第6章

Battle Field put no more restraint upon its young women than it put upon its young men--and it put no restraint upon the young men.In theory and practice it was democratic, American, western--an outgrowth of that pioneer life in which the men and the women had fought and toiled and enjoyed, side by side, in absolute equality, with absolute freedom of association.It recognized that its students had been brought up in the free, simple, frank way, that all came from a region where individualism was a religion, with self-reliance as the cardinal principle of faith and self-development as the goal.

There were no dormitories at Battle Field then.Olivia and Pauline lived in one of the hundred or more boarding-houses--a big, square, white "frame," kept by a Mrs.Trent, the widow of a "hero of two wars."Her hero had won her with his uniform when he returned from the Mexican War.His conduct was so irregular and his income so uncertain that it had been a relief to her when he departed for his second war.From it he had brought home a broken constitution, a maimed body and confirmed habits of shiftlessness and drunkenness.His country took his character and his health and paid him in exchange a pension which just about kept him in whisky and tobacco.So long as he was alive Mrs.Trent hated him as vigorously as her Christianity permitted.When he was safely in his grave she canonized him; she put his picture and his sword, belt and epaulets in the conspicuous place in the parlor;she used his record for gallantry to get herself social position and a place of honor at public gatherings.

Her house stood back from the highway in a grove of elms and walnuts.Its angularity was relieved by a porch with a flat roof that had a railing about it and served as a balcony for the second-story lodgers.There were broad halls through the middle of the house down-stairs and up.Olivia and Pauline had the three large rooms in the second story on the south side.They used the front room as a study and Pauline's bedroom was next to it.

Late one afternoon she was seated at the study window watching a cherry-red sun drop through the purple haze of the autumn.She became conscious that some one was on the balcony before the window of the front room across the hall.She leaned so that she could see without being seen.Sharp against the darkening sky was the profile of a young man.Olivia joined her and followed her glance.The profile remained fixed and the two girls watched it, fascinated.It certainly was a powerful outline, proud and stern, but with a mouth that was sweet in its kindliness and gentleness.

"I wonder what he's thinking about," said Olivia, in an undertone; he was not fifteen feet from them."I suppose, some scheme for conquering the world."Most of Battle Field's youth came from the farms of that western country, the young men with bodies and brains that were strong but awkward.Almost all were working their way through--as were not a few of the women.They felt that life was a large, serious business impatiently waiting for them to come and attend to it in a large, serious way better than it had ever been attended to before.They studied hard; they practised oratory and debating.

Their talk was of history and philosophy, religion and politics.

They slept little; they thought--or tried to think--even more than they talked.

At a glance this man was one of them, a fine type.

"He's handsome, isn't he?" said Pauline.

"But--" She did not finish; indeed it was not clear to her what the rest of her protest was.He reminded her of Dumont--there was the same look of superiority, of the "born to lead." But his face seemed to, have some quality which Dumont's lacked--or was it only the idealizing effect of the open sky and the evening light?

When the bell rang for supper he apparently did not hear it.The two girls went down and had talked to the others a few minutes and all had seated themselves before he entered.An inch or so above six feet, powerful in the chest and shoulders, he moved with a large grace until he became self-conscious or approached the, by comparison, frail pieces of furniture.He had penetrating, candid eyes that looked dark in the gaslight but were steel-blue.His face now wore the typical western-American expression--shrewd, easy-going good humor.Mrs.Trent, intrenched in state behind a huge, silver-plated coffee-urn with ivory-trimmed faucet, introduced him--Mr.Scarborough--to Olivia, to Pauline, to Sadie McIntosh, to Pierson and Howe and Thiebaud (pronounced Cay-bo).Scarborough sat directly opposite Olivia.

But whenever he lifted his eyes from his plate he looked at Pauline, who was next to her.When she caught him he blushed and stirred in his chair so uneasily that it creaked and crackled;and his normal difficulties with his large hands and the small knife and fork were distressingly increased.

Pauline was disappointed in him--his clothes were ill-fitting and gave him the appearance of being in danger of bursting from them;his hair was too long, suggesting a shaggy, tawny mane; though his hands were well-shaped they had the recent scars of hard manual labor.Thus, when Olivia spoke enthusiastically of him after supper, she made no reply.She would have been ashamed to acknowledge the reasons for her lack of admiration, even had she been conscious of them.

But the next morning at breakfast she revised her opinion somewhat.He talked, and he had a remarkable voice--clear, musical, with a quality which made it seem to penetrate through all the nerves instead of through the auditory nerve only.

Further, he talked straight to Pauline, without embarrassment and with a quaint, satiric humor.She was forgetting for the moment his almost uncouth hair and dress when, in making a sweeping gesture, he upset a glass of water and sent a plate of hot bread flying from the waitress' hand.

"He'd do well in the open air," thought she, "but he's out of place in a house."Still, she found him interesting and original.And he persistently sought her--his persistence was little short of heroism in view of the never-wholly-concealed sufferings which the contrast between her grace and style and his lack of both caused him.

"He looks like a king who had been kidnapped as a child and brought up in the wilds," said Olivia."I wonder who he is.""I'll ask him," replied Pauline.And Olivia was slyly amused by her cousin's unconscious pride in her power with this large, untamed person.