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BASIL EVERMAN

CHAPTER I THE SHADOW ON A BRIGHT DAY

Richard Lister's mother stood at the head of the stairs and called a little impatiently. She was a large, middle-aged woman who looked older than she was in the black silk dress and bonnet with strings which was the church- and party-going costume of women of her years and time. Middle age had not yet begun to dress in light colors and flowery hats like youth.

When, above the sound of a tinkling piano, a young voice answered, "I'm coming!" she returned to her room, without expecting, however, that Richard would keep his promise at once.

Walton College, on whose campus Mrs. Lister lived, of which her husband was president, and from which her only son was being graduated to-day, had not yet dreamed of being a "greater Walton." Satisfied with its own modest aims, it had not opened its eyes to that "wider vision" of religion and education and "service" which was to be loudly proclaimed by the next generation. Even games with other colleges were as yet unheard of; the students were still kept at their books and it was expected of them that they learn their lessons. Each was required to deliver an oration on Commencement Day, the first speaker saluting in old-fashioned English pronunciation Auditores, Curatores, Professores, and Comites, and making humorous allusions to puellæ. Only in admitting the daughters of the professors, and once an ambitious girl from the village, was the college a little ahead of its own times.

Waltonville, like its college, belonged to an order which was elsewhere passing. Lying a little north of Mason and Dixon's line, it resembled in many pleasant ways a Southern town. The broad streets were quiet and thickly shaded and the houses were plainly built of red brick with noble white pillars. The young people gathered in the twilight and talked and sang; occasionally a group of students lifted their voices in Integer Vitæ or "There's Music in the Air"; and those citizens who lived near the campus could hear a chanted "bonus-a-um" or "amo-amas-amat" from the room of the Latin professor, who was a stern drillmaster. Otherwise the village was as quiet as the country.

The Civil War was still the chief topic of discussion among the older men. Dr. Lister, Dr. Scott, who was the teacher of English—Waltonville was careful about titles—and Dr. Green, the village physician, met many times in the long vacation and talked about Grant and Sherman and Lee. Dr. Lister had served a brief term at the end of the war; Dr. Scott had been too young to enlist, but had lost father and brothers; Dr. Green, who was still younger, had had no personal experience of war, nor, so far as any one knew, of its losses.

Of Dr. Green, Waltonville knew comparatively little. Mrs. Lister remembered his single year at the college, whither he had come, self-prepared, to enter the senior class. An unexpected legacy had given him the opportunity, passionately desired and as passionately despaired of, of studying medicine. He was older than the other students, a tall, dark, quiet man who allowed himself no diversions, who belonged to no fraternities, and who cared nothing apparently for girls. His companions knew, however, that he was not always silent. He burst occasionally into fierce and eloquent harangues, condemning and scorning those who wasted their time in idleness or love-making. His successful efforts to educate himself gave him an air of authority. The students knew also that he went now and then, as many of them did, to see Margie Ginter, the daughter of the hotel-keeper, but they believed that he went merely to be amused by her bad grammar, and that for him her round figure, her childish mouth, and the touches of her pretty hand on arm or knee had no temptation. When the Ginters left, Margie sent back to him letters with misspelled addresses which the students did not believe he answered.

After being entirely lost to the view of Waltonville, Green returned. He had become a physician, but the four years of preparation had lengthened to six, during which he had changed into a weary and disappointed man. He had come, he explained, to see old Dr. Percy, now retiring from his practice, and offering the good-will of his business for sale. He had hoped that Dr. Everman would recommend him and that others would remember him. When he heard that Dr. Everman had died, he expressed to Mrs. Lister so hearty an admiration for her imposing and learned father and so unfeigned a regret that he was gone, that he won at once her valuable support. It was not long before he ceased to look like a beaten man, his thin frame filled out, he walked briskly, and began to exhibit some of the scolding eloquence of his college days.

In Waltonville class distinctions continued. The college people, the clergymen, Dr. Green, and the lawyers who attended a sleepy court in April and August, made up one class; all other white persons another. The servants were negroes who lived in low, neat cabins along a grassy lane which bounded the town on its eastern side. Waltonville had never been a slave-holding community, but some of the older negroes had been attached to the same family for several generations. 'Manda Gates, Mrs. Lister's cook, had served her mother, and Miss Thomasina Davis's 'Melia had held her in her arms the day she was born.

There was neither strife nor envy between Waltonville's classes. Mrs. Lister respected Mr. Underwood, the storekeeper, but did not invite him to dinner, and Mrs. Underwood would have been greatly disturbed at the prospect of entertaining Mrs. Lister.

The old house, in whose exact center Mrs. Lister stood when she called Richard, had been built sixty years earlier for her father, President Richard Everman, and had descended to his son-in-law and successor. It was a broad, pleasant house with high ceilings and with woodwork of solid oak. One side of the first floor was divided into library and sitting-room and the other into dim, long double parlors. Dining-room and kitchen were in a wing at the back.

On a level with Mrs. Lister the bedrooms opened each with an elaborately dressed and inviting bed, dim in the pleasant light which filtered in through bowed shutters. Above in the third story were other bedrooms and a large, otherwise empty attic in which stood the reservoir which held the supply of water for the house. As a little girl, she had come with her two companions, her brother Basil and Thomasina Davis, to steal short peeps at the tank in which they could easily have been drowned. She was the only one of the three who was really afraid. Thomasina insisted upon running boldly into the room and little Basil was found afterwards there alone. Basil's desire to investigate was always keener than his fear of danger.

Having waited for ten minutes, Mrs. Lister now returned to her post in the hall, and raised her voice in three successive calls. At the last impatient summons, the piano in the parlor ceased its clangor with a series of great chords, rolling under a fine, clear touch from the lowest of the yellowed keys to the uppermost treble. In the bass the tones were indescribably mournful, as though the aged instrument cried out in pain under the strong fingers of youth; in the treble they sounded a light cackle, half childish, half senile, like the laughter of an old man. The piano, bought years ago for Basil, resembled an old man in many ways; its teeth were yellow, it creaked as though rheumatism had taken a permanent abode in its joints, and it was swathed in a covering of warm red felt. Though it was the only object in Mrs. Lister's house which was not exactly