THE LETTER THAT NEVER CAME.
"Write me a letter, my dear old friend,
I love you more and more,
As farther apart we drift, dear heart,
And nearer the other shore.
The dear old loves and the dear old days
Are a balm to life's regret;
It's easy to bear the worry and care
If the old friends love us yet."
Yes, pretty Geraldine, piqued and unhappy over her cruel disappointment
in love, had joined the Clemens Company, the manager of which was also
one of the actors--Cameron Clemens. He played the clever villain in
"Hearts and Homes," his special play, while Clifford Standish took the
hero's part.
Geraldine threw her whole heart into her work, and succeeded so well
that she was promoted in a week, owing to the illness and withdrawal
of the second lady from the company. It was the part of an _ingenue_,
which just suited Geraldine's youth and _naivette_. She could act it to
perfection without laying aside her pretty naturalness of manner.
They traveled from town to town, staying just a night or two in each
place, usually drawing full houses, and Geraldine proved a great
attraction, winning always so much admiration that it was a wonder her
pretty little head was not turned by flattery.
It might have been had not her heart been so sore over its brief,
broken love-dream.
To have known a man but two brief, bright, happy days, and not be able
to forget him, it was absurd, she thought, in desperate rebellion
against her own heart.
And yet, through the busy weeks of travel, study, and acting, Harry
Hawthorne's image staid in her mind, and his voice rang through her
dreams, sweet and low and tender as it had always been to her whenever
he spoke.
In her waking hours she knew him light and false; in her dreams he was
always tender and true, and inexpressibly dear.
"Last night in my deep sleep I dreamed of you--
Again the old love woke in me and thrived
On looks of fire, on kisses, and sweet words
Like silver waters purling in a stream--
A dream--a dream!"
Through all the changing days in which the silent struggle against a
hopeless love went on in her young heart, Clifford Standish was ever
near, patient, tender, devoted, telling her with his yearning eyes the
love she was not ready to listen to yet.
And in spite of herself, Geraldine found a subtle comfort in his
devotion.
It was a balm of healing to her proud heart, so deeply wounded by Harry
Hawthorne's trifling.
Many hearts have been caught in the rebound in this fashion, many true
loves won.
True, there are many proud ones who do not prize a love they can only
have because it has been scornfully refused by another.
They will say, resentfully:
"I will not accept a love that is given me only because it was left by
one who did not prize it."
Others, more humble, will gladly accept the grateful love of a wounded
heart that finds consolation in their tenderness.
Clifford Standish, madly in love with Geraldine, was glad to accept
such crumbs of love as might fall to him from the royal feast that had
been spread for Harry Hawthorne.
So he hovered by her side, he paid her the most delicate attentions,
anticipating every wish, and found ample reward as he saw himself
gaining in her grateful regard.
At the same time the arch-traitor was intercepting the few letters that
came to her, and the ones she wrote to Miss Carroll.
For Geraldine had long ago gotten over her pet with her friend, since
she know in her heart how dear she was to Cissy, and that the girl had
advised her for her own good.
Geraldine had found out that the career of an actress--even a young,
pretty, and popular one--is not always strewn with roses.
She had to study hard, and she did not enjoy traveling all day, or
even half a day, and then appearing on the boards at night. Sometimes
the hotel accommodations of country towns where they stopped over were
wretchedly indifferent. Sometimes her head ached miserably, but she
must appear on the boards, all the same. And the free-and-easy ways of
some of the company did not please the fastidious taste of the girl.
Now and then she found her thoughts returning to the old days behind
the counter at O'Neill's with Cissy and the other girls, with an almost
pathetic yearning. Secretly she longed to be back again.
How she wished that Cissy would write to her now, and beg her to
return, so that she might have an excuse for following the dictates of
her heart.
At last, believing that Cissy was too proud and stubborn to write
first, she penned her a long, affectionate letter, through which
breathed an underline of repentance and regret that her chum would be
sure to answer it by writing:
"Come home, dear. I told you that you would get sick of being an
actress."
But Geraldine was too weary and heart-sick to care for a hundred
"I-told-you-so's" from the triumphant Cissy. What did it matter so that
she got back to her dear old chum again and their cozy little rooms,
and even to what she had once called her slavery behind the counter.
She recalled what Harry Hawthorne had told her about it being a slavery
of the stage, too; then put the thought from her with an impatient sigh.
"What do I care what he said about it?" indignantly, then sighing,
"even though I have found it to be, alas, too true!"
She wrote her letter to Cissy, and after that her heart felt lighter.
She knew her chum would be glad to get the letter--glad to have her
back.
"Dear, I tried to write you such a letter
As would tell you all my heart to-day.
Written Love is poor; one word were better!
Easier, too, a thousand times to say.
"I can tell you all; fears, doubts unheeding,
While I can be near you, hold your hand,
Looking right into your eyes and reading
Reassurance that you understand.
"Yet I wrote it through, then lingered, thinking
Of its reaching you what hour, what day,
Till I felt my heart and courage sinking
With a strange, new, wondering dismay.
"'Will my letter fall,' I wondered, sadly,
'On her mood like some discordant tone,
Or be welcomed tenderly and gladly?
Will she be with others, or alone?
"It may find her too absorbed to read it,
Save with hurried glance and careless air;
Sad and weary, she may scarcely heed it;
Gay and happy, she may hardly care.
"If perhaps now, while my tears are falling,
She is dreaming quietly alone,
She will hear my love's far echo calling,
Feel my spirit drawing near her own.
"Wondering at the strange, mysterious power
That has touched her heart, then she will say:
'Some one whom I love this very hour
Thinks of me, and loves me far away.'"
Poor Geraldine! what a hopeless waiting she had for the letter that
never came!
How could he bear the wistful light in her sad brown eyes, the wretch
who had robbed her young life of happiness?
In his keeping rested the letters of the two fond girls to each
other--the letters that would have brought happiness to three sad
hearts.
And the weeks slipped into months while they echoed in their souls the
poet's plaint:
"The solemn Sea of Silence lies between us;
I know thou livest and thou lovest me;
And yet I wish some white ship would come sailing
Across the ocean bearing news of thee.
"The dead calm awes me with its awful stillness,
And anxious doubts and fears disturb my breast.
I only ask some little wave of language
To stir this vast infinitude of rest.
"Too deep the language which the spirit utters;
Too vast the knowledge which my soul hath stirred.
Send some white ship across the Sea of Silence,
And interrupt its utterance with a word."
It was two months now since they had gone upon the road, but not a
word had Geraldine received. It seemed to her as if the past days were
a dream, so different was her life now--all whirl, confusion, and
excitement.
Once she had thought this would be charming. Now she found it the
reverse.
How glad she was to hear that the company would go back to New York in
time for Christmas. She was so tired of the West, where they had been
all these weeks.
When they were on their homeward way, they stopped over for a night at
a pretty West Virginia town a few hundred miles from New York.
They had come straight through from Chicago, and the stop-over was very
agreeable to the weary members of the company.
They arrived in the afternoon, and the tired travelers, after resting a
while at their romantic hotel on the banks of the beautiful Greenbrier
River, set out to explore the little town of Alderson, first hurrying
to the post-office for their letters, which they expected to be
awaiting them there.
Geraldine did not expect any mail, poor girl! She waited at the door
while Clifford Standish went in and came out with a little budget for
himself.
"Nothing for you, Geraldine. It seems that Miss Carroll is still
unforgiving," he laughed, without noting the sensitive quiver of her
scarlet lips.
They walked on, and she pretended to be absorbed in contemplation of
the beautiful mountain scenery, while he ran over his letters.
"Let us cross the railroad and walk on the bridge over there," she
said, at last.
It was a beautiful sunny day, very calm and mild for December. They
loitered on the broad bridge that spanned the romantic river between
the two towns, Alderson and North Alderson, and while she watched the
lapsing river and the mountain peaks against the clear blue sky, he
read to her bits of his letters from New York.
"Here's one that will interest you," he laughed, meaningly, and read:
"'Well, old fellow, there's nothing that I know in the way of
interesting news just now, unless that a girl you used to be sweet on
is going to be married to-morrow. It's little Daisy Odell, you know,
of Newburgh. She's been visiting a married sister here, and caught a
beau. He's a fireman named Harry Hawthorne, a big, handsome fellow,
the hero of several fires. The marriage will take place at Mrs.
Stansbury's, and I've an invitation to it.'"
He looked from the letter to her face, and saw that she was deadly pale
and grief-stricken.
"Oh, will you let me read that for myself?" she gasped, as if she could
scarcely believe him.
"Why, certainly," he answered, but as he was handing her the crumpled
sheet, the wind caught it somehow, and fluttered it beyond reach over
the rail and down into the river.
"Oh! oh! oh!" he cried, with pretended dismay, but his outstretched
hand could not grasp it.
"It's gone; but no matter--the news must be true, for Charlie Butler
wrote it, and he always tells the truth," he said, carelessly.
And how was the unsuspecting girl to know that no such words were
written in the letter, and that it was from a woman, instead of Charlie
Butler?