ABSTENTION from the art and practice of golf for one week had been Professor Robson’s ukase. Had he foreseen the course of more personal events he would never have issued it. For he now had no opportunity of seeing his pupil alone. Nothing so direct as avoidance could be charged against her. But since that parting on the Pritchard porch, he had never been able to achieve so much as two minutes of her undivided time. Her eyes, when they met his only to be swiftly withdrawn, were sweetly troubled. The Eternal Feminine within her was, for the time at least, in flight. And along those paths of delicate elusiveness, the clumsy and pursuing feet of man stumble and trip. Jeremy’s soul was sorely tried and not less sorely puzzled.
If he found difficulties in Marcia’s attitude, his own future course with regard to her was dubious. What could he, in his position and with his resources, ask of her? To wait? Certainly nothing more than that. And was even that much fair to her? His own feeling was simplicity itself. Life had, in these few short weeks of association, summed and compressed itself into his love for Marcia Ames. Until that abrupt change in the tone of their relations brought about by her half-acceptance of his devotion, she had never evinced anything more than a frank and confident comradeship. Now he felt that he might speak—if he could find opportunity. That he could not, almost caused him to accuse Marcia of unfairness. Yet could he honorably ask her to marry him and tie herself to a meager and as yet unpromising career? Within himself Jeremy had begun to assume that confidence of future success which comes with the assured sense of workmanship. He would cheerfully gamble his own future on it. But how could he ask her to risk hers? Even supposing that she cared for him! There was the thought that ached; the uncertainty of it. In any case he had to know how it stood with him in her heart.
Upon her inviolable truthfulness he could depend for a full and fair answer, if he were able to state his case. He knew that all her frank and unevasive courage would answer to his demand; that she would look that fate, or any other, steadily in the eyes. But not before her own good time. And that the time was not yet, became sufficiently apparent, one week before the match when the lessons were resumed, for with the resumption Buddy Higman was quietly established at once as caddy, chaperon, and dragon with the added qualities of the modestly adhesive burdock. The skill and technique of “No. 4.—M. Ames” prospered and improved mightily, which is more than can be said of the disposition of her instructor.
Some men’s work would have suffered. Not Jeremy’s. He was of that fortunate temperament which, keeping its troubles to itself, boils them out into steam and transforms the steam into energy. Besides, he had now “the grip of his pen.” He derived a glowing satisfaction from the expert performance of his craft. The editorial page was hospitable to him, especially for contributions in lighter vein. Many special assignments for work out of the ordinary, calling for a knack of description or characterization, came to him. His writings were beginning to earn the knighthood conferred by the clipping shears and the paste-pot. Newspapers in larger cities than Fenches-ter copied and privately asked questions about them. But what made it all so worth while, what gave a touch of exaltation to the dogged purpose for success, was the conviction that all this forwarded him upon the road which led to Marcia.
The tournament with Kirk College, on the Fenchester Country Club grounds, was now two days away. Jeremy had asked for and obtained the assignment to cover it. He had long before applied for and received the job of caddying for No. 4 of the team opposing his own college, which was regarded by the visiting Kirks as an ignoble instance of loyalty corrupted by the baser passions. However, Jeremy was perfectly willing that Kirk should win; rather hoped it would, in fact, provided only the No. 4 of Old Central beat her man. He believed her capable of doing it, unless her nerve faltered, which he deemed improbable. On her most recent performances she was from two to four strokes lower than any one but himself and Buddy Higman appreciated.
Important though the event was to Jeremy Robson, the authorities on The Record considered it rather a waste of their brilliant youngster’s time. However, they were appeased by the cropping out meantime of a story so much in the Robson line that it might have been made to order for him. Wackley, the managing editor, outlined it to him, when he arrived in the morning.
“Robson, do you know a queer old bat up on Banks Street who runs a shoe surgery?”
“Eli Wade? Yes; quite well.”
“He’s a nut of the old Know-Nothing kind, is n’t he? Hates all foreigners and all that?”
“He’s a pretty hard-shelled Yankee.”
“Well; he’s done it this time. Made a fine young riot for himself last night. It seems he’s been pasting cartoons and mottoes in his show window; and some of the younger fellows from the Deutscher Club, who pass there on their way home, naturally got sore. Last night with a few beers aboard, they stopped and gave him a raree serenade. Out comes the old boy in his nighty and makes ’em a red-hot speech. They give him the whoop, and he begins to damn ’em all back to Germany.”
“Yes; he’s got fighting stuff in him,” agreed Jeremy.
“Too much for his own good. Somebody ups with a rock, and down comes the big boot over the door. Well, the old boy goes dippy over that. Dives inside and grabs up a hammer and right into them. First thing you know, they have him on a rail—a scantling from that new building on the corner—and are yelling for tar. It might have been serious for the old boy, but just then along comes Andy Galpin of The Guardian. You know him; he’s some young husky. Guard on the O. C. team for three years. Well, he bucks the center and lays out a couple of the merry villagers and there’s a pretty mix-up, and I understand Galpin got one in the eye that did n’t improve his make-up. But the boys were sick of the fun anyway, and they let Galpin get away with it and take old Wade home. Instead of doing the sensible thing and sleeping it off, Wade gets all het up, and swears out warrants and they’re going to thrash it out in police court this noon, in time for the edition. Probably Wade ’ll make a speech. Anyhow, there’ll be a circus when he goes on the stand. We want a rattling good story on it; and put in your best touches on the old boy. He’ll do for a local character to hang all sorts of stories on, later.”
“But look here, Mr. Wackley: I know Eli Wade pretty well. He’s—he’s a sort of friend of mine.”
“What if he is? You can have fun with him, can’t you? He won’t know the difference. And if he does, he won’t care. Those fanatical guys are crazy for publicity. He’ll eat it up.”
It was Jeremy’s settled intention, so he told himself, as he set out for court, to write an account which, while lively, should fairly set forth his friend’s side. When he saw Eli Wade at court his heart misgave him, the Boot & Shoe Surgeon looked so whitely wrathful. The proceedings dwindled into nothing. The “life” was out of the story, quite to one reporter’s relief, when his evil genius inspired Eli Wade to address the court. At the outset he was simple and dignified. But counsel for the serenaders interpolated some well-timed taunts which roused him to indignation. He had not slept that night, for shame of the treatment to which he had been subjected; and his self-control was in abeyance. Indignation, as he answered the taunts, waxed to fury. He burst into a savage and absurd invective, aimed at “German interlopers,” “foreign clubs that run our city,” and the like; his voice shrilling louder and louder until he was drowned out by the uncontrollable laughter of the court-room. It was all quite absurd and pitiable. Instinctively Jeremy’s pencil took it down. Here was his story, ready to hand.
As he sat in the office, the grip of characterization settled upon him. Oddments and gleams of past conversations in the “Infirmary” came back to him, and he embodied them. Stroke by stroke there grew up under his hand a portrait, crude from haste but vivid, telling, and a stimulant to mirth, not always of the kindliest. It was not intentionally unfair; it was never malicious in purpose. But it was the more deadly in effect. By the magic transformation of print it made out of an unpolished, simple, generous, fervent, and thoughtful artisan, a laughable homunculus. Yet there was in it no element of “fake.” Jeremy could have defended it at all points. Any newspaper judgment would have credited it with due fidelity to facts. The sum-total was a subtle and gross misrepresentation. Had the writer read it over he would perhaps have seen this for himself. But there was no time. He barely caught the edition. Wackley’s: “Great stuff, my boy! You’ll hear of this,” happily distracted him from the stirrings of a conscience which faintly wished to know how Eli Wade would take it.
“You’re doing golf to-morrow,” continued the managing editor. “Don’t bother to come to the office first.” Profiting by this, Jeremy, an hour before match time, called at Miss Pritchard’s for Marcia. He was informed that she had left on an errand, but would meet him at the Country Club. When, just before the first pair teed up, she appeared, her mentor was startled, she looked so wan and languid.
“Good Heavens!” said Jeremy in a whisper. “You have n’t let this thing get on your nerves?”
She shook her head. Her eyes did not avoid his now; but the changeful lights seemed to have dwindled to the merest flicker in inscrutable depths.
“Let me get you a cup of coffee. That’ll brace you up.”
“I shall be all right,” she said with an effort.
At the call for the fourth pair she stepped to the tee and hit a ball straight down the center for 160-odd yards. It was the virtue of her game that she was straight on the pin, nine shots out of ten, thereby overcoming the handicap of greater distance sure to be against her in college competition. Great and grinful was the satisfaction of her trainer at observing the demeanor of her opponent. When he was presented to her, that gentleman, a sightly and powerful youth notable for his long drives, took one extended, admiring, and astounded survey of “M. Ames”—he had n’t known what the bewildering fates held in store for him inquired privately but passionately of high Heaven and his team-mates how a fellow was going to keep his eye on the ball with a vision likethatto look at, and entered upon a disastrous career by nearly slaying, with his first drive, a squirrel in a tree a good hundred yards off the course. He recovered in time to record an unparalleled ten for the first hole. M. Ames, dead on the pin, scored a correct five. Everson (the Kirk boy) contributed three putts on the second green, and M. Ames won it in a sound four. But as his pupil took her stance for a brassie, after a respectable tee-shot from the third, Jeremy perceived with dismay that her hands were shaking. Up went her head, as she swung, and the ball darted from the toe of her club into the rough. She was out in three, but again she succumbed to star-gazing on her mashie shot, and her opponent still triangulating the course like a care-free surveyor, was able to halve it. From then on, Jeremy the mentor was in agony. Except off the tees, where she clung to her beautiful, free-limbed, lissome swing, as it were by instinct, No. 4 for Old Central topped, sliced, pulled, and scarified the helpless turf. The gallant foeman was so distressed at her obviously unusual ineptitudes, that his own game went glimmering down the grassy bypaths that lead to traps and bunkers. Only this involuntary gallantry saved M. Ames from practical extinction. As it was, she was two down at the end of the first nine, with a dismal fifty-four. As they left the ninth green she turned to Jeremy: “Would you mind not caddying for me the rest of the match?”
“But Marcia!” he cried, aghast. “What’s wrong?”
“You have got on my nerves.”
“I have n’t said a word except to steady you.”
“I am sorry,” she said inflexibly.
An angry gleam flashed in Jeremy’s eyes. “Of course, if you feel that way about it—”
“I do. I am sorry,” she repeated.
“Do you mind my following you?” he asked with semisardonic intent.
“I should rather you did not.”
“Well, good Heavens! Something has happened to spoil your nerve.”
“No.”
“Then what—”
“Come for me after the match. We can talk then.” With this Jeremy had to be content. Relieved of his presence, M. Ames summoned all her force to the rescue of her nerves, and astonished her opponent with a forty-four, steadily and carefully played. The match, which had originally been counted upon by a careful captain as a probable win for Old Central, was a tie, under the scoring system agreed upon.
Dismal misgivings, meanwhile, had beset Jeremy Robson, the promising young reporter of The Record. Already he was, in his heart, on the defensive when, as he and Marcia turned out at the gate, she said:
“Did you write the article about Eli Wade?”
“Yes.”
“I thought it must have been yours,” said her lips. The tone said, “I hoped it was not.”
“That’s a good sign, for people to recognize my style. What did you think of it?”
“It was clever.”
There was no warmth in the tone. Rather a reluctant relinquishment of disbelief.
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“I did not like it. I hated it.”
“Oh, that’s the personal view,” he said indulgently. “Perhaps.”
“The Bellair Journal has offered me a job on the strength of it.”
“Were you obliged to take that—what is the term—that assignment?”
“A reporter takes what is handed out to him.”
“I suppose so. That would be the danger. I should fear that.”
“Fear what? I can’t imagine you fearing anything.”
“I should fear getting into that habit of mind. Complaisant. Servile.”
“That’s an ugly word, Marcia,” he said, flushing.
“I am sorry. Perhaps there is a side to it that I do not understand. But surely, oh, surely, you need not have written it in that way!”
“My dear girl! Personal feeling has no relation to newspaper work. I can’t juggle with facts because the man happens to be my friend. That is n’t honest.”
“Isthishonest?” She held up the clipping which she took from her pocket.
Jeremy quailed before the hurtness of her eyes, which was wonder more than reproach.
“There is n’t a word in it,” he began, “that—”
“There is not a thought in it that is not a cruel injustice.”
“You’ve no right to say that.”
“That is true. You remind me.”
“Oh, Marcia,” he cried miserably. “Don’t take it that way. I’d have thrown up my job sooner than write it if I’d known that you’d feel it so.”
“It does not matter about me. But you! How could you have done it! How could you have used his gentle, sweet, simple philosophy—his talks between friends in the shop—to make a mock of him?”
“I did n’t. I swear I did n’t.”
She put the clipping into his hand. Re-read, now, the words were self-damnatory. Jeremy groaned.
“It has hurt him so terribly,” she said.
“You’ve seen him?”
“Yes. He has resigned his place on the School Board. Mr. Dolge advised him to get off before he was laughed off.”
Jeremy stared at the words of his facile portraiture as if they had suddenly been informed with venom. “And he was so proud of it!” he muttered.
“It was a large thing in his little life,” said the girl. “He feels disgraced.”
Wackley’s easy and cynical assumption that the subject of the sketch would be “crazy for publicity” recalled itself to Jeremy. He swore beneath his breath. “When did you see Eli?
“This morning. At the hospital.”
“The hospital! Is he injured that badly?”
“No. You had not heard? It is Mr. Galpin, a friend of Eli’s—who stood by him.”
“Andy Galpin! How bad is it?”
“Much worse than they supposed. He will be nearly blind in one eye.”
“Good Lord!”
“And is he a friend of yours, also; Mr. Galpin?”
“Andy? Yes; of course he is.”
“But you made no inquiry about him.”
“I did n’t know.”
Her eyes, steady and deep-lighted, still did not judge him, still pathetically wondered at him.
“Marcia!” he broke out. “I haven’t been able to think of anything but you. I have n’t had anything in my heart—”
“Please!”
He stopped, appealing to her with his look.
“I think you have to think of Eli Wade.”
Jeremy winced and was silent. Their car pulled up at the Pritchard gate. She got out, but did not ask him to come in.
“The worst of it is that it’s hurt you,” he muttered. “I did n’t know that you cared so much about him.”
“It was not he that I cared so much about,” returned Marcia steadily. “It was you.”
She turned and passed into the house. Try as he might, on his way to the hospital to see Andrew Galpin, Jeremy could derive from that low-toned avowal neither hope nor comfort for a sick heart and a grilling conscience.
The doctors would not let him see Galpin.
As by tradition bound, his “story” of the golf match focused on the one and unique girl-player on the team. She was the “human interest” center. So skillfully did he skirt the edge of her bad play that only an analysis of the score would apprise the reader of the partial failure. Her good shots were described in glowing terms. To her, the casual reader would have supposed, belonged the chief credit on Old Central’s side; and the copy-reader, who was no golfer, in good faith headed it “Miss Ames Gains Tie for O. C.”; the final team score having also been all even, though it should have been Old Central’s victory had No. 4 played up to her standard. The writing of the article cheered up the writer notably. Here was no wounding word or acid-bitten phrase. There was only the clear purpose to please. Again Jeremy had been caught and carried in the whirl of his semi-creative enthusiasm.
The quality was still there when he read it over on the following day. Intent upon his sunshine-scattering he sent an early proof to “M. Ames.” He felt, on the whole, that he had been, if not unjustly, at least untenderly treated. Overnight he had been able to persuade himself that the Wade sketch represented a fine type of loyalty to profession rising triumphant above personal feelings. All that was needed to reestablish him firmly in the conviction of righteousness, was Marcia’s appreciation of his golf-story. He went to the Pritchard house to receive it. Marcia was not there. She had gone for a few days’ visit at the Magnus Laurens’ country place. Jeremy sent a hasty, reproachful and alarmed note after her. Why had she left without a word? What did it all mean? When was she coming back? When could he see her and explain? As a composition it was distinctly below standard for the rising young star of The Record. But at least it could boast the highly-prized quality of heart-interest.
Jeremy called again at the hospital to see Andrew Galpin. That battered warrior received him with immitigable cheerfulness.
“Ay-ah,” he explained. “Something busted inside the eye. It ain’t as bad as they thought. They’re going to save quite a glimmer of sight in it, and ‘my right eye is a good little eye,”’ he chanted. “Back on the job in a week or so.”
Jeremy, craving solace, asked whether his friend had seen the Eli Wade story; then, remembering his disability, corrected himself hastily.
“Sure I saw it. Or had it seen for me. I made ’em read me both papers from end to end. That was a crackajack story. You keep on like this, young fellow, and Fenchester ’ll be too small to hold you.”
“I’m afraid it hurt Eli Wade’s feelings,” said the visitor hesitantly. “Did he say anything to you about it?”
“Ay-ah. He spoke of it.”
“What did he say?”
“We-ell; he said—Sure you want to know?” Jeremy nodded. “He said, ‘I’d never have believed it from the way he wears his shoes.’ Like the poor old nut, ain’t it?”
“Andy, was the story so rotten?”
“I just told you it was a crackajack piece of work.”
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about my doing it at all.”
“It was your assignment, was n’t it?”
“Certainly, it was,” assented Jeremy, comforted and justified. “I had to take it or quit my job, did n’t I?”
“Oh, I guess you’re stronger than that on The Record.”
“What would you have done in my place?”
“Me? Oh, I’m a reporter. I reckon I’d have done the story.” But there was no conviction in Galpin’s tone. Jeremy wished he could have seen the bandaged eyes. He mistrusted that they would have avoided his.
“That’s part of the business,” he declared, self-defensively.
“That’s the hell of the business,” said Andrew Galpin. Jeremy left the hospital feeling that Marcia Ames and Andrew Galpin had said much the same thing to him about his article, in widely different terms.
Marcia’s reply to his note came several days later. Its brevity did not conceal an indefinable and disturbing reserve. She would see him, she wrote, when she returned. With the note was inclosed the proof of the golf report. Its margin carried a penciled note.
“Can you not see that this only makes it worse?” Jeremy read his cherished report once more, and saw. It was a lie.
LAKE SKOHOTA thrusts a long and slender arm past Fenchester to throw it cherishingly about a tiny island, cut off from the University campus and made part of it again by an arched bridge overhanging dappled waters. Willows bending from the islet’s bank weave their thousand-fingered enchantments above the dreaming shallows. The subtle spice of sedge and marsh-bloom blows from it to disperse its spell upon the air that whispers a never-finished tale of secrecy and sorcery to the trees. It is a place of witchery.
The sheen of countless stars glowed above the bridge and wavered below it, as two figures emerged from the pathway and paused at the summit of the arch to lean and look down through the darkness at the blackly opalescent gleam of the waters. A canoe stole around the bend and slipped beneath them, the stroke of its paddles accentuated in cool, delicious plashes of sound as it entered the arch.
“Another two,” said the soft and happy voice of a girl, rising to them; and a boyish voice answered:
“The night is full of them.”
The canoe merged with the darkness. The two figures on the bridge, silent, followed it with their blind speculations into an unknown world. From far across the open spaces of the lake came the music of women’s voices blended, which the night breeze hushed to hear; a modulation of wistful, minor strains:
“In dreams she grows not older
The lands of Dream among,
Though all the world wax colder
Though all the songs be sung.”
The latter couplet was repeated, a haunting, yearning, falling melody, that suddenly swelled and rose into the splendid, fulfilling major:
“In dreams doth he behold her
Still fair and kind and young.”
The taller figure on the bridge stirred from a dream. “That is your song, Marcia.”
“Yes,” said the girl, a little away from him in the darkness. “I arranged it for them, to be sung so; in parts.”
“You sang it the first day we really began to know each other.”
“Very long ago,” she assented, with her serene gravity. “Two months, is it not?”
“Or years. Or centuries. It does n’t seem to matter.”
“I am glad they sang that to-night. For us,” she concluded, after the briefest of pauses.
He put his hand over hers, which rested on the stone coping of the bridge. She did not stir nor speak. But it was his hand, not hers, that trembled. A heavy rowboat came lumbering down the reach, two students at the oars.
“Politics for me,” said one confidently. “We’re going to run the country from this end now. I’m for Mart Embree’s band-wagon.”
“Too dull,” said another. “Gimme a touch of Nuh York.”
“It’s a rough world for poor, lost lambs like us to be spilled into, anyway,” boomed a resonant bass from the stern seat, and their laughter died away around the bend of the island.
Marcia Ames freed her fingers from her companion’s clasp.
“Jem,” she said.
“I love you,” he said.
Her figure, dim-white in the darkness, neither withdrew from nor swayed toward him. But he thought that he saw her head half turn with a sorrowful intent.
“Jem,” she said again, “I came here to—”
“I love you, Marcia,” he repeated with a still insistence.
“Wait. I am going away.”
“When?”
“Very soon. This week. Perhaps sooner.”
“For how long?”
“Will you not understand, Jem? I am going away.” The quiet repetition fell, chill and deadening, upon his heart.
“From me?”
“From everything here.”
“Why?”
“I must.”
“Then you don’t care!”
She was silent.
“You’re going back?” He made an obvious effort to gather his force for the determinative word. “Abroad?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll follow you,” he declared grimly.
“Now you are angry with me, are you not?” She spoke with a sorrowful, disappointed intonation.
“Have n’t I a right to be?”
“Have you?”
“Tell me, if you can, that you have n’t cared for me a bit; not at any time. You see,” he added with conviction but without triumph, “you can’t!”
“If I had ever cried—in my life—since I was a child—I think—I should cry now,” she said, in little, uneven sections of speech.
“Marcia!” All the anger passed away from Jem, leaving him shaken. “Don’t feel that way. What has happened? What have I done to change you toward me?”
“I cannot tell you—more than I have told you.”
“Try,” he urged. “Let’s have it out!”
“I am not clever at explaining. Not—not such things as this. There is something that rises up inside and—and forbids. Oh, Jem! You must know, without my putting it into words.”
“It’s that cursed Wade story, of course. But that’s because you don’t understand. Surely, between you and me a—a petty little matter such as that—”
“Petty!”
“Why, Marcia, it’s just part of the day’s work. Ask any newspaper man. Ask Andrew Galpin.”
“Who has perhaps half-spoiled his life by defending his friend.”
“That’s different—I’d have done that.”
“Would you?”
“Can’t you believe that of me, Marcia? Do you think I’m a coward?”
“Falsehood is always cowardly,” she said very low. “Perhaps I am abnormal about it. I cannot help it. I was bred that way.”
“But try to be fair to me,” he pleaded.
“Fair to you? I was more than that. I could not believe that you had written it. When I went into Eli Wade’s shop that morning there was a strange, violent white-haired little man there with him—”
“Nick Milliken.”
“Yes. He said what—what you have said; that it was all part of the day’s work; that you were no worse than any other reporter. He said that you had boasted to him that nobody could control your pen.”
Jeremy groaned. “It’s true.”
“And then he laughed, and said things about you that I would not endure to hear—as I told him.”
“You defended me against Milliken!”
“I tried to.”
“Can’t you defend me against yourself, Marcia?”
He could hear her long, slow-drawn breath before she answered. “I could defend you againstyourself, in my own heart. But I cannot defend the ideal of you that I had built up, against what you have done to it.”
“Could n’t you have told me?”
“Told you what, Jem?”
“That I did represent an ideal to you..Think what it would have meant to me to—to know that.”
Something told him that she was smiling in the darkness and that there was pain and pity as well as a sweet mockery in the smile. “Could I tell you that before you told me—what you have told me to-night?”
“That I love you? You can’t pretend that you did n’t know it. But I’d no business to tell you then: I’ve no business to tell you now,” he added gloomily. “What have I got to offer a girl like you!”
“That would not matter,” she answered him proudly. “It is the other that matters.”
“Wade, again! I can’t see that it matters so much, even to him. How was I to guess that it would hurt a simple-minded old dreamer of that sort?”
“Have you been to see him since?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
The direct query had the stunning force of accusation. “You’re right,” he said dully. “I knew all the time it was a rotten thing to do, only I would n’t face it. And I’ve kept away from the Boot & Shoe Infirmary because I was afraid to go there. It’s curious,” he added, in a flat, detached manner of speech, “how the little things of life—the things you think are little—wreck the whole business for you, when it’s too late to do anything.”
“Jem!” gasped the girl. “I cannot bear to hear you talk so. It—it is unlike you. It hurts me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, dear, Heaven knows. I only want to get this clear. You—you think I’m unfit to be—that I’m untrustworthy. Is that it?”
“Am I being very cruel?” she whispered.
“You’ve answered. It’s the truth that’s cruel, not you.”
“I must trust. Absolutely. Or—there is nothing.”
“I see. When do you go?”
Of a sudden her strong young arms were about his shoulders; her hot, sweet face was pressed against his. He felt the quick throbbing of the vein in her temple, and was shaken to the foundations of his being with the dear and bewildering shock of it.
“Oh, Jem!” Her whisper fluttered close to his ear. “Why do youletme go! Never let me go. It breaks my heart to go. To leave you. Never to see you again. Why must I go!”
“You mustn’t. You shan’t. Marcia, darling! After this you can’t leave me.”
He lifted her head to press his lips upon her eyes. They were hot and dry. But when he sought her mouth, her quick hand interposed. As abruptly as she had come into his arms she escaped their jealous clasp and stood back from him.
“How could I!” she panted. “It was unfair of me. I never meant it.”
“You can’t tell me that—now,” he answered, with a new note of joy and triumph.
“It was wrong—so wrong,” she mourned. “It did not mean what—what you hoped. For I must go.”
“Go?” he repeated incredulously. “And not come back?”
“Oh,wantme to come back, Jem!” she pleaded. “Keep wanting me to come back. If anything could ever bring me, that would. But it will not. Nothing can. I know it. I am holding to a dream.”
“I’ve lost mine,” said Jem. “And everything in life with it—if you go, now.”
“Forgive me. And believe that I never meant to hurt you. If I have, it was my ignorance.”
“Ignorance? You? I wish I could see your face now, to see how wise it is!”
“You are smiling at me again,” she said. “But I am not wise. I am very foolish. And I am very young. Jem, do you know how old I am?”
“Sometimes I’ve thought you must be at least a hundred.”
“I am not eighteen yet, Jem. Indeed, I am not. I once told you that I was old, as a child. So you must forgive me and believe me.”
“I’ll do anything but give you up.”
“That, too,” she said very low. She set her hand trustfully within his arm. “Come. You must take me home.”
It was a silent walk; the girl full of musings; the man of a grim, dogged determination. At the rose-bowered steps he took her hand.
“To-morrow,” he said. “I’ll be here directly I finish my work. No; I’ve got one errand I must do first.”
“What is that?” she asked wanly.
“I’m going to see Eli Wade.”
“Yes. I am glad,” said she.
He stopped for a moment at the gate, hoping for another sight of her. She had turned up the hall light and now stood in the doorway, beneath the roses. Her face was inexpressibly wistful, inexpressibly lovely, inexpressibly lonely. The subtle and changeful eyes stared widely into the darkness. Suddenly she threw her arm across them with a desolate, renunciatory gesture and turned away.
The shoes which Eli Wade had repaired for Jeremy Robson were leaden-soled to carry home a leaden and foreboding heart, that night.
With the new day came new courage to the lover. Marcia cared for him, by her own tacit confession. After all, his fault had been a minor one; there was sound defense for it: he could convince her of that, and overbear her intention of leaving him. What he failed to perceive was this: that the girl was concerned, not with a fault, but with a flaw of character divined by her subtle and powerful intuition. But a world without Marcia Ames was unthinkable to young Jeremy Robson, considering the prospect calmly in the light of day; and being unthinkable, there remained only to devise the best means of combating her illogical and even—he would go thus far—unfair judgment of himself. Growing more assured and comfortable in his mind, as the day wore on, he contrived to finish up his work early, and left the office at a jubilant skip, intent on getting to Montgomery Street with the least possible delay. He was n’t even going by way of the Boot & Shoe Infirmary. Eli Wade could wait.
On the sidewalk he was accosted by young Burton Higman, who glanced sidelong at him out of ashamed-looking, swollen eyes.
“Cut it short, Buddy,” said the hasting Jem.
“She’s gone,” said the small boy.
Jem stopped dead in his tracks. “Who’s gone?”
“Miss Marcy.”
“Where? When?” demanded Jem wildly.
“Chicago. Three-thirty-seven,” returned the precise Buddy.
A pall of dimness settled down over the glaring street; hot, stark, sterile dimness through which the figures of trivial folk moved lifelessly on futile errands.
“Did she leave any message?” inquired Jem, presently, in a voice which would have been life-like from a phonograph.
“Told me to tell you.”
“Why did she go—so soon?” The query was put, not to young Mr. Higman but to a blind and juggernaut providence.
It was young Mr. Higman, however, who responded. “Afraid,” he stated.
“Afraid? What of?”
“Herself. She told me so when she k-k-kissed me goodbye.” Buddy’s eyes winked rapidly. “But she didn’t tell me to tell you that,” he reflected.
“Did she give you any other message?”
“Not exac’ly a message.”
“Go on! Out with it.”
“You need n’tbitea feller,” expostulated young Mr. Higman. “She told me if ever you got what you was after, to go to you an’ ast for a job, when I needed it, for the sake of a mut—mut—some kind of friend.”
Jem registered a silent and pious vow. “Is that all?”
“Yes. Do I get the job?”
“If I can give it to you.”
“Say, Mr. Robson. I guess she meant you was that kind of friend. Are you a friend of hern?”
Jem got it out at last: “Yes.”
Young Mr. Higman’s eyes became suddenly more strained and ashamed-looking. “I’m goin’ to miss her somethin’ awful, Mr. Robson,” he said. “Ain’t you?” But Mr. Robson had passed on. Buddy wondered whether he had suffered a touch of the sun. He seemed uncertain in his walk.