CHAPTER II

When Captain Edward Allston, A.E.F., received his discharge from the army, he returned to his home in Baltimore to put up, as graciously as possible, with the fuss about his safe return which he knew he must inevitably face sooner or later. He played his part like a gentleman. For a week he allowed his family to do with him what they wished and accepted with a smile every attention they and his many friends, including even the sub-debs, showered upon him. Within decent limits he even permitted them to make a hero of him, although this, by all odds, was the most disagreeable demand made upon him. He felt that those who had been deprived of the chance of serving directly were entitled to some compensation, and if they enjoyed this sort of thing, this was the sort of thing he should allow them to enjoy.

All this while he was looking forward. He was not consciously tired, but he was confused. His mind was in a jumble; filled with detached pictures of training camps, and troop trains, and foul-smelling transports, of strange faces and sights and smells and sensations, with the tyranny of military discipline binding together the titanic whole like the steel bands shrunk around artillery shells. If he talked reluctantly to the eager young women who asked so many questions, it was because he was not yet quite clear in his own mind. That was it; he was not quite clear. And he wished to get clear.

The place to accomplish this was not within the four walls of a house, pleasant as the house might be. He needed more room, more silence, more time. He needed the open road, the open sky, and above all an open mind if ever he hoped to get back to straight, normal thinking--the kind of thinking which had characterized the Allstons since Phillip Allston built that fine old Georgian mansion on the banks of the James in 1720 and established the family in America. Ned Allston had always resented the circumstances which forced his grandfather to leave Virginia and those spacious grounds for town life in Baltimore.

Allston remained at home a week. Then he packed his suitcase, tossed it into his low gray roadster, waved au revoir to the somewhat anxious group who did not quite understand, and started south. He had no fixed plan. He intended to follow the better roads into Virginia and possibly through Virginia into North Carolina, stopping where it was pleasant to stop, fishing here and there, sleeping and eating a great deal, trying all the time to get his thoughts to run straight so that the world might again appear orderly to him.

The scheme worked out even better than he expected. He found it a little hotter than was comfortable, to be sure, but he remedied that by turning west by north and making for the Blue Ridge country. It was all one to him which way he traveled as long as he retained the privilege of traveling in any direction he wished. That seemed to be the one big clarifying idea he worked out on the first lap of his journey. He was now free to free himself and he must guard that freedom. For two years he had been nothing but a pawn moved about by a hand over which he had no control. He had been ordered to go to this place and, snapping his hand to his forehead, level with his eyes, he had gone; he had been ordered to go to that place and, saluting again, he had gone. He had been commanded to do this and he had obeyed; he had been commanded to do that and he had obeyed. And each time he put into the task assigned to him everything that was in him. He stinted of himself nothing. Furthermore, he did this gladly. The cause was worthy of his best.

But this did not mean that he accepted his lot without a struggle. The only discipline the present generation of Allstons knew was self-imposed. It is doubtful if one of them had ever received a direct order until Private Allston enlisted at Plattsburg. In the following few months the latter received enough to make up for a couple of generations--blunt, bullying orders that roused the fighting blood in him, until his intelligence came to his rescue. That was but the beginning. Doubtless this was good for him; certainly it was necessary. But now--well, it was good to be free. And if he had ceased to plot murder against certain superior officers, he was glad they were no longer about.

It was good to be free. It was good to be able to take the right-hand road or the left as one chose. Or it was good to take neither and stop when one willed. It was good not to get up in the morning any sooner than one wished and to go to bed at night when one did wish. It was good to meet people without any uniform to tag them. It was good to hear them all speak English once again--even though they did it brutally. It was good to find some, too, who did it rather nicely. Like the young woman at Valley Elk.

It was rather an odd and dramatic circumstance--his meeting with the young woman at Valley Elk. He had no intention of meeting her nor she of meeting him. Until it happened, both would have said that it was about the most remote probability of their respective lives. Wilmer Howe had come up here from New Orleans with her father to enjoy a quiet, cool, and serene summer in this bungalow Mr. Howe had built several years ago for just that purpose. Allston had not come up here for any purpose whatsoever except to try in passing a bass stream he had heard of in the preceding village--a whim scarcely deserving to be dignified as a purpose.

It was mid-afternoon and he had been driving all day. Settled back in his seat, he was not as alert as he should have been so that, when rounding a turn he saw the frail figure of a girl in the middle of the road, he had no alternative to avoid hitting her but to swerve sharply to the right. The sudden jerk at the wheel snapped the steering-gear and drove him into the bushes against a chestnut-oak. He had not been going fast, but the impact knocked the breath out of him and the broken glass of the windshield cut his face. He pulled himself free, rather a sorry spectacle, but able to stand, and started towards the young woman in the road with the rather hazy intention of stopping her screams.

“Look here,” he protested feebly and brokenly because it was not easy to talk. “Don’t make that noise. I’m the one to holler.”

Roxie covered her eyes with her hands to shut out the sight of his blood-stained face.

“Oh,” she moaned, “yer’re killed.”

“I’m not,” he insisted. “But if you keep making that noise I’ll wish I had been.”

Miss Wilmer came running down the serpentine drive preceded by a barking collie dog to add to the confusion. At sight of Allston she too was inclined to cover her eyes--brown eyes, large and limpid, and, at the moment, big-pupiled--but she conquered her timidity. The collie dog bared his teeth.

“Tam,” she called to him. “Tam! Down!”

Allston straightened to attention and removed his cap. His eyes were no longer on Roxie.

“I’m sorry I stirred up all this fuss,” he apologized. “I--I think something must have happened to the steering-gear.”

She may have been interested in the fate of the steering-gear, but she did not show it. Her concern seemed to be wholly about him.

“You’re hurt!” she exclaimed.

Roxie, still moaning, had sidled close to Miss Howe.

“Oh, it’s all my fault, Miss Wilmer,” she choked. “An’ if you’ll let me, I’ll run for the doctor--fast.”

The prospect of action seemed to inspire Roxie. She stood poised for flight--her frail body quivering.

“It’s good of you both,” broke in Allston. “But, honest, I seem whole. If you could direct me to the village--”

“I hope you don’t think me as inhospitable as that,” Miss Wilmer said hurriedly. “Our house is just up the hill. Shall I call father to help you?”

He tried his legs again and they seemed to be working.

“You’re very kind,” he answered, meeting her brown eyes. “I can make it easily. My name is Allston.”

She inclined her head ever so slightly in recognition of his introduction and bade Roxie hurry on. The latter on the instant flew up the road, running free as a wild thing.

Allston found himself making his way by the side of Wilmer Howe towards a grassy terrace before a low-roofed bungalow set upon the summit of the incline. Obviously this was a summer home, designed without much originality, but with good taste and ample means; a house, he thought at once, expressing the father rather than the daughter. He would expect something more distinctive of her. Perhaps it was she who was responsible for the grounds--generous and well-cared-for, bounded by a hedge of balsams giving a trace of formality to the enclosure. And yet, when halfway up he paused for breath--his ribs had received a bad bruising--and looked below over the luxuriant meadows in the valley and the symmetrical fields beneath the radiant sun, he thought she must be responsible for all that too.

A lean, erect man with white hair stepped through the door of the house to the porch, looking very much disturbed. At sight of Allston he hurried forward, walking briskly and firmly.

“What’s this Roxie tells me? An accident?”

His brown eyes swept Allston’s face and figure and instantly grew sympathetic.

“I hope it’s not serious?”

“Not at all, sir,” answered Allston. “My face--”

“His car swerved and struck a tree,” explained the daughter.

“That’s bad. The road there is dangerous. Come right into the house.”

He placed a broad hand beneath Allston’s arm.

“The first thing to do is to clean those cuts,” he advised.

“I imagine it’s the only thing to do,” laughed Allston. “The car came off worse than I.”

“Fortunately. Cars are more easily replaced than heads,” answered Howe. “Wilmer will telephone for the doctor if you think it necessary.”

“I’m sure it isn’t. All I need is a chance to wash up.”

Howe escorted him to the guest-room, pretty in yellow and old rose chintz, and pointed out the very modern and immaculate bath opening from it.

“You need my help?” he asked.

“Thanks, but I can manage nicely.”

“Then I will wait for you on the porch.”

The cuts, while not ornamental, were not serious. Cold water both cleaned them and stopped their bleeding. His ribs were still sore, but that injury did not show. He rejoined his host within twenty minutes very much improved in appearance if by no means restored to his original condition of a half-hour before.

Allston’s intention was to express his thanks and make his way afoot to the village at once. He had already intruded long enough on the generous hospitality of these good people. But his polite plan was more easily conceived than executed. It seems that neither Mr. Howe nor his daughter was yet ready to believe--having brought up his bag in the interim and inspected the machine--that Allston was in any condition to proceed. When he came down he found they had arranged for him a large, comfortable wicker chair before a dainty tea-table laden with cool drinks and cakes and preserves.

“My dear sir!” exclaimed Mr. Howe solicitously. “I could not think of allowing you to go, and besides--where would you go?”

“I was hoping to find, if not a hotel, then some kind of boarding-place.”

“There is no hotel, and the boarding-houses are already full.”

“That _is_ a complication,” frowned Allston. Then, brightening, “But there is still the car. I can sleep on the seat if you don’t mind my using a portion of your blue sky for a roof.”

“With a spare room in my house, sir?”

Allston laughed. He laughed pleasantly, revealing fine white teeth. It was a better voucher than most formal introductions.

“I am indebted to you, sir,” he answered, unconsciously imitating the touch of formality which characterized the speech of Mr. Howe. “I am indebted to you--and the chestnut-oak.”

But his indebtedness did not end there. Properly he should have included Roxie who entered at that moment bearing a tray. It was she who had first swerved him from the main road. He found her blue eyes upon him--eyes filled with shy anxiety. He smiled into them good-naturedly.

“All through crying?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” she answered, confused.

“That’s good because it wasn’t your fault at all.”

“It was,” she insisted with a directness and positiveness that startled him.

“Roxie,” warned Wilmer. “It isn’t polite to contradict.”

“It ain’t perlite to lie, is it?” retorted Roxie with no trace of insolence, but with frank conviction.

“You may go now.”

As the girl went out, Wilmer evidently felt called upon to explain her.

“She’s a treasure and I don’t know what we’d do without her. We can’t bring colored servants with us from home. There isn’t society enough here for them. But I’m afraid the Mission school hasn’t been able to change her temperament, although it has improved her English. Somehow you don’t mind her frankness much when you get used to her.”

“I don’t mind even now,” returned Allston. “She’s honest, at any rate.”

“She’s honest and she’s good,” nodded Wilmer, serving him with cold tea. “And a firm believer in fairies.”

“Is that to her advantage or not?” questioned Allston.

She hesitated. Allston was on the whole surprised at that. He himself might have hesitated if asked to consider the question seriously, but he did not expect it of her. And he was more or less puzzled and interested by her answer.

“If she’d only believe in bad fairies too,” she said.

“Nonsense,” broke in the father. “That’s a paradox. All fairies are good. As soon as they aren’t, they are something else.”

“Father is as gallant to the fairies as to the ladies,” she smiled with evident fond appreciation of that quality.

“Wilmer is worried about a young mountaineer who has lately been paying his attentions to Roxie,” broke in Howe, throwing some light on the argument. “He hasn’t a very good reputation, it’s true. But I tell her that a man can’t throw a woman over his saddle like in the old days and make off with the lady against her will.”

“Which might be true,” put in Wilmer. “Except that some of these mountain folk are still living in the old days. Bud Childers is hardly more than a cave man.”

“And he’s your bad fairy?” asked Allston.

“Or the something else,” she smiled. “Fairy, good or bad, is rather a light name for a six-foot man.”

Perhaps she felt the conversation had swung into too personal a channel, for deftly she turned it aside to the more general discussion of the effect of Mission schools upon these people. She had rather positive views.

Allston listened politely, but not so much to what she said as to the melody of her voice and to the quick play of expression on her fine face, particularly about the mouth. She had a mouth such as is generations in the making--two sensitive lips, full without being too full, thin without being too thin, balanced nicely, almost exquisitely, above a firm, if rounded chin. Her straight nose matched the chin rather than the mouth. It came from her father rather than her mother, he thought. The eyes were a girl’s eyes grown, by much reading, a bit mature before her time. She controlled them a little too well for youth, perhaps, and yet at moments Allston caught in them flashes as wayward as sunbeams.

Then, somehow, Allston found the conversation back in the personal channel--this time sweeping his own life into the current. He felt a certain obligation here. So as briefly as possible he filled in enough of his past to give them some slight understanding of who he was and why he was here. He found them both eager listeners and when he had done, the dusk was well upon them. Howe rose and extended his hand as though to welcome a new guest.

“I feel honored more than ever,” he said a little pompously but sincerely, “to entertain a man who fought for democracy.”