his wife surrounded him. It would not be long now, he counseled with
himself, although the long months had brought him nothing, until he
should see her, talk to her. He fell asleep after a time, his head
on his knees. At midnight the moon began to rise, and at two in the
morning, his wakeful hour, was a large silver disk shining through the
trees to the east. He opened his eyes when the radiance became strong,
making a silver pattern at his feet and lighting the woods with strange
lusters and silvery, shadowy forms. As usual, his old notion that his
wife must be near occurred to him on this occasion, and he looked about
him with a speculative, anticipatory eye. What was it that moved in
the distant shadows along the path by which he had entered--a pale,
flickering will-o’-the-wisp that bobbed gracefully among the trees and
riveted his expectant gaze? Moonlight and shadows combined to give it
a strange form and a stranger reality, this fluttering of bog-fire
or dancing of wandering fire-flies. Was it truly his lost Phœbe? By
a circuitous route it passed about him, and in his fevered state he
fancied that he could see the very eyes of her, not as she was when he
last saw her in the black dress and shawl but now a strangely younger
Phœbe, gayer, sweeter, the one whom he had known years before as a
girl. Old Reifsneider got up. He had been expecting and dreaming of
this hour all these years, and now as he saw the feeble light dancing
lightly before him he peered at it questioningly, one thin hand in his
gray hair.
Of a sudden there came to him now for the first time in many years the
full charm of her girlish figure as he had known it in boyhood, the
pleasing, sympathetic smile, the brown hair, the blue sash she had
once worn about her waist at a picnic, her gay, graceful movements. He
walked around the base of the tree, straining with his eyes, forgetting
for once his cane and utensils, and following eagerly after. On she
moved before him, a will-o’-the-wisp of the spring, a little flame
above her head, and it seemed as though among the small saplings of ash
and beech and the thick trunks of hickory and elm that she signaled
with a young, a lightsome hand.
“O Phœbe! Phœbe!” he called. “Have yuh really come? Have yuh really
answered me?” And hurrying faster, he fell once, scrambling lamely to
his feet, only to see the light in the distance dancing illusively on.
On and on he hurried until he was fairly running, brushing his ragged
arms against the trees, striking his hands and face against impeding
twigs. His hat was gone, his lungs were breathless, his reason quite
astray, when coming to the edge of the cliff he saw her below among a
silvery bed of apple-trees now blooming in the spring.
“O Phœbe!” he called. “O Phœbe! Oh, no, don’t leave me!” And feeling
the lure of a world where love was young and Phœbe as this vision
presented her, a delightful epitome of their quondam youth, he gave a
gay cry of “Oh, wait, Phœbe!” and leaped.
Some farmer-boys, reconnoitering this region of bounty and prospect
some few days afterward, found first the tin utensils tied together
under the tree where he had left them, and then later at the foot
of the cliff, pale, broken, but elate, a molded smile of peace and
delight upon his lips, his body. His old hat was discovered lying under
some low-growing saplings the twigs of which had held it back. No one
of all the simple population knew how eagerly and joyously he had found
his lost mate.
THE SECOND CHOICE
SHIRLEY DEAR:
You don’t want the letters. There are only six of them, anyhow, and
think, they’re all I have of you to cheer me on my travels. What good
would they be to you--little bits of notes telling me you’re sure to
meet me--but me--think of me! If I send them to you, you’ll tear them
up, whereas if you leave them with me I can dab them with musk and
ambergris and keep them in a little silver box, always beside me.
Ah, Shirley dear, you really don’t know how sweet I think you are,
how dear! There isn’t a thing we have ever done together that isn’t
as clear in my mind as this great big skyscraper over the way here in
Pittsburgh, and far more pleasing. In fact, my thoughts of you are the
most precious and delicious things I have, Shirley.
But I’m too young to marry now. You know that, Shirley, don’t you? I
haven’t placed myself in any way yet, and I’m so restless that I don’t
know whether I ever will, really. Only yesterday, old Roxbaum--that’s
my new employer here--came to me and wanted to know if I would like an
assistant overseership on one of his coffee plantations in Java, said
there would not be much money in it for a year or two, a bare living,
but later there would be more--and I jumped at it. Just the thought
of Java and going there did that, although I knew I could make more
staying right here. Can’t you see how it is with me, Shirl? I’m too
restless and too young. I couldn’t take care of you right, and you
wouldn’t like me after a while if I didn’t.
But ah, Shirley sweet, I think the dearest things of you! There isn’t
an hour, it seems, but some little bit of you comes back--a dear,
sweet bit--the night we sat on the grass in Tregore Park and counted
the stars through the trees; that first evening at Sparrows Point
when we missed the last train and had to walk to Langley. Remember
the tree-toads, Shirl? And then that warm April Sunday in Atholby
woods! Ah, Shirl, you don’t want the six notes! Let me keep them. But
think of me, will you, sweet, wherever you go and whatever you do?
I’ll always think of you, and wish that you had met a better, saner
man than me, and that I really could have married you and been all
you wanted me to be. By-by, sweet. I may start for Java within the
month. If so, and you would want them, I’ll send you some cards from
there--if they have any.
Your worthless,
ARTHUR.
She sat and turned the letter in her hand, dumb with despair. It was
the very last letter she would ever get from him. Of that she was
certain. He was gone now, once and for all. She had written him only
once, not making an open plea but asking him to return her letters,
and then there had come this tender but evasive reply, saying nothing
of a possible return but desiring to keep her letters for old times’
sake--the happy hours they had spent together.
The happy hours! Oh, yes, yes, yes--the happy hours!
In her memory now, as she sat here in her home after the day’s work,
meditating on all that had been in the few short months since he had
come and gone, was a world of color and light--a color and a light so
transfiguring as to seem celestial, but now, alas, wholly dissipated.
It had contained so much of all she had desired--love, romance,
amusement, laughter. He had been so gay and thoughtless, or headstrong,
so youthfully romantic, and with such a love of play and change and to
be saying and doing anything and everything. Arthur could dance in a
gay way, whistle, sing after a fashion, play. He could play cards and
do tricks, and he had such a superior air, so genial and brisk, with a
kind of innate courtesy in it and yet an intolerance for slowness and
stodginess or anything dull or dingy, such as characterized---- But
here her thoughts fled from him. She refused to think of any one but
Arthur.
Sitting in her little bedroom now, off the parlor on the ground floor
in her home in Bethune Street, and looking out over the Kessels’ yard,
and beyond that--there being no fences in Bethune Street--over the
“yards” or lawns of the Pollards, Bakers, Cryders, and others, she
thought of how dull it must all have seemed to him, with his fine
imaginative mind and experiences, his love of change and gayety, his
atmosphere of something better than she had ever known. How little
she had been fitted, perhaps, by beauty or temperament to overcome
this--the something--dullness in her work or her home, which possibly
had driven him away. For, although many had admired her to date, and
she was young and pretty in her simple way and constantly receiving
suggestions that her beauty was disturbing to some, still, he had not
cared for her--he had gone.
And now, as she meditated, it seemed that this scene, and all that
it stood for--her parents, her work, her daily shuttling to and fro
between the drug company for which she worked and this street and
house--was typical of her life and what she was destined to endure
always. Some girls were so much more fortunate. They had fine clothes,
fine homes, a world of pleasure and opportunity in which to move. They
did not have to scrimp and save and work to pay their own way. And yet
she had always been compelled to do it, but had never complained until
now--or until he came, and after. Bethune Street, with its commonplace
front yards and houses nearly all alike, and this house, so like the
others, room for room and porch for porch, and her parents, too, really
like all the others, had seemed good enough, quite satisfactory,
indeed, until then. But now, now!
Here, in their kitchen, was her mother, a thin, pale, but kindly woman,
peeling potatoes and washing lettuce, and putting a bit of steak or
a chop or a piece of liver in a frying-pan day after day, morning
and evening, month after month, year after year. And next door was
Mrs. Kessel doing the same thing. And next door Mrs. Cryder. And next
door Mrs. Pollard. But, until now, she had not thought it so bad. But
now--now--oh! And on all the porches or lawns all along this street
were the husbands and fathers, mostly middle-aged or old men like her
father, reading their papers or cutting the grass before dinner, or
smoking and meditating afterward. Her father was out in front now,
a stooped, forbearing, meditative soul, who had rarely anything to
say--leaving it all to his wife, her mother, but who was fond of her
in his dull, quiet way. He was a pattern-maker by trade, and had come
into possession of this small, ordinary home via years of toil and
saving, her mother helping him. They had no particular religion, as he
often said, thinking reasonably human conduct a sufficient passport to
heaven, but they had gone occasionally to the Methodist Church over in
Nicholas Street, and she had once joined it. But of late she had not
gone, weaned away by the other commonplace pleasures of her world.
And then in the midst of it, the dull drift of things, as she now
saw them to be, he had come--Arthur Bristow--young, energetic,
good-looking, ambitious, dreamful, and instanter, and with her never
knowing quite how, the whole thing had been changed. He had appeared so
swiftly--out of nothing, as it were.
Previous to him had been Barton Williams, stout, phlegmatic,
good-natured, well-meaning, who was, or had been before Arthur came,
asking her to marry him, and whom she allowed to half assume that she
would. She had liked him in a feeble, albeit, as she thought, tender
way, thinking him the kind, according to the logic of her neighborhood,
who would make her a good husband, and, until Arthur appeared on
the scene, had really intended to marry him. It was not really a
love-match, as she saw now, but she thought it was, which was much the
same thing, perhaps. But, as she now recalled, when Arthur came, how
the scales fell from her eyes! In a trice, as it were, nearly, there
was a new heaven and a new earth. Arthur had arrived, and with him a
sense of something different.
Mabel Gove had asked her to come over to her house in Westleigh, the
adjoining suburb, for Thanksgiving eve and day, and without a thought
of anything, and because Barton was busy handling a part of the work
in the despatcher’s office of the Great Eastern and could not see her,
she had gone. And then, to her surprise and strange, almost ineffable
delight, the moment she had seen him, he was there--Arthur, with his
slim, straight figure and dark hair and eyes and clean-cut features,
as clean and attractive as those of a coin. And as he had looked at
her and smiled and narrated humorous bits of things that had happened
to him, something had come over her--a spell--and after dinner they
had all gone round to Edith Barringer’s to dance, and there as she had
danced with him, somehow, without any seeming boldness on his part, he
had taken possession of her, as it were, drawn her close, and told her
she had beautiful eyes and hair and such a delicately rounded chin, and
that he thought she danced gracefully and was sweet. She had nearly
fainted with delight.
“Do you like me?” he had asked in one place in the dance, and, in spite
of herself, she had looked up into his eyes, and from that moment she
was almost mad over him, could think of nothing else but his hair and
eyes and his smile and his graceful figure.
Mabel Gove had seen it all, in spite of her determination that no one
should, and on their going to bed later, back at Mabel’s home, she had
whispered:
“Ah, Shirley, I saw. You like Arthur, don’t you?”
“I think he’s very nice,” Shirley recalled replying, for Mabel knew of
her affair with Barton and liked him, “but I’m not crazy over him.” And
for this bit of treason she had sighed in her dreams nearly all night.
And the next day, true to a request and a promise made by him, Arthur
had called again at Mabel’s to take her and Mabel to a “movie” which
was not so far away, and from there they had gone to an ice-cream
parlor, and during it all, when Mabel was not looking, he had squeezed
her arm and hand and kissed her neck, and she had held her breath, and
her heart had seemed to stop.
“And now you’re going to let me come out to your place to see you,
aren’t you?” he had whispered.
And she had replied, “Wednesday evening,” and then written the address
on a little piece of paper and given it to him.
But now it was all gone, gone!
This house, which now looked so dreary--how romantic it had seemed that
first night _he_ called--the front room with its commonplace furniture,
and later in the spring, the veranda, with its vines just sprouting,
and the moon in May. Oh, the moon in May, and June and July, when he
was here! How she had lied to Barton to make evenings for Arthur, and
occasionally to Arthur to keep him from contact with Barton. She had
not even mentioned Barton to Arthur because--because--well, because
Arthur was so much better, and somehow (she admitted it to herself
now) she had not been sure that Arthur would care for her long, if at
all, and then--well, and then, to be quite frank, Barton might be good
enough. She did not exactly hate him because she had found Arthur--not
at all. She still liked him in a way--he was so kind and faithful, so
very dull and straightforward and thoughtful of her, which Arthur was
certainly not. Before Arthur had appeared, as she well remembered,
Barton had seemed to be plenty good enough--in fact, all that she
desired in a pleasant, companionable way, calling for her, taking her
places, bringing her flowers and candy, which Arthur rarely did, and
for that, if nothing more, she could not help continuing to like him
and to feel sorry for him, and, besides, as she had admitted to herself
before, if Arthur left her-- * * * * * Weren’t his parents better off
than hers--and hadn’t he a good position for such a man as he--one
hundred and fifty dollars a month and the certainty of more later on?
A little while before meeting Arthur, she had thought this very good,
enough for two to live on at least, and she had thought some of trying
it at some time or other--but now--now----
And that first night he had called--how well she remembered it--how it
had transfigured the parlor next this in which she was now, filling it
with something it had never had before, and the porch outside, too,
for that matter, with its gaunt, leafless vine, and this street, too,
even--dull, commonplace Bethune Street. There had been a flurry of snow
during the afternoon while she was working at the store, and the ground
was white with it. All the neighboring homes seemed to look sweeter
and happier and more inviting than ever they had as she came past
them, with their lights peeping from under curtains and drawn shades.
She had hurried into hers and lighted the big red-shaded parlor lamp,
her one artistic treasure, as she thought, and put it near the piano,
between it and the window, and arranged the chairs, and then bustled to
the task of making herself as pleasing as she might. For him she had
gotten out her one best filmy house dress and done up her hair in the
fashion she thought most becoming--and that he had not seen before--and
powdered her cheeks and nose and darkened her eyelashes, as some of
the girls at the store did, and put on her new gray satin slippers, and
then, being so arrayed, waited nervously, unable to eat anything or to
think of anything but him.
And at last, just when she had begun to think he might not be coming,
he had appeared with that arch smile and a “Hello! It’s here you live,
is it? I was wondering. George, but you’re twice as sweet as I thought
you were, aren’t you?” And then, in the little entryway, behind the
closed door, he had held her and kissed her on the mouth a dozen times
while she pretended to push against his coat and struggle and say that
her parents might hear.
And, oh, the room afterward, with him in it in the red glow of the
lamp, and with his pale handsome face made handsomer thereby, as she
thought! He had made her sit near him and had held her hands and told
her about his work and his dreams--all that he expected to do in the
future--and then she had found herself wishing intensely to share just
such a life--his life--anything that he might wish to do; only, she
kept wondering, with a slight pain, whether he would want her to--he
was so young, dreamful, ambitious, much younger and more dreamful than
herself, although, in reality, he was several years older.
And then followed that glorious period from December to this late
September, in which everything which was worth happening in love had
happened. Oh, those wondrous days the following spring, when, with
the first burst of buds and leaves, he had taken her one Sunday to
Atholby, where all the great woods were, and they had hunted spring
beauties in the grass, and sat on a slope and looked at the river
below and watched some boys fixing up a sailboat and setting forth in
it quite as she wished she and Arthur might be doing--going somewhere
together--far, far away from all commonplace things and life! And then
he had slipped his arm about her and kissed her cheek and neck, and
tweaked her ear and smoothed her hair--and oh, there on the grass,
with the spring flowers about her and a canopy of small green leaves
above, the perfection of love had come--love so wonderful that the mere
thought of it made her eyes brim now! And then had been days, Saturday
afternoons and Sundays, at Atholby and Sparrows Point, where the great
beach was, and in lovely Tregore Park, a mile or two from her home,
where they could go of an evening and sit in or near the pavilion and
have ice-cream and dance or watch the dancers. Oh, the stars, the
winds, the summer breath of those days! Ah, me! Ah, me!
Naturally, her parents had wondered from the first about her and
Arthur, and her and Barton, since Barton had already assumed a
proprietary interest in her and she had seemed to like him. But then
she was an only child and a pet, and used to presuming on that, and
they could not think of saying anything to her. After all, she was
young and pretty and was entitled to change her mind; only, only--she
had had to indulge in a career of lying and subterfuge in connection
with Barton, since Arthur was headstrong and wanted every evening that
he chose--to call for her at the store and keep her down-town to dinner
and a show.
Arthur had never been like Barton, shy, phlegmatic, obedient, waiting
long and patiently for each little favor, but, instead, masterful and
eager, rifling her of kisses and caresses and every delight of love,
and teasing and playing with her as a cat would a mouse. She could
never resist him. He demanded of her her time and her affection without
let or hindrance. He was not exactly selfish or cruel, as some might
have been, but gay and unthinking at times, unconsciously so, and yet
loving and tender at others--nearly always so. But always he would talk
of things in the future as if they really did not include her--and this
troubled her greatly--of places he might go, things he might do, which,
somehow, he seemed to think or assume that she could not or would not
do with him. He was always going to Australia sometime, he thought,
in a business way, or to South Africa, or possibly to India. He never
seemed to have any fixed clear future for himself in mind.
A dreadful sense of helplessness and of impending disaster came over
her at these times, of being involved in some predicament over which
she had no control, and which would lead her on to some sad end.
Arthur, although plainly in love, as she thought, and apparently
delighted with her, might not always love her. She began, timidly
at first (and always, for that matter), to ask him pretty, seeking
questions about himself and her, whether their future was certain to
be together, whether he really wanted her--loved her--whether he might
not want to marry some one else or just her, and whether she wouldn’t
look nice in a pearl satin wedding-dress with a long creamy veil and
satin slippers and a bouquet of bridal-wreath. She had been so slowly
but surely saving to that end, even before he came, in connection
with Barton; only, after _he_ came, all thought of the import of it
had been transferred to him. But now, also, she was beginning to ask
herself sadly, “Would it ever be?” He was so airy, so inconsequential,
so ready to say: “Yes, yes,” and “Sure, sure! That’s right! Yes,
indeedy; you bet! Say, kiddie, but you’ll look sweet!” but, somehow,
it had always seemed as if this whole thing were a glorious interlude
and that it could not last. Arthur was too gay and ethereal and too
little settled in his own mind. His ideas of travel and living in
different cities, finally winding up in New York or San Francisco, but
never with her exactly until she asked him, was too ominous, although
he always reassured her gaily: “Of course! Of course!” But somehow she
could never believe it really, and it made her intensely sad at times,
horribly gloomy. So often she wanted to cry, and she could scarcely
tell why.
And then, because of her intense affection for him, she had finally
quarreled with Barton, or nearly that, if one could say that one ever
really quarreled with him. It had been because of a certain Thursday
evening a few weeks before about which she had disappointed him. In
a fit of generosity, knowing that Arthur was coming Wednesday, and
because Barton had stopped in at the store to see her, she had told him
that he might come, having regretted it afterward, so enamored was she
of Arthur. And then when Wednesday came, Arthur had changed his mind,
telling her he would come Friday instead, but on Thursday evening he
had stopped in at the store and asked her to go to Sparrows Point, with
the result that she had no time to notify Barton. He had gone to the
house and sat with her parents until ten-thirty, and then, a few days
later, although she had written him offering an excuse, had called at
the store to complain slightly.
“Do you think you did just right, Shirley? You might have sent word,
mightn’t you? Who was it--the new fellow you won’t tell me about?”
Shirley flared on the instant.
“Supposing it was? What’s it to you? I don’t belong to you yet, do
I? I told you there wasn’t any one, and I wish you’d let me alone
about that. I couldn’t help it last Thursday--that’s all--and I don’t
want you to be fussing with me--that’s all. If you don’t want to, you
needn’t come any more, anyhow.”
“Don’t say that, Shirley,” pleaded Barton. “You don’t mean that. I
won’t bother you, though, if you don’t want me any more.”
And because Shirley sulked, not knowing what else to do, he had gone
and she had not seen him since.
And then sometime later when she had thus broken with Barton, avoiding
the railway station where he worked, Arthur had failed to come at his
appointed time, sending no word until the next day, when a note came to
the store saying that he had been out of town for his firm over Sunday
and had not been able to notify her, but that he would call Tuesday.
It was an awful blow. At the time, Shirley had a vision of what was to
follow. It seemed for the moment as if the whole world had suddenly
been reduced to ashes, that there was nothing but black charred cinders
anywhere--she felt that about all life. Yet it all came to her clearly
then that this was but the beginning of just such days and just such
excuses, and that soon, soon, he would come no more. He was beginning
to be tired of her and soon he would not even make excuses. She felt
it, and it froze and terrified her.
And then, soon after, the indifference which she feared did
follow--almost created by her own thoughts, as it were. First, it
was a meeting he had to attend somewhere one Wednesday night when he
was to have come for her. Then he was going out of town again, over
Sunday. Then he was going away for a whole week--it was absolutely
unavoidable, he said, his commercial duties were increasing--and once
he had casually remarked that nothing could stand in the way where
she was concerned--never! She did not think of reproaching him with
this; she was too proud. If he was going, he must go. She would not be
willing to say to herself that she had ever attempted to hold any man.
But, just the same, she was agonized by the thought. When he was with
her, he seemed tender enough; only, at times, his eyes wandered and he
seemed slightly bored. Other girls, particularly pretty ones, seemed to
interest him as much as she did.