Leigh looked up, a mist of tears in her violet eyes.
"Oh, little girl, forgive me. It"s because--because," Thaine hesitated.
"Because deep down where n.o.body ever knew I"ve loved you always, Leigh. I didn"t know how much until the night of my party and the day we were at Wykerton."
"Thaine! Thaine! you mustn"t say such things," Leigh cried, gripping her hands together. "You mustn"t! You mustn"t!"
"But I must, and I will," Thaine declared.
"Then I won"t listen to you. You are a flirt. Not satisfied with making one girl love you, you want to make all of us care for you."
"I know what you mean. I thought I loved Jo. Then I knew I didn"t, and I felt in honor bound to keep her from finding it out. But that"s a dead failure of a business. You can"t play that game and win. I"ve learned a good many things this summer, and one of them is that Todd Stewart is the only one who really and truly loves Jo, and she cares as much for him as she does for anybody."
"How do you know?" Leigh asked as she leaned back now and faced Thaine.
"Because she doesn"t know herself yet. She"s too spoiled by the indulgence of everybody and too pretty. She wants attention. But I found finally, maybe mother helped me a little, that if she has Todd"s attention she"s satisfied. More, she"s comfortable. She was always on thorns with me.
Isn"t that enough about Jo?"
"Well?" Leigh queried.
"No, nothing is well yet. Leigh, let me go away to the University. Let me make a name for myself, a world-wide name, maybe, let me fight on my frontier line and then come back and lift the burden you carry now. I want to do big things somewhere away from the Kansas prairies, away from the grind of the farm and country life. Oh, Leigh, you are the only girl I ever can really love."
He leaned forward and took her hands in his own, his dark eyes, beautiful with the light of love, looking down into hers, his face aglow with the ambition of undisciplined youth.
"Let me help you," he pleaded.
"It is only sympathy you offer, Thaine, and I don"t want sympathy. You said that game wouldn"t win with Jo. Neither would it with me. I am happy in my work. I"m not afraid of it. The harder part is to get enough money to buy seed and pay interest, and Uncle Jim and I will earn that. I tell you the mortgage must be lifted by alfalfa roots just as Coburn"s book says it will be."
There was a defiant little curve on her red lips and the brave hopefulness of her face was inspiring.
"Go and do your work, Thaine. Fight your battles, push back your frontier line, win your wilderness, and make a world-wide name for yourself. But when all is done don"t forget that the fight your father and mother made here, and are making today, is honorable, wonderful; and that the winning of a Kansas farm, the kingdom of golden wheat, bordered round by golden sunflowers, is a real kingdom. Its sinews of strength uphold the nation."
"Why, you eloquent little Jayhawker!" Thaine exclaimed. "You should have been an orator on the side, not an artist. But all this only makes me care the more. I"m proud of you. I"d want you for my chum if you were a boy. I want you for my friend, but down under all this I want you for my girl now, and afterwhile, Leigh, I want you for my own, all mine. Don"t you care for me? Couldn"t you learn to care, Leigh? Couldn"t you go with me to a broader life somewhere out in the real big world? Couldn"t we come some time to the Purple Notches and build a home for just our summer days, because we have seen these headlands all our lives?"
Leigh"s head was bowed, and the pink blooms left her cheeks.
"Thaine," she said in a low voice that thrilled him with its sweetness, "I do care. I have always cared so much that I have hoped this moment might never come."
Thaine caught her arm eagerly.
"No! no! We can never, never be anything but friends, and if you care more than that for me now, if you really love me--"the voice was very soft--"don"t ask me why. I cannot tell you, but I know we can never be anything more than friends, never, never."
The sorrow on her white face, the pathos of the great violet eyes, the firm outline of the red lips told Thaine Aydelot that words were hopeless.
He had known her every mood from childhood. She never dallied nor hesitated. The grief of her answer went too deep for words to argue against. And withal Thaine Aydelot was very proud and unaccustomed to being denied what he chose to want very much.
"Leigh, will you do two things for me?" he asked at length. The sad, quiet tone was unlike Thaine Aydelot.
"If I can," Leigh answered.
"First, will you promise me that if you want me you will send for me. If you ever find--oh, Leigh, ever is such a long word. If you ever think you can care enough for me to let me come back to you, you will let me know."
"When I send you the little sunflower letter Prince Quippi never answered you may come back," Leigh said lightly, but the tears were too near for the promise to seem trivial. "What is the other thing?"
"I want you just once to let me kiss you, Leigh. It"s our good-by kiss forever. Hereafter we are only friends, old chums, you know. Will you let me be your lover for one minute up here on the Purple Notches, where the whole world lies around us and n.o.body knows our secret? Please, Leigh.
Then I"ll go away and be a man somewhere in the big world that"s always needing men."
Leigh leaned toward him, and he held her close as he kissed her red lips.
In all the stormy days that followed the memory of that moment was with him. A moment when love, in all its purity and joy, knew its first realization.
The next day Leigh Shirley made b.u.t.ter all the morning, and in the afternoon she tried to retouch her sketch of sunflowers as she had seen the shadows dull the brightness of their petals in the valley below the Purple Notches.
The same day Thaine Aydelot left home for the winter, taking the memory of the most sacred moment of his life with him out into the big world that is always needing men.
CHAPTER XVIII
REMEMBERING THE MAINE
The Twentieth Kansas was fortunate in opportunity, and heroic in action, and has won a permanent place in the hearts of a grateful people.
--William McKinley.
The sunny plains of Kansas were fair and full of growing in the spring of 1898. The alfalfa creeping out against the weeds of the old Cloverdale Ranch was green under the April sunshine. The breezes sweeping down the Gra.s.s River Valley carried a vigor in their caress. The Aydelot grove, just budding into leaf, was full of wild birds" song. All the sights and sounds and odors of springtime made the April day entrancing on the Kansas prairies.
Leigh Shirley had risen at dawn and come up to the grove in the early morning. She tethered her pony to graze by the roadside, and with her drawing board on a slender easel she stood on the driveway across the lakelet, busy for awhile with her paints and pencil. Then the sweetness of the morning air, the gurgling waters at the lake"s outlet, once the little draw choked with wild plum bushes, and the trills of music from the shimmering boughs above her head, all combined to make dreaming pleasant.
She dropped her brushes and stood looking at the lake and the bit of open woodland, and through it to the wide level fields beyond, with the river gleaming here and there under the touch of the morning light.
She recalled in contrast the silver and sable tones of the May night when she and Thaine sat on the driveway and saw the creamy water lilies open their hearts to the wooing moonlight and the caressing shadows. It was a fairyland here that night. It was plain daylight now, beautiful, but real.
Life seemed a dream that night. It was very real this April morning. The young artist involuntarily drew a deep breath that was half a sigh and stooped to pick up her fallen brushes. But she dropped them again with a glad cry. Far across the lake, in the leaf-checkered sunshine, Thaine Aydelot stood smiling at her.
"Shall I stay here and spoil your landscape or come around and shake hands?" he called across to her.
"Oh, come over here and tell me how you happened," Leigh cried eagerly.
Gra.s.s River people blamed the two years of the University life for breaking Thaine Aydelot"s interest in Jo Bennington. Not that Jo lacked for admirers without him. Life had been made so pleasant for her that she had not gone away to any school, even after her father"s election to office. And down at the University the pretty girls considered Thaine perfectly heartless, for now in his second year they were still baffled by his general admiration and undivided indifference toward all of them. His eager face as he came striding up the driveway to meet Leigh Shirley would have been a revelation to them.
"I "happened" last night, too late to-wake up the dog," Thaine exclaimed.
"I happened to run against Dr. Carey, who had a hurry-up call down this way, and he happened to drop me at the Sunflower Inn. He"s coming by for breakfast at my urgent demand. This country night practice is enough to kill a doctor. His hair is whiter than ever, young as he is. He said he is going to take a trip out West and have a vacation right soon. I told him all my plans. You can tell him anything, you know. And, besides, I"m hoping he will beat me to the house this morning and will tell the folks I"m here."
"Doesn"t your mother know you are here?" Leigh asked.
"Not yet. I wanted to come down early and tell the lake good-by. I have to leave again in a few hours."
The old impenetrable expression had dropped over his face with the words.
And n.o.body knows why the sunshine grew dull and the birds" songs dropped to busy twittering about unimportant things.
"Do you always tell it good-by?" Leigh asked, because she could think of nothing else to say.