Ann Arbor Tales — Reading Notes

There was only one who seemed to see the end--Crowley--Houston's room-mate, nearest pal--as unlike him as white is unlike black, and therefore, perhaps, more fondly loving. It was because he loved him as he did that Crowley saw--saw the end as clearly as he saw the printed page before his eyes, and shuddered at the sight. He saw a brilliant mind dethroned; a splendid body ruined; a father killed with grief--and seeing, thus, he was glad that Houston's mother had passed away while he was yet a little, brown-eyed, red-cheeked boy.

His misgivings heavy upon his heart, he spoke of them to Florence. At first, her eyes glinted a cold harsh light, but as he talked on and on, fervently, passionately, that light went out, and another came that burned brighter, as he cried:

"Oh, can't something be done? _Something?_"

They walked on a way in silence, and then she said, quietly, as was her manner, always: "Do you think I could help?"

He seized her hand and she looked up into his eyes, smiling.

"Oh, if you could!" he cried; and then: "Would you try?" But before she could answer he flung down her hand saying: "But no, you couldn't; what was I thinking of!"

They were walking by the river to the east, where, on the right, the hill rose sheer--a tangle of vivid green--from the heart of which a spring leapt and tinkled over smooth, white pebbles, to lose itself again in the earth below, bubbling noisily.

At his expression, or, more at the tone he employed in its utterance, she shrank from him, and then, regardless of her steps, sped half-way up the hill, beside the spring course. There she flung herself upon a mossy plot, face down.

Crowley called to her from the road, but she did not answer; he went to her, and stooping touched her shoulder. Her whole body, prone before him, quivered. She was crying.

He talked to her a long time, there in the woodland, silence about them save for the calls of the birds.

She turned her wet eyes upon his face.

"Oh, to think every one doubts me!" she murmured. "You laughed at me when I asked you if I could help--you think I'm only a toy-like girl--a sort of great cat to be fondled always."

She seized a stick, broke it impetuously across her knee and rose before him.

"I will help!" she cried, "I will--and you'll see what I'll do!"

Afterward--long afterward--he remembered her, as she was that moment--her golden hair tumbling upon her shoulders; her eyes blazing, her glorious figure erect, her white hands clenched at her sides.

So it was Crowley--Jim Crowley the penitent, yet the sceptical--who brought them together, just as it was Crowley who waited, who counted the days, who watched.

From the walk he saw them on the tennis courts one evening a week later.

Unobserved he watched their movements; the girl's lithe, graceful; Houston's, strong, manly. He was serving and Crowley noted the swift sweep of his white arm, bare almost to the shoulder, and was thrilled. Florence had slipped the links in her sleeves and rolled her cuffs back to dimpled elbows and her forearms were brown from much golf.

Crowley approached the players after a moment and they joined him at the end of the net. The flush on the girl's face gave her beauty a radiance that he could not recall ever having noticed before. Usually Florence was marbly calm. Houston was warm, glowing.

"Gad, you're a fine pair; I've been watching you," Crowley blurted.

The girl shot him one swift glance, then her lips parted over her strong, white, even teeth, as she laughed.

"Aren't we?" she cried gaily--"just splendid----" And made a playful lunge at him with the raquet.

"Venus and Adonis playing tennis, eh?" Crowley said.

"Oh, cut it out," Houston exclaimed.

"They didn't play tennis, did they?" Florence asked.

"He ought to know," Houston put in, "he's working for that Rome scholarship--but he'll never get it any more than I shall the Athens...."

"They used to play hand ball--the gods did----" Crowley explained professorily. "And in a court, too. I suppose your tennis is merely a survival of that old Greek game."

The three sat at the edge of the court while Crowley discoursed learnedly upon the pastimes of the ancient Greeks. The deep throated bells in the Library Tower rang out the hour of eight across the maples and the amateur lecturer rose lazily.

"Do you want to go down town, Jack?" he asked indifferently.