"Some day we"ll eat with you in Washington," was Atwood"s continued prophecy.
They always drank "To Jane." Now and then Atwood brought news of her.
First from the college, and then as the years pa.s.sed from the beach resort where she had opened a tea room. She was more beautiful than ever, more wonderful. Her tea room and shop were most exclusive and artistic.
"Sandwich Jane!" said O-liver. "How long ago it seems!"
It was five years now and he had not seen her. And next month he was to go to Washington. Not as President, but representing his district in Congress. Tommy"s hotel had outgrown the original modest building and was now modern and fireproof. Henry was married, he had had several new cars, and his wife wore sables and seal.
The old arcade was no more; nor the old post-office. But O-liver still talked to admiring circles in the hotel lobby or to greater crowds in the town hall.
He still would take no money from his father, but he saw much of him, for Mrs. Lee was dead. The Tudor house was without a mistress. It seemed a pity that O-liver had no wife to grace its halls.
The newspapers stated that Fluffy Hair"s income had doubled. Whether this was true or not it sounded well, and Fluffy Hair still seemed young on the screen. Jane would go now and then and look at her and wonder what sort of woman this was who had laughed at O-liver.
Then one day a telegram came to O-liver in his suite of rooms. And that day and for two nights he rode Mary Pick over the hills and through the canon and down to the sea, and came to a place where Jane"s tea room was met in the center of a j.a.panese garden--a low lovely building, with its porches open to the wide Pacific.
He had not seen her for so long that he was not quite prepared for the change. She was thinner and paler and more beautiful, with an air of distinction that was new. It was as if in visualizing his future she had pictured herself in it--as first lady of the land. Such a silly dream for Sandwich Jane!
They were quite alone when he came to her. It was morning, and the porches were empty of guests. Jane was in a long wicker chair, with her pot of coffee on an hour-gla.s.s table. Far down on the terrace two j.a.p gardeners clipped and cut and watered and saw nothing.
"You are younger than ever," Jane said when they had clasped hands.
"Will you ever grow old, O-liver?"
"The men say not." He seated himself opposite her. "Jane, Jane, it"s heavenly to see you. I"ve been--starved!"
She had hungered and thirsted for him. Her hand shook a little as she poured him a cup of coffee.
"I told you not to come, O-liver."
He laid the telegram before her. Fluffy Hair was dead!
The yellow sheet lay between, defying them to speak so soon of happiness.
"To-morrow," O-liver said, "I go to Washington. When will you come to me, Jane?"
Her hand went out to him. Her breath was quick. "In time to hear your first speech, O-liver. I"ll sit in the gallery, and lean over and listen and say to myself, "He"s mine, he"s mine!""
She heard many speeches in the months that followed, and sometimes Tommy or Atwood or Henry, traveling across the continent, came and sat beside her. And Atwood always clung to his prophecy: "He"ll be governor next; and then it"ll be the White House. Why not?"
And Jane, dreaming, asked herself "Why?"
The East had had its share. Had the time not come for a nation to seek its leader in the golden West?
LADY CRUSOE
Billy and I came down from the North and opened a grocery store at Jefferson Corners. It is a little store and there aren"t many houses near it--just the railroad station and a big shed or two. Beyond the sheds a few cabins straggle along the road, and then begin the great plantations, which really aren"t plantations any more, because n.o.body around here raises much of anything in these days. They just sit and sigh over the things that are different since the war.
That"s what Billy says about them. Billy is up-to-date and he has a motor-cycle. He made up his mind when he came that he was going to put some ginger into the neighborhood. So he rides miles every morning on his motor-cycle to get orders, and he delivers the things himself unless it is barrels of flour or cans of kerosene or other heavy articles, and then he hires somebody to help him. At first he had William Watters and his mule. William is black and his mule is gray, and they are both old.
It took them hours to get anywhere, and I used to feel sorry for them.
But when I found out that compared to Billy and me they lived on flowery beds of ease, I stopped sympathizing. They both have enough, to eat, and they work only when they want to. Billy and I work all the time. We have our way to make in the world, and we feel that it all depends on ourselves. We started out with nothing ahead of us but my ambitions and Billy"s energy, and a few hundred dollars which my guardian turned over to me when I married Billy on my twenty-first birthday.
As soon as we were married, we came to Virginia. Billy and I had an idea that everything south of the Mason and Dixon line was just waiting for us, and we wanted to earn the eternal grat.i.tude of the community by helping it along. But after we had lived at Jefferson Corners for a little while, we began to feel that there wasn"t any community. There didn"t seem to be any towns like our nice New England ones, with sociable trolley-cars connecting them and farmhouses in a lovely line between. You can ride for miles through this country and never pa.s.s anything but gates. Then way up in the hills you will see a clump of trees, and in the clump you can be pretty sure there is a house. In the winter when the leaves are off the trees you can see the house, but in the summer there is no sign of it. In the old days they seemed to feel that they were lacking somewhat in delicacy if they exposed their mansions to the rude gaze of the public.
There was one mansion that Billy took me to now and then. It was empty, and that was why we went. The big houses which were occupied were not open to us, except in a trades-person sort of fashion, and Billy and I are not to be condescended to--we had a pair of grandfathers in the _Mayflower_. But that doesn"t count down here, where everybody goes back to William the Conqueror.
That great big empty house was a fine place for our Sunday afternoon outings. We always went to church in the morning, and people were very kind, but it was kindness with a question-mark. You see Billy and I live over the store, and none of them had ever lived on anything but ancestral acres.
So our Sunday mornings were a bit stiff and disappointing, but our afternoons were heavenly. We discovered the Empty House in the spring, and there was laurel on the mountains and the gra.s.s was young and green on the slopes, and the sky was a faint warm blue with the sailing buzzards black against it. Billy and I used to stop at the second gate, which was at the top of the hill, and look off over the other hills where the pink sheep were pastured. I am perfectly sure that there are no other sheep in the whole wide world like those Albemarle sheep. The spring rains turn the red clay into a mud which sticks like paint, and the sheep are colored a lovely terra-cotta which fades gradually to pink.
The effect is impressionistic, like purple cows. Billy doesn"t care for it, but I do. And I adore the brilliant red of the roads. Billy says he"ll take good brown earth and white flocks. He might be reconciled to black sheep but never to pink ones.
We used to eat our supper on the porch of the Empty House. It had great pillars, and it was rather awe-inspiring to sit on the front steps and look up the whole length, of those Corinthian columns. Billy and I felt dwarfed and insignificant, but we forgot it when we turned our eyes to the hills.
The big door behind us and the blank windows were shut and shuttered close. There were flying squirrels on the roof and little blue-tailed lizards on the stone flagging in front of the house; and there was an old toad who used to keep us company. I called him Prince Charming, and I am sure he was as old as Methuselah, and lived under that stone in some prehistoric age.
We just loved our little suppers. We had coffee in our thermos bottle, and cold fried chicken and bread and b.u.t.ter sandwiches and chocolate cake. We never changed, because we were always afraid that we shouldn"t like anything else so well, and we were sure of the chicken and the chocolate cake.
And after we had eaten our suppers we would talk about what kind of house we would build when our ship came in. Billy and I both have nice tastes, and we know what we want; and we feel that the grocery store is just a stepping-stone to better things.
The sunsets were late in those spring days, and there would be pink and green and pale amethyst in the western sky, and after that deep sapphire and a silver moon. And as it grew darker the silver would turn to gold, and there would be a star--and then more stars until the night came on.
I can"t tell you how we used to feel. You see we were young and in love, and life was a pretty good thing to us. There was one perfect night when the hills were flooded with moonlight. We seemed all alone in a lovely world and I whispered:
"Oh, Billy, Billy, and some folks think that there isn"t any G.o.d--"
And Billy put his arm around me and patted my cheek, and we didn"t say anything for a long time.
It was just a week later that Lady Crusoe came. I knew that some one was in the house as soon as we pa.s.sed the second gate. The door was still closed, and the shutters were not opened, but I heard a clock strike--a ship"s clock--with bells.
I clutched Billy. "Listen," I said.
He heard it, too; "Who in the d.i.c.kens?" he demanded.
"There"s somebody in the house--"
"Nonsense--"
"Billy, there must be, and we can"t sit on the porch."
"You stay here, and I"ll go around to the back."
But I wouldn"t let him go alone. At the back of the house a window was open, and then we were sure.
"We"d better leave," I said, but Billy insisted that we stay. "If they are new people, I"ll find out their names, and come up to-morrow and get their orders."