Ann Arbor Tales Part 3

In the evening they waited on "their rock," as she called it, until twilight rose and the birds became quiet and the wild life about was still.

Over the shoulder of the hill across the river the moon rose, round, high, white, to light a gleaming path along the stream.

Paddling back, Houston displayed his skill, for it was no child's work against the current. She watched him; the strong, even movements of his arms, as he fairly bent the paddle blade before his steady strokes.

Rounding a bend the lights of the town twinkled into view.

"We're nearly home," he called, and the words came quick and short from the effort he had made.

"And you're tired," she murmured.

"No, not tired," he replied--"I only wish it were longer----"

"But we can come again--before you go home."

"Florence--I don't want to go, now." He hesitated a moment. "I might make the governor believe that the summer school would materially benefit his son," he added.

She laughed at the mockery in his voice. "I'm afraid I should be your only professor," she said.

"I would hope so," he replied.

"No, dear," she said, seriously, "don't this summer--next, perhaps."

"Will you write me then--often?" he asked.

"How often?"

"Don't you suppose you could--I shan't say every day--but every other day?"

"Yes."

And his heart leaped in his breast at the tone she employed.

"I love you," he whispered. "Oh, how I love you!"

"And you will keep your promise?" She smiled back at him.

"Yes."

"Dearest Jack!"

"I'm going to tell the governor when I get home, Florence," he suddenly exclaimed.

"No, no, dear, don't; not yet." The haste of her reply was startling--"I don't think I would," she added more calmly, seemingly herself conscious of it. "Perhaps he'll come on, next year; then he could meet me; and he could see---- Perhaps he might not--might not--like it----"

"Not like it!" he cried. "Yes, you're right; he might fall in love with you himself! Yes, he might," he added in mock seriousness, "I hadn't thought of that...."

They walked slowly through the silent streets to her home, and in the darkness of the little round room he held her close in his arms and kissed her.

"Has it been a happy day?" he whispered, his cheek pressed to hers.

He felt the quick pressure of her hand upon his arm.

"So happy," she murmured.

After the door closed behind him she stood as she had that first night, and in the darkness about her she seemed to see the sweet face of a young girl--the girl of the picture.... She brushed the back of her hand across her smooth forehead and sighed....

In another week he was gone.

He came back to her after many weeks and although she did not ask, he told her he had kept his promise.

IV

During the winter that followed, Houston's constant attention to Florence was generally accepted at its face-value. That they were engaged few of their intimates doubted; and among the faculty members of their acquaintance there were many smiles and sidewise glances.

At a Forty Club dance one night Mrs. Longpre, a _chaperon_, said to Mrs.

Clifford, another, lowering her lorgnette through which, for some moments she had stared, rather impertinently, as was her custom, at Jack and Florence, "I find that couple quite interesting."

"Why, pray?" Mrs. Clifford asked, roused suddenly from the doze into which she had lapsed, due to _ennui_ that she made no effort to conceal.

"That Mr. Houston seems a very nice young man," observed the worthy dame, patronizingly, and as though speaking to herself, "but what he can see in that girl is beyond me."

Mrs. Clifford squinted. She refused to add to her generally aged and wrinkled appearance by wearing spectacles.

"Isn't she a proper person?" she asked.

Mrs. Clifford had a proper daughter--a very proper daughter--who at that precise moment was sitting prim and solitary on the lowest step of the gallery stairs.

"Well," Mrs. Longpre observed, significantly, "there have been stories.

Of course one is quite prepared to hear stories and whether they are true or not one never knows," she added, defensively. "But the girl's mother allows her to have her own way more than I should, if she were my daughter. She is old enough to be his aunt, besides, and always has half-a-dozen young men dancing attendance upon her."

"I suppose it's just another college engagement that will end when he graduates," Mrs. Clifford ventured. "Is the girl in college at all?" she inquired with a smothered yawn.

Mrs. Longpre smiled. "Hardly," she replied, drily. "If she had continued--for she started I am told--she would have graduated quite seven years ago." There was a tart venom in the last speech.

"You don't say," mused Mrs. Clifford who was new to Ann Arbor, her husband, the professor, having been called from a little Ohio college to fill the chair of Norwegian Literature. And she immediately lapsed into another doze from which she did not emerge--being quite stout, and pleasantly stupid--until the orchestra overhead began the last dance--"Home, Sweet Home."

Mrs. Longpre's point-of-view as regarded Jack and Florence was that of nearly all the faculty women who knew them. Indeed, there was but one among them, the jolly little wife of the a.s.sistant professor of physics--who did not know much and did not feign more--who championed them. And her support was little more than a mere exclamation at the girl's beauty, now and then at a "reception," or a wide-eyed admiration, feelingly expressed, of Houston's charming manners and exquisitely maintained poise.

If Florence in the slightest measure realized how she--for what her judges were pleased to call her latest "affair"--was held by those judges she did not express her knowledge even by a sign. As for Houston, he saw precisely how the companions.h.i.+p was regarded by the small people among whom decency required him to mingle, and the knowledge irritated his nerves.

"The fools!" he exclaimed to Florence one day, "don't they think a fellow can really care for a girl--ever!"

She laughed and told him not to mind, and he was satisfied.

In the beginning Houston had planned to work for the Athens scholars.h.i.+p, an honor within the University's gift much sought, but seldom won save by weary plodders in the library, who when they graduated carried from the campus with their neatly rolled and tubed diplomas no remembrance of the life of their fellows, or of friends made, or of pleasant a.s.sociations formed.

At first Houston's effort was brave, but at the end of the first semester of his freshman year he was conditioned in one course. The receipt of the little white slip marked his first lapse from academic virtue. Afterward, his course was plainly indicated--a trail clearly marked by empty bottles.