Lydia of the Pines Part 46

"Lydia," said John, finally, "how does the Great Search go on? We haven't reported for a long time."

"I don't think I make much headway," replied Lydia. "The older I grow, the less I understand men and I've always felt as if, if there was a G.o.d, He was a man."

"You mean male, rather than female," agreed John.

"Lydia, dear, I wish you did have faith."

"But do you believe, yourself?" urged Lydia.

"Yes, I know that the soul can't die," said the man, quietly. "And the thing that makes me surest is the feeling I have for you, I know that I'll have another chance."

"What do you mean?" asked Lydia wonderingly.

"_That_, you'll never know," he replied.

"Well, I know that you're a dear," said the young girl, unexpectedly, "no matter how you get your Indian lands. And I love you to death."

She patted his cheek caressingly, and John Levine smiled sadly to himself in the darkness.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HARVARD INSTRUCTOR

"The saddest things that I have seen are the burned pine woods and the diseased Indians."--_The Murmuring Pine_.

The University campus was a huge square of green, elm dotted, that was bordered on one edge for a quarter of a mile by the lake. The other three sides were enclosed by the college buildings, great Gothic piles of gray stone, ivy grown, with swallow haunted eaves. One entered the campus through wide archways, that framed from the street ravis.h.i.+ng views of lake and elm, with leisurely figures of seniors in cap and gown in the foreground.

College life was not much unlike High School life for Lydia. She of course missed the dormitory living which is what makes University existence unique. The cottage was nearly three miles from the campus.

Lydia took a street-car every morning, leaving the house with her father. She was very timid at first: suffered agony when called on to recite: reached all her cla.s.ses as early as possible and sat in a far corner to escape notice. But gradually, among the six thousand students she began to lose her self-consciousness and to feel that, after all, she was only attending a larger High School.

It was curious, it seemed to her, in how short a time the real High School dropped out of her life. Miss Towne and the cooking teacher who had had so much to do with her adolescent development, became more or less dreamlike. And though Lydia did try to call on Miss Towne at the High School, her days were very full and little by little she slipped away entirely from the old environment.

Except for flying visits home, John Levine spent the year at Was.h.i.+ngton. He was returned to Congress practically automatically, at the end of his term. Kent throve mightily as a real estate man. He dashed about in a little "one lung" car with all the importance of nineteen in business for the first time. He continued to call on Lydia at irregular intervals in order to boast, she thought, of his real estate ac.u.men and of his correspondence with Margery and Olga, both of whom were now at boarding-school.

Lydia was taking a general course in college. In a vague way, she was planning to become a teacher and partly because she had no apt.i.tude for foreign languages, and partly because of the deep impression Miss Towne's little lecture on slang had made on her, she decided to teach English. She therefore took not only the required course in Freshman Composition, but an elective in Shakespeare, and was herded with fifty others into the cla.s.sroom of a young instructor fresh from Harvard. He was a frail looking young man, smooth shaven and thin, with large, light brown eyes behind gold rimmed eyegla.s.ses.

Lydia was deeply impressed from the very first by the young man's culture. He could quote Latin and Greek quite as freely as he could French and German and his ease in quoting the latter seemed as great as in quoting Palgrave's Lyrics, which Lydia was sure he could quote from cover to cover.

If his manner was a trifle impatient and condescending, this only served to enhance his impressiveness. And he knew his Shakespeare.

Lydia entered under his guidance that ever new and ever old world of beauty that only the born Shakespeare lover discovers.

The Christmas recess had come and gone before Lydia became vaguely conscious that young Professor Willis called on her always to recite, whether he did on any other girl in the cla.s.s or not. She did not know that from the first day she had entered his cla.s.s the young professor had been conscious of the yellow head in the furthest corner of the cla.s.sroom. It was a n.o.bly shaped head bound round with curly yellow braids above a slender face, red cheeked yet delicate. He was conscious too of the home-made suit and the cheap s.h.i.+rtwaists, with the pathetic attempt at variety through different colored neckties. Little by little he recognized that the bashful young person had a mental background not shared by her mates, and he wondered about her.

It was early in January that he made an attempt to satisfy his curiosity. The snowfall had been light so far and heavy winds had blown the lake clear of drifts. Lydia often brought her skates to cla.s.s with her and if the wind were favorable skated home after her last recitation.

She had just fastened on her skates one day when a rather breathless voice behind her said,

"Going for a skate, Miss Dudley?" and Professor Willis, skates over his shoulder, bore down on her.

Lydia blushed vividly--"I--I often skate home. I live three miles down the sh.o.r.e."

"Rather thought I'd have a try myself, if you don't mind."

"Heavens!" thought Lydia. "I hope he won't come clear home with me?

The house looks awful!"

Willis fastened on his skates and stood up. "Which way?" he asked.

Lydia nodded homeward and started off silently, the Harvard man close beside her.

"You enjoy your Shakespeare work, Miss Dudley?" he asked.

"Oh, yes!" cried Lydia. "That most of anything. Don't you love to teach it?"

"Er--in some ways! I will admit that the co-educational end of it is very trying to an Eastern college man."

This was such a surprising view to Lydia that she forgot to be bashful.

"Don't you like girls, Professor Willis?" she asked.

"Not in a boys' cla.s.sroom--that is--at first the situation brought cold sweat to my face. But now, I carry on the work to a great extent for you. You are the only person with a background, don't you know."

Lydia didn't know. The Harvard man's voice, however, was entirely impersonal, so she ventured to explore.

"What do you mean by background?"

"If you wouldn't skate so outrageously fast," he panted, "I could tell you with more--more aplomb."

"But," explained Lydia, "I have to skate fast. There's always so much to be done and old Lizzie isn't well."

She looked at the Shakespeare professor innocently. He looked at his watch.

"Dear me!" he said, "I must be back in the cla.s.sroom in half an hour.

Supposing we continue this conversation to-morrow, in your own home, Miss Dudley? May I call to-morrow night?"

"Why yes," replied Lydia, in utter embarra.s.sment again, "if you really want to! It's a dreadful trip,--to the end of the car line and half a mile along the road to a white cottage after that."

"That's nothing," said the Harvard man, gravely. "Till to-morrow night then," and lifting his cap, he skated back, leaving Lydia in a state of mind difficult to define.

She told Lizzie and her father that evening. Amos looked over his paper with a slight scowl. "You're too young to have a college professor calling."

"Well," cried Lydia, "you don't seem to realize how wonderful it is that he wants to take this awful trip out here, just to see _me_. And don't let it worry you, Daddy! He'll never want to come but once."

She looked around the living-room disgustedly.

Amos started to speak, looked at Lizzie, who shook her head, and subsided. The older Lydia grew, the more helpless he felt in guiding her. It seemed to him though that Patience would be pleased to have a professor calling on her daughter, and he let the matter go at that.