The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 17372Unread post Didier
23 Nov 2017, 17:30

CHAPTER XI

At first thought I decided to go back to Brooklyn and seek our Mr. Clinch on the following day. But second thought pre­vailed and second thought suggested that I strike while the iron was hot. That doesn't seem like very good metaphor, but it will do in this case. So, my mind firmly set, I flew to the first trolley-car and sought out Harry Clinch — whoever and whatever he might be.
His was an address in a very dingy street. I had suspected that it was dingy, but his office was more dingy than the dirty street. I toiled slowly up three flights of stairs and sat for a long time in a miserably lighted ante-room where a dingier office-boy and a line of cheap actresses, after the sort of the woman who had just befriended me, regarded me with suspicion and my crutches with undisguised interest. I slitted my eyes and bent my head and regarded each of them in turn. They were vastly more Interesting to me than the flashy lithographsthe walls of the place bore. I wondered if Mr. Harry Clinch would expect me to be such as they.
After a seemingly endless lapse of time my turn came, and the boy, with little formality, led me into the private sanctum of Mr. Clinch. That gentleman bore no outward evidences of material prosperity. He was flashily dressed, but his clothing was badly out of press, his boots cried aloud for a shine, a fine growth of black stubble covered his bulldog chin.
Clinch read my credentials and looked at me sharply; it was evidently a way that he had acquired with women who came to see him. It was evident that he was puzzled to know what to do with me. Finally he spoke and my heart jumped when I heard that his was a kindly voice.
"You ain't sickly, are you?" he asked.
I put my fingers upon the hand-pieces of my crutches that rested upon my lap as I sat close to his desk and he nodded assent.
" P'raps you won't be needin' them long? " he kindly proffered.
I hesitated for a moment before I answered him." I have been lame for years," I finally said. " My crutches are permanent."
" Hard luck," he said, half aloud. Then —" I guess, p'raps you don't understand from that lady that I was a contractin' agent for concert halls — did ye ? "
It seemed the very irony of fate that my sus­picions had been verified and that I had been sent to a theatrical booking-office, of all places. I gathered my crutches preparatory to slipping them under my shoulders and wishing Mr. Harry Clinch a very good morning. But he saw what was in my mind and stopped me. I slipped back into my chair again.
" Hold me there, miss," said he. " I ain't sayin' that that settles it for you, although them sticks, of course, don't cut much of a figure in my line."
It was like a ray of sunshine in a cold place and I dropped my hands in my lap and sat very still, awaiting further orders.
" I don't want you to get mad jest because I tell you that you are good lookin' "— Mr. Harry Clinch must have recognized that I was different from the other women who were in the habit of coming to him —" an' you mayhave some talent — p'raps. The worse ain't come to you, yet. She says here on this card that you can tickle the piano."
I said that I could try it.
" Well an* good an' that's enough," said Mr. Harry Clinch, and with a somewhat ob­sequious bow he led me into still another room where stood a faded square — so much like our old instrument back in Honeytown that it gave me lumpy feelings when first I saw it. I whirled the stool and seated myself at the faded songster, Mr. Clinch taking my crutches with a little polite ceremony that further con­vinced me that I was different than his regular sort. I drummed over the keys.
" Somethin' lively, miss ? " he demanded.
I laughed frankly and boldly at him and he seemed to like it. I could give him the lively tunes. Not any very new tunes, perhaps, but for liveliness — well, we had a little merriment and melody of tunes that used to cheer our sol­dier boys away back in the long-agoes of the Civil War.
" Great," he applauded. " Now, if it wasn't for them cussed crutches of yourn,"— how I loved the matter-of-fact way in whichhe regarded my lameness —" I'd have you out in them i860 costumes, them hoop-skirts an* the like, and we'd make a vaudeville act out o' you that would hit 'em dead and get bookin' on every circuit in the country."
But my crutches are a double " if " that can­not be erased by the mere touch of rubber, and they barred anything like that which Mr. Clinch suggested into the realm of absolute im­possibility. So Clinch ushered me back into his little office, trying to plan for a girl, who was peculiarly beset when she tried to earn her own living. I followed him, no small affection for him coming to my soul. It was patent to me that he was the kindest man that I had yet met in New York.
" We'll do it," said Clinch, as he seated him­self at his desk again. " We'll do it. You'll do and we'll make you. It can't be much at first, because of them, a sort of — er — well, rotten job, but you're in hard luck, all right and I'll stick by you if you'll stick by me."
His stenographer began making out a con­tract.
" Don't you lose heart, miss," Clinch went on. " You work for jus' all you're worth an'p'raps some day you'll be astonished at what you've done for yourself. I know a girl whose pa was warden of the old Tombs prison downtown and she's made a star outen herself — gets her name in big letters up an' down Broadway. You've heard o' Blanche Walsh. That's her."
He went on, giving me other instances of the same sort and he cheered me wonderfully, this flashily dressed tough-mannered gentle­man. Then he halted while his stenographer gave me my contract to glance through. I signed it.
Fifteen dollars a week! Fifteen dollars a week at the very outset! That was princely. I could hardly have made that in a month back in Honeytown. It had been a lucky blaze that had burned my bridges behind me. My two dollars there in the railroad office was surely a good investment.
When I slipped out of Mr. Harry Clinch's office I could not withstand the temptation to stop for a moment to give my name in a whis­per to the tow-headed boy who sat in command of that place." I'm going to receive my mail here," I told him in a louder voice, so that those about me might hear. " Now that I am under contract with Mr. Clinch! "
I wish you might have seen those women stare. The tow-headed boy, himself, was quite beyond utterance. The others simply stared. I let them stare to their heart's content. I was happy, happy, happy. Happiness had come to my heart like rain to a dry, drought-stricken country and it was welling into all the sorrow-opened crevices of my soul. I was happy. The world was a great and beautiful place and New York was all that I had ever fancied it, and more, too.
I came downtown on a Broadway car and alighted at a point to carry me through City Hall Park to the entrance of the bridge — it was before the wonderful subway had been dug under the river to Brooklyn. It had been sunny, and it was now cloudy, although my heart was too filled with happiness to notice a mere passing thing like weather. After I was out of the car, the rain-drops began splotching on the flagstones of the path through the park andThe Girl With the Rosewood Crutches 135
I quickened my pace in search of nearby shelter. But the shower came quickly upon me and my beloved velvet suit was in fair danger of being miserably drenched — of course, um­brellas are impossibilities to us crutch-folk — before I could scurry to the protection of the bridge terminal. Then, of a sudden, I was aware that someone was overtaking me. I halted, thinking possibly that it might be some­one that I knew in this wilderness of strangers. An umbrella was shoved over me and the rain ceased beating down upon me.
That was a kind thing of the man, and how I would have appreciated it if the thing had gone no further. But there remains another chapter still to be told.
The man who had showed me a little kindness in the rain was not my sort of man. I caught side glances of him as we poked along there on the slippery, slimy walk, that quite convinced me of that. He was fat, the sort of fatness that comes from overeating and no inclination to keep the human frame hard and lean and alert. Then he began talking to me and I began to wish myself elsewhere than in that place.
/^ 1^ Original from
Digitized by V^iOOglL THE 0HIO STATE UNIVERSITY" Been sick long? "
You know now, how that sort of thing at the outset places anyone toward me. I kept quiet, but it was of no use. He was of the stupid, insistent sort.
" I haven't been sick," I half muttered, half snarled in return at him.
But even that left him undaunted.
" Ain't it hard for you to use them things? " he continued.
My anger almost had the upper hand of me.
" No," I answered him deliberately. " I do it for the fun of the thing. I love it."
I lifted my eyes and looked ahead. Thank Heaven, we were close to the bridge entrance now. I did not dare give my unsought com­panion another side-glance. I was wildly anxious to see how my sally hit him. I hoped that it might hit him squarely between his shifty eyes.
We were at the threshold of the bridge and I was looking to discover my car on the loop.
" Why do you hurry home ? " my companion answered, "I'll get a cab and we can have a bit of dinner first."
I stopped, dum founded. For a moment Iwas impulsed to lift one of my crutches out of place and strike him down with its heavy fer­rule. But I could neither talk nor raise a fin­ger, much less a stout crutch. I felt the blood come to my face and, feeling that folk about were watching me, grew ruddier still.
Sometimes men understand quickly. 'A man came up from behind us.
" Is this fellow annoying you ? " he asked.
He was my kind of man. His voice was the voice that had first spoken to me on coming to New York, his assurance had been my strength. That was the voice that I would have known on the long distance telephone all the way from Constantinople — it was the Boy, for the third time I had seen him in New York. . . . I must have said " yes " with my eyes for still my muscles were inert. It seemed to me that his eyes must have said, "This was the sort of thing I warned you against," but all his tongue spake was:
" I'll put you on the car."
The man with the umbrella slunk off. He was at least quick enough to recognize his op­portunity.
I was on the car in the moment, half hopingthat he was to follow me. But he did nothing of the sort, merely lifting his hat to me with a friendly assurance of half recognition, as if he, too, hoped — that I would ask him to come to me. At least that is the way it all seemed to me. And I had not even had the decency to thank him for saving me from that other thing. I was always the sort of girl who came to the point just a little too late.
It seemed so odd to be greeting our rusty boarding-house again. But even the assort­ment of Stripes seemed welcome to my eye again and as for my little cell-like room, well, it was a dingy little place, but you don't know just how homelike it seemed to me com­ing back to it for — well, ever and ever so long.
I just had to hunt out Mr. Jessup and then Sadie and tell them of my great good-fortune. She was in readiness for good news, for she had good news — great good news — to tell me in return. Sadie was engaged; engaged to be married. Jim had a raise and Sadie was going to quit her job at the factory. She had a big­ger, better job, the sort of job God madewomen for. I laughed with her, kissed her, cried with her in her joy.
After I was back in my little room it seemed a little bit more lonely than it had seemed be­fore. It seemed as if it were cruel of Fate to flash the reporter before my eyes for a fleeting instant and then — a great wave of lonesomeness overwhelmed me and I cried my­self off to sleep.



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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 17703Unread post Didier
25 Nov 2017, 19:48

CHAPTER XII

The concert hall was quite as bad as Mr. Harry Clinch had described it and per­haps a little worse. It was a Volksgarden, not of the worst sort, but quite bad enough. Outside, the elevated railroad darkened its front and sent increasing grime upon its once gay face. Within, it was a great bare room, studded with slim pillars, stuffed with little round tables and chairs and ending in a big stage.
Just below and in front of the stage I had a grand piano that some day had done service in a better setting. I was the orchestra, but any glory that might have accrued from that was more than offset by the fact that such glory meant long hours of dull hard work on the keys of that old grand. Still, when it grew dull and a little more tiring than usual, I had only to think of the long weeks when I was without work, when New York seemed to be cruelly closing its heart to me.
Also, I had a low-necked gown. The con-cert-hall manager preferred to have it so. He was a kind soul, Mr. Blumenstein, when it did not particularly interfere with his pocket-book. His kindness to me at the beginning consisted chiefly in letting jme choose my own color for my gown. I chose white instantly, and think that he was disappointed. His taste seemed to run toward a decided brilliancy in colors. Still I think the white my color. My skin, well burned, is olive — which means that it is not olive but a deep brunette coloring — and white becomes me.
And Mr. Blumenstein was hard to suit. I think that he was disappointed because of the cut of my gown as well as because of its color. That was a matter upon which I stood my ground firmly. The women upon his stage might and did cut their gowns to the limit at each end — which meant a dangerous approach to nothingness. But I did not forget who I was or where I came from in a moment. So, trust me, my gown was designed to be worn in a concert hall and yet was not the concert hall kind. It was a kind that might be worn in the nicest parlor in New York in these older days. If it were not for the fact that I needed as amere matter of convenience to myself to keep it in my dressing-room at the Volksgarden, I would have taken it across the river and shown it to Sadie. I should have loved to see her big eyes pop when she caught sight of it. I am sure that she would have said, " You're per­fectly swell in them things," and that I should have kissed her and loved her for it.
But, I did not dare let Sadie or any of the other folk at our house see that saucy frock. I cannot imagine what would have happened to me if the Stripes had then discovered that they harbored a concert-hall singer under their old roof. They were good, those Stripes — straight stripes, not crooked. They went to a red brick church near by and told folks about it, so that folks need not for an instant imag­ine that any Stripe flirted with sin.
So the Stripes rested easily. The Miss Kate Senton they stuffed away under the roof of their human garage was not Miss Kittie Sevenne of Blumenstein's Volksgarden, in Manhattan. No, they were not the same, not even though Miss Kate Senton of the South Brooklyn boarding-house was a tall slight figure of a dark girl, a figure that hung at alltimes between a pair of indispensable rosewood crutches and that Miss Kittie Sevenne of the Volksgarden was also tall and slight and dark and, oddly enough, made her passage to and from her piano, upon crutches. New York is a big, big town, and there was more than one girl within its limits who was tall and slight and dark and who sought the friendly aid of a trim pair of rosewood crutches.
Then, too, the Stripes did not visit the Volks­garden, so there was really no occasion for me to worry and wonder if my lie to them about being a cashier in an uptown restaurant would ever be laid bare. If the Stripes had, how­ever, descended upon the Volksgarden — well, I trusted to it that if they discovered me and I discovered them, that they would feel worse about it than I. At least, I had no pre­tensions that might embarrass me. That was the way I filled my silly head with foolish worries. I seemed to forget that there were other boarding places in this big city.
It was not impossible, at any rate. I got over to the Volksgarden at a little after noon and had a bite to eat in the excellent Germanrestaurant that Blumenstein had attached to his place. Then I took my place at the rusty piano arid hammered its keys till night. Then din­ner, a quick change into my evening gown and at the keyboard again till midnight. Then back into the everyday things and home in the sleepy slow cars. I passed through a quarter of the city where sometimes I thought that my crutches were my only protection. And even they were not always absolute protection — I could not forget that disagreeable episode in the City Hall Park. Still — fifteen dollars a week was not to be sneezed at.
Some day I might get a raise out of it. Even Mr. Blumenstein hinted as much.
" It is a relief, young lady," he told me one night. I will not try to even attempt his dialect in cold, unfeeling letters and words. " It is a relief, young lady, to have someone at this piano who will not be making eyes at the young fellows."
I knew that he was referring in his own deli­cate way to my crutches.
" The last — the last three," he continued, rolling his eyes and wagging his fat little bald head, as if in simulation of sadness. " Thelast three married. They were good girls and settled like in their habits. But they each got married, just after I had each one trained and thought she would stay with me a good many years. It is discouraging. Your predecessor, Miss Hodenpyfful, married a young cabinet­maker, August Lemle. He is a nice boy and he has a nice shop just around the corner in Second Avenue. He will make her a good husband. But "— he struck his hand against his breast in a melodramatic fashion —" I lose a good pianist."
I looked at him very gravely.
" You wouldn't hold it against a girl because she married, would you, Mr. Blumenstein ? " I asked.
" No, never," he replied, decisively. " Our folks are nice folks. Most of them are Ger­mans and they like the beer and the music and the singing. I won't have any but nice folks on this stage and that's the trouble. All the young fellows around here — our nice young German-American boys — come here when they want a wife. Sometimes I think, I think I have not a Volksgarden, young lady, but a matrimonial bureau."I nodded toward my crutches, which lay sprawled on the floor beneath the piano.
" I don't think you need have any fear of me," I assured my employer.
Mr. Blumenstein had told, better than I could, the character of his place. It was not, as I have already said, of the worst sort. Drunken men and women, loafers of any sort, were not welcome there. If ever they got into the place, the stout Germans soon put them out. It was a family place. It was a place where the great German colony of a great city might drift, men, women and children, for food or wine or beer and a comfortable, lazy evening. There was little talk, but much laughter and much smoke. It was not a place beyond the pale. There were some faded Christmas mot­toes, hung in brown evergreen, still hanging on the walls and they told me that the German churches held their merry Christmas festivals there.
Even the women who sang on the stage were not of the worst sort. Their costumes had quite astonished me, but you must remember that I had my training in a small village, that I never saw a low-necked gown until thatmemorable night when I went to the opera.
But after I had overcome those first feelings I found that even the singers in Blumenstein's Volksgarden were of something the same sort as his patrons. Most of them were stupid German girls — tremendously uninteresting to me — but they must have interested the Ger­man boys who came there, for they have told me of countless little happy affairs that were hatched in the place. Truly Mr. Blumenstein was right when he told me that he was running a matrimonial bureau 1
So my crutches were the safety-guard upon which he had looked with approval when he had engaged me! I began to wonder if they were going to be my safety-guard against all men and for all time to come.
After all the years that they had stung and hurt, after my long fight to bend my pride gracefully to them and my conquests over them, they were again menacing me. I had learned the hard lessons, it seemed. And you will re­member that I had already come to look upon my crutches with a certain decent dignity. You will remember, too, that I had learned to be really proud of my rosewood sticks, of myability to bend them to my will, to make them carry me, easily, gracefully, rapidly, whither I willed.
Mr. Blumenstein had put a new phase of the question into my head. Could I expect any man to love me, not despite my crutches, but because of them? That was the question. 1 had taken off my lameness as a mental handi­cap unto myself, and, thank God, I stood free. But did I stand free of crutches as far as others were concerned?
It seemed very silly, and in the same vein, tragic. For in all the years before I came to New York the man question had not haunted me. It was a silly question for me to ponder without even the man in sight. And yet, I wa9 again tremendously lonely, and thus given to pondering over academic questions of this sort. I saw Jim and Sadie, I saw the little married happinesses — tiny, world-wondrous things of twos, roundabout me on every side — and I longed for the bigger, greater life that God must have destined for every woman.
Physical handicaps, mental handicaps, what would they be with a man's great love to sus­tain one? Was such sustenance to be deniedme? Was I to be given everything else — health, strength, understanding, good looks, even real beauty — and then to be rejected be­cause my gait was different from that of most other women ?
It was hard to be brave; courage was diffi­cult.



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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 17928Unread post Didier
27 Nov 2017, 18:00

CHAPTER XIII

The weeks swept into months, and before I knew it Christmas was upon us — and past. I had few presents that Christmas. One of them I cannot forget. . . . For Blumenstein raised my pay. Harry Clinch made him do it.
" She really ought to get eighteen dollars a week," he argued. "Here Rockefeller has poked up the price of oil a cent a quart, and how are the poor working girls to live if this sort of thing keeps up ? "
I got my eighteen dollars a week. . . . And just to show that mine was not an unap-preciative soul I bought a brand new evening gown for my act. I went back to my girlish fancy and indulged myself in black velvet. I think that our manager was again disappointed. But it was a beautiful gown, none the less won­derfully cut and marvelously fitted. And it was lower in the neck than the white gown had been — in the back it was cut almost danger­ously low. I was beginning to be a real New Yorker*Christmas passed, then January, and my life seemed to be a regular routine that had gone on for years instead of mere months. And then — there came a great change in it.
For into our place, hidden there under the roar and grime of the elevated, there came one night one whom I had seen before — my Mr. Somebody, the Boy. I thought that I recog­nized him when first he came into the place and at my first opportunity I slipped my glasses out from under my bodice, where I always placed them just as I went to my place at the piano. My vision cleared behind their lenses in an in­stant.
It was the Boy. I had not seen him since that night —it seemed ages ago — when he had met me at the bridge entrance. I slipped my spectacles off again and pounded the keys of the piano joyously. The Boy — it was he — and under our very roof. Would he see me? I think he must have seen me almost from the first, for he was up and changing his seat and moving toward the front of the place. When he was seated a second time he was in a position to see my crutches sprawled on the floor beneath the piano, and that must haveconvinced him that his suspicious were correct.
I wonder now how I played that night. At first, when I caught sight of him coming in through that door, the piano must have fairly protested against the treatment it was receiv­ing. I was sprinkling notes all about, any­where but upon the keys. But afterwards 1 That was different.
I had someone to play for then, and play I did, to the very best of my crude abilities. I must have done fairly well, for he was extrav­agant in his praises afterwards.
Yes, now you know it all. The ice was quite broken. Then, the reporter was in search of local color, he told me. I suppose that my color, my olive skin — which means that my skin is not olive colored — must have been the most local thing to him in all New York, for he came to me at the intermission of the per­formance. I suppose I was of a different sort from what he would have ordinarily found in such a place, just as he was different sort than the most of the other visitors. At any rate, he drew a chair close to my seat at the piano as I rested between the two " acts."
" Oh, don't," I protested in genuine alarm,for Mr. Blumenstein stood in the wings watch­ing him.
" Afraid of Looey? " he laughed, with1 a nod at Mr. Blumenstein and with that delicious as­surance I liked so much in him. "You don't know Looey as I know him. He lets me run the place. I carried a front-page story last year that was the biggest kind of a free * ad' for him. The smart folks were telephoning and engaging tables for weeks after I pulled that off. I wrote a story about the girl that had your old job, Augusta Schemmlacher. She eloped with a nobleman named Hassen-strauser who was reduced by fate to stropping razors in a Yorkville barber-shop."
I laughed, despite myself, and that is the way we were again introduced — this delight­ful Boy and Miss Kittie Sevenne of the Volks-garden.
I had heard of the elopement of my distin­guished predecessor, Miss Augusta Schemm­lacher, who had been the first to start the chain of marriages, from Blumenstein's inspired piano. That gentleman, himself, smiled upon my conversation with this Boy. Perhaps he was thinking of another front-page story in theBanner and smart folks beginning again to tele­phone for tables at the Volksgarden. Truly, the power of the press is a tremendous thing.
We talked through that long intermission — the Boy and I. He was filled with curiosity as to how the city had brought me into the place, for of a sudden he recalled the night that we had ridden together on a North River ferry­boat — the night that I had first come to New York. He kept plying me with questions in his clever, inquisitive, reportorial way, and I could not even make feeble protest against answering. I told him frankly of the months that I had been in town — but little of the hard times — and I never told him of the Tigers' Ball. I had seen how Aylesworth had taken that. Neither did I tell the Boy of Ayles-worth — at that time.
" Oh, but you're a bully sort," he said ap­provingly. Even as I look back upon it all I can remember how happiness came again to me. It seemed as if I were peeping through a freshly opened door to Paradise again.
He leaned forward, one leg thrown over the other, his hands clasped over his knee, and he smiled sympathy into my heart, that Boy. Per-haps it was not a full measure of happiness hav­ing him there!
Gradually he made me tell even more of my­self — that seemed to be a real accomplishment with him. Finally, I told him how near I had come to going back to Honeytown, how a chance acquaintance in a railroad ticket-office had changed all my plans.
" There's a story," said he, his eyes lighting, up with a quarry in view. " I wish you'd let me use it. It would make a corker and make you famous. Perhaps Looey would double your salary after I got that story in right."
But I told him that that would be quite im­possible, that it would sting if he did anything of the sort. He put away his indispensable pencil, which seemed to fall into his fingers, and then said that he would not think of it. He was a gentleman, that Boy.
We might have talked into endless aeons if Blumenstein had not signaled me that the sec­ond part of his performance was ready to pro­ceed. The Boy saw the signal and pulled up his chair preparatory to going.
I have told you that I am an impulsive girl, likely to do almost anything imaginable.How I did this thing I do not know — foolish impulse never led me to do worse. But I leaned forward as he took his chair, and to him I whispered:
" You are coming again ? "
It was awful, but it served. Here was the reply:
" Often."
Often; often, meaning many times. Many times again. It seemed too good for truth.
The weeks went slipping past and the Boy kept his promise well. We were great, good friends already. He knew all about me, al­though I knew but little of him, and did not dare ask for fear of breaking the most glorious illusion of my life. He had been generosity itself, but our life and our acquaintance ex­isted entirely within the Volksgarden. I had not dared to accept his invitation to go outside the place. Somehow I was very timid about it all. I was so fearful of breaking the spell of what seemed to be a very beautiful dream being enacted into my very life. I could not forget the June Sabbath that I spent in Prospect Park with Aylesworth.Blumenstein raised my pay again. Harry Clinch made him do it.
It was not done in a moment. Clinch had to make quite a fight. Blumenstein could not be convinced in a moment. Clinch came in sometimes to cheer me and to support me in whatever little contentions that arose between the management of the place and myself. To­gether we generally won our points. Rough Harry Clinch certainly was, but, oh, so kind beneath every bit of his roughness! And he had a persistence that was nothing short of marvelous. It always seemed to win for me. ... I got my second raise. My pay was twenty dollars a week. . . . When I tried to thank Harry Clinch he almost avoided me.
" You're worth every cent he pays you," was all that he would say to me.
I am writing this story from the pages of the thin black diary that I kept so faithfully throughout all of those years. It records im­partially the details of those first months in New York — although it is silent as to Ayles-worth and the Boy. Still it is no test of mem-ory to bring back the part that they played in those eventful days of my life. I can still re­member wondering as I sat at the piano at the Volksgarden that winter if I was to have another Aylesworth experience. I hoped that no such cross would again be given to me, and still hoped — God only knows now what I then hoped each time the Boy came into the place.
One little entry in the diary brings back more memories. It was in that disagreeable season in New York when winter slowly gives way to spring. It would rain, then snow, then sleet — then more rain and more snow. But I did not miss one single night at my piano all that winter. A clever shoemaker down our way had devised sharp steel points for the heel of the stout high-laced boot I wore upon the street on winter nights. There were similar spike points for me to put in place of the rubber ferrules on my crutches. Mailed cap-a-pie in that fashion, I could almost laugh at the dangers of icy side­walks. I have used the steel points each winter since then and they have never served me false.
But on that particular night I was in too much of a hurry to take the time to attach thesteel points to my crutches — there was more rain than snow outside at any rate. It was raining sharply when I came out of the Volks-garden. Blumenstein's place had a stage-entrance leading into the alley, quite after the fashion of regular theaters, and the alley was always a dangerous place for me — with its treacherous pavement of slippery flag-stones.
I made my way carefully, for the alley was not well-lighted, and my crutches demand a pretty sure footing. Only last week I nearly had a nasty fall right here in my study and after all these years of the sticks. One of them slipped on a loose rug and I only saved myself from falling by clutching at a corner of a desk. A woman who has lost a leg cannot run the risk of falling.
So I poked my way gingerly through that alley, longing for the warm comfort of the trolley-car that should carry me down to the bridge. But — as I had almost passed through the place, one of my crutches went slipping, my balance tottered and I swayed in peril of a nasty fall on the stone pavement. I would have had that bad fall then if an arm, a strong arm, a man's arm had not reached out, caughtand saved me. I was under a gas-jet that mo­ment and I turned my head to say thanks.
The owner of the arm was none other than the Boy. It seemed, at first, too strange a co­incidence for truth. Then I found that it was no coincidence. It seems that he had made a habit of standing in the alley in the black shade of an awning night after night to make sure I boarded my car safely, and I had not known it all that while !



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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 18145Unread post Didier
29 Nov 2017, 16:04

CHAPTER XIV

Winter swept into spring, and spring into summer, and I began to feel that I was a fixture at Blumenstein's. But I was singularly happy and contented in my work — constant though it was. Still there came a day when the very fragrance of indolence hung in the soft air, and on that day Blumenstein's heart softened and the Boy and I went out into the lovely Long Island country together. He had suggested Prospect Park and luncheon al fresco, but I gave little shudders at the very thought of the thing, and we went up into a lovely wild place beyond Jamaica and dreamed that the world existed only for the two of us.
He had been constant in his attendance upon the Volksgarden — two or three nights a week through the long season.
" I am fond of the atmosphere of the place," he told me; " it reminds me of Europe and my school days over there.'*
What could I think, what could I dare to think when he talked to me like that. I didnot think. I closed my eyes and dreamed. I let myself sink into the unearthly happiness, and forget that there was a yesterday of pain, of Aylesworth and all that, that there was to be a to-morrow of uncertainty. The to-day was glorious. The sun shone above me and sent his warm rays down upon me. I was seem­ingly in the great happiness of my life.
The Boy had studied in Europe. He had also studied at St. Paul's and at New Haven, and his was a family of real distinction. He did not tell me all in so many words at the very first, but finally I patched it together from the small talk that he let drop to me. They owned a big house — the Boy's family — and they went away summers to another big house some­where on the coast. But the Boy stayed in town and I did not even dare ask my heart why that was so. . . . For the look that had come for a moment in Mr. Drake's eyes and that had been ready to come to Aylesworth as he puffed his pipe that Sabbath morn did not come into those of the Boy. I think that was why I loved him the more.
I was content to receive the happiness that was granted me and to remain dumb like thecat or dog who lifts its head to be gently stroked.
"You are in love," Sadie told me — and I did not deny that.
" Yes, I am in love," I told her, laughingly, " I'm in love with the world, the warm summer days that have come again, my smart new linen frock, I'm — I'm in love with everything."
" I'm in love with Jim," she replied in her practical, tactless way. " We are going to be married in three months. Jim's folks live south and we don't want to go down there until September."
Dear Sadie I She had such a simple romance and it was all so real to her. It was a real to­day for her. She looked forward to a glowing to-morrow just ahead and I — I did not dare look an hour into the future.
But the early summer sun that beat so joy­ously down upon the city brought a new distress to me. My weak old eyes gave protest once again and for three days I lay in my bed again, my eyes tightly bandaged once more, the seconds timing off as minutes, the minutes as unending hours. The glare of pavements and white and open spaces was too much for me and again thebig, cross, black-bearded doctor stood at my bedside, scolding me.
Back I came that summer, as I have had to come sometimes since, to the comfortable pro­tection of my thick black spectacles. For three months I wore those horrid goggles on the streets of New York and you cannot imagine what a humiliation of womanly pride that was to me. For the first five or six weeks after my short and enforced rest there in my room I wore them all the while, indoors and out, and won­dered what use linen frocks and swagger hats were after all to me. . . . Blumen-stein was unexpectedly kind and sympathetic but with the exception of those same three days I kept at my work, slipping my dark spectacles off as I went to my place at the piano and over my eyes once more as I came back again.
The Boy seemed quite concerned when he first saw me " behind the scenes " at the Volksgar-den, my tight-fitting ugly goggles covering my weak old eyes.
" It is nothing," was my laughing assurance to him. " My eyes, as you know, are not over-strong and I have not treated them fairly. Hence a little penance for a few weeks."" It was a good deal, last night/' was his grave reply. He has grave, gray eyes which I love to distraction. " I missed you very much. I had some things I wanted to talk over with you. We will talk them over to-night."
I put my fingers on the gold frames of my spectacles.
" Not to-night," I told him. " I have really promised my eyes these protectors for a month to come."
But he was obstinate — he has his stubborn traits — this Boy — and I rather like them in him.
" I can't wait even a week," he said, " so it might as well be to-night. You don't suppose I care about anything as external as those blamed old goggles, do you ? "
I could have hugged him and I was ready to give assent to whatever he might propose. So after the place was well-nigh deserted we slipped out together, the Boy guiding me care­fully through the dark alley — very dark to me through the thick lenses of my goggles — his arm giving me firm grasp on mine above the elbow; the place where all crutchfolk must be grasped. There was a cab at the curb andwhen we alighted from the cab we were in front of a gaily-lighted restaurant. I shrank back.
" Oh, I cannot go in there wearing these ugly things," I said, and I halted while I lifted my arms to unhook my spectacles from behind my ears. But he made me replace them. Some­how I was mighty fond of the Boy. I had never before taken orders from anyone else.
After we were within the restaurant and snugly seated at a not too conspicuous side-table I was a thousand times glad that I had retained the big black spectacles upon my nose. Not glad alone because the place was glary and they restful, but because of a little incident that came to pass there.
Most of the smart folk were supposed to be out of town, for this was late June, and nothing was supposed to be really smart in New York in midsummer. The hotels and the theaters were given over to the country merchants and the real New Yorkers were having a blissful time off under the shady trees of which they know so little.
Some smart folk were in the restaurant that night, however. A party of them stopped beside the Boy for a moment, looked at mecuriously — I supposed they might have even fancied me blind and that I could not see through the blackness of my goggles — while I studied them in return.
There were three of them — the first of them was Uncle Aneas Strong, the second Mrs. Aneas Strong, the third, their darling daughter. I shivered for a moment for fear the Boy might begin introductions, but he is tactful and did not. They studied me but could not place me. The rack-boy had taken my crutches with my outer wraps and so my most conspicuous cues were gone. They had not seen me enter, and so there you are — they did not dream that Kate Senton sat so close to them that minute.
44 Don't suppose you know them? " said the Boy to me after they had passed out into the street. I did not answer and he took.my silence for the answer he expected. " That's Aneas Strong, President of the big Roosevelt National bank, his wife and his daughter. I know them in a business way and " — he broke nn with a laugh for a moment — " I'll suppose they'll go up the shore and tell my folks that they saw their angel Freddy in at S------'s with a strange girl."
" A goddess in goggles," I offered." A goddess," he said in the grave way I liked so well. "A goddess," he repeated. His tones quickened. " They won't be decent enough to put it in that way. Decency doesn't run in that blood. Old Aneas is a screw and they've no love for me. You see, my folks and the Strongs worked out a dandy story plot, the thread of which was that I should marry Miss Skin-and-Bones who just stood beside you here. I helped develop the theme and strengthened the plot quite a bit by balking in the traces."
" You didn't want to marry her ? " I asked. It seemed as if the room was winging unsteadily about me, and yet I had declined the Boy's per­functory invitation to share wine with him.
" Didn't want to marry her ? " he repeated. " Don't you think that I am a free agent? Was I not to be consulted? Miss Strong has some­thing to say in the matter. They tell me that her heart is already gone — to some Parisian."
Did you ever feel as if someone had stepped beside you and with unseen hands of power lifted a burden from your shoulders that was all too hard to bear? That was my feeling that very moment. In the next I found myself vexed by inward doubtings. Suppose that he was tell-ing me this to make the rest the easier. Sup­pose that Miss Strong did really care for the Boy. . . . The very idea sent ugly thoughts through my heart and soul — again I was in re­volt against the world and all the things of the world. . . .
But then I knew — the Boy. He was not the sort that says one thing and means another, and I knew that full well. If Miss Strong had —
My thoughts came away from Miss Strong and back to the Boy. He was saying some­thing— a something that I could ill afford to miss.
" I am in love, Miss Senton."
The old fears were almost upon me once again. But I kept very cool. I bit my lip until it almost bled. I could feel my heart beat against my gown.
" I am in love with you, Miss Senton."
I covered my face with my hands. It was awful, that moment — frightful — it was a joy almost too great for human frame to stand.
" I am in love with you, Miss Senton,'* he re­peated, as if I had not heard every tiny inflectionthe first time. " I want you to do me the very great honor of becoming my wife."
" Don't — Boy — don't, dear Boy," I pro­tested.
" Why not? " he asked. " Why not? "
I could not answer him for two or three minutes.
" It is quite impossible," I finally stumbled out.
" Why impossible ? " he demanded. " I re­gard it not only as possible but probable."
His assurance never failed him in a crisis, and I loved that in him.
"Why do you ask me to explain?" I de­manded of him. " You who know so well with­out asking ? Why do you want me to tell of the gulf that lies between us? "
" Yes, I know it," he said. " You are good and dear, clever and beautiful, and I'm a bad sort of a scribbler that has had all manner of op­portunities and thrown them to the four winds. I'm a drifter and an idler. I'm —"
" Stop I I can't bear that sort of thing," I told him, putting my fingers into my ears.
He laughed in his audacity.
" I knew you cared," he laughed at me, " andI have proven it. When are you going to say * yes' to me, Miss Senton ? "
" I can't say * yes ' to you ever, Boy."
" You don't care for me?" The laughs were all gone now.
" More than I have ever cared for another person on earth," I replied, my heart speaking those words through my mouth.
"And you won't say that single word to me?"
I saw that there was plenty of argument ahead for me and I buckled down to the business of the thing.
" How can I? " I asked him. " Have you forgotten that I am a cripple ? "
I think that was the first time that I ever called myself by that odious word. Still I real­ized that an odious word was necessary that in­stant, that nothing else would serve, and I used it without hesitation.
" Have you forgotten that I am a cripple? " I demanded of him.
" I have never noticed it," he replied, firmly, and I loved him the more for it. From the time I had first known him the Boy had never, directly or indirectly, referred to my crutches,and perhaps you think that I had not appreci­ated that in him.
" I am a cripple till the end of my days," I persisted.
" I think that you are the most wonderful and graceful woman in the world/' he said slowly, a grave sweetness settling about his mouth and eyes. " Your wonderful crutches are only your obedient servants, Miss Senton."
I could have reached over and hugged him and kissed him for that, but I only said:
" It has taken time and thought and pain to train them, Boy. In the whole question they are handicaps."
He looked at me almost savagely.
" Perhaps you think that I am not handi­capped, Miss Senton? You have never known of me. Perhaps you think a fellow is not handi­capped with the dollar mark imbranded upon his brow? You have never known the curse of being rich!"
I looked at him in astonishment.
" It is a curse, being rich," he continued fiercely, " and when you are very rich it's a triple curse. At school and at college my path was marked. You may have thought yourself con-spicuous upon your crutches; how would you have thought yourself if you were known as the son of not brains and blood and love, but the son of — ten million dollars ? How would you have loved a world if you thought that every man who smiled upon you smiled upon you be­cause your governor's check-book could work marvels. It was the suspicion of those about me that was my price to be paid for being the son of ten million dollars. The price was too stiff. I bucked in the traces. But what could I do? I couldn't choose my own father, could I?"
He laughed hoarsely at his rude joke and resumed:
" Not a man, not a woman, but whom I doubted, until you. That is why I did not dare tell you. You took me just as I am, flesh and blood, mind and soul, just as God made me to be. You could not see the dollar mark that the world put on me, you thought me a poor dog of a newspaper hack living up to my salary and a little beyond, and you were kind and loyal and lovable to me. Do you think that you can un­dervalue what that meant to me, Miss Senton? I was hungry for true companionship. With awhole cityful about me, snapping their tails and licking their teeth as they prayed for me to join them, I was lonely — lonely for the real thing, Miss Senton.
" There you have it. It's not English, it's not even grammar, but it's hard facts and I've meant every gospel word of it"
I could not answer for some minutes.
" Dear Boy," I finally told him. " You have knocked over the tiny bridge that spanned the
gulf."
" No, no," he said.
" Did you not know that I have lived these warm summer days in fear that some truth might come to me that would destroy the illu­sion — the charm that real friendship gave to a friendless life. Now it is all over."
I turned my head away.
" No," he protested, so sharply that I had to caution him to speak in a lower voice. " It is just beginning."
I shook my head.
" See here," he argued, almost losing his good manners in his great earnestness. " When my dad was younger than I am now they told him some things could not be. The old man rearedup on his hind hoofs and bellowed at them that they could be. He knew they could be, and he was enough of a man not to let them shake that out of him. He had a hard fight and a long fight, but he won his point. That's it, Miss Senton. He won his point." He was silent for just a moment. " I am going to win my point," he whispered out at me. " I am going to make you my wife."
Now what could any woman do against such force as this, such bold, strong, armed force, with her heart turning traitor within her and urging unconditional surrender to the enemy? For the moment my mind conquered. I knew what was best, best for myself, best for the Boy. I wanted to make no mistakes.
We were silent for a long time, making mere pretense of supping there in the lovely restaurant together. Finally I felt that the si­lence was embarrassing to both of us, and I broke it.
" I am going to try to develop my work a great deal, Boy," I told him. " I am going to try and make myself very much better; I am try­ing to work out a scheme for making a little monologue out of my session at the piano.Clinch has put the idea in my head and I am turning it on details all this while."
He beamed upon me and I felt sure that his mind was quite off the other thing.
" That's great," he said, heartily. " I'll help you, in any little ways I can help you and we'll put a great act together. Then I'll send up the dramatic man of our sheet and we'll make you famous."
Busily we chatted together again, making all the details for the great monologue that was to be. He was quick and cheery and clever again and I was quite sure that the thing that would not leave my mind and heart had quite com­pletely withdrawn from his.
" I'll be up at the Volksgarden to-morrow night with the rough sketch of the monologue," he told me at parting. " Don't forget that it is going to be a great act. When it is all ready I'll send up the dramatic reviewer — he owes me so much money that he can't pay, that he's mine, body and soul — and I'll make him give you a notice that will make you famous. Yes, you will be famous and forlorn. And when you're forlorn perhaps you will think again about marrying me."It was evident that that idea was not to be shaken out of the Boy's head quite as easily as I had fancied. And yet as I crawled up into my room that night I could not forget Ayles-worth and how the doors of Paradise had closed so quickly shut upon me that day in Prospect Park. And here the door stood open again — a rare opportunity for such as I — for if I knew that I was beautiful I could not forget the other — my inevitable rosewood crutches — the problem compounded by the trouble that my eyes were giving me.



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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 18417Unread post Didier
01 Dec 2017, 17:38

CHAPTER XV

The monologue was finally finished — after weeks and weeks of patient labor and an almost incredible number of changes. The Boy did himself proud with it, and I was proud of both — the big manly fellow whom I loved so dearly and the creature he had given birth within his brain. I broadened the humor of it a bit, for it was not going to the heads of the most intelligent folk on earth. Then early one afternoon I tried it upon Louis Blumenstein himself.
" It is immense, miss," Blumenstein told me, his little bead eyes popping nearly out while he wiped his forehead — it kept frightfully hot right up into those early days of September. " I'll give you a swell stage set and put you right up back of the footlights."
But I would not do that. My crutches again barred the stage to me — and at a time when it might have become a most promising career.
I finally compromised with Blumenstein. I still sat at my old place at the piano and at theproper time I did the monologue, with some singing, some whistling, some playing and some talking. Folks seemed to like it from the be­ginning and that first night at the Volksgarden I heard something that sounded suspiciously like applause. The Boy was overjoyed. If I had believed half he said, I would have believed myself greater than Maud Adams, Ethel Bar-rymore and Mrs. Fiske combined. Luckily my head was not easily turned, although he came to me that night and said something that pleased more than all the rest of his praise.
" You are beautiful in that act," he told me.
I could have kissed him for that, but I simply turned and made a pretense of scolding him, with the lie showing from the depths of my black eyes.
The Boy kept his promise, as he always did, and sent the dramatic editor of his paper, a Mr. Davis, to see my act. Mr. Davis was a con­sequential little man, very fat, very blond, very sleek of dress and of tongue. I must have been coming along toward a professional career, for I purred and fawned at him, and that night's Banner — well, it was wonderful, printed therein cold type and almost an entire column. He said that I was like the Russian actress Nazim-ova and he said other things — but I still have some shreds of modesty and must refuse to re­peat them here.
If it had all been about Kate Senton it would have reached the Honeytown Weekly Argus and I would have been a prophet famous in her own land. But it was all about a Miss Kitty Seven-ne; and Mr. Davis, not noticing my crutches, could not very well ring them into his article so it hit just precisely the way that I had wished it to hit.
It hit in quite another way. For when Blu-menstein awoke to find his Volksgarden entering upon a new lease of fame and the smart folk again engaging tables he raised my pay to twenty-five dollars a week, and I cut off a flight of stairs at the Stripes's.
My new room was a big square old-fashioned apartment with a hominess about it that I did not suppose a New York house could ever pos­sess. It had a white marble mantel that must have been quite an acquisition in its day, and on the chimney breast over the mantel hung a very old portrait, the portrait of a girl good to lookupon. The Pin Stripe wanted to cart it off when I moved down into the big room.
" That old daub ought to be thrown away," she said. " I'll get Ma to get something in a chromo to fill up there, something with a nice lively color."
Rather than have the old picture go, I bought it of the P. S. for a crisp new five dollar bill, so now I was a patron of art and owned something more than a mere collection of rags to hang upon myself. I cleaned and scoured at the old picture and it rewarded me by coming into its own again. The girl's face looked smilingly quizzical at me as if she could see, and sympa­thized. I have wondered many, many times who she was. I wondered if she lived in this house, perhaps in this very room. Then I won­dered still more. I wondered if she loved and was loved in return, and two brown sticks on the one side and ten million dollars on the other kept her from the consummation of her happi­ness.
Yet that was the thing that I was trying so hard to forget. On the whole, mine was a happy life those autumn days. My eyes were much better, and I did not now have to wear theblack spectacles except upon the street. My room was homelike and the Stripes had an in­creased respect for me as soon as I took more expensive lodgings.
After the evening performance we drove to
S------'s and supped there night after night.
We did not see the Aneas Strongs, and the Boy told me that they were up at their hole in the Berkshires, which is the delightfully contemptu­ous way in New York of referring to a three or four thousand-acre estate with a palace of a farmhouse stuck on some one of its knobs. Still that was the Boy's training and environment. For, the illusion broken, I showed no hesitancy in inquiring into his position in the social fabric of the city. It was a big position and a high position, which do not always go together in New York. His father was a synonym for a bundle of Government bonds, his mother was on the boards of directors of every big charitable institution in the place, his two sisters had the en­viable distinction of having angled for most of the desirable European nobility that had been placed upon the market.
When I realized what he was, in a city where a man is measured so much by his check-book andhis family tree, I could not believe that he was the grave, gray-eyed lovable Boy, whom I had come to know as intimate friend and companion. For our companionship went forward in the same high sweet tenor as it went before he broke the truth to me. The thing we discussed that night we had carefully avoided since. We went ahead much as before, save that we were a little more in each other's company. It was too idealistic to last. It was a dream from which I dreaded the awakening.
The town was getting alive again. The big shops were filling with smarter folk, and I knew my New York well enough already to know that these thoroughbreds were the real New Yorkers. The Boy would point some of the notables out to me from time to time. Between his family acquaintance and his far wider reporter's ac­quaintance there were few of them that he could not identify.
His family had been asking him when he pro­posed to take his vacation, and he replied that he did not propose to take a vacation. I urged it upon him myself. It had been a hard, hot summer and he had worked steadily and neededthe rest and change. But he said that the Volksgarden has been enough of a summer va­cation for him and the little evening suppers at S—'s enough rest and change for any man.
'Nevertheless I grew fearful. His family — his father, his dignified mother, the two anxious sisters would grow suspicious if he still hung so closely to town. They would not believe that his newspaper was holding him so closely to its insatiable demands for copy, they might remem­ber the ugly gossip that the Aneas Strongs must have given them and then they would flock down upon the Boy.
Do you wonder that I dreaded the awakening from my dream?



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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 18860Unread post Didier
04 Dec 2017, 18:57

CHAPTER XVI

Blumenstein raised my pay again and I cut off still another flight of stairs at the Stripes's. I got thirty-five dollars a week now and felt like a multi-millionaire. Harry Clinch of course got the raise for me. He told Blu-menstein that the Volksgarden would be losing me some day. That agitated the little bald head and it came at me with an offer of thirty dollars a week if I would have signed a contract for five years. I think that I might have signed that contract if it had not been for Clinch.
" Don't do it, miss," said he. " There'll be bigger things for you within five years than this."
Clinch had my interests at heart. He talked to Blumenstein in a way that scared me. I thought that I would surely lose my position be­fore Clinch was done talking to my employer. Then I discovered that I did not even know the beginnings of this business. For when I walked out of Blumenstein's office I was still con-tract free and my salary had been placed at an enviable thirty-five dollars.
Thirty-five dollars every seven days I That was a lot of money for me then. I not only moved down one tedious flight of stairs — taking my lovely portrait with me — but I ob­tained increased respect from each of the Stripes. I had a cab and spent long and lovely mornings shopping. I think that you know now that I had the thing that women sometimes call " the talent of dress " and envy its possession by one or the other of them. It was my own fancy to stick by black and white. With comparatively moderate expenditures in these days of new afflu­ence I could be most effective in my costumes. I bought the most marvelous hats, marvelously big and marvelously little, tremendous feathers, silk stockings, sturdy little boots, fetching slippers with wickedly high heels, long gloves — all the foolish, extravagant and delightfully lovely ex­ternals that made me feel, more than ever, a real New York girl.
I might have mortgaged myself for the rest of my life in those alluring smart shops of New York if I had not been halted right in the mid­dle of my mad course of extravagance." Never was a minute, when the scribe he was not in it," came a voice in my ear one morn­ing while I shopped in my smart hansom, and continued: " Pretty poor verse but it has served its purpose of halting the lady and should not literature be finally judged by the pur­pose it accomplished?"
I think that I will know that voice a million years hence. I stopped quickly, poising myself on my crutches and looked straight into the eyes of its owner, the gray eyes I love so well.
"Well, I'm your prisoner," I told him. " What will you do with me? "
He looked at me gravely without even the suspicion of a smile.
" Steal you for an excursion. We'll get few more days like this. Autumn is close on our heels, already."
I had planned that morning right up into the afternoon and here it was scarce eleven. I had also planned to spend a certain sum of money in those four brisk hours and here was my money almost gone in a little over sixty minutes. It did not seem to do much good to try and plan here in New York. Everything was bound to cost just a little more than one estimated. Youran a race in which you were bound to be a very bad loser.
But this is far and away from the thread of my narrative. ... I capitulated and we headed east on Twenty-third Street with certain dim plans for a stroll up the avenue and lunch at a certain beloved table at S------'s.
That plan was changed — much changed. A limousine was drawn close to the curb just north of Madison Square and when the Boy saw that car he began changing color. He studied it intently and the rear of a woman's hat that occupied it. Then he turned to me and spoke in a low voice as we continued up the avenue.
" I am going to ask you to do a very difficult thing — to do it for me," he said, slowly, as he measured his words. "Would you be willing to do a very difficult thing — for me ? "
I looked at him steadfast, without my fa­vorite trick of slitting my eyes.
" I would do anything in the world for you," I told him.
He corrected me instantly.
" Don't tell me that," he replied. " As long as there is one big thing in the world that you will not do for me, it hurts."" I thought that subject was buried," I re* plied.
" Hardly more than beneath the surface," he mumbled. Then he spoke clearly to me on the subject that was uppermost in his mind.
" That lady supporting that superb bit of tonsorial architecture," he said. " Is my sis­ter. I am going to introduce her to you. I hope that she will be very nice to you."
Now that was difficult. I was scared at the thought of the thing and wished myself at any other place at that moment. We were too late to get out of it now. For the Boy's sister had turned far enough to see us coming up the side­walk and curiosity and interest shone in her sharp-featured little face. There was another young lady with her and that young lady I recog­nized at once as Aneas Strong's daughter.
For a moment I yearned for the disguise my homely black spectacles would have given me, then the next moment I had girded on my armor of bravery and was ready to face any music that might be offered me. The business of intro­ductions were quick enough, confusing to both the Boy and me. After that we were slipping in the deep tonneau of the limousine, I occupy-ing myself with getting my crutches out of the way and stowed inconspicuously on the floor of the car as soon as 1 was seated. I made enough work of that to gain time to collect my thoughts. After that I straightened up and was ready for the worst.
His sister —- answering to the name of Cecile —- turned on the current.
" Miss Strong," she said, as sweetly as cat­nip tea, " says that she thinks that she has met you before."
Miss Strong smiled in acquiescence. How strong the temptation lay upon me that instant to call attention that Miss Strong and this silly crippled girl who had turned a beloved brother's head all summer the way that it was taught to turn were fairly close kin. But somehow good sense ruled for this lucky once and I held my tongue.
" Very likely," I said in a low voice.: " Peo­ple are apt to recall me."
The Boy looked at me sharply just then. He must have understood how very difficult it was, for when I returned his glance I read in the grayness of his eyes, quite as clearly as if he had spoken it:" Don't be afraid, dear. No matter what these women may do or may say I will stand close to you. Be staunch. If there is any grill­ing going to be done remember that I can get rather warm, myself."
I rather floored Miss Strong by referring, myself, indirectly to my crutches. It is funny — psychological I suppose — but I can keep them from a topic that is always somewhat dis­tressing to strangers by mentioning it myself in the very first instance. So when Cecile spoke again it was in another quarter.
" I hope someone has taken good care of Fred this summer," she said. " We could not. I've never known such an affection for the town as he has developed all these hot, dull months."
" The town may be hot but it is not entirely dull all summer. I have been here through it all, myself."
Somehow I seemed to be gaining courage.
" You have indeed ? How interesting."
I have heard of people filling in gaps with this very sort of conversation but had never be­fore imagined that I would have to come to it, myself. The Boy watched me, helpless, his eyes showing me love and sympathy all the whileand that was a world of encouragement. Miss Strong knew enough to say nothing and keep her eyes out the window of the car.
Cecile began to get nasty.
" It was not quite a deserted town then, with Freddy and you ? " she said, smilingly.
I searched for retort Before I had it I was interrupted:
" I had to keep pretty close to town, myself," said the Boy, " for fear of losing Miss Senton." He plunged in deeper. " You did not know, Cecile, that I have asked her to marry me."
I do not think that if the trusted engineer of the Kane fleet of motor cars had that moment plunged us into a crosstown trolley car, thrown it over upon its side and created a panic, that there could have been more excitement in the limousine in which we rode.
Miss Strong's eyes came back from the street without — mighty quick. Miss Cecile Kane looked at her, at Freddy at myself before she could speak.
" I'm sure Freddy is entitled to congratula­tions," she finally stammered out, " and you to wishes for happiness, Miss------"" Senton," I supplied. Miss Kane appeared to have a feeble memory.
Miss Strong echoed those platitudes — lies, I meant to say.
Then the Boy spoke.
" Now that we have both your cordial best
wishes, we will drop off here at S------'s for a
bite of lunch."
The Lady Cecile bit her lip, but still made pretense of smiles.
" Is this a state secret? " she inquired. " Or may Isabel and myself post it to a breathing and anxious world."
" You may tell it to anyone you please," said the Boy, " and be sure you add that I am only hopeful yet. For to tell the truth frankly your congratulations were premature and em­barrassing to Miss Senton. Be sure you say that I have not yet been accepted. Then you may tell everybody else."
But we both knew that neither would tell a soul.
He picked up my crutches from the floor of the tonneau as I slipped down to the walk and handed them to me when I was ready again for their support." I knew that you would be glad to meet Miss Senton, just as you will be glad to meet her many times in the future," said the Boy, turning to his sister.
Miss Cecile Kane did not reply and I was quite as glad. I had no desire to hear what her heart might put into her sharp tongue. When we were seated in the restaurant and the waiter had disappeared with our order I came to the point.
" You are a dear Boy," I told him, " but a frightfully and dangerously impulsive Boy. Why did you tell your sister all that, all that she will repeat?"
He smiled confidently.
" She won't repeat it, neither will Isabel Strong repeat it. It is not quite in line with any of their plans. I suppose I was impulsive " — the humor of my scolding any other person in the broad world for being impulsive began to come to me —" but I was tired, tired and dis­gusted of the talk that was going on about my head, over my head, around my head, at home. I wanted to show them you, what a dear you were, what a smart and beautiful sister-in-law for them to covet. When I saw Cecile therethe impulse came upon me and I yielded to the impulse. I know now that I had no right to do it. I was a fool. I have made you suffer and for that you ought to put me beyond your for­giveness."
He buried his face in his hands and seemed so desolate that I leaned across the table and consoled him.
" It was all right and for the best, dear," I told him.
That was not much, but it seemed to cheer him wonderfully.
" It is strange,'* he said, " now you call me 1 dear' and won't —"
I changed the subject, somewhat badly and awkwardly as I climb in and out of carriages, but—I changed the subject.
" They have raised my pay," I told him. It is great to have someone to receive your confi­dence. " I am getting all of thirty-five dollars a week now and it seems just like oceans of money to me."
He smiled once again.
" You're getting famous," was his judgment. " Are you getting forlorn ? "
I shook my head. There seems to be noway of getting away from that point with the Boy.
" You ought to be forlorn, forlorn enough to marry me."
I shook my head.
" One would not have to be forlorn to marry you," I told him.
"Then why don't you marry me?" he per­sisted.
" Would you want a better reason than the one we have just seen," I tried to tell him. " Your sister — your sister's friend. You don't seem to see the great gulf, my dear Boy."
But he was stubborn — dear and stubborn, and very hard to convince. We came no nearer the point that day.
But I realized that our glorious to-day was nearly ended. To-morrow was close at hand, and I shuddered at the very thought of to­morrow. His sister knew; the girl they wished him to marry knew. It would not be long now before his family all knew. When they realized that he had proclaimed his love for me in the very face of Miss Isabel Strong, temporizing would cease. There would be no more drifting in the easy currents of content.For the sun set red upon my horizon and to­morrow would be troublous, stormy. I prayed that God might grant me the strength to guide my little bark safely throughout all of it. It was going to be a rough sea and a hard passage to navigate.



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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 19080Unread post Didier
06 Dec 2017, 16:24

CHAPTER XVII

It seemed as if I had been shuffling; ahead ever and ever so long a time and that just now I had taken a great step and gone a long, long way ahead at a single stride.
For, on a night when winter was again upon the town and the trees were slipping off their lovely brown and yellow autumn gowns, I sang and whisded and played and recited my mono­logue at a great house up on Riverside Drive. Harry Clinch made all the arrangements. At first I trembled, for fear of Blumenstein.
"I'd love to do it," I confided to Clinch in his dingy office. " But how about the Volksgarden ? "
Clinch laughed.
"It's a good thing, miss, that I didn't let you sign that contract with our Dutch friend. He'll let you off all right. I'll see to that."
And so he did. He must have had a magic touch, for Louis Blumenstein not only said "all right" but wished me success and success came to me. I had a wonderful new frock — another black velvet evening gown, such as I know represents my personality best of all — more than a week's pay for a single evening's work, interesting folk to meet, a carriage to take me to and from the house — this last a mag­nificence not lost upon the Stripes. They had divined in some rough way that I was a sort of amateur entertainer — although they did not even dream about the Volksgarden. Still there were things that compensated them. Miss Clarice Stripe was to appear at some church en­tertainment and I dressed her for the occasion — in her mother's Turkish corner, every blessed last bit of it. She was a wonderful success, the hit of that evening, and she almost loved me for the part that I had played toward her triumph. And I was glad, for I had not forgotten her kindness to me in the long hours while I lay abed with my eyes so tightly bandaged against the light.
The folk who listened to me in the big house on Riverside Drive were entire strangers to me. And although many smart men and women heard me at the Volksgarden and although I was never ashamed of the place, I had a new professional name for these private house affairs. Merton Leslie. Do you like that? Does it sound professional? The Boy did not select it for me. I picked it out of an old novel for I was going to keep it as a secret from him for a little time.
It was Clinch's idea, my changing my name for these private house affairs. He thought it a big new field for me, and thought, too, that some of these very fine New York ladies might object to graduate artists of the Volksgarden. I made Clinch explain to Blumenstein where the responsibility rested for the change. I did not want Blumenstein to think that my pride or un­common vanity had reached a point wherein the humble hall that had first sheltered me was no more worthy of my attention.
For Blumenstein had been kind to me before the night when he let me go to the big house in Riverside Drive. He insisted so steadily on giving me a stage setting and making me a reg­ular feature of his performance that I finally yielded. So my place at the piano as accom­panist was taken by another, my hours were just so much shorter, my work just so much the easier. I came on for twenty minutes in the afternoon and another twenty minutes in the evening. The chief feature of my setting was a grand piano. After I was seated at it, they took my crutches away and the curtain went up. I did my little act and not a soul in all that house dreamed that I was lame.
The people at the big house on the Drive seemed to like my act. All of them applauded and some of them came to me at the close of the evening and told me so. I had a crisp fifty dollar bill to slip within my gown, and, as I have already told, a comfy carriage to take me all the way back to Brooklyn. It should have been a mighty happy evening for me — and was not. For while there were nice men and smart men there a-plenty, and I met some of the nicest and the smartest of them and they were uncommonly kind to me, yet there was one whom I missed. As I sat in the carriage and we pattered our way home over the narrow roadway of the great bridge I could not but think how much better it was at the Volksgarden, with the Boy waiting to take me out to the nightly supper that had become part and parcel of my life. ... I could hardly wait for the next night — the hour when I should slip bade into the old groove at Blumenstein's and as I toyed with the keys of his piano, remember who was waiting for me in the wings.
But the next evening at the Volksgarden — such an evening. Even to-day when it is all past I can hardly make my pen tell what a blow first came to me that night 1
For — for the first time in many, many weeks the Boy did not come to the Volksgarden. I looked for him early in the evening from a little peeking-place at the side of the drop-curtain — I thought it possible that he might have stopped in the audience for a moment before coming be­hind the scenes to me. He was not there. As I gave my act I scanned the house closely for him, which was quite futile as I cannot see dis­tinctly more than twenty feet without my glasses. But I could see the blurred faces — hundreds and hundreds of faces, upturned and listening and I could almost know that the two gray eyes were not among them looking faith­fully and affectionately into mine.
I lingered a long while changing from my stage clothes to my street costume, and when I peeked again through the drop-curtain the strong lenses of my glasses made every detail of the audience clear to me. But my intuition as I sat upon the stage was right. The Boy was not there.
It seems a little thing as I look back upon it now — that I should have been afraid because he had missed a single evening at the Volksgarden. But I had real intuition. It was not that he was missing but because I mistrusted the reason why he was gone. . . . And it seemed as if I could not wait until the second evening at the Volksgarden. ... I was very much afraid. It seemed as if the dawn of that mysterious and unknown To-morrow was right upon me.
Two days more and no good news.
Blumenstein noticed and became alarmed. He even threatened to send for Harry Clinch.
" You are not well, miss," said my employer. " You have worked too hard this year. You shall take a vacation — a vacation with pay — next week."
Blumenstein was kind and thoughtful, but also very nearsighted. If he had not been near­sighted he would have seen the Boy in the first place and missed him in the second. Perhaps it was all for the best that he did not understand the situation more clearly.
I waited until the end of the performance that third night — and still no luck. And when I came out into the alley by the stage-en­trance I looked sharply in its every dark nook and cranny, hoping against the very blacknesses of hope. December was almost upon us and it was raining, threatening snow. I felt as if snow had fallen and lay deep upon me, heart and soul.
They all know me as impulsive, all those who know me well. That night I had about reached the breaking point. I was only a woman, after all, and there were limits to a woman's endurance.
So it was that I found my way to a telephone in a corner drug-store after the performance. It was one of those booth telephones, a big con­venience to a woman who has to speak her heart into an unfeeling metal transmitter.
First I called the Banner office and asked for the Boy. It was not an easy matter to locate him, apparently. The first voice that answered my inquiry said that he was in and would be at the phone directly, the second that he was out, the third said that he did not know when Mr. Kane would return. This voice had an impres­sion that he was out of town. It was all very confusing and very unsatisfactory.
" Why don't you call up Kane's house," said the third voice, when I had him convinced that mine was an important errand. I hung up the telephone, and swung across to the telephone directory which lay sprawled across the drug­gist's cigar-stand. I turned to " K " and hunted rather vaguely for a few minutes.
For it had not occurred to me till then that I did not know just where the Boy lived, or his father's precise initials. For these things were least important of all in my love for him. I was not going to marry his family. So his place of residence was an open question to me and it came to me, quite as quickly, that he did not know where I lived. I had never let him come to see me at my boarding-house. Our acquaint­ance, while infinitely close in one way, was tremendously impersonal in another. It was vastly more dreamlike that way and we lived as in an illusion of sleeping hours.
I had to call up the Banner office once again before I had the Boy's address assured in my own mind and it was in no steady frame of mind that I called 9841 Plaza and realized that the magical genius of a copper wire and an elec­trical current brought me close to his home, close to him.
" Is Mr. Fred Kane there? " I asked.
It was hard, asking that question of a strange voice. There is something, after all, so impersonal about the telephone as to be all but appalling.
I felt after it was all done that it was nothing if not appalling — the whole business. For after I had thrown my dignity to the winds and humbled my pride I found that his voice was a small part of what was to be denied to me. They did not even give me the satisfaction of knowing where he was, what of him. The best I might do was to talk with servants, good serv­ants who knew enough to keep their mouths closed. I inquired for Miss Cecile, but, of course could not talk with her.
I wrote the Boy a letter that night and tried to explain how it all was, but I had faint hope that he would ever receive it. I felt that he must be trying to feel his way toward the Volksgarden — toward me. I felt that some­one had broken in between us.
I had infinite faith in him. A thousand years hence I shall have the same infinite faith in him. There can be no last day to our love.
Still I felt that there was mischief brewing. Some one had interfered. It seemed that the To-morrow had come, had been ushered in to me in a midnight of sorrow and of blackness.



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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 19205Unread post Didier
08 Dec 2017, 17:38

CHAPTER XVIII

The Christmas days came over the town once again — and once again my heart could not enter upon their joys. My heart was not in Christmas — how could it have been that eventful winter? . . . My presents were few and they were simple and from them you might not have fancied that I already had a siz­able and growing balance in a down-town bank. I gave little trinkets of jewelry to Clinch and to Louis Blumenstein, flowers to the sick-abed man in our shabby street, to Mr. Jessup who had reached an age where seemingly he could grew no older, a new smoking jacket and pipe; to the Stripe girls and the servants in the house, other little trinkets. But my heart was not in the giving and I had little real joy in the things that their love sent speeding back to me. . .
For I would not forget. The weeks were multiplying again and I had even ceased trying to look for him. I was losing heart, losing in­terest, and Blumenstein, looking forward to that evil hour when my listlessness should begin to show itself in my work was ever urging me to take a trip down to Bermuda and back. . . . But Blumenstein did not understand. Neither could you have understood. . . . My soul could not be dulled forever and I was losing heart. I fancied myself already a middle-aged woman and saying her farewells to a youth that could not return to her again. My heart was sick. I was desolate. For a time I even lost my love for fine clothes, for the pretty fripperies that so appeal to a woman of warmth and youth and life. If you had seen me in our Brooklyn streets, a plain figure of a woman leaning heavily upon two crutches — the slim figure of a woman in black tailormade and plain little hat, my eyes downcast and half hidden behind the lenses of my demure spectacles, you could hardly have fancied me the exquisitely dressed Merton Les­lie whose engagements multiplied in the great houses of Manhattan, whose drolleries were ex­citing the joy and the laughter of the most blase folk of the most satisfied city on the en­tire face of the earth. I was living my part, in more ways than even those who came close to me could readily understand. I was giving good measure for good money. When they paid me well I was as gay and as beautiful, as exquisite in my lovely gowns, as charming in my manner as woman well could be — but I was playing a role.
Still — the engagements multiplied. A man discovered my lodging-place in South Brooklyn — just how, I have never settled to the satis­faction of my own mind. Some men have a faculty of finding out anything that they wish to know and he must have been one of these.
He was a well-dressed, well appearing man, my caller. He greeted me with a decent smile and a showing of excessive cordiality.
" You are making a great success in your en­tertainment work, Miss Senton," was his greet­ing.
I was guarded, not knowing his business.
" I am trying to do something with it," I said.
" You are doing much with it," he assured me, " and you might do a great deal more with — with a little proper direction."
I was puzzled. I slipped off my crutches and down into a chair.
" I think you have the advantage of me," I said to him." Clarkson's my name. I'm a ——
Instantly it all flashed upon me. This man was an attorney. The Kanes must have sent him to suggest a money settlement. I knew. I had not digested miles of glowing small type pages for nothing whatsoever.
" I'm a producer," he continued, but I scarce heard him. I was indignant that the Kanes should even dare! " It has occurred to me, Miss Senton, that we might make up a contract that would land you in far better pastures than Clinch can land you. Harry Clinch is a good sort, an awfully good sort — we're friends — but he hasn't quite the connections."
" Eh, what's that ? " I asked. I began to vaguely realize that my caller was talking some­thing else than the words my mind had put into his mouth.
He repeated what he had said.
" Why do you bother with Clinch ? " he asked me. " You're out of his class already. You've got a big act and soon the whole town will be talking of it."
I looked at him deliberately for a full min­ute before I answered him.
" No sir," I said. " Nothing can separate me from my present agent. That's all I can and will say."
He departed.
I remembered Harry Clinch's remark to me, " I'll stick by you if you'll stick by me." He had stuck by me and stick to him I would. He had been kind to a friendless girl. They have a way of forgetting such things sometimes in New York, but that is not the Honeytown way.
When I told Harry Clinch of my interview with Clarkson, he swore a little — then apolo­gized to me and said that he would try and do anything for me that I wished. I told him that I wished to give up my work in the Volksgarden — although I could not have even be­gun to tell him the real reason why.
" I understand," he said, quickly. " You are a real artist these days and out of the Blumenstein class."
" Oh, don't let him think that," I said hur­riedly.
" Trust me for that," said Harry Clinch. He was a born diplomat, my booking-agent, and so it came to pass that I said good-by to the dingy place where I had spent so many hours with happiness, and Blumenstein let me go with only decent regrets and kind hopes for my fu­ture success. Kitty Sevenne had also been buried, had been given a decent interment. And in her place had arisen another — Merton Leslie. And Merton Leslie was growing fa­mous.
I had the front parlor of our house and the Stripes were prostrate at my feet. Think of it! Sixty to one hundred dollars a week those days, and busy perhaps two afternoons and three or four evenings out of the week! I had cabs on rainy days, tea in quaint shops after­noons, hospitable homes to visit, fashionable folk to meet and to say nice or snippy things to me as might suit their fancies. But — never a sight of the Boy.
The letter I wrote him that night after I left the Volksgarden came back to me through the circuitous paths of the dead-letter office. All avenues between us were blocked. It was quite plain to me that money — a whole lot of money — could work marvels in New York.
Still progress — still more engagements and at higher prices — and Clinch told me that I was growing famous. Still — no word or sign ofthe Boy and a dear and precious memory locked up in my soul, the memory of the living dream that was and could not last.
Sometimes I thought that I might pass him on the street and that he might reach out and halt me as he did that autumn day when he found me shopping there in Twenty-third street. In Honeytown you see folks all the time that you know and it seemed that even in tremendous New York you would see one time someone whom you wanted to see more than anyone else in the world. As you know I am a conspicuous figure in the street and it seemed as if he must see me as the months began to pile themselves aggravatingly upon one another — it was late January already — but he did not.
The engagements continued to come in and Clinch took offices in a smart building with an elevator. I was so glad that I had brought him luck. For in some way I did bring him real luck. He was enabled through me to get entertainers to book, and he began to realize a good steady income from his business. He thought that it was all because of his kindness to a friendless lame girl who stumbled into his office nearly two years before, but be that as it may be, it was better for Clinch. Poor little Mrs. Clinch — a patient and hopeless invalid that I went to see many times and left thanking God for the measure of health He gives me — had a cherished opportunity to spend a winter in Florida, and when Clinch brought her north again well, he was going to have a darling little house awaiting her out on Long Island.
There are some things that are worth a hope­less invalidism and one of these, a husband's love and care.
But to Clinch again. He was no longer careless in his appearance, as when first I met him. He was Clinch the immaculate, and ac­quiring a reputation as such along the very gay­est stretch of Broadway. He laughed at me on the day when I stopped in at his new office and congratulated him on the neat little lady that he had engaged as an office assistant.
" Me typist," he whispered to me, and laughed again.
" You're getting very English, Mr. Clinch." I tried to give him the very answer that I knew he must be expecting.
" Londonese," he explained. Suddenly he wheeled around in his swivel chair and threw a real idea out of his planning mind at me.
" London, that's it, Miss Leslie," said he. " You've got to have the hallmark."
"The hallmark?" I echoed.
"Haven't you seen it?" was his reply. " New York is London mad. It apes about everything they do over there. Those very tea-rooms that you enthuse about, represent the importation and the transplanting of an idea. Our smart plays gain smartness traveling via the playhouses of the English capital. I have it, Miss Leslie. You must go abroad — this season. I can get you engagements in the big London houses — you can prepare an 1860 act like I suggested in the first place — and, Gad, when you come back here I'll get you five hun­dred dollars a night."
I shook my head. London was once a dream, and London is only a little distance from Paris where the boulevards were lined with the chest­nut trees, but London was a long distance away from New York. Not that I loved New York so madly, but then I could not figure the blow that it had dealt me, but I was afraid to go away from the Remote Possibility. I still hoped,hoped against hopelessness with all my strength.
" You'll like London," continued the invin­cible Clinch. " And they'll like you. They are taking to Americans these days, over there. They'll like your act, Miss Leslie — so clean, so sparkling, so subtle and so clever. You'll be a big hit. It will be worth ten years' progress here."
A big hit! Suppose it was a big hit ! After a big hit, what? Money? Money was not so much to me because I had the Honeytown way of thought, not the New York way. I re­ceived my neat checkbook only as a toy wherein the scratch of a pen made real money for me.
A big hit! Money! Suppose I acquired both — then after that — what? A house in the country, a carriage, a respectable old-maid-ship, pursuing religious devotions to the point of faddishness, raising dogs or chickens, chas­ing celebrities — an old maid.
God forbid. I would rather have been Sadie, with her little world, but a little world illuminated with the brilliancy of love. I took supper with Sadie and Jim one night and fancy the pride with which they showed me their flat — six rooms and bath. It had roses paintedon the ceiling, a cherry grill separating the parlor from the dining room, and a sort of up­right tombstone in red wood on the parlor side-wall that Sadie called a " console." They had a fireplace, and, there being no flue to the fire­place, Jim had an electric light glowing under red tissue paper in the grate. They had finely polished mahogany furniture, upholstered in sea-green plush and the certificate which showed that Jim had won enough honor to be elected treasurer of his union hung framed in red and gold on the parlor wall. There were lots of more colors in the carpet and the tinted crayon on the right of the " console " portrayed Jim's uncle, the distinguished alderman from Red Hook, on one of the times he wore a collar. The companion portrait on the left was that of Jim's aunt — Sadie told me that she was a Remsen and connected with the real Remsens of Brooklyn Heights.
It was all a glare and battle of kaleidoscopic color, but it was a home, almost pathetic as such, and it made me heartsick and mad with jeal­ously when I thought of that! Sadie grew very confidential and opened a closet door, to show a baby carriage stowed away in there. " One of Jim's fresh friends sent it us for a wedding present I" she whispered to me, with a great show of embarrassment
Home, a real home. What was a front par­lor in a boarding house, surrounded by cringing landladies and their daughters, what would an old maid's paradise of a country house, designed and furnished by master architects and crafts­men be compared with Sadie and Jim's six rooms and bath?
No London for me. While there was New York there still was hope. While I had life and strength I would keep to it, up and about and around the town fighting for that Remote Possibility.
Still I hoped in the hopeless hope.
I met an old friend upon Twenty-third Street. She saw me first and stopped me.
" I'd know you in any crowd with them sticks of yours," she said. She looked at me critically.
" Harry Clinch must have done well by you," she said. " You're looking more scrumptious than when I saw you last."
She continued her scrutiny.
" I wanted to pay you back those two dollars you lent me but I hain't had a chance. Times has been pretty close with me."
She showed as much. I reached for my own purse found a yellow-backed bill in it and stuffed it into her fingers.
"You don't owe me any two dollars, you don't owe me anything," I told her. " I owe you everything in this world."
She could not answer in her embarrassment.
" Now you must give me your address and when you need help you must come to me, for I am going to give you my address." She started to speak but I would not permit her. " You owe me not one cent in the world," I per­sisted ; " you never can owe me anything. There is nothing that I can do that can ever re­pay my indebtedness to you."
Of course I could never explain, and she for her part could never understand. I did explain some things, of the great luck that had come to me in my profession of entertaining. As I talked to the woman — she was the same as of old, dyed hair, showy crumpled suit, flashy cheap hat — a big limousine swept by us up the Avenue. In it there sat a young woman and that young woman was Cecile Kane. I am sure she saw me there, for my eyes caught hers. Yet she gave me no sign of recognition. It must have been something approaching a triumph for her.
I parted with the woman, mechanically, hardly listening to the words she mumbled out at me. My mind was in the automobile, riding there with Cecile Kane and pleading, as only the mind of a desperate and lovesick woman can plead for news of the Boy. In a moment my old passions were aflame within my heart.
The postman brought me a letter within that week, forwarded by Clinch. It was addressed to Kate Senton — how unfamiliar my own name grows to me — and it came to me from Aneas Strong!
That letter! Can I do better than spread it on these minutes?
West Sixty-third Street, New York.
7 February, 19 — My dear Kate: —
We feel that we have not seen you as often as we had planned or hoped when we first knew that you had come to New York. But we have heard of Merton Leslie. Merton Leslie is acquiring an enviable degree of fame.Won't you come up some night and dine with us, Kate? Afterwards we would like to have a small company of our friends in for the evening and we shall all be interested in seeing the wonderfully entertain­ing monologue of which we have heard such flattering reports. Let us know the evening and we will send our winter car to your door to bring you over and take you home.
I was always fond of your mother, Kate. If you have half of her good sense and ability your monologue cannot be the full measure of your possibilities. We are sorry to hear that your lameness continues and that you are still dependent upon your crutches. We hope that you will soon regain your strength.
With hopes that you will be able to set an evening for us within the next fortnight and affectionate re­gards from all of us, I remain
Your Uncle,
Aneas Strong
Affectionate regards from all of us! I won­dered how much affectionate regard Isabel Strong would hold for me if that good-looking foreigner had not strolled along at just the moment to take her affections away from Fred Kane.
Affectionate regards! I would have shown my affectionate regard for Uncle Aneas by set­ting a date and charging him my regular price — one hundred dollars — for the evening's en­tertainment. I think that if it had not been for that mawkish reference to my mother I would have written him as much.
As it was I tore the letter into hundreds of tiny bits and watched them curl into ashes upon my hearth. Go to Uncle Aneas' house again ? Not I.
And yet do you think that I lost complete sight of the Remote Possibility? The Kanes might be there, the real Kane, the Boy, my boy, might be there. It was a hope, not of the hopeless sort.
Still my pride must have some recognition. It was quite out of the question that I go to the Strong's mansion again. I would not go even if they were willing to pay me ten times my or­dinary charge for an evening's entertainment.



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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 19603Unread post Didier
11 Dec 2017, 17:46

CHAPTER XIX

It have a new stunt for you, Miss Senton," said the dapper little Harry Clinch. " It's Boston."
"Boston?" I asked.
" It's vaudeville," he explained. " And I don't have to tell you that vaudeville's the big thing in theatricals just now. It's the best paid branch of the business."
I put my finger-tips upon the hand-pieces of my slim, rosewood crutches.
" You forgot — these," I reminded him.
His face colored. Then he gained control of himself.
" I never forget," he said, plainly, " but you can do your act at that big house over in Boston just as you used to do it down at Blumenstein's. You're seated at the piano — blingo — curtain goes up — you're in one of those funny old cos­tumes of 1860 — the stunt goes—blingo—down goes the curtain. It's as easy as poker and twice as profitable. One week in Boston, six hundred dollars — and it is all as easy as if somebody was just sliding it under your nose on a platter." I laughed, then agreed. I had always liked Harry Clinch's enthusiasm. But somehow I balked on the 1860 costume, even though it was not to be seen with my eternal crutches. As I remember it, I found that it reminded me too much of my mother. The entire thing seemed impossible. But I did go to my dress­maker's and began planning still another black velvet evening gown, for the astonishment and confusion of the old New England town. Three weeks later I boarded a fast ex­press train at the Grand Central and went to Boston. It was my first time outside of New York in almost two years, and I looked for­ward to the five hours in the cars almost as I had looked forward to that first long railroad trip from Honeytown down into the unknown city. ... I have never been satiated with travel, like your born and bred New Yorkers. It is all very new and crisp and fresh to me still, and how I love it! I love to be seated in the train, watching intently as we burrow through the very hearts of the towns, skimming the meadows and the wood, catching glimpses of blue lakes and silvery rivers and the whitecrest of ocean shore. ... I love to study my fellow travelers, carefully and analytically. I can even smile inwardly now as they glance curiously at my crutches or whisper to them­selves as I go swinging past them. So much can Time do for a woman such as I.
Boston was charming. I liked it from the beginning, with its neat and curious streets and its plain red brick houses, its lamp-posts hung on brackets in the narrow alleys. In fact now that I have known London I can only see it as a larger Boston, only much smokier and very much more dirty.
For that week in the show vaudeville theater I resurrected Kitty Sevenne. The arrange­ment about setting the act, as Clinch had sug­gested, worked perfectly and probably not one of the great audiences that I faced twice each day would have associated me with the crutched woman that they might have met upon the streets of the town, coming and going from her work. I have spoken of this again because twice it had a distinct influence upon my stay in Boston during that engagement.
The first time was of an afternoon, mid-week,as I was leaving the side-door of the theater. I had it in my mind to step around to the box-office to inquire for my mail. At the main door of the place a man coming out from inside halted me, with a touch of his fingers upon my elbow. . . . For a moment my heart al­most stopped beating. I stopped short and looked around. The Boy! He was the first thought that always came into my mind.
But this was not the Boy. This was an­other— and another whom I should not for­get in a moment. This was the Perkins's Wil­liam— the Perkins's William from Honeytown and I should have known him among a million. For a moment we struggled for words. They came slowly and I breathed them first.
" Oh William," I breathed at him. " I am glad to see you."
It almost seemed then as if I had rather see him than anyone else in the world. I had grown far away from Honeytown. In an in­stant he brought me straight back to it.
" I was in at the show an' I seen you in it. Leastwise I thought it must a' been you an' I was a thinkin' of those afternoons in your aunt'sbarn. Do you remember how you'd give us comedy an' then tragedy an' then the Per­kins's?"
A thousand questions struggled for priority within my mind. In a little time he was telling me of Honeytown — in all the detail that I had craved. My aunt was feeling poorly—she had been abed for long weeks at a time. The trolley line had been built into Honeytown from the county-seat, and the merchants of our little town were sick at heart. There was tragedy with the coming of the trolley. Mr. Saun­ders, the hardware merchant, had shot himself one night while he stayed late to make up his accounts in the store. Folks were already flock­ing to the county-seat, which had metropolitan airs, to do their shopping — and Saunders had been the first to feel the change. . . .
He changed to pleasanter things. Things were looking up with Mr. Drake, and Mrs. Drake was keeping a hired girl. My soul re­joiced at that. Of a sudden I became home­sick — for the first time in my life. Honey­town had never before appealed to me. Now I was hungry to see it again — its dusty open square, its main street stretched along in the shadow of the ridge, the red brick houses with their stately white pillars, the quaint old churches among the trees, the abandoned Acad­emy. The Perkins's William was a friend.
That night I varied my rule and did not dine alone in Boston. William, who had come into Boston as convoy to a carload of horses was re­splendent in a brand-new suit of store clothes, a derby hat and a bright and brilliantly red scarf, joined me. And as for myself I did full honor to the occasion. I wore my smartest broadcloth tailormade, my fetchingest hat — and not one bit of it was lost on him. I could see him, again and again, studying me, my neat clothing, my trim rosewood sticks, the swing­ing silver lorgnette which hangs below my waist and which replaces the demure spectacles on most occasions. As to his verdict — he was far too bashful to give it to my face. But I could see that it was favorable.
And then, just as I had been hungry for Honeytown, I began to hunger again for the Boy. The very fact that a man sat with me at the table — even the Perkins's William — made me again desolate. It made me sorry that I was away from New York. I began to count the hours when I should be back again upon the Island of Manhattan — the Land of my possibility. . . . And before he had left me I had made the Perkins's William prom­ise to tell no one in Honeytown of seeing me. For I had planned to give our little village the one real surprise of its existence.
That week dragged itself to its very end and I knew that the act had been successful. Harry Clinch had even taken the trouble to telegraph me that much from New York. The house was solidly sold at each performance, and per­haps there was not inspiration in playing to three thousand persons at a single time ! . . . . I had done my little act so many times that I became almost mechanical and yet that was the very thing I tried so faithfully to guard against. With my heart and soul in my work there were no moments when I could let my mind drift from the work in hand. But when the act was over and I was in safe hiding behind the wings, from a point of vantage which a kind-hearted stage-director had found for me I gave myself to skimming the great audience for a familiar pair of gray eyes.I might have known better than to hope — and did not. I would go over the audience once, twice, three and four times and then — hope against hope and quickly calculate when I would again be back in New York — the land of my Remote Possibility.
Saturday night again. Six hundred dollars in my wallet and in the morning the train back to New York again. That last must have had its effect upon my work, for I was in fine fettle. Harry Clinch had told me that Boston was a " great Saturday night town," whatever that might mean, and I felt that in my very tingling nerve-points. I was in my act — loving it — the audience laughing and shouting its approval. I flung my head back and laughed and sang the old songs. I flung my head back — for a moment my blood almost turned chill — and still I sang the old songs.
For my eyes were not too short-sighted for me to see — far up among the flies in the cav­ernous ceiling of that great stage — a splotch of yellow light — fire. A tiny blaze, then not larger than a man's hand, was crawling along the edge of an inflammable bit of scenery canvas. That audience was in peril and did not know it. But I had seen the fire.
I cannot tell you of my craven fear of fire. Years ago I can remember hours of terror when our big barn burned, and a little later, a worse terror, when half of unprotected Honeytown made quick fuel for an angry and windswept blaze. Mr. Jessup had told me of the Brook­lyn Theater fire — when bodies lay like logs after a flood-drift, in the corner of the gallery stair. Only a little while before, the whole land had been terror-stricken at the horror in the Iroquois Theater, Chicago.
My first impulse — you know now how im­pulsive I am — was to fly in terror from that stage. Then the situation was solved for me. For I could no more move — let alone fly — from that seat, than a marble statue might move from its pedestal in the Park. Indeed I was more helpless. For I cannot even stand without my crutches. And my crutches at that moment were stowed away — goodness knows where — somewhere in the dim recesses of the dusty stage.
So, then I was in for it. I must stay in my place, as if I had been lashed to the mast, and continue to play and sing. And play and sing I did. I played and I sang as I had never be­fore played and sung. I caught the stage-director standing somewhere there in the wings. With an inclination of my head I showed him that resistless little flame creeping along the bit of scenic drapery.
All this came to pass in incredibly less time than it takes me to tell it. Still I played and still I sang, and still the thousands of faces watched me, little dreaming of the little flame that played so merrily on the edge of a bit of canvas.
Then — after it had seemed long hours and could really have been reckoned in seconds — the great fire curtain came clanging down be­tween all those faces and me and I leaned for­ward on the keyboard of the piano, crying in the tensity of the moment.
A confusion of orders were being shouted about me. They were climbing up toward the blazing cloth already, clearing the big stage, no one thinking, of course, of my indispensable crutches. But they thought of me. There was that big Irish stage director, big chested and big hearted, and he came to me — recalled my lameness of a sudden — and picked me up in his arms, carried me right out into the street and placed me in a carriage. The carriage hurried me off to my hotel. My personal danger was over.
They build these modern theaters with won­derful care. I only had in mind that awful tragedy at Chicago, and yet it was far differ­ent this night in Boston. That Boston au­dience must have suspected the worst when the portentous fire-drop came suddenly clanging down upon the stage, yet every man in the playhouse was hero, every woman, heroine. They filed out of the threatened theater as quietly and as calmly as if the evening's enter­tainment had been sedately ended by the usual benediction of the national air.
Behind the scenes the firemen and the stage­hands worked with intelligence and in one or two cases with rare heroism and put out the blaze without severe damage to the house. It was just an episode — that shows how different a situation can be than the worst.
They came to me the following morning, the Sunday papers — you really ought to have seen the first-page articles they carried. I was quite a heroine. It was really quite wonderful how Kitty Sevenne had sat so calmly at the piano, in the face of danger, and not a one of those newspapermen knowing that she sat calmly be­cause it was entirely impossible for her to leave. That made me a pretty cheap sort of heroine, after all.
Kitty Sevenne had a rare amount of adver­tising, for the little episode was telegraphed to all the newspapers of the country. Poor Kitty Sevenne, who was taken out of her coffin for a single week of activity, had enough engage­ments showered in upon her to have lasted her a long year. But I was done with the theater — for a long time, at least. Not that any foolish fear of another fire obsessed me. But I wanted more freedom, more time to myself and I wanted to go to Honeytown.
For again I had almost abandoned hope of realizing the Remote Possibility.



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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 19733Unread post Didier
13 Dec 2017, 17:11

CHAPTER XX

It did not wait till summer — as I had promised myself — before I returned to Honeytown. I was childish in my anxiety to get back to the old town and I was not ashamed of my childishness. . . . Summer was in the air, although it was still early spring and I felt that the dreariness of the winter-tired city could not reach far beyond its boundaries. So I set the date, before April was gone from us, and went up to the old town. Harry Clinch protested. Engagements were coming in upon me in showers, but still I would not be held in New York for them. I was homesick. I was tired of waiting for a Remote Possibility that never materialized and so my mind was firmly set. . . . And he finally made up his mind that I was a real artist and filled with the vagaries of genius.
It all came back to me as I slipped into the railroad office in lower Broadway to buy my ticket — that other time when I was ready to surrender, to acknowledge that New York had conquered me. It was the same railroad ticket office and behind its marble counter stood that self-same clerk. I thought that he would not recognize me, but I did not know the keen human knowledge and the accurate memories of these ticket-clerks.
" Did she ever pay you back that two dol­lars ?" he said, as he stamped my tickets and slipped them into an envelope for me.
" She did — with interest," was my truthful answer.
" Somehow I thought that she never would. She did not look on the level to me," was his parting comment as I swung out of the place. But the ticket-clerk would never understand.
To be again on the railroad train; to know that every time the carwheels made another quick revolution I was just so many feet and inches nearer Honeytown, to measure the hour-hand crawling around the face of my tiny watch, and then to know that I was many miles nearer the old town — such were the delights of that memorable journey. I read long hours, there were delights in being absolutely alone, and then when I was tired of reading I would take the time-table and find how much more ground we had covered. It was different from my out-bound trip from Honeytown — this re­turning in the comfort of a parlor-car, a new novel in my lap, flowers and candy by my side, porters to answer my every little whim. . . .
Finally the country grew familiar and I slipped on my spectacles so I might not miss a single detail of the county that I loved so well. The towns along the main line were old friends bobbing up to wish me safely home again — the shabby depot at the county-seat was like a pet acquaintance. How it had diminished in size! It seemed as if my glasses must be play­ing odd tricks with me. When I was a little girl it had seemed so big, so wonderfully im­pressive, with its trains coming and going on all sides and the gay place where folks could eat their meals in the railroad depot. Now it seemed small, very shabby and very dirty, and you could not have dragged me in to eat at the stuffy lunch-counter that showed itself from within.
But it all was home and at that shabby old junction I found the little branch line train that would take me straight back to Honeytown.Now I was within breathing reach of home. The conductor of the branch train had been a boyhood chum of my father and my mother. If I had but mentioned my name to him he would have had me in tears telling me of those who were so close to my life, and I did not dare risk tears on my return to Honeytown. . But I fancied that he stared sharply at my crutches and myself as he took my ticket. I fancied that he was inwardly saying:
" Could that be Harry Senton's girl — their little Kate."
I knew that he would have said that if he could have seen me closely — my mother's eyes, my mother's hair. But my big glasses half shielded my black eyes, my traveling veil completely covered my hair and the old con­ductor moved on. I would have loved to have talked with him — but I dared not risk it — not just then. My heart was already too filled with memories. . . . There was Mr. Russell's farm and there the Samuel Peters' place and there the William Peters' place and there. . . .
A long white farm-house on a hillside, its outbuildings and its barns clustering close about it. A porch alongside the white farm-house, a vine growing against its side like the palm of an outstretched hand, a wide-spreading tree at the corner of the porch. A window open at the roof of the porch — my window. I saw again the route that I had followed when I had made my escape from the old house, the tree that had served as my ladder. . . . The train swept on and I looked up the road that passed the house. It lost itself to view where it cut through the ridge and there at the cut was a little graveyard — our burying-ground. . . . The train passed further on, it was already whistling and slowing for Honeytown. My eyes could scarce keep track of the familiar landmarks that were now spread out before them.
The Perkins's William had met me at the train as I had asked him — and he had kept my secret absolute. It was beginning to sprinkle and he drew the carriage curtains tightly after I had awkwardly clambered into his wagon. So no one saw me on my return to Honeytown — no one saw the glistening eyes of a woman peeking out at loved sights from the corner of a curtain as the Perkins's family vehicle crept through the village square in the beginning of an April shower.
My aunt was not at the porch step to greet the newcomer as was her way when the sound of carriage wheels turned up the lane. My aunt would not stand again at the horse-block to welcome her callers. ... It was Elam who met me, who stammered out his greetings awkwardly and in whispers and who led me in to her.
She was stretched in the fastnesses of her great four-poster bed — the bed in which whole generations of Sentons had entered and had left this gray old world. I was a little afraid that my unexpected return might startle her, but Elam and the woman of the village who waited upon her had broken the news gently and she was ready. I swung silently up to the high-set bed, slipped my crutches out from under­neath my shoulders and knelt beside her. . . . I was a little girl once again. My aunt seemed to understand — for the first time in her life. She put her thin old hand out to­ward me. I took it to my lips and kissed its knuckled fingers fervently. It was worthwhile to have kith and kin to come back to. . . .
And yet I had not stood there in the shadow of death for more than ten minutes before I realized that we were far apart — my aunt and I. She was sweet and gracious — showing me a side of her nature that I had never dreamed that she possessed in all the years I lived with her. She asked many questions of myself and I answered most of them, truthfully. After a time she grew excited, more excited than I had been that day. Her memory was acute — she was telling me over and over again that we would have our meals on the porch summer­times as I had wished it, that I could be play­acting in the barnloft all I wished. . . . Her fingers played with the polished shoulder horn of one of my crutches as it lay there against the bed and she reproached herself for her treatment of " Kate's little cripple girl" and asked me if I could forgive her so that she could go to her last home in peace.
Forgive her, of course, yes, and in that dis­tressing moment I did forgive her; but forgiveness does not mean that you can wipe away the memories of long hard years even in such a moment. ... I got out of the room as soon as I could do so — conveniently. I poked down the narrow stair and into the old living-room. My mother's picture hung there over the divan. I threw myself down before it and cried upon the divan.
It was not the first time that I had cried there. But how little had been the other things! I had thought them great in their turn — the loneliness of an orphan, the isola­tion that my lameness had placed upon me, all the other grievances, real or imagined. How small they seemed now. Life was now com­plex— then, with all its disappointments, it was simple. . . .
I poked around the homely, homelike old room, looking at my old friends upon the book­shelves, lifting out this for the moment, delving into that for the instant — but still I was dis­consolate. There was something more than my aunt's illness that made my heart desolate. . . . I sank in a heap on the floor, just at the bay-window beyond my mother's square piano — in the very spot and on the same old " body Brussels " that I had tumbled on, a tiny baby just learning to use her feet . . ,I reached into my bag and brought out a let­ter— one of his letters.
It was not a great letter, mind you, not brilliant, not dramatic, but it merely happened to be the last that he had written to me. It was a mere note, in regard to some plans for a Sabbath morn excursion off into the lovely Long Island country, but I lifted it to my lips as if it had been something sacred or enchanted. In an instant my old friends of the book­shelves were forgotten. My mind had leaped its way to a new decision. . . .
I was going back to New York. I was going back that night, as was possible. After all, this was not my home. My home was where I had found success. . . . There used to be a night-train for the big city that passed through the county-seat at a little after midnight. If that train was still run­ning I could take the new trolley-car from Honeytown and catch it over there. Plans formed rapidly within my mind. . . .
Before they were finished it was supper time and I could not offend the kindly folk of the old house — the tenant farmer and his family who were keeping the place for my aunt — by refusing to break bread with them. . . . The meal was awkward and strained. We were all different now and there was no gain ­saying that. I was glad when it was over and I was out of the house. It had stopped rain­ing and the dusk was beautiful with soft gold sifted through the April air. The trees were still dripping and the ground wet, but I made my way out the lane toward the main road.
Elam came running after me.
" Hey, Miss Kitty," he shouted at me.
I stopped short and he caught up with me.
" Yer aunt is awake an' talking o' you," he said. " I didn't know but what ye'd like
to "
Dear soul. When I remember his homely honesty, his great devotion, I can but think how God sprinkles his great men where one may least expect them. ... I hesitated. I lied to Elam. I was tired of the nervous day.
" I'll see her — to-morrow," I told him.
But I never saw my aunt again.
I slipped from the lane into the main-road and then turned down the familiar way toward the center of the village, first swinging myself in the great long easy strides that experience has taught me and then, as I reached the slip­pery flagstones, still wet and treacherous from the shower, going more slowly because of my eternal fear of my crutches slipping and giving me a nasty fall. I kept my face down almost all the while, finding a safe foothold for my sticks at every step. . . . Once I lifted my eyes and saw a girl a little way ahead of me and alone. It was already quite dark, but her white dress made a splotch of light against the dark shadows. . . . She was coming my way and walking slowly, too. ... I lifted my head again and she was passing under the electric light at the corner by the Baptist Church. I could see her clearly now — her trim white figure, the soft fluff of her hair, for she was hatless, the big black splotchy goggles that sat over her sightless eyes.
Tessie Hessler!
I hurried forward toward her — and silently as a cat. Suddenly I reached out my hands and stopped her.
" Who is it? " she asked, in the fearlessness of the blind.I lifted her wonderful fingers and she let them run lightly over my face.
" Kate," she cried, " Kate Senton! "
And then she wept for the pure joy of her friendship for me. We kissed one another, again and again and again. She made minute inspection of me in that wonderful detail that the blind so love. She ran her fingers over my suit, my sticks, my smart little hat, over and over and still over my face. They paused for an instant upon my spectacles.
" Oh, Kate," she cried, in alarm.
" It is nothing," I comforted her, " nothing save the heritage of near-sightedness that I have from my mother. I neglected it so many years. Now my glasses let me see so many of the fine beauties of the world that I have missed—"
I stopped short, for I was embarrassed, re­membering that those same beauties were veiled from one who walks in endless night. But Tessie Hessler was never embarrassed. She saw more clearly than we folk with eyes.
" Where were you bound? " she demanded.
" To the Drake's house and to yours."
" Oh, I was going to Mr. Drake's," she explained, " after the butcher-shop. I go to him every evening.'*
" Alone ? " I asked. She had seemed so helpless when I had known her.
"He taught me self-reliance," she ex­plained. " He has taught me other things, but I will let him tell you of them."
The pleasantest memories of my return to Honeytown were those of bringing Tessie Hessler and the Drakes back into my life. The little artist and his big wife were honestly glad to see me and let me know that. And I — it seemed like home — their funny, stuffy little house in the lane. I poked my way ahead into the studio. It was the same mussy place as I had known it, half finished pictures, pic­tures that never were to be finished before the last trump of Gabriel, sketches of every sort placed here and there and everywhere. I have been in many studios since — the workshops of really famous artists — but none of them has had the appeal to me of the back room of Mr. Drake's house. Why, there was the chair in which I had sat in the glory of red-shod foot and great gray cloak, and here was the model-ing board of a sculptor — materials, knives and the half-modeled head of a woman gathered closely together.
" I did not know you were a sculptor —" I began.
" I am not," he said, " it is Miss Hessler."
Tessie! Tessie, the artist who was doing these things. A miracle was being wrought in Honeytown. Mr. Drake had taught my friend self-reliance, the wonderful alphabet for the blind and finally the impossible thing — to work unseeing in one of the great arts of the world.
" There is a man in France — another of us without eyes," she told me, " who has modeled wild animals and seeing folk have paused beside his work. Can I hope to do less ? "
Somehow the tears sprang to my own eyes. In that moment I all but deified Mr. Drake. There were some things after all that made the return to Honeytown worth while. . . . After a while I asked him of his own work. He was diffident as was always his way. . . . Finally he told me.
" Do you remember — the time I painted the portrait — " The Girl Who Loved Shakes­peare ?" " he asked.
Could I forget — forget the hour when he had first held the mirror to my eyes?
" It was successful," he said. " It won a medal. If you ever go west — to C------,
you will find it in the gallery there. ' . . . It was the foundation — of my success. And I have not forgotten."
He pointed to the half-modeled head of the woman, and I understood.
For two hours my thoughts had been carried completely away from the Boy, and I had not even thought it possible. Then, while Tessie and I went slowly away from the Drakes, I told her much of my story — it seemed good at last to have a real confidante. She was sym­pathetic, understanding, listening quietly as I spun my tale. When it was done she offered not a word of comment. Instead she put her soft hand upon my arm and as we walked for­ward in the dark I knew that her heart was with mine in all of its perplexities.
One thing more. ... It was already nine o'clock and the trolley-car that was to bear me over to the county-seat and my night train for New York left before eleven. But I could not bear to leave without a visit to the little graveyard where the East road cut through the crest of the ridge. It was a long mile up there from the center of the village, but if it had been five I would have gone. The night was soft, the full spring moon was looking down upon the village, fast putting up its shutters for the night and Tessie said that she would go with me. I protested, but only faintly, for I was hungry for her companionship.
So it was that we two went up the old road together once again. ... It was a long walk and my shoulders were well lamed from it, but I would not have missed it. Then at the trolley-car there came the moment of fare­well from the girl who had been my childhood companion. She clung to me and I could see that with all of her bravery, she could not bear to have me go.
" Do not fear Tessie," I told her, " for I am coming back to Honeytown for you. You shall see, in your own way, the great city. You shall hear the opera, the great concerts and you shall understand. And I am going to build me a house — somewhere by the sea, where the surf pounds an unending choral against the land. It shall be our house — for all our lives — and there we shall defy time and old age. . . . Will you come with me then ? "
" I will go anywhere in this world with you, Kate," was her simple reply.
And so I left her, a slim wisp of a blotch of white in the half shadows of the moonlight, her great blue-black goggles, like eyes seeming to pierce through into my very heart. . . . It was a long and dreary ride in the trolley-car through the blackness of the night, but again I was leaving Honeytown with much the same feelings as on that first time. And I had learned one lesson. You cannot bring dreams to concrete realities.
Yet here was I, dreaming again, building new castles in the air, a wonderfully airy place perched on a giant rock and bravely facing the sea. It helped pass the long tiresome trolley-ride and so it was well. But before I was in my berth that night I had torn up all my mental plans and thrown them into the scrap-basket of my brain. I would see to it that Tessie Hessler made her escape from the monotoniesof Honeytown, and that she was never very far from me. . . . But as to the house, what of that? When I wanted a house I wanted the Boy to plan it. Without him no human habitation seemed even tenable.



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