WHEN Willard came back to the La Rue place, he walked right in, as if he had only been out for a turn in the afternoon air. He had come by the hack from Thomasville, and with his little brown leather travelling-bag in his hand was in the middle of the open hall when Lucie met him. He was handsomer than ever in his light, close-fitting suit of gray; and he smiled very frankly, and put out his hand for a welcome, having in his eyes a manly flash of joy.
"It's no use," he said, "I can't stay away. Here I am."
Lucie was startled by such a sudden and unlooked-for apparition. She trembled a little; and her voice was not quite steady as she took his hand, and said, —
"I am glad you have come."
"It is ever so kind of you to say so. It relieves me of the terrible embarrassment of apology, when apology would be so insufficient," he replied, his eyes gathering the merest trace of sadness, and his voice shading into regret. "I have my punishment, I assure you."
He stood before her so erect, so evidently conscious of his ability to make generous amend for his fault, so confident of receiving cordial forgiveness, that she felt her embarrassment rapidly slipping away.
"Your room is just as you left it," she said. "It has been waiting for you."
"I have dreamed of it constantly," he replied with a swift smile. "I could not close my eyes without hearing the magnolia-bough brushing across the east window, and the mocking-birds twittering in the grove. But your aunt and your father, are they well?"
"Quite well, sir; and they will be real glad to see you. Papa was so surprised at your sudden leaving."
She stood holding one of her hands in the other, with her head slightly turned to one side, and her long black lashes drooping over her eyes. Somewhere in her face, — about her mouth more than elsewhere,—there appeared a trace of sadness, or slight weariness, as if she recently had been thinking deeply.
"I did an unpardonable thing," he said, lightly shaking himself; "but I have repented, and done penance, and you have forgiven me. Let the dead past bury its dead. May I go to my room? I am tired and dusty with the all-day's drive."
"Yes. Supper will be called in a few minutes; and," she smilingly added, "there are strawberries and cream to be served."
He bowed, and was turning to go up stairs, when she said, —
"I heard of your brave and generous act in defence of Col. Vance, at Live Oak."
"That was nothing, —who told you?"
"A little bird," and they parted.
Once more in the prim, airy, old room, Willard took off his travel-clothes, and, having bathed, dressed himself with scrupulous care. This done, he clasped his hands behind him, and, walking to and fro, indulged in a brown study. There was the old rustling of stiff magnolia-leaves at the window, the same sweet inflowing breeze, the mocking-birds everywhere singing, the blue sky, and sections of hill-notched horizon. He felt as though he had been a hundred years away, without the slightest change having come in his absence.
Miss Julie La Rue and the judge met him at the supper-table, quite as if he had never been away. He had never seen them more perfectly at ease or more entertaining.
Conversation at length turned to Vance's father's death, just announced by telegraph; and incidentally the successful labors of Cauthorne in behalf of Col. Vance's political plans were spoken of by the judge in terms of warmest praise.
"We have grown to respect Mr. Cauthorne very, very highly," the old man said: "he is a gentleman of most sterling character and abilities."
"I am glad you are finding him out," said Willard. "He is slow to get acquainted with; but he is full of all manner of kindness, goodness, strength, and worthiness. There are few such men."
"He is so interesting," added Lucie: "his life has been a string of such wonderful adventures."
"He takes wholesome views of things," said Miss Julie: "there's nothing light or trivial in him. His mind, like his body, is stout and substantial."
In a word, it was quite manifest to Willard that, during his foolish absence, Cauthorne had gained a strong lodgement in the regards of the La Rue household. It was an enviable achievement. Such a household could scarcely be found elsewhere.
Willard could not help noting and dwelling upon certain little evidences of a departure from the old customs in the arrangement of the supper-room. Green wire-screens had been hung in the windows and doors. A vase of snowy lilies stood in the centre of the old mahogany board. A pretty little bouquet lay beside each plate. The tea-set was the blue china of grandmother-days, and coolly gleamed in the place of the heavy silver. Lucie had brought all this down from the dormer-windowed attic. The room looked as though a gentle breath of the latest art-whim had just blown through it. The walls had been papered, — a great concession, — and the woodwork had been revarnished. The negro girl who hovered about the backs of their chairs used her great brush of peacock-feathers perfunctorily, and to no purpose; for there was not a fly in the room. She added a picturesque Southern feature to the little scene, with her straight, lithe, undeveloped figure, her coal-black hands and face, her white cotton gown, and her round woolly head wrapped in a snowy kerchief.
It was with an intense satisfaction that Willard recognized his own fitness as a part of this group. He was a foreign element, he admitted, but a perfect foil to emphasize the unique beauties of his surroundings.
But Lucie, — he could not leave off studying her. Once, when the colored girl stood behind her waving the gorgeous feather-brush, he fancied her an Oriental queen in barbaric state, fanned by her favorite slave; but he rejected the fantasy almost instantly, seeing the gentle Christian face, the gray, innocent eyes, the modest corsage, all rebuking his comparison.
When supper was over, Judge La Rue took Willard's arm, and, requesting Lucie to fetch her guitar, took him out to the much-loved seats beneath the oaks.
The moon was well up the eastern sky, pouring a strong light slantwise across the grove; and, as is nearly always the case at night in Tallahassee, a gentle breeze was drawing from the north-west.
Lucie played a fandango, and afterwards sang two or three old familiar songs.
Willard listened to these, and to the garrulity of the old man, in a mood which permitted but slight appreciation of either. He was turning over in his mind the singular features of his intercourse with the La Rue household. It surprised him to recollect how meagre this intercourse had been, and especially strange seemed the tenuity of Lucie's part of it all. He could not remember any positive act of hers, barring the demand for the sketch; and it seemed to him now that his effect upon her imagination must have been entirely negative from the first.
While they sat there a great clatter of hoofs and grinding of wheels interrupted one of the songs. Merry voices rose on the moonlit air.
"Oh, the excursionists!" cried Lucie: "they are from your city, sir."
Willard hated that recurring "sir" falling stiffly into the talk of everybody in the South.
"What excursionists?" he asked, coming away from his abstractions.
"It is Lucius Hatch and a party of Northerners from Jacksonville. I used to know Hatch's father. When I was in Washington in the year" — Judge La Rue went far enough to say.
Willard interrupted him.
"Lucius Hatch, did you say? He's a very dear friend of mine, superintendent of the Air Line Railway. Is he here? "
"Yes, sir: came over from Jacksonville this afternoon with some twenty-five or thirty others," said the judge.
As the foremost carriage came in sight, the moonlight brought its occupants into bold relief against the foliage of the dark fig-orchard on the other side of the street, and Willard exclaimed,—
"Why, there's Hatch now, and Miss Barnes and"—
"Mr. Cauthorne is with them," said Lucie.
"What a racket they make!" said the judge: "they will alarm the city. They must be an ill — they must be a jolly set."
"So they are, I should judge; but they are good people, the very best, or Hatch would not be with them," said Willard.
"Nor Mr. Cauthorne," said Lucie.
The long line of open vehicles drew past; and as each one entered the strong moonlight in front of the La Rue gateway, the stylish dresses and blonde faces of the women and girls, and the well-clothed, well-poised forms of the men, were very distinctly shown.
"They are like a flight of glad birds," said Lucie: "they cannot contain their happiness."
"It is the change of climate," said Willard philosophically. "They have breathed a draught from the Fountain of Youth."
"I should like that sort of life," rejoined Lucie. "It must be delightful to swing back and forth with the sun, keeping just on the line of springtime all the year."
It was lightly said, but the latent pathos of the wish coupled itself in Willard's mind with the great changes the war had wrought. Twenty years ago one of the La Rues would not have wished in vain for means to indulge every caprice of the imagination.
The merry troop went by with mirthful noises trailing after. It was like a taunt, as the voices struck against the old dull house, and rebounded into the moss-hung trees. Some negroes — those ubiquitous black familiars of the Southern night — slipped across the lawn to hang upon the fence and vacantly stare at the brilliant procession. It would have needed something more enlightening than moonshine to give them to understand the significance of their difference from the resplendent blue-robed blondes as they were trundled by.
But while Lucie was absorbed, quite as much as the quondam slaves, in watching the passing party, Willard was wondering if he should ever be able to get any nearer to this witching girl. What was holding him away? Surely there never was a kinder, sweeter, simpler person. Why should not he say his say, and urge his cause without fear at the first opportunity?
Judge La Rue at length excused himself, and went into the house. The raid of the blondes was over. The last carriage had disappeared, the echoes of merry voices had entirely died away in the distance.
"Lucie," said Willard, standing in front of where she sat, "do you know why I came back?"
She looked up quickly as he spoke, and began to smile.
"You do not know; but I'm going to tell you now, and I wish you would listen very attentively," he went on.
"Isn't it late? What time is it?" she replied. She had a vague presentiment of what he was going to say.
"It is time for me to speak, and for you to hear," he said gently. "I have travelled a thousand miles, night and day, to come back and tell you that I love you, that I cannot live without you, that my life, my love, and all that I am or ever can be, are yours forever."
She was white and speechless, even her lips losing their ruby brightness. She moved as if to get up, but he begged her not to go. He cast himself upon the seat close beside her, and poured a flood of eloquent prayer into her ear.
"Say you love me, Lucie, say you will be my wife, say I may be happier than man ever has been, speak to me — kiss me"—
She leaped away like a startled fawn. She had gone up the steps, and disappeared almost in the twinkling of an eye.
He picked up the guitar, and followed her; but he saw her no more that evening.
He walked up and down in his room, chafing as only a bewildered and baffled lover can. He tried to draw some sort of consolation from this or that little thing, as he conned over all that she had ever said or done in his presence. He sat in the window, and looked out upon the lovely moon-lit landscape, rimmed with dark-blue hills. He stretched forth his arms, and murmured the beloved name. He went and kissed the flowers her hands had placed upon his table. He could not sleep, when he at last lay down. Brush, brush, brush, rustle, rustle, rustle, he heard the magnolia-bough blown across the many-mullioned window. He wondered if this was to be the end.
Next morning at breakfast Lucie was quite her usual self, showing no sign of remembering the little scene on the lawn, talking to Willard as if she had never heard him rave. She was inscrutable. He looked upon her with increased respect for her character as a well-balanced and perfectly self-poised young woman; and his passion, something disconnected from his judgment, grew apace, feeding and thriving upon what was intended to destroy it.
Coolly he bided his time, fully determined to never give over until from her own sweet lips should fall the decision of his fate in unequivocal terms.
But the time did not come. Something was always interfering. They sat together in the shade, they sang together in the grand parlor, they rode and drove together, she always, by some pretty turn, avoiding every assault he planned, until finally Col. Vance returned, bringing the remains of his father, and a great public funeral took place, the whole population of Tallahassee following their honored and famous old fellow-citizen to his last resting-place in the shady cemetery on the hill.
