# Son of the Wind/Chapter 3

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CHAPTER III
BLANCHE
HE WAS awakened in the morning by the sound of young things scuttering. A race was forward in the hall—first the panting and patter-patter and scratch of some small animal in full career; a shower of light quick footsteps following, the sound of a body in soft collision with his door, and then, the voice.
"No, no, Beetles, give it to me—give it to me this instant!" A young school-mistress controlling her youngest scholar could not have been more severe. "There's no use hiding under my petticoat; hold your head up. Now—" dropping to an encouraging tone— "open your mouth, and give it to Missus;" falling to a dulcet note that would have wiled an image— "no, little dog mustn't eat it. It's hard and cold and bad for his inside;" suddenly rising to the pitch of Napoleon commanding his army— "Do you hear! Beetles!"
Evidently there was a tussle. He guessed the child was on her knees. The door vibrated slightly with ​the struggling bodies. Carron heard squeaks and whimpers of a puppy in high excitement, and then a whimper of quite a different origin.
"Ugh! you little beast! You would, would you!" Between set teeth, "Just the same, I'm going to—there!" The last word was pitched to virtue triumphant; but the puppy's indignant yelp was higher yet, the resentment of frustrated will.
The jar of a door opening farther down the hall was audible, and a second voice, raised to cover the distance, suppressed with the fear of being overheard and thus giving a double carrying quality, reached him as distinctly as if it had been spoken through the keyhole. "Blanche, what in the world are you doing there?"
The reply came clear and cheerful. "Taking something away from Beetles. I was afraid he would eat it."
"Well, get up this moment, and come away." Carron felt himself pierced by the stage whisper. "Don't you know that man is in that room!"
There was a rustle and a hasty scrambling up, as if the door had suddenly become contaminated. At the same time a hurrying step approached down the hall. The two petticoated sounds merged almost in front of his door, and he found himself a not unwilling listener to the duet that followed.
​"I thought he was in the regular spare room. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I haven't had a chance to. I didn't know you were back. There, I hope you haven't waked him up!"
"I hope I have. What is he like?"
Mrs. Rader's reply was inaudible.
"Oh, mother, I don't believe it! Is he good looking?"
"Sh-h-h!"
Carron sat up and smiled. It was like being awakened by a bird singing—it was better, for a bird would have cared not a feather about a man's looks. The bright mettlesome voice touched pleasantly on his nerves. "The precocious thing," he thought. "How old is she?"
Tussling with the dog on the floor he had put her age at thirteen, but her last sentences made him clap on three years more. "I wonder why I didn't see her last night at supper," he thought, as the voices and footsteps moved away along the hall. "I wonder—" he mused longer, and seemed less pleased with his next reflection. "I wonder how many of them there are around the place."
This thought had been summoned by the memory of last night, and the apparition of an arm thrust upon him out of darkness. That had not been the ​arm of a child, youthful though it was. It had been a thing of long curves and of a well covered turn of elbow; an arm that had found its power, concealing it cunningly in dimples; no doubt, Carron thought, an arm to strangle reason. It had risen as magically before him as ever the arm of the Lady of the Lake had risen to the king in the legend. The same feeling of irritation stirred in him that had crept in his veins the night before when it had appeared before him as the thing he had not expected, and certainly the last thing he had wanted. He was not in the least averse to the idea of a child about the place. Children, even half-grown girls, are pleasant companions and content with little attention; but a young woman might be very much in the way. Women could always be depended on to turn up at the wrong moment when a man was interested in something else, had to get through in a hurry, and wanted a clear gangway.
A clear gangway in this business was what he had not, thus far, been able to find. Not an opening but had ended in a cul-de-sac; not a person he wanted but, just as he thought his finger was upon them, turned out to be some other person. He hardly thought he could blame Rader for this. In the disappointment of last night his own over-eager imagination had led him astray; and certainly, he ​couldn't blame the girl—she of the arm—but he must make sure she did not happen again as a substitute for something else that he wanted. Yet in spite of false appearances, in spite of a too-lively fancy, he saw he was a long stride nearer what he was after than he had been twenty-four hours ago. If only he could keep a cool head, and keep the ground he had gained with the scholar last night he thought that Rader's hypothetical friend would presently be his own. Of course there was the chance always that the man on the road might play turncoat, and put the scholar's friend on his guard. To find this fellow, this first informer, apparently such a familiar here among the Raders, was disconcerting. He was called by his first name. It might be that he was engaged to the young woman whom he had brought back last night. Carron discarded his last idea promptly, since as much as he had seen of her was far too fine to belong to such a clod.
He decided to abandon vain suppositions about people who were of small importance to him, and hurried his dressing. The thought of how the mare had spent the night after her hard yesterday's trip was an anxiety in his mind, and presently sent him swinging, two steps at a time, down the outside stair and toward the barn.
Voices of birds were in the air, and a pale em​broidery of light and shadow was drawn across the ground. The chestnut greeted him coquettishly. Carron looked at her stall and manger, glanced over her own admirable appearance, whistled with surprise, told her she was a handsome girl with four good feet and asked her who had been looking out for her so early in the morning. "It couldn't have been that child," he thought. Still, with the help of a bucket upside down, a well-grown girl, of say fifteen, might manage the grooming, though hardly the stalls. "If she did," he reflected, "she knows how. She's earned some candy." He rather thought he was going to like the younger Miss Rader. As for the elder, who went to country dances, and was squired by the man on the road, probably she would share her mother's opinion, and hold a doubtful distance. Nevertheless, as he approached the house again he looked along the piazza to see if anywhere there was the flutter of a gown; and he opened the dining-room door with a slight disturbance of the nerves.
It was a small, rather long and narrow room, with worn walls and a terrible fireplace of cast iron, but it was filled with the same pleasant, greenish, watery sunlight that had lighted his room upstairs, a tone which seemed common to the whole house. The only people at table were Mrs. Rader ​and the scholar, but, again, there was a place set which was as yet unoccupied. Evidently in this castle of surprises the expected presence was always lacking. Rader had an open book beside him and read more than he ate. When he turned his head for a sip or for a bite, he kept his fingers between the leaves. He did not seem to be aware of the young man's entrance. It was Mrs. Rader's hand that touched him to a consciousness of it. Then he raised his eyes, smiled dimly, as with a notion of having seen Carron somewhere at some time, perhaps some years ago, and promptly returned to the pages of his book.
But Mrs. Rader accompanied her good morning with a look sufficiently aware of him, and sufficiently propitiatory for two. She had gone to call him to breakfast, she said, but as he had not answered she had supposed him still asleep. There was a faint embarrassment in her manner as she added, "I hope you rested well, that nothing disturbed you this morning?"
Carron guessed what was disturbing the good lady's sense of the decorous—that informal little scene outside his door a half hour earlier—and hastened to reassure her. "Never slept better in my life. I would have been asleep yet if it hadn't been for a brutal bluejay in a tree outside my window."
​Mrs. Rader looked relieved. "It must have been a hawk," she observed. "Bluejays don't come up this far."
A door somewhere outside shut vigorously. Rader did not change his attitude, but it was evident he had suspended reading. "There she is," he said.
"I wonder if she caught it," Mrs. Rader threw out. But to the scholar the interesting point evidently was not what the one approaching had caught, but that she would presently appear.
Carron wondered would it be "Blanche" or would it be "The Lady of the Lake?" Apparently it was a third person, neither child nor enchantress.
A longish oval face she had, long thick throat and sloping shoulders. She gave an impression of length of line without being tall, of brownness without being brown, of being but a slim reed and yet being fully a woman, of smiling and not smiling. A khaki skirt swung from her slender hips. Low shoes—spurs stuck on the heels—gave glimpses of slender ankles. Hat she had not; and her brown hair, bloused out in small wavy locks around the ears, was put up recklessly with indications of the ends of curls. A mongrel terrier with bright eyesslouched at her heels. In the first look she gave Carron an elf seemed to peep out of her eyes. Amusement, curiosity, some small elation too in​definite to name, was darted at him and withdrawn. She did not offer her hand, but bent her head quite in the manner of the city girl to acknowledge her mother's introduction. This consisted only of two words: "My daughter," and left Carron as uninformed as before.
"Father, I got the stage," she said, sitting down in the place beside Carron.
The scholar, who had continued his book without having looked at his daughter, now paused again, his eyes still glued to the page. "U-m-m?" he said.
"I was early for it," she went on. "I rode down as far as 'the notch' before I met it."
Carron looked at her with anxiety. "Miss Rader, I hope it wasn't my letter that you have been taking trouble about?"
She stretched a long throat with a quick inquiring turn of the head at him. "Yes—why not?"
"Of course I would have taken it myself. From what Mr. Rader said, I supposed he had a boy he could send."
"Oh, George! But with errands you can't be sure of him. It was nothing of a ride. I liked it."
"I'm very much in your debt," Carron gratefully declared himself. "It was an important letter. I promise to run all your errands for you as long as I am here."
​She smiled, her lips not unclosing, only deepening their curve. Evidently this sort of speech she understood in the spirit in which it was offered, a courtesy and not a compliment. "I hope the rain will hold off while you are here," she said. "The sport is better before it. There's more game in the mountains."
Carron thought that as far as he was concerned. there would be indeed. "Do you hunt?" he inquired.
A faint line gathered between her brows. "Oh, no, I don't, and I don't really know much about what weathers are good for it; only all the men say it's better before wet weather. This morning Beetles started six covey of quail in a mile." She broke a crust of toast and held it up before the anxious eyes of the terrier. "Beetles, little dog, sit up! Sit up for Missus! Beg nicely!"
The sudden change of voice from courtesy to coaxing made Carron open his eyes. Was this she who had awakened him—she of the flying heels? Was this the one who had nestled against his door, who had demanded to know whether he was good-looking? Since she had entered the room she had not given his looks a conscious glance, and yet there was no mistaking the intonation of the voice. "Good Lord!" he thought, with a sort of awe, "are women such children when they are alone?" Nothing child​ish about her now—if a man could believe his sight. Her large blue eyes and the curl of her mouth were enough like a child's, but it is not in such things that a woman's maturity speaks, Carron knew, but in the proud carriage of shoulders, the level turn of head, the steady way of meeting a man's eye, and their way of meeting what he says, not as if he were an antagonist, but as if he were a human being.
Thus Blanche Rader began setting herself very prettily to find out what sort of talk he preferred; and he allowed himself the luxury of being drawn out, and being "difficult" merely for the pleasure of watching her graceful faculty at work. She had undertaken the task not impersonally—he doubted that she was capable of being quite impersonal with any one—yet rather with the air of its being the thing expected of her, the thing she always did, pleasant enough in this case, in any case her part of the business.
But Mrs. Rader, who should have found herself relieved by her daughter's aptitude, showed restlessness. Her hands moved without intention among the coffee cups. Once or twice her lips parted. She made false starts to get into the conversation. Finally, a pause giving opportunity, she leaned forward and got her daughter's eye.
​"Did you have a good time last night?" she asked. She almost faltered it.
"Yes, very good indeed. There were some new people there. I danced with them mostly."
"I thought you would dance mostly with Bert," said her mother.
The girl looked as if she suspected intention in this remark, and resented it. "He didn't dance at all. He wasn't there a good part of the time. He only came back to drive me home."
Her right arm rested on the table. The hand was tanned to a soft brown, very smooth and fine in texture, with five dimples, where most women show knuckles, and round finger-tips. Carron could see the wrist white and punctuated with a dimple. The rest was hidden in a starched sleeve. Still, he knew it must be the arm enchanted.
The owner of it, unaware of what had been his last night's vision, ate for a few moments before offering her next remark. "I think Bert was feeling ill. He wasn't like himself." She fixed a challenging gaze on her mother's face. "Sometimes I am afraid that Bert isn't quite steady."
Mrs. Rader's lips opened for reply, but she checked herself, no doubt because of the stranger. A current of hostility was in the air. The scholar raised his eyes. His look had no connection with ​what had been said. No voice outside had penetrated to that seclusion where his mind dreamed. He had simply come to the end of a phrase of thought, and now was preparing to make a transition to another. He gave his chair a gentle scrape backward and closed his book. What arrested him was the sharpness of Carron's involuntary movement forward. Rader mildly surveyed the young man's aspect of protest against thus being cavalierly deserted without apology and without a word. Perception struggled around to the fact that something was expected of him, something that he had promised. He looked at his daughter. His eyes rested upon her with something as human as affection. "Are you going to do anything in particular this morning, Blanche?" he asked.
"I'm going to help mother with the up-stairs cleaning."
"Oh!" He seemed to suffer a drop of inspiration.
She looked inquiringly. "What is it?"
"Mr. Carron," Rader explained slowly, "would like to see the country a little. I was thinking perhaps you might show him around."
"I'm so sorry—" she turned apologetic to the young man. "But, perhaps I can this afternoon if you would care to?"
​Carron was angry. Was this Rader's idea of fulfilling his hints? Was this his idea of a companion for hunting? Charming young women with arms reaching out of oblivion like the fabled Lady of the Lake were all very well, but time was slipping by and he must be about a man's business. Yet, what to do, when apparently he had all time on his hands, and the girl was offering him her time so graciously? It was Mrs. Rader who rescued him.
"Oh, Alex, I want Blanche to help me with the quilts this afternoon." She addressed her husband, and then apologized to Carron. "It happens that at this time of year we are most busy, getting the house in order before the rains set in. I hope you won't mind being left to yourself to-day?"
Carron assured her that his wish was not at all to disturb the routine of the place, and that perhaps some other day when Miss Rader had a little time to waste she would— On the whole he was relieved, though he could have wished that the girl had shown some feeling one way or another. But she did not even drop her alert mood to indifference. It was Rader who was disconcerted. He rose, gathering up his book, gave Carron a hasty glance, embarrassed, apologetic, as if he would say, "I have done my best," and murmuring something about not ​being disturbed that morning, went hastily out. His very back was eloquent of a sense of defeat.
"Confound the man," Carron thought; "what ails him? What does he think I want?"