldn't he have won no matter where he was?" suggested Pauline.,"Sooner or later--but not so soon," replied Olivia.

"No--a tree doesn't have to grow so tall among a lot of bushes before it's noticed as it does in a forest.""And you've never seen him since Battle Field?" As Olivia put this question she watched her cousin narrowly without seeming to do so.

"But," replied Pauline--and Olivia thought that both her face and her tone were a shade off the easy and the natural--"since he came I've been living in New York and haven't stayed here longer than a few days until this summer.And he's been in Europe since April.No," she went on, "I've not seen a soul from Battle Field.It's been like a painting, finished and hanging on the wall one looks toward oftenest, and influencing one's life every day."They talked on of Battle Field, of the boys and girls they had known--how Thiebaud was dead and Mollie Crittenden had married the man who was governor of California; what Howe was not doing, the novels Chamberlayne was writing; the big women's college in Kansas that Grace Wharton was vice-president of.Then of Pierson--in the state senate and in a fair way to get to Congress the next year.Then Scarborough again--how he had distanced all the others; how he might have the largest practice in the state if he would take the sort of clients most lawyers courted assiduously; how strong he was in politics in spite of the opposition of the professionals--strong because he had a genius for organization and also had the ear and the confidence of the people and the enthusiastic personal devotion of the young men throughout the state.Olivia, more of a politician than Fred even, knew the whole story; and Pauline listened appreciatively.

Few indeed are the homes in strenuously political Indiana where politics is not the chief subject of conversation, and Pauline had known about parties and campaigns as early as she had known about dolls and dresses.

"But you must have heard most of this," said Olivia, "from people here in Saint X.""Some of it--from father and mother," Pauline answered.

"They're the only people I've seen really to talk to on my little visits.They know him very well indeed.I think mother admires him almost as much as you do.Here's our place," she added, the warmth fading from her face as from a spring landscape when the shadow of the dusk begins to creep over it.

They were in the grounds of the Eyrie--the elder Dumont was just completing it when he died early in the previous spring.His widow went abroad to live with her daughter and her sister in Paris; so her son and his wife had taken it.It was a great rambling stone house that hung upon and in a lofty bluff.From its windows and verandas and balconies could be seen the panorama of Saint Christopher.To the left lay the town, its ugly part--its factories and railway yards--hidden by the jut of a hill.Beneath and beyond to the right, the shining river wound among fields brown where the harvests had been gathered, green and white where myriads of graceful tassels waved above acres on acres of Indian corn.And the broad leaves sent up through the murmur of the river a rhythmic rustling like a sigh of content.

Once in a while a passing steamboat made the sonorous cry of its whistle and the melodious beat of its paddles echo from hill to hill.Between the house and the hilltop, highway lay several hundred acres of lawn and garden and wood.

The rooms of the Eyrie and its well-screened verandas were in a cool twilight, though the September sun was hot.

"They're all out, or asleep," said Pauline, as she and Olivia entered the wide reception hall."Let's have tea on the east veranda.Its view isn't so good, but we'll be cooler.You'd like to go to your room first?"Olivia said she was comfortable as she was and needed the tea.

So they went on through the splendidly-furnished drawing-room and were going through the library when Olivia paused before a portrait--"Your husband, isn't it?""Yes," replied Pauline, standing behind her cousin."We each had one done in Paris.""What a masterful face!" said Olivia."I've never seen a better forehead." And she thought,"He's of the same type as Scarborough, except--what is it Idislike in his expression?"

"Do you notice a resemblance to any one you know?" asked Pauline.

"Ye-e-s," replied Olivia, coloring."I think----""Scarborough, isn't it?"

"Yes," admitted Olivia.