Love stories, American; West (U.S.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Western stories
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 pass 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 passed 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 massed 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 class. 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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