The Cost [40]
of her height and slender, graceful strength. Her eyes, full of the same old frankness and courage, now had experience in them, too. She was wearing her hair so that it fell from her brow in two sweeping curves reflecting the light in sparkles and flashes. Her manner was still simple and genuine--the simplicity and genuineness of knowledge now, not of innocence. Extremes meet--but they remain extremes. Her "plumage" was a fashionable dress of pale blue cloth, a big beplumed hat to match, a chiffon parasol like an azure cloud, at her throat a sapphire pendant, about her neck and swinging far below her waist a chain of sapphires.
"And the plumage just suits her," thought Olivia. For it seemed to her that her cousin had more than ever the quality she most admired--the quality of individuality, of distinction. Even in her way of looking clean and fresh she was different, as if those prime feminine essentials were in her not matters of frequent reacquirement but inherent and inalienable, like her brilliance of eyes and smoothness of skin.
Olivia felt a slight tugging at the bag she was carrying. She looked--an English groom in spotless summer livery was touching his hat in respectful appeal to her to let go. "Give Albert your checks, too," said Pauline, putting her arm around her cousin's waist to escort her down the platform. At the entrance, with a group of station loungers gaping at it, was a phaeton-victoria lined with some cream-colored stuff like silk, the horses and liveried coachman rigid. "She's giving Saint X a good deal to talk about," thought Olivia.
"Home, please, by the long road," said Pauline to the groom, and he sprang to the box beside the coachman, and they were instantly in rapid motion. "That'll let us have twenty minutes more together," she went on to Olivia. "There are several people stopping at the house."
The way led through Munroe Avenue, the main street of Saint X. Olivia was astonished at the changes--the town of nine years before spread and remade into an energetic city of twenty-five thousand.
"Fred told me I'd hardly recognize it," said she, "but I didn't expect this. It's another proof how far-sighted Hampden Scarborough is. Everybody advised him against coming here, but he would come. And the town has grown, and at the same time he's had a clear field to make a big reputation as a lawyer in a few years, not to speak of the power he's got in politics."
"But wouldn't he have won no matter where he was?" suggested Pauline.,
"Sooner or later--but not so soon," replied Olivia.
"No--a tree doesn't have to grow so tall among a lot of bushes before it's noticed as it does in a forest."
"And you've never seen him since Battle Field?" As Olivia put this question she watched her cousin narrowly without seeming to do so.
"But," replied Pauline--and Olivia thought that both her face and her tone were a shade off the easy and the natural--"since he came I've been living in New York and haven't stayed here longer than a few days until this summer. And he's been in Europe since April. No," she went on, "I've not seen a soul from Battle Field. It's been like a painting, finished and hanging on the wall one looks toward oftenest, and influencing one's life every day."
They talked on of Battle Field, of the boys and girls they had known--how Thiebaud was dead and Mollie Crittenden had married the man who was governor of California; what Howe was not doing, the novels Chamberlayne was writing; the big women's college in Kansas that Grace Wharton was vice-president of. Then of Pierson--in the state senate and in a fair way to get to Congress the next year. Then Scarborough again--how he had distanced all the others; how he might have the largest practice in the state if he would take the sort of clients most lawyers courted assiduously; how strong he was in politics in spite of the opposition of the professionals--strong because he had a genius for organization and also had the ear and the confidence of the people and the enthusiastic personal devotion of the
"And the plumage just suits her," thought Olivia. For it seemed to her that her cousin had more than ever the quality she most admired--the quality of individuality, of distinction. Even in her way of looking clean and fresh she was different, as if those prime feminine essentials were in her not matters of frequent reacquirement but inherent and inalienable, like her brilliance of eyes and smoothness of skin.
Olivia felt a slight tugging at the bag she was carrying. She looked--an English groom in spotless summer livery was touching his hat in respectful appeal to her to let go. "Give Albert your checks, too," said Pauline, putting her arm around her cousin's waist to escort her down the platform. At the entrance, with a group of station loungers gaping at it, was a phaeton-victoria lined with some cream-colored stuff like silk, the horses and liveried coachman rigid. "She's giving Saint X a good deal to talk about," thought Olivia.
"Home, please, by the long road," said Pauline to the groom, and he sprang to the box beside the coachman, and they were instantly in rapid motion. "That'll let us have twenty minutes more together," she went on to Olivia. "There are several people stopping at the house."
The way led through Munroe Avenue, the main street of Saint X. Olivia was astonished at the changes--the town of nine years before spread and remade into an energetic city of twenty-five thousand.
"Fred told me I'd hardly recognize it," said she, "but I didn't expect this. It's another proof how far-sighted Hampden Scarborough is. Everybody advised him against coming here, but he would come. And the town has grown, and at the same time he's had a clear field to make a big reputation as a lawyer in a few years, not to speak of the power he's got in politics."
"But wouldn't he have won no matter where he was?" suggested Pauline.,
"Sooner or later--but not so soon," replied Olivia.
"No--a tree doesn't have to grow so tall among a lot of bushes before it's noticed as it does in a forest."
"And you've never seen him since Battle Field?" As Olivia put this question she watched her cousin narrowly without seeming to do so.
"But," replied Pauline--and Olivia thought that both her face and her tone were a shade off the easy and the natural--"since he came I've been living in New York and haven't stayed here longer than a few days until this summer. And he's been in Europe since April. No," she went on, "I've not seen a soul from Battle Field. It's been like a painting, finished and hanging on the wall one looks toward oftenest, and influencing one's life every day."
They talked on of Battle Field, of the boys and girls they had known--how Thiebaud was dead and Mollie Crittenden had married the man who was governor of California; what Howe was not doing, the novels Chamberlayne was writing; the big women's college in Kansas that Grace Wharton was vice-president of. Then of Pierson--in the state senate and in a fair way to get to Congress the next year. Then Scarborough again--how he had distanced all the others; how he might have the largest practice in the state if he would take the sort of clients most lawyers courted assiduously; how strong he was in politics in spite of the opposition of the professionals--strong because he had a genius for organization and also had the ear and the confidence of the people and the enthusiastic personal devotion of the