II
In New York he had bought a suit of Irish homespun and a heather cap. He looked bulky but pleasantly pastoral as he gaped romantically from the Pullman window at the fields of Virginia. “Ole Virginny—ole Virginny,” he hummed happily. Worm fences, negro cabins, gallant horses in rocky pastures, a longing to see the gentry who rode such horses, and ever the blue hills. It was an older world than his baking Kansas, older than Mizpah Seminary, and he felt a desire to be part of this traditional age to which Sharon belonged. Then, as the miles which still separated him from the town of Broughton crept back of him, he forgot the warm-tinted land in anticipation of her.
He was recalling that she was the aristocrat, the more formidable here in the company of F.F.V. friends. He was more than usually timid … and more than usually proud of his conquest.
For a moment, at the station, he thought that she had not come to meet him. Then he saw a girl standing by an old country buggy.
She was young, veritably a girl, in middy blouse deep cut at the throat, pleated white skirt, white shoes. Her red tam-o’-shanter was rakish, her smile was a country grin as she waved to him. And the girl was Sister Falconer.
“God, you’re adorable!” he murmured to her, as he plumped down his suitcase, and she was fragrant and soft in his arms as he kissed her.
“No more,” she whispered. “You’re supposed to be my cousin, and even very nice cousins don’t kiss quite so intelligently!”
As the carriage jerked across the hills, as the harness creaked and the white horse grunted, he held her hand lightly in butterfly ecstasy.
He cried out at the sight of Hanning Hall as they drove through the dark pines, among shabby grass plots, to the bare sloping lawn. It was out of a storybook: a brick house, not very large, with tall white pillars, white cupola, and dormer windows with tiny panes; and across the lawn paraded a peacock in the sun. Out of a storybook, too, was the pair of old negroes who bowed to them from the porch and hastened down the steps—the butler with green tailcoat and white mustache almost encircling his mouth, and the mammy in green calico, with an enormous grin and a histrionic curtsy.
“They’ve always cared for me since I was a tiny baby,” Sharon whispered. “I do love them—I do love this dear old place. That’s—” She hesitated, then defiantly: “That’s why I brought you here!”
The butler took his bag up and unpacked, while Elmer wandered about the old bedroom, impressed, softly happy. The wall was a series of pale landscapes: manor houses beyond avenues of elms. The bed was a four-poster; the fireplace of white-enameled posts and mantel; and on the broad oak boards of the floor, polished by generations of forgotten feet, were hooked rugs of the days of crinoline.
“Golly, I’m so happy! I’ve come home!” sighed Elmer.
When the butler was gone, Elmer drifted to the window, and “Golly!” he said again. He had not realized that in the buggy they had climbed so high. Beyond rolling pasture and woods was the Shenandoah glowing with afternoon.
“Shen-an-doah!” he crooned.
Suddenly he was kneeling at the window, and for the first time since he had forsaken Jim Lefferts and football and joyous ribaldry, his soul was free of all the wickedness which had daubed it—oratorical ambitions, emotional orgasm, dead sayings of dull seers, dogmas, and piety. The golden winding river drew him, the sky uplifted him, and with outflung arms he prayed for deliverance from prayer.
“I’ve found her. Sharon. Oh, I’m not going on with this evangelistic bunk. Trapping idiots into holy monkey-shines! No, by God, I’ll be honest! I’ll tuck her under my arms and go out and fight. Business. Put it over. Build something big. And laugh, not snivel and shake hands with church-members! I’ll do it!”
Then and there ended his rebellion.
The vision of the beautiful river was hidden from him by a fog of compromises. … How could he keep away from evangelistic melodrama if he was to have Sharon? And to have Sharon was the one purpose of life. She loved her meetings, she would never leave them, and she would rule him. And—he was exalted by his own oratory.
“Besides! There is a lot to all this religious stuff. We do do good. Maybe we jolly ’em into emotions too much, but don’t that wake folks up from their ruts? Course it does!”
So he put on a white turtle-necked sweater and with a firm complacent tread he went down to join Sharon.
She was waiting in the hall, so light and young in her middy blouse and red tam.
“Let’s not talk seriously. I’m not Sister Falconer—I’m Sharon today. Gee, to think I’ve ever spoken to five thousand people! Come on! I’ll race you up the hill!”
The wide lower hall, traditionally hung with steel engravings and a Chickamauga sword, led from the front door, under the balcony of the staircase, to the garden at the back, still bold with purple asters and golden zinnias.
Through the hall she fled, through the garden, past the stone sundial, and over the long rough grass to the orchard on the sunny hill: no ceremonious Juno now but a nymph; and he followed, heavy, graceless, but pounding on inescapable, thinking less of her fleeting slenderness than of the fact that since he had stopped smoking his wind cer’nly was a lot better—cer’nly was.
“You can run!” she said, as she stopped, panting, by a walled garden with espalier pears.
“You bet I can! And I’m a grand footballer, a bearcat at tackling my young friend!”
He picked her up, while she kicked and grudgingly admired, “You’re terribly strong!”
But the day of halcyon October sun was too serene even for his coltishness and sedately they tramped up the hill, swinging their joined hands; sedately they talked (ever so hard he tried to live up to the Falconer Family, an Old Mansion, and Darky Mammies) of the world-menacing perils of Higher Criticism and the genius of E. O. Excell as a composer of sacred but snappy melodies.