The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 19899Unread post Didier
15 Dec 2017, 17:11

CHAPTER XXI

After all it is a woman's privilege to change her mind. Although by that time I doubted if I had a mind remaining. It seemed as if it were but a sieve, unable to hold the least little bit of strength or determination. Harry Clinch prevailed upon me and I de­cided to go to London. After all, it could be no worse than New York. ... I was in a sorry state. When I was out of New York I could hardly wait for a train to take me back again — and yet in New York I was wretchedly unhappy. I began to wonder how it was all to end. . . . The Remote Possi­bility had become an Impossibility, and despair had succeeded hope. ... So I threw myself into a furore of preparation for the sail across the Atlantic My two smart new trunks already stood in the corner of my room in South Brooklyn, and I was in a whirl of preparation for the long trip — and trying all the while to forget.How a whisper may arouse hope in a tired heart!
The night came when I played my final en­gagement in New York — in a fine old house in lower Fifth avenue. I was resting after my turn, half closing my eyes and idly listening to the gabble of the folk near me. I was half listening to them, which is generally just half more than worth while. A lovely frock-coated young man, with his hair tightly brushed back on the top of his head, suddenly tried to engross me by calling my attention to a re­markably pretty blonde who sat across the old-fashioned parlor from us.
" Very fortunate child, she," he gabbled on to me. " She's Miss Kitty Morrell, of Mem­phis. She's one of those heavy Southern swells with lots of blood, you know. I'd be pretty keen for her, myself, but what's the use ? They are all saying she's engaged to Freddy Kane — you know, old Ross Kane, the Presi­dent of the K. & W. — his son. Mighty lucky girl, she, to catch all that bunch of rocks. She is going—"
But I was rude and paid no more attention to his gabblings. Freddy Kane? The Boy ! I brought myself to my senses. I smiled upon that fool gabbler of a man and got enough out of him to make sure that I was making no mis­take. He was the same beyond doubt. He had been a reporter once, "just for experi­ence," said my informant.
I longed to ask this young man more, but did not dare. I wanted to know, I was hungry for information and had to seal my own lips. For I did not know how much ugly slander might have leaked out about last summer. And this pretty little blonde — it was all ugly, too ugly for me to believe for an instant. I knew the Boy's heart. I could believe it.
Nevertheless I took my first opportunity to swing over to Miss Kitty Morrell and engage her in conversation. She was an artful sort — looked sympathetically at my crutches, then described her own love for riding, for golf, for polo, for the thousand and one things God framed strong women for. Kind of her, was it not? I began to hate her with a slow hate. But I smiled upon her as a woman must some­times smile upon those whom she hates.
" I have enjoyed your singing — your little entertainment so much," she told me. " I wish that you could come and sing for me at a little entertainment I am giving on Wednesday evening next."
Wednesday evening. I was booked to sail on Thursday morning. Quite out of the ques­tion. Still I revolved the proposition closely in my mind in that instant. A few minutes at Miss Kitty Morrell's and I might see the Boy once again. It was enthralling from that view­point
For I did want to see him again. " Why tear the heart sores open again ? " my mind asked my heart. Would I get any joy from seeing him talking, loving this silly little Mem­phis girl? It seemed out of the question. I told Miss Kitty Morrell that I was certain that my arrangements for sailing on Thursday would make it quite impossible for me to ap­pear at her entertainment on Wednesday.
She pouted at that. I knew that she was the very sort of woman that would pout at dis­appointment. How the Boy must have changed in all of his tastes!
" If you should change your mind" she told me. She must have had enough intuition in her little head to read my failing. " Do come anyway. I hope that you will change your mind."
But I left her, solemnly assuring her that my mind was a solemn organ of fixed and cer­tain habits.
Remote Possibility again reigned within me when I left that house, and in twenty-four hours I forgot all the assurances that I had given Miss Kitty Morrell of my steadfastness of mind.
I changed my mind. It was so close to my sailing hour — forty-eight hours — that I was scared, awfully scared. The Remote Possi­bility pleaded so tremendously for a recogni­tion.
So, acting on the impulses that have made me what I am, I made up my mind anew on the instant. I pinned on my hat before it might change again upon me, slipped into my long fur coat and went swinging down the street, working my crutches at top speed, to the little telephone booth in the drugstore at the corner.
Would Miss Kitty Morrell still care to have Leslie Merton appear at her musicale to-morrow evening? It must have been, despite her own statements to the contrary, that Merton Leslie was quite as capricious as any prima donna. It must have been also, that her reputation had brought her, too, to the point where she could be capricious and still not suffer from her caprices. For the matter was sealed. I was going to sing at Miss Morrell's musicale after all.
When I came back to my house I felt quite satisfied with it all. . Hope — even the most remote hope — was sweeter far than despair. So thinking and so hoping, I threw a kiss to the sick-abed man up in the window.
Poor sick-abed man! Think of all these long, long years that he had gazed down upon his flowers and een unable to pluck them!



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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 20353Unread post Didier
18 Dec 2017, 17:45

CHAPTER XXII

I wore white on that night at Kitty Morrel's, for I remembered. I remembered that the Boy had said that he loved me in white, and that it became my half pallid, half olive color. That gown was a dream — I have never had one to excel it. It was a symphony, worked out in the fine textures of the silk loom. It fitted me to perfection, rather generously displayed the fine contour of my back and shoulders, my long, tapering graceful arms. It was costume-blanc in its en­tirety, from the tip of my slipper to the great white plume in my deep, black hair. To com­plete that costume, I swung that night upon a brand-new pair of sticks, snow-white even to their soft leather saddles beneath my shoul­ders.
I felt when dressed like a real product of Art and Nature, and so the older Miss Stripe need not have stopped me in the hall, as I hurried to my waiting carriage and said:"You certainly do look swell in that cos­tume."
I answered her mechanically, for I kept thinking why she could not have told me some­thing kind months ago — when the clothes were not molded to be the making of the woman — and when I was starving for want of a little praise — hungry for a real friend­ship.
How remote, Remote Possibility can keep itself.
For after all — new costume — new hope — new heart — I played to a parlor full of strangers. None were familiar faces, and I felt sure that I had jumped at a conclusion and jumped short. I went through my per­formance mechanically, gave an ear to the polite applause that followed it, received the neat thanks of Kitty Morrell, together with her check and started to leave the place. . . .
After all had been said and done, I was doomed to a final disappointment.
I slipped into my outer wraps and started for my carriage. But when I was close to the outer door of Miss Morrell's house I was halted.
Could you imagine a voice coming out of the past, out of memory, out of a very Heaven and halting you? Such a voice halted me. I would know it a million years hence — the Boy's voice.
" I nearly missed you — after all this time."
I looked into his dear gray eyes again. I reeled and I think I would have fallen had it not been for the support of my crutches.
I could not speak for the moment. He spoke to me again.
" Miss Morrell told me that you were com­ing to-night to do the little act — do you re­member how we wrote it together? I came from away uptown. I counted so much on hearing it again, Miss Senton. Such a vile time. My car broke down helplessly and I've been steering my course downtown here in trolley-cars, only to get here too late to listen to the little act that has always meant so much to me. Thank God, I didn't miss you, too."
He paused to catch his breath, then re­sumed :
" After she had told me that you were coming I could hardly wait until to-night. I had not dreamed that you were this celebrity, this Merton Leslie, who has been acquiring all this glory. I did not imagine that Miss Leslie was Miss Senton until Miss Morrell told me of Miss Leslie's crutches and then I began putting two and two together — then I began to be sure that there could be no mistake."
He led me to a deep sofa in the hall and still continued talking to me. Others were playing and singing in Miss Morrel's parlor and we were quite undisturbed.
" I had not thought of coming here to-night, Miss Senton, until she told me of those." His eyes fell for the instant on my crutches stacked beside me — " Then I changed all my plans and came. You see I still tire easily and was to have spent this evening at home, for I sail for London to-morrow on the Mercedia"
My ship! My brain was awhirl and I would have asked him a thousand questions. But some of the others came strolling through the hall and stopped to speak with him. Our tete-a-tete was an impossibility for some minutes. I listened carefully to what the others said to the Boy. From them I gathered that he hadbeen ill for a long time. When they were all gone again and I had him to myself once more, he explained:
" You must have thought me a cad, and worse than that, Miss Senton, to have lost sight of you so completely. IVe been fighting the nasty typhoid and a lot of nastier things that came in its trail, for a good many months now. I can only dimly remember the last time I went to the Volksgarden for you and found that you were gone. Old Blumenstein took advantage of your absence to be rather nasty to me. It seemed that he was getting pretty hot about my attentions to you — think of the fate of your predecessors there. At any rate, he would give me no trace of what had become of you.
" The next day I was coming to find you — but there was no next day, Kate." It was the first time he had ever called me by my own name and I started in a little glad surprise. " I was to have started on your trail the very next morning, but there was no next morning. I was too ill to know myself that I remained a living being."
So he sat there and poured out the long story to me. It must have been an effort, for he was still very tired and weak, but he had to tell it to me at the outset. He had first picked up my trail again when he read of Kittie Sevenne's part in the near-tragedy in the Bos­ton theater. He had gone to Boston for his first time away from home since his illness — to find that Kittie Sevenne had returned to that mysterious unknown from which she had come for a single brilliant week. It was a long story and I listened to every word of it with a fas­cinated interest.
But then I found that he was growing very excited, which is bad for a convalescent and I put my fingers on my lips as if to silence him. Miss Kitty Morrell was standing just within the parlor, but in full sight of us both. I indi­cated her by a movement of my head.
" She is such a dear girl, that other Kate," I said, " that I could not refuse to come here to-night, even though it meant to-morrow" — but I checked myself for I realized that my sailing plans would have to be quickly changed. " She is a dear girl and I'll venture to say that she will not go back to Memphis without some man's ring — upon her finger," He turned upon me and hardly hid his anger.
"What have you heard, dear?" he whis­pered. " What have they dared tell you? "
But there was no time then for more talk. The Boy gave way for the moment saying:
"I'll see you home to-night."
For months it had been a hope and a dream — ofttime faint hopes, faint dreams, but always hopes and dreams are soothing to a tired woman's heart. Now it was all quite clear. The Boy told me all — his fight for health, his fight against those who might have been expected to love him and to fight for him. The weeks and the months have been as long for him as for me, as hard, as difficult as well-nigh hopeless. At last we both under­stood.
A clock in an adjoining room struck the hour. I counted each of its strokes. There were twelve. It was midnight.
Another day had come upon us. Together we had come into our To-morrow of real hope and promise.



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Re: The Girl with the Rosewood Crutches

Post: # 20493Unread post Didier
20 Dec 2017, 18:01

CHAPTER XXIII

I was up early that morning and out upon our quiet street. I went to the corner be­fore the cab came for me and I took a final look at each of the houses that have come to be such old friends of mine.
Mr. Jessup waved to me gently from his seat in the window. I paused beside that other window, farther down the way. But the sick-abed man was not at the pane to smile softly at me. There was a bunch of crape and spring flowers at the door and he would not look again down into the street. God had taken the sick-abed man into His woods and His fields and I was going away, too. I did not cancel my passage upon the Mercedia. She sailed at ten o'clock, and an hour before that I kept an engagement — an engagement with the Boy at a vine-clad little church, which was quite the most important en­gagement of my life.

THE END



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