followed him into the room where the girl lay, high in fever. "I
couldn't leave her alone, to get the doctor, but now you can
go----" Something in Walling's manner stopped him. "I'll go, and
you can stay with her. Are you on Firefly? I'll take him. It'll be
quicker." Before Walling could think what to say, the boy was gone.
He went to call him back. The girl moaned. What could he do? He
couldn't refuse this duty fallen on him from the sky, even if the
girl were a stranger; and this was the woman he loved, ... but she
was dying.
"Dick!... Oh, Dick!... Dick!..." The voice from the bed startled
him. He went softly over to see what she wanted. In her eyes there
was no recognition: she had spoken in delirium.
She loved him! But the rush of joy was swept away by the sight of
her suffering. He bathed her face and hands. By and by the fever
seemed less. She passed into a light sleep.
He made some coffee. While he drank it he had time to think of
himself. When the doctor came from Monterey.... The doctor would
know, and....
"I must clear out when I hear them coming." Then another thought
forced its way in: "Go now, while you've still a good lead. Go now!"
He went to the stable, saddled a horse, and led him out. Then the
face of the girl came over him. He left the horse tied to the gate,
and went back. She was sleeping still, but brokenly. He couldn't go.
It was a two hours' ride to Parl's, where the boy could 'phone....
If the doctor left Monterey immediately, he'd get to the house about
five. It was now nearly two.
The girl slept. Walling knew it was the critical time. If she woke
better, she would probably recover. The thought was sweet to him. If
she went again into delirium.... He sat still, thinking. The hours
passed very slowly.
Suddenly Walling heard a step outside. He had heard no horse coming.
He looked out cautiously and saw four men with rifles. Walling
cocked his revolver, took down the boy's rifle from the wall and
loaded it. He could account for some--and those who were left might
depart. It would be a battle, anyway. There was no use being taken
alive. Better be shot than hanged.
The leader made a signal. Walling raised his gun. And then--Mary
stirred. Her battle, like his, was still undecided. If she slept on,
and woke refreshed, she would get well. If not....
Walling laid down his rifle and stepped outside. The men covered
him. As he was taken down the road to the waiting horses, the doctor
and the girl's brother drove up.
"She's asleep," said Walling.
The boy showed no surprise--he had heard the story from the
doctor--but his voice was pitiful:
"Why didn't you?... I didn't know.... Oh, my God! ... and you
stayed ... when you could have got away!" He turned to the men with
a hopeless look. "It's my fault!" he cried. "He stayed with my
sister. I thought she was dying. He didn't tell me he _couldn't_
stay! He'd be safe in the mountains by now.... Oh, my God!"
The leader glanced at his companions. They were stern men, but they
were moving uneasily. The situation was unbearable.
"How long have you been here?"
"Since about midnight," answered Walling, though he couldn't see
what difference it made. The leader took out his watch.
"Twelve minutes past five now. Say, we've been twelve minutes
getting you, that leaves five hours. We'll stay here and rest our
horses. At twelve minutes past ten we'll start again. That suit you,
boys?"
"What do you mean?" asked Walling.
"I mean you still have your five hours' start; you haven't lost
anything by staying with the sick girl."
Walling went back to the house. Mary was still sleeping. He touched
her hand. It seemed cooler.
"Tell her I'll write--if I can."
"Good-bye," said the boy.
As he went out Walling saw the men unsaddling their horses. He took
off his hat to them as he rode away into the mountains.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FIRST GIRL
By Louise Pond Jewell
They had been talking of the Marsdens, who had just gone down with
the torpedoed ship; and among the kindly and affectionate things
said about them, the exceptional happiness of their married life was
mentioned. Some one spoke of this as being rather surprising, as
they had married so late in life; then, naturally enough, another
remarked what a different world it would be if every man had been
accepted by the first girl he had proposed to. And he added, that
sometimes he thought that first choice was one of truer instinct,
less tinctured with the world's sophistication than any later one.
The bachelor contributed with a laugh that that first girl had one
advantage over the wife, no matter how perfect the latter--that she
remained the ideal. And then, little by little, they came to the
point of agreeing to tell, then and there, in the elegance and
dignity of the clubroom suited to the indulgence of their late
middle years, each one about that first girl, and what she had meant
to him.
The Explorer began.
"I met her in the Adirondacks, and knew her only one summer. After
that, I couldn't see her just as a friend--and she was unwilling to
be anything else to me. So, all my life, I've associated her with
the woods and lakes, with the sincerity and wholesomeness of the
great Outdoors. She had the freedom of Diana, and her lack of
self-consciousness. I never saw her except roughly clad, but she
always suggested that line of Virgil--'She walked the goddess.'
"She was strong and lithe as a boy, could climb mountains, row, play
golf and tennis with any of us; and what a good sport. She never
fussed over getting caught in drenching rains, being bruised and
torn by rocks and thorns; and once when a small party of us lost our
way, and had to spend the night on a lonely mountainside within
sound of wolves and catamounts, her gayety made a 'lark' of it. She
could drive horses with a man's steady hands; she knew the birds by
name, and all the plants and trees that grew within miles, and she
was familiar with the tracks and habits of all the small creatures
of the forest. To me she was--simply wonderful, and, I confess,
always has been."
"What became of her?" they asked.
"Later, she married--a man who didn't know a pine from a palm! I
always wondered...."
The Diplomat came next.
"That sort," he said, "is a little too independent and upstanding to
belong to my type of woman. The rough, tanned skin, the strong,
capable hands--big, probably--the woolen skirt and
blouse--they'll do very well in a girl chum, for a summer. But when
it comes to a _wife_, one's demands are different. The girl I wanted
first--and I've never forgotten her; she was a queen--I knew
during my first winter in Washington. You talk of Diana; I prefer
Venus--wholly feminine, but never cloying. She was the kind that
looks best in thin, clinging things. I remember yet a shimmering
green and silver 'creation' she wore at the Inaugural Ball. She
didn't take hikes with me through scratchy forests, but she'd dance
all night long, and her little feet would never tire. She didn't
handle guns or tillers, but you should have seen her pretty fingers
deftly managing the tea things in a drawing-room, of a winter's
afternoon, or playing soft, enchanting airs on the piano at
twilight; or, for the matter of that, placing a carnation in a man's
button-hole--I can feel her doing it yet! She probably didn't know
birds, but, by George! she knew men! And there wasn't one of us
young fellows that winter that wouldn't gladly have had her snare
him. Only--that was the one thing she didn't do!"
"Didn't she ever do any snaring?"
"Oh--finally. And--the pity of it!--a man who couldn't dance, and
had no use for Society! Sometimes...."
"How about you?" the third member of the group was asked, an
Engineer of national reputation. "Was there a first best girl for
you, too?"
"Guilty!" he replied. "But my account will sound prosaic after these
others. You know, my early days weren't given to expensive summer
camps, nor to Washington ballrooms. I made my own way through
college, and 'vacations' meant the hardest work of the year. But
when I was a Senior, all the drudgery was transformed. Paradise
wouldn't have been in it with that little co-educational college
campus and library and chapel and classrooms; for I found _her_.
Just a classmate she was. You tell how your girls dressed; I never
noticed how _she_ dressed; it might have been in shimmering green
and silver, and it might have been in linsey-woolsey, for all I
knew. But--she could _think_, and she could _talk_! We discussed
everything together, from philosophy and the evolution of history to
the affairs of the day. I spent every hour with her that I could,
and in all sorts of places. There's a spot in the stackroom of the
old library that I always visit yet, when I go back--because of
her. I've never known a woman since with such a mind, such breadth
and clearness; and it showed in her face--the face of Athena, not
Diana or Venus! I believed that with such a companion at my side, to
turn to in every perplexity, I could make my life worth while. But
she--saw it differently."
"Is she a feminist now?" slyly inquired the Explorer.
"She, too, married, after a while--a fine fellow, but--anything
but a student. I can't help...."
"Mine," said the fourth, the Socialist, "will sound least dramatic
of all--though I assure you the time was dramatic enough for me.
You talk about your goddesses; my pedestal held just a sweet human
girl,--a nurse, serving her first year at the hospital, that time
we had the smash-up in '80. And you talk of beauty, and style, and
brain; but with me it isn't of a pretty face or graceful form I
think when I recall that magic time; and least of all is it of any
intellectual prowess. I'm not sure whether she knew the difference
between physics and metaphysics, or whether she'd ever heard of a
cosine. But she was endowed with the charm of charms in a
woman--sympathy. She would listen by the hour while I poured out to
her my young hopes and ambitions; I could tell her all the dreams a
young fellow cherishes most deeply--and would die of mortification
if even his best friend guessed at their existence. She always
understood; and though she talked little herself, she had the effect
of making me appear at my very best. I felt I could move the world
if she would just stand by and watch. But in spite of her kindness
and gentleness she turned me down. Many times I've questioned...."
"That was all right for a sick boy," commented the Diplomat, "but
for a _wife_, a girl like Alison----"
"'Alison,'" echoed the Engineer, involuntarily, "a nice name,
anyway; that was _her_ name."
"Why----" the Explorer mused--"that's an odd coincidence; so was
_hers_--Alison Forbes."
"Alison Forbes"--breathed the Socialist--"Alison
Forbes--Marsden!"
And suddenly there was a silence, and the four friends looked
strangely at one another. For they knew in that moment that there
had been in those lives of theirs left far behind, not four first
girls, but one--seen with different eyes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
A SOPHISTRY OF ART
By Eugene Smith
On the station platform in Quanah, one morning, I stopped "waiting
for the train" for a moment to watch a man and woman painting on a
large signboard across the way. The inevitable wiseacre in the
little group of travelling men explained that they were really
talented artists, a man and wife.
The husband had contracted--er--a throat affection in their studio
back East, and physicians had ordered him to the open air and high,
dry altitude of west Texas. So they had come, and were earning
expenses, making a series of paintings on signboards, advertisements
of a lumber corporation, throughout the Panhandle country.
I walked out across the tracks near where the slightly stooped
husband, in overalls, and his little wife, looking very attractive
in her neat apron and sunbonnet, were at work.
There was a pathos about the thing that went straight to my heart.
The loyal little woman and the stricken husband there in the clear,
crisp morning air and sunshine, earnestly striving, undismayed.
Something--a common sympathy--thrilled me.
And now the painting seemed artistic. The general idea was a lovely
cottage home (built, of course, with Oakley's lumber, as was
intimated). But the cottage was not glaringly new--rather mellowed
a bit with time, it seemed, and was the more homelike for it.
In the front stood a sweet little woman, looking down a winding
road, and in the expression on her face, painted by the real little
woman, was joyous hope--almost certainty--of seeing the husband
coming down the road to her and home, after his day's work.
The colours of sunset added to the beauty of the conception, which
altogether made desirable the having such a little wife to wait for
one each evening at such a little cottage home. And that was the
purpose of it; when you thought of home-building, you also thought
of Oakley's lumber.
The painters were happy in their work--happy as two birds building
a nest. The wife, seated on her little stepladder, with palette and
brushes, was deftly pointing up the vines about the windows, as all
good wives should. She hummed something of a tune, now and then
looking gayly down at him, who laughed back up at her from his work
on the winding road and distant trees.
A courteous inquiry and my being an Easterner, was a passport into
their confidences. "We only paint a little while in the cool of the
morning and afternoon of each day," he was saying to my remarks on
the weather. "It's dangerous to lay on much paint at a time," he
continued, "for the sand ruins it."
"Oh, if it wasn't for the sand storms!" she chimed in. "But we love
the country, and the folks, too; they seem so much a part of the out
of doors, you know. Though we hope--we expect--to go back home
before long." She was looking fondly down at him.
"I had a little trouble with my throat," he explained
depreciatively. "But this western air has just about put me in the
running again. It's wonderful." I could see the thankfulness in his
eyes, as he smiled up at his companion. I didn't blame him for
loving life.
In the smoking-car of the belated train we travelling men discussed
the case of the painters.
"It's only his throat that bothers him a bit," I denied with some
heat. "Besides, he is nearly recovered, and looks it."
"Yes, I know; that's characteristic. It's what they all say when
they begin to perk up in a change of climate," persisted the
Pessimist in the crowd. "But the average is 100 to 1 against them.
I've seen too many lungers out here in this country."
Damn a Pessimist with his statistics, anyhow!
* * * * *
Several months later I made another trip through the Texas Panhandle
country, and at each town going up from Quanah toward Amarillo I saw
one of the Oakley lumber advertisements prominently displayed on
large bill-boards. They were all the same, like the first one; that
is, if your glance was but a passing one. But to me, who had grown
interested in Art and things artistic, there was a difference in the
paintings. Yes, a difference! I wasn't so sure at first. "It's just
imagination," I pooh-poohed the idea. But later on----
Anyhow, I soon found myself going directly from the station, on each
arrival, to look up the Oakley bill-board. It was never hard to
find. Somehow, I just got to wondering--worrying--about the
welfare of the young husband, the artist, I had met.
In the first few of the paintings I found portrayed all the life and
glad hope and expectancy that I had seen some time before in the one
at Quanah.
Then came the inevitable. Strange as it was, I knew that I had been
expecting--dreading--it; though rather in the gossip around the
hotels than in the pictures themselves, where I really found it.
That was the only surprise.
I remember, in Clarendon--the first town after you get up on the
Cap-rock of the Staked Plains--there I saw--or imagined--it
first. One is ever instinctively wary of eyesight in that land of
mirages.
And in each succeeding village and town as I travelled westward and
upward, I felt it--saw it--there on the bill-boards, as if painted
in half-unconsciously by the artist: a faint trace of querulous
doubt in the face of the little, waiting wife, spirit of melancholia
lying dull in the picture.
As I was getting out of Goodnight one afternoon--a little ahead of
time--in the automobile that daily makes the round trip to Claude,
we drove past the Oakley signboard. I was in a hurry to get on to
Claude to see the trade before night, and be ready to leave for
Amarillo the next morning. But forgetting all this at the sight of
the picture on the bill-board, I asked the chauffeur to stop a
minute before it.
She was still smiling, the little wife waiting there in front of
their home for her husband's return, but the smile was hollow and
lifeless. I knew--could see--she was full of uneasiness and dread,
and was only smiling to keep up her courage.
"That's quite a lumber advertisement--there," I ventured. The
chauffeur was drinking water from the canvas canteen.
"Uh-huh!" he gulped. "I seen 'em painting it."
"A man and woman?"
"Well, yes; but the woman did most of it. I saw her there every day
for some time. Once in a while the man--her husband, I
guess--would be tryin' to help paint, but he was all in. You could
tell it, the way he looked."
I winced at his words. So here it was, confirmed, what I had been
hoping was only imagination. Confound that Pessimist!
"They must have painted a good many of these signs; I see them
everywhere," I continued, in a disinterested manner.
"There's another'n over at Claude," yawned the chauffeur. "I think I
remember hauling them people over in the car."
"Over to Claude?"
"Yes--I fergit. I never pay much attention to the folks I haul," he
remarked casually, eying me in a bored way.
Then we drove on.
A day later I arrived in Amarillo from Claude, glad, for it was my
trip's end. I started walking uptown from the station to stretch my
legs, besides--well, there across the street, on a vacant lot, was
the Oakley bill-board, and the picture. The late afternoon sunlight
fell full across it.
I looked at the woman in the picture, whom I had come to know for
the real little wife, the artist, painting from her heart. She stood
smiling, but behind the smile I read doubt and dread realized, and
hope--almost--dying hard. For the smile was but a poor attempt,
and the joyous expectancy I saw shining in her eyes months before at
Quanah was not there now. There was a subtle air of unmistakable
despair about her. Her very frailty and dependency and loyal effort
to keep her smile wrung from me a quick sympathy.
I turned back to the drab routine of life sadly, and picking up my
grips, saw the Pessimist standing on the sidewalk with his
detestable knowing look. There behind him came the Wiseacre. It was
one of those little coincidences of a drummer's life which so often
find the same parties together again.
"I was just looking at another one of the pictures--the last one, I
guess," I said suddenly, feeling unashamed of my concern and
sadness.
"Last one!" exclaimed the Wiseacre, full of ready information. "Why,
man! That's their _first_ one. Here's where they began last year. I
saw them in St. Paul three weeks ago, happy as wrens."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MESSAGE IN THE AIR
By B. R. Stevens
The typewriters were clicking busily in the place. Every one seemed
honestly, industriously at work.
Looking out of the aperture prepared for the purpose, Lance Allison
saw nothing suspicious. Yet Monsieur the General had been so sure
that information was leaking, in some mysterious way, from this very
room.
Lance had been surprised that the fame of an American detective
should have made any impression in France: more surprised when the
General, on learning his identity, had personally solicited his aid.
Sitting with ears as well as eyes alert, his quick brain began to
dissociate the sound of the typewriters one from another.
That tall girl in black--the one with the pale, pale face, he
amended in his thought, so many, alas! were in black--that girl
wrote with an even monotony in consonance with her expressionless
countenance.
The pert little lass in blue seemed to write each word with an
emphasis, for her spacing was noticeable each time.
And so it went, each typist showing some marked peculiarity as his
ear picked out the particular rhythm.
His examination had reached the last one, and for the first time he
observed its operator closely.... Something familiar and different
about that girl.... Not her clothes, nor her coiffure--nothing he
could put a finger on.
Then he caught the click of her machine. Different from any of the
others, it seemed to jerk out the words and syllables with amazing
irregularity, dwelling on one letter, slighting another, pausing
between. Here, too, was something hauntingly familiar.
In the meantime men came and went, and Lance's watchful eye followed
the slightest movement made by each newcomer. At any moment some
signal might give him a clue to the disclosures which the General
declared seemed to be made daily.
A timid country lad entered, wiping the dew of embarrassment from
his brow. After some awkward hesitation he conferred with one of the
clerks, evidently stumbling and halting in his inquiries.
No word of the colloquy reached Lance's ear, but he suddenly became
aware of a message in the air--clear, deliberate, reiterated!
_Fifty thousand English left Paris this morning. Destination,
Arras._
An hour later the girl who somehow seemed different was confronted
in the private quarters of Monsieur the General by Lance Allison,
American detective. Bright-eyed and defiant, she smouldered under
the guard's restraint.
"You are an American!" There was curt reproach in the detective's
tone.
"Well, what of that?" she snapped.
"How came _you_ a traitor to the Allies?"
Then, as she did not answer, he bowed to Monsieur the General. "This
girl gave out her information to a young clod-hopper to-day. More
than likely some other one yesterday and the day before, or to him
in a different disguise. At any rate, they were men who could spell
English--or American," he added whimsically.
"But how? How, Monsieur le detective? He approached her not--nor
even looked toward her."
"No," smiled Lance, "but he had his ear cocked in her direction." He
turned to the seething girl. "Now, make a clean breast of it, Miss.
You are done for. What evil spirit prompted treachery in one born
under the Stars and Stripes?"
Suddenly the smouldering fire burst into the flame of speech.
"'Twas Jean Armand, the low-down dog! Pretended to love me--_me_!
Kissed me--took my hard-earned money for his own comfort. And
then--the day he went to the front--he married Elise, a stupid,
wax-faced doll!... _Then_ I swore to betray France as he had
betrayed me--and I have done it."
"But how?" The General's question was addressed to the detective.
"By the clicks of her typewriter, Monsieur. She practised a peculiar
jerky touch so that it would become unnoted. Then when a spy came
in--was the hand on the heated brow the signal, I wonder?--she
talked to him by the dots and dashes of the Morse code with as much
clearness as if the words were breathed into his ear."
"Yes, and it took an American to find me out," she glowed with
strange exultation. "These conceited Frenchies were all at sea....
_And_--Jean, the husband of the fat Elise, fell yesterday under a
charge from troops I sent to meet his regiment--so--I don't care
what you do to me, now. My work is done!"
--------------------------------------------------------------------
IN A GARDEN
By Catherine Runscomb
Dick Halcomb stood waiting on the shady station platform. A little
groom appeared, suddenly and breathlessly.
"Sorry to be late, sir," he gasped. "Mrs. Paige and Miss Laura have
gone to Mrs. Vingut's garden party, and left word for you to join
them."