Lo Michael! (6 page)

After chapel the guests were shown about the college buildings and campus. The president and Endicott walked ahead, Michael behind with Starr, answering her interested questions.

They had been through all the classrooms, the gymnasium, the dining hall, servants' quarters and dormitories. They had visited the athletic ground, the tennis courts, and gone down by the little lake, where Michael had taken them out for a short row. Returning they were met by one of the professors who suggested their going to hear some of the classes recite, and as Mr. Endicott seemed interested they turned their steps toward the recitation hall.

“I think,” said Starr as they walked slowly across the campus together, “that you must be a very brave boy. To think of you saving my life that way when you were just a little fellow!”

She looked up, her pretty face full of childish feeling.

Michael looked down silently and smiled. He was wondering if any eyes were ever as beautiful as those before him. He had never had even a little girl look at him like that. The president's daughter was fat and a romp. She never took time to look at the boys. The few other girls he knew, daughters of the professors, were quiet and studious. They paid little attention to the boys.

“I want to thank you for what you did,” went on Starr, “only I can't think of any words great enough to tell you how I feel about it. I wish there was something I could do to show you how I thank you?”

She lifted her sweet eyes again to his. They were entering the large Hall of the college now.

“This way,” said Michael guiding her toward the chapel door which had just swung to behind the two men.

“Isn't there something you would like that I could do for you?” persisted Starr earnestly, following him into the empty chapel where Mr. Endicott and the president stood looking at a tablet on the wall by the further door.

“Your father has done everything for me,” said Michael sunnily, with a characteristic sweep of his hand that seemed to include himself, his garments and his mental outfit. He turned upon her his blazing smile that spoke more eloquently than words could have done.

“Yes, but that is papa,” said Starr half impatiently, softly stamping her daintily shod foot. “He did that because of what you did for
him
in saving my life. I should like to do something to thank you for what you did for
me
. I'm worth something to myself you know. Isn't there something I could do for you.”

She stood still, looking up into his face anxiously, her vivid childish beauty seeming to catch all the brightness of the place and focus it upon him. The two men had passed out of the further door and on to the recitation rooms. The girl and boy were alone for the moment.

“You have done something for me, you did a great deal,” he said, his voice almost husky with boyish tenderness. “I think it was the greatest thing that anybody ever did for me.”

“I did something for you! When? What?” questioned Starr curiously.

“Yes,” he said, “you did a great thing for me. Maybe you don't remember it, but I do. It was when I was getting well from the shot there at your house, and your nurse used to bring you up to play with me every day; and always before you went away, you used to kiss me. I've never forgotten that.”

He said it quite simply as if it were a common thing for a boy to say to a girl. His voice was low as though the depths of his soul were stirred.

A flood of pretty color came into Starr's cheeks.

“Oh!” she said quite embarrassed at the turn of the conversation, “but that was when I was a baby. I couldn't do that now. Girls don't kiss boys you know. It wouldn't be considered proper.”

“I know,” said Michael, his own color heightening now, “I didn't mean that. I wanted you to know how much you had done for me already. You don't know what it is never to have been kissed by your mother, or any living soul. Nobody ever kissed me in all my life that I know of but you.”

He looked down at the little girl with such a grave, sweet expression, his eyes so expressive of the long lonely years without woman's love, that child though she was Starr seemed to understand, and her whole young soul went forth in pity. Tears sprang to her eyes.

“Oh!” she said, “That is dreadful! Oh!—I don't care if it isn't proper—”

And before he knew what she was about to do the little girl tilted to her tiptoes, put up her dainty hands, caught him about the neck and pressed a warm eager kiss on his lips. Then she sprang away frightened, sped across the room, and through the opposite door.

Michael stood still in a bewilderment of joy for the instant. The compelling of her little hands, the pressure of her fresh lips still lingered with him. A flood tide of glory swept over his whole being. There were tears in his eyes, but he did not know it. He stood with bowed head as though in a holy place. Nothing so sacred, so beautiful, had ever come into his life. Her baby kisses had been half unconscious. This kiss was given of her own free will, because she wanted to do something for him. He did not attempt to understand the wonderful joy that surged through his heart and pulsed in every fibre of his being. His lonely, unloved life was enough to account for it, and he was only a boy with a brief knowledge of life; but he knew enough to enshrine that kiss in his heart of hearts as a holy thing, not even to be thought about carelessly.

When he roused himself to follow her she had disappeared. Her father and the president were listening to a recitation, but she was nowhere to be seen. She had gone to her own room. Michael went down by himself in a thicket by the lake.

She met him shyly at dinner, with averted gaze and a glow on her cheeks, as if half afraid of what she had done, but he reassured her with his eyes. His glance seemed to promise he would never take advantage of what she had done. His face wore an exalted look, as if he had been lifted above earth, and Starr, looking at him wonderingly, was glad she had followed her impulse.

They took a horseback ride to the college grove that afternoon, Mr. Endicott, one of the professors, Starr and Michael. The president had borrowed the horses from some friends.

Michael sat like a king upon his horse. He had ridden the college mule bareback every summer, and riding seemed to be as natural to him as any other sport. Starr had been to a New York riding school, and was accustomed to taking her morning exercise with her father in the Park, or accompanied by a footman; but she sat her Florida pony as happily as though he had been a shiny, well-groomed steed of priceless value. Somehow it seemed to her an unusually delightful experience to ride with this nice boy through the beautiful shaded road of arching live-oaks richly draped with old gray moss. Michael stopped by the roadside, where the shade was dense, dismounted and plunged into the thicket, returning in a moment with two or three beautiful orchids and some long vines of the wonderful yellow jessamine whose exquisite perfume filled all the air about. He wreathed the jessamine about the pony's neck, and Starr twined it about her hat and wore the orchids in her belt.

Starr had never seen an orange grove before and took great delight in the trees heavily loaded with fruit, green and yellow and set about by blossoms. She tucked a spray of blossoms in her dark hair under the edge of her hat, and Michael looked at her and smiled in admiration. Mr. Endicott, glancing toward his daughter, caught the look, and was reminded of the time when he had found the two children in his own drawing room being made a show for his wife's guests, and sighed half in pleasure, half in foreboding. What a beautiful pair they were to be sure, and what had the future in store for his little girl?

On the way back they skirted another lake and Michael dismounted again to bring an armful of great white magnolia blossoms, and dainty bay buds to the wondering Starr; and then they rode slowly on through the wooded, road, the boy telling tales of adventures here and there; pointing out a blue jay or calling attention to the mockingbird's song.

“I wish you could be here next week,” said the boy wistfully. “It will be full moon then. There is no time to ride through this place like a moonlight evening. It seems like fairyland then. The moonbeams make fairy ladders of the jessamine vines.”

“It must be beautiful,” said Starr dreamily. Then they rode for a few minutes in silence. They were coming to the end of the overarched avenue. Ahead of them the sunlight shone clearly like the opening of a great tunnel framed in living green. Suddenly Starr looked up gravely:

“I'm going to kiss you good-bye to-night when we go away,” she said softly; and touching her pony lightly with the whip rode out into the bright road; the boy, his heart leaping with joy, not far behind her.

Before supper Mr. Endicott had a talk with Michael that went further toward making the fatherless boy feel that he had someone belonging to him than anything that had happened yet.

“I think you have done enough for me, sir,” said Michael respectfully opening the conversation as Endicott came out to the porch where the boy was waiting for him. “I think I ought to begin to earn my own living. I'm old enough now—” and he held his head up proudly. “It's been very good of you all these years—I never can repay you. I hope you will let me pay the money back that you have spent on me, some day when, I can earn enough—”

Michael had been thinking this speech out ever since the president had told him of Endicott's expected visit, but somehow it did not sound as well to him when he said it as he had thought it would. It seemed the only right thing to do when he planned it, but in spite of him as he looked into Mr. Endicott's kind, keen eyes, his own fell in troubled silence. Had his words sounded ungrateful? Had he seen a hurt look in the man's eyes?

“Son,” said Endicott after a pause, and the word stirred the boy's heart strangely, “son, I owe you a debt you never can repay. You gave me back my little girl, flinging your own life into the chance as freely as if you had another on hand for use any minute. I take it that I have at least a father's right in you at any rate, and I mean to exercise it until you are twenty-one. You must finish a college course first. When will that be? Three years? They tell me you are doing well. The doctor wants to keep you here to teach after you have graduated, but I had thought perhaps you would like to come up to New York and have your chance. I'll give you a year or two in business, whatever seems to be your bent when you are through, and then we'll see. Which would you rather do? Or, perhaps you'd prefer to let your decision rest until the time comes.”

“I think I'm bound to go back to New York, sir,” said Michael lifting his head with that peculiar motion all his own, so like a challenge. “You know, sir, you said I was to be educated so that I might help my friends. I have learned of course that you meant it in a broader sense than just those few boys, for one can help people anywhere; but still I feel as if it wouldn't be right for me not to go back. I'm sure they'll expect me.”

Endicott shrugged his shoulders half admiringly.

“Loyal to your old friends still? Well, that's commendable, but still I fancy you'll scarcely find them congenial now. I wouldn't let them hang too closely about you. They might become a nuisance. You have your way to make in the world, you know.”

Michael looked at his benefactor with troubled brows. Somehow the tone of the man disturbed him.

“I promised,” he said simply. Because there had bean so little in his affections that promise had been cherished through the years, and meant much to Michael. It stood for Principle and Loyalty in general.

“Oh, well, keep your promise, of course,” said the man of the world easily. “I fancy you will find the discharge of it a mere form.”

A fellow student came across the campus.

“Endicott,” he called, “have you seen Hallowell go toward the village within a few minutes?”

“He just want, out the gate,” responded Michael pleasantly.

Mr. Endicott looked up surprised.

“Is that the name by which you are known?”

“Endicott? Yes, sir, Michael Endicott. Was it not by your wish? I supposed they had asked you. I had no other name that I knew.”

“Ah! I didn't know,” pondered Endicott.

There was silence for a moment.

“Would you,—shall I—do you dislike my having it?” asked the boy delicately sensitive at once.

But the man looked up with something like tenderness in his smile.

“Keep it, son. I like it. I wish I had a boy like you. It is an old name and a proud one. Be worthy of it.”

“I will try, sir,” said Michael, as if he were registering a vow.

There was an early supper for the guests and then Michael walked through another sunset to the station with Starr. He carried a small box carefully prepared in which reposed a tiny green and blue lizard for a parting gift. She had watched the lizards scuttling away under the board sidewalks at their approach, or coming suddenly to utter stillness, changing their brilliant colors to gray like the fence boards that they might not be observed. She was wonderfully interested in them, and was charmed with her gift. The particular lizard in question was one that Michael had trained to eat crumbs from his hand, and was quite tame.

The two said little as they walked along together. Each was feeling what a happy time they had spent in one another's company.

“I shall write and tell you how the lizard is,” said Starr laughing, “and you will tell me all about the funny and interesting things you are doing, won't you?”

“If—I may,” said Michael wistfully.

At the station a New York acquaintance of the Endicotts' invited them to ride in his private car which was on the side track waiting for the train to pick them up. Michael helped Starr up the steps, and carried the lizard into the car as well as the great sheaf of flowers she insisted on taking with her.

There were some ladies inside who welcomed Starr effusively; and Michael, suddenly abashed, laid down the flowers, lifted his cap and withdrew. A sudden blank had come upon him. Starr was absorbed by people from another world than his. He would have no opportunity to say good-bye—and she had promised— But then of course he ought not to expect her to do that. She had been very kind to him—