A Private Chivalry by Francis Lynde

TIME was, and is no more, when invalids, hopeful and hopeless, thronged the eastern foothills of the Rockies till there was no longer houseroom for them in the cities, and a new word "lunger" was grafted upon the exuberant stock of Western folk speech to distinguish them. Unlike the pioneers of a still earlier day, who crossed the plains with their worldly possessions snugly sheltered beneath the canvas tilt of a single prairie schooner, these migrants for health's sake were chiefly of the class which neither toils nor spins, and to the foothill cities they presently added suburbs architecturally characteristic each after its kind. In these suburbs the trim-built town house of New England is the commonest type, but the more florid style of the middle West is not lacking, and now and then, in the roomier city fringe, there are replicas done in red brick of the low-storied, wide-verandaed country house of the South.

Such was the home of the Langfords in the Highlands of North Denver. Driven from the ancestral acres in the blue-grass region of Tennessee in the late afternoon of his life, the judge had determined to make the new home in the life-giving altitudes as nearly like the old as money and the materials at hand would compass, and he had succeeded passing well. He had bought acres where others bought lots, and the great roomy house, with its low-pitched roof and wide verandas on three sides, stood in the midst of whatsoever Tennessee greenery would stand transplantation from the blue-grass region to the less genial climate of the clear-skied altitudes.

On pleasant Sunday afternoons, when Dorothy was at her mission school and the judge slept peacefully in his own particular chair, when Mrs. Langford followed her husband's example in the privacy of her room, and Will was no one ever knew just where, the hammock slung at the corner of the veranda which commanded a view of the mountains was Isabel's especial convenience. For one reason, there was the view; for another, the hammock swung opposite that portion of the low railing which was Harry Antrim's favourite perch during the hour or two which measured his customary Sunday afternoon visit.

Being very much in love with Isabel, Antrim was quite willing to turn his back upon the scenery for the sake of looking at her. And as between a winsome young woman swinging in a hammock -- a young woman with laughing brown eyes and a profusion of glory-tinted hair framing a face to which piquancy and youthful beauty lent equal charms -- who but a scenery-mad pilgrim of the excursion trains would think of making a comparison?

In these Sunday afternoon talks Isabel could be abstract or concrete as occasion demanded. What time the young man dwelt overmuch on railway matters, she found it convenient to be able to look over his shoulder at the mighty panorama unrolled and unrolling itself in endless transformation scenes against the western horizon. And when Antrim, finding himself ignored, would come back from things practical to things personal, she had but to close her eyes to the scenic background and to open them again upon the personality of her companion.

Conceding nothing to what he was pleased to call her artistic fad, Antrim was willing to condone Isabel's indifference to railway affairs. His business was a part, the greater part, of his life, but he could understand why Judge Langford's daughter, as such, might easily weary of railway shop talk. True, there had been more or less of it all along in the old days in Tennessee, when the judge was counsel for the railway company of which Antrim's father was the superintendent; but that was because the Langfords and Antrims dwelt side by side and were friends as well as neighbours. Here in Colorado it was different. The judge was an invalid -- a migrant for health's sake, with gear sufficient to make him independent of railway counsellorships, and with little left of his former connection save a pocketful of annual passes and a warm affection for the son of his old friend the superintendent.

None the less, Antrim thought that Isabel might bear with him now and then, if only for the reason that she would at some time begin to eat the bread and meat of railway service and so continue to the end of the chapter. This, indeed, he had the temerity to say to her one Sunday afternoon some weeks after his return from the exile of division duty at Voltamo. By which it will be seen that Antrim was a very young man, and as yet no more than a novice in the fine art of love-making.

"I do take an interest in your affairs, Harry; you know I do. I am glad to see you succeeding in something you really like. But I wish" -- she stopped, and let her gaze go beyond him -- "I wish you wouldn't always talk as if -- " She paused again, and Antrim finished the protest for her:

"As if my prospects and your future were one and the same thing, you mean?"

"Yes; it stirs me up and makes me feel resentful. I know I can't paint very much yet, but that is no reason why I shouldn't attain by and by, is it?"

"None in the world. It's only when you side-track me for art that I get restive. No man could be patient under that. Besides, you are never going to be a bachelor of art; you are going to be married to me, and then you can paint for fun as much as you like."

Isabel's retort was emphasized by a piquant little grimace of defiance:

"That is what you have been telling me ever since I can remember. I didn't mind it so much in the boy and girl stage; but when you say such things now, it only makes it more than ever impossible."

"Why does it?"

"Because it shows that you still cling to the idea that my love for art is nothing but a schoolgirl fad. It isn't anything of the kind; and you and father and all the rest of them ought to know it by this time."

"Oh, pshaw! " said Antrim, relapsing into disgusted silence.