, John
Cowles, this morning when the bees droned fat and the flowers made
fragrant all the air? I was no boy, but a man grown; and ruthless as I
was, I had all the breeding the land could give me, full Virginia
training as to what a gentleman should be. And a gentleman, unless he
may travel all a road, does not set foot too far into it when he sees
that he is taken at what seems his wish. So now I said how glad I was
that she had come back from school, though a fine lady now, and no doubt
forgetful of her friends, of myself, who once caught young rabbits and
birds for her, and made pens for the little pink pigs at the orchard
edge, and all of that. But she had no mind, it seemed to me, to talk of
these old days; and though now some sort of wall seemed to me to arise
between us as we sat there on the bank blowing at dandelions and pulling
loose grass blades, and humming a bit of tune now and then as young
persons will, still, thickheaded as I was, it was in some way made
apparent to me that I was quite as willing the wall should be there as
she herself was willing.

My mother had mentioned Miss Grace Sheraton to me before. My father had
never opposed my riding over now and then to the Sheraton gates. There
were no better families in our county than these two. There was no
reason why I should feel troubled. Yet as I looked out into the haze of
the hilltops where the red road appeared to leap off sheer to meet the
distant rim of the Blue Ridge, I seemed to hear some whispered warning.
I was young, and wild as any deer in those hills beyond. Had it been
any enterprise scorning settled ways; had it been merely a breaking of
orders and a following of my own will, I suppose I might have gone on.
But there are ever two things which govern an adventure for one of my
sex. He may be a man; but he must also be a gentleman. I suppose books
might be written about the war between those two things. He may be a
gentleman sometimes and have credit for being a soft-headed fool, with
no daring to approach the very woman who has contempt for him; whereas
she may not know his reasons for restraint. So much for civilization,
which at times I hated because it brought such problems. Yet these
problems never cease, at least while youth lasts, and no community is
free from them, even so quiet a one as ours there in the valley of the
old Blue Ridge, before the wars had rolled across it and made all the
young people old.

I was of no mind to end