VIII
The sack had bumped poor Stafford black and blue. With a weary sigh he flung it across the other shoulder—and whack, those stony potatoes caught him on the left leg. But he was nearly there now. That silly, adorable girl must have had plenty of time to make her explanation to Barty. Stafford had sent her on ahead from the landing stage with an electric flash light. It was only a short half mile over a good trail, and he was only a little way behind her, never out of hearing of a call. He thought that she ought to see Barty alone. They must arrange their own affairs in their own pathetic, blundering way.
Whack! This time just behind the knee. Stafford flung the sack on the ground and began to drag it after him. Let happen what might, he had the tobacco safely in his pocket. If further meals depended upon carrying that accursed sack any more, then he preferred never to eat again.
Ah! He saw the flare of the camp fire now.
“Hallo-o-o, Barty!” he shouted.
“Halloo-o-o, Stafford!” Barty responded cheerfully. “What’s been keeping you so late? I was beginning to get a bit uneasy.”
Stafford made no answer, but came on at a very much quickened pace, dragging the sack behind him over the rough ground.
“Leadenhall!” he said. He stood still, looking anxiously about him. The flickering light of the fire illumined a small cleared space in the dark woodland, and there was no one there but Barty. “Didn’t some one else come?” he demanded sharply.
“Some one else?” said Barty, with a laugh. “Expecting callers?”
Then Stafford told him.
At first it seemed to Barty preposterous, and even a little annoying, that the alert and self-reliant Jacko should have got herself lost in this fashion. The trail up from the landing was perfectly clear and easy to follow, and Stafford had given her his flash light.
Barty went all the way down to the lake again, calling her name. Then, as he stood on the shore of the black water, the note in his voice changed. A fitful wind had sprung up, driving clouds across the face of the moon. The trees stirred and sighed.[Pg 216] No matter what feminine folly had induced her to leave the trail, she had left it. She was gone, beyond reach of his voice. Which way?
He remembered Stafford’s words—hard words for a young man of his temper to swallow.
“You accepted the responsibility for her life and her happiness,” Stafford had said; “and you left her—a young, lovely thing like that. I think you failed her pretty badly, Leadenhall!”
It was Barty’s way to hold his tongue, and he had held his tongue then, but he had thought.
“I tried to please her and I tried to please you,” was what he thought; “and I’m hanged if either of you know what you want. All right—I do!”
So he had set off in a grim and dogged humor. Of course, he was glad—very glad—that Stafford had found Jacko so charming. Of course he did not object to her going about with that fellow named Terrill—certainly not! He trusted Jacko absolutely, and he was glad she had been able to amuse herself a little; only it was a queer sort of gladness. Of course, he wanted to be fair to his little pal.
“Jacko!” he shouted.
His lusty voice died away across the lake, and nothing answered. The canoe was still there, so she couldn’t have gone back. She must have turned off the trail into the woods. It was not a cold night; and there was nothing there that could hurt her. Barty said that over and over again to himself as he turned back—not along the trail, but through the whispering wood.
His flash light threw a valiant little pathway through the surrounding darkness. He stopped every now and then to call her. He limped painfully, and because of his injured foot he had on soft moccasins, not good for going over stones and broken branches; but he could have gone barefoot over red-hot plowshares then, and scarcely known it.
What, nothing here to hurt her—little Jacko, alone in the black shadow of the whispering trees—in the forest, where the old enemies, the nameless and formless things, never wholly forgotten by the most civilized heart, still lurked? He saw the wood not with his own eyes, but with Jacko’s. Little Jacko, with her eager, beautiful gait, her gallant little head held so high, and her pitiful youth and slightness!
“Jacko!” he shouted in anguish. “Jacko!”
He was in a panic now, trying to run, stumbling and falling, whirling the flash light in a wide circle, shouting until his voice was hoarse and strange. There was no fear, however baseless, that he did not feel for her now, no disaster that he did not foresee.
And at last he heard her. Her voice answered his.
“Here, Barty!” she called faintly.
He found her sunk on the ground in a heap, under a tree, white and limp.
“I got lost, Barty,” she said, with a sob. “I’m—sorry!”
He caught her up in his arms and held her strained against his heart. The flash light had fallen to the ground, and he could not see her face.
“Are you hurt?” he cried. “Jacko, are you hurt?”
She flung her arms round his neck and drew down his head. He felt tears on her cheeks. He was filled with a sublime and almost intolerable tenderness for this beloved creature, clinging to him. He had no words. He could only hold her close in his arms and kiss her cold face again and again.
“Barty!” she said. “Your foot! Let me down!”
But he would not. He carried her back to the camp, and he did not stumble or falter once. White and haggard with exhaustion, he came staggering into the friendly firelight with Jacko in his arms, her face hidden on his shoulder, her dark hair hanging loose over his arm.
When he set her down, and she looked at him, she did not regret his pain, his weariness, or the fear he had felt for her. On his face there was a look that she would never forget—an exultation, a sort of splendor that stirred her beyond all measure. This was his hour, the hour that was due him, his hour of supreme effort and glorious victory.
He could not quite suppress a groan as he turned aside, for his foot throbbed horribly; but she knew that he was glad to endure it for her, that it was his right and his pride so to endure for the woman he loved. For the sake of his love she had done this for him. She had strayed away so that he might find her anew, so that they might start all over again, with the past effaced and the future all before them.[Pg 217]
Barty came limping toward her with a plate of unduly solid flapjacks that he himself had cooked. He was followed by Stafford with a cup of ferociously strong coffee. Both of them were so anxious, so concerned, so busy doing clumsily what Jacqueline could have done so easily herself. What she longed to do was to throw her arms about Barty’s neck, to tell him that she did not want him to wait on her and serve her, but to let her help him and share everything, good or bad, with him.
But she stifled that longing. As he stood before her, she looked up into his face with a smile—a strange and beautiful smile which he did not quite understand.[Pg 218]
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
MAY, 1925
Vol. LXXXIV NUMBER 4
Flowers for Miss Riordan
A CAVALIER’S FLORAL TRIBUTE WHICH HELPED ITS RECIPIENT TO ACHIEVE THE FREEDOM OF HER SOUL
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
THE gates were opened, and the crowd went shuffling and pushing out of the dim ferry house. Fleet and glittering motor cars shot by, and after them came thundering trucks, and great dray horses with earth-shaking tramp—the whole world going by on parade, until it seemed that only an enchanted ship could hold all of it. Then bells clanged and winches rattled, the gates shut before Miss Riordan’s nose, and off went the boat, with the world aboard, leaving in its wake a strip of foaming water that after a while grew tranquil and a lucent green.
Miss Riordan turned back and began to saunter up and down the ferry house. She wore an annoyed expression. She was a cruel lady, frowning upon the tardiness of her cavalier, who was doubtless rushing to her from somewhere, breathless and humbly apologetic.
“I am here,” she said in effect, “and I may as well wait, but it shall never happen again—never!”
Two boats gone! That meant forty minutes.
“Well, of course, I came too early,” she reflected. “That makes it seem longer; but I just won’t wait after the next one.”
She knew she would, though. He knew it, too—knew he would find her there. He would come when it suited him, and there she would be, waiting for him.
“He makes me sick!” she said to herself, with a sudden rush of tears. “Who does he think he is, anyway? I bet, if everything was known—”
But she hoped the time would never come when everything was known, even if it should effect the well deserved humiliation of Mr. Louis Pirini.
On the Day of Judgment there would be an angel with an immense book. He would ask you questions, and write down your answers in letters of fire; but he would know the right answers beforehand, or have them on file somewhere, so you’d have to be careful what you said. It was a comfort to think, though, that if that time came, you would be purely a soul, without bodily contours, and certainly without age. Miss Riordan was not very clear in mind about her sins, but she knew well enough which were the things that filled her with the greatest shame and guilt—her age and her physical luxuriance.
“Well, anyhow, I don’t look it!” she said forlornly to herself. “He don’t really know. He just tries to tease me—but I don’t care!”
The energy she was obliged to expend in not caring for the humorous remarks of Mr. Louis Pirini was, however, a considerable drain upon her nervous system. Usually she was able to laugh when he did; but sometimes he was too mean, and then she cried—a weakness she dreaded beyond measure. Always, whether she laughed or cried, when he was with her and when he was absent, she was filled with a passionate resentment against him.
Her grievances had grown monstrous; her heart was bursting with them. Sometimes, when she lay awake at night, she thought that the only good thing in the world would be to “get even” with him.
But Mr. Pirini was safe as an immortal god from her vengeance. There was no conceivable way in which she could hurt him. She couldn’t retaliate by making unpleasant remarks about his personal appearance, because they both knew that he was superb. She could not shame him by reminding him of all she had done for him—she had tried that once. She couldn’t even tell any one of her own generosity and[Pg 220] his vile ingratitude. On the contrary, she felt obliged to lie quite wildly. When she bought anything new, she pretended that Louis had given it to her. When they went out together, she pretended that it was his treat.
“And he just stands there grinning!” she thought. “All I’ve done for him, and look how he acts! Look at last Sunday, down to Coney, when we met Sadie. She’s seen me and Louis going together nearly a year. It was perfectly natural for her to say was him and me going to get married; and what did he up and say, after all I’ve done for him? ‘Sure we are,’ he says, ‘when hell freezes over!’ I’d just like to have told Sadie a thing or two about him!”
Unattainable consolation! She couldn’t ever tell any one, for nobody would understand. She did not even care to bring the matter to the attention of God prematurely, for she feared He would not consider all the evidence, but would give a judgment based upon one or two salient facts; and the facts were somehow so insignificant, compared with her feelings.
Twelve minutes, now, before the next boat. A sort of panic seized her. He mustn’t come and discover her walking up and down like this, as if she were impatient, as if she were eagerly waiting for him. No—she would be found reading something with profound interest, unconscious of the passing of time, of the waste of this Saturday afternoon, so precious to her after a week’s work in the factory.
She sauntered up to the news stand and fluttered over the pages of a magazine. She thought it was “high-class,” and yet it was full of pictures. She paid for it, and sat down on a bench.
“Well, I read a lot of good things in school,” she reflected, always on the defensive. “‘Hiawatha,’ and all that. I was real good in English.”
She turned to an article on Turkey, a country which she thought immoral and interesting, but it was difficult to divert her attention from her feet. Funny, the way they hurt more when you were sitting down than when you were walking!
“Maybe I might have took a half a size longer,” she reflected. “Well, anyways! This shiny paper kind of hurts my eyes. It’s an awful foolish thing to wear glasses—makes you look so much older; only they do say it gives you wrinkles to squint.”
Wistfully she looked at the photograph of a group of Turkish beauties. Certainly they were all stout, but somehow it was a different sort of stoutness; and their eyes, their languorous, ardent eyes.
“Yes, but I bet if everything was known—” thought Miss Riordan.
Just then she became aware that some one was looking at her—some one who had sat down beside her. She began to assume various expressions of interest in her magazine. She frowned, as if absorbed. She raised her eyebrows, amazed. She smiled and shook her head, incredulous. Then, as she turned the page, she cast a furtive sidelong glance, to see who it was.
It was a little old man with a woeful face. His wrinkled brow, his hanging jowls, and his sad, dim old eyes gave him rather the look of a superannuated hound. Perhaps he was pathetic, but not to Miss Riordan. She was very angry. She stared at him in haughty surprise, and turned back to her magazine; but she could still feel his eyes fixed upon her.
“The nerve of the man!” she thought indignantly.
Presently he moved a little nearer and cleared his throat, as if about to speak. This time she gave him a look calculated to destroy; but, just the same, he did speak.
“I see you are reading Travel,” he said.
She glared at him.
“I have had the honor of contributing one or two articles to that publication,” he went on. “Little sketches of my various journeys; but after all—” He smiled. “After all,” he said, “east or west, home is best. I always return to Staten Island with renewed appreciation.”
Miss Riordan was perturbed. She did not wholly understand this speech, but she was impressed, and she was embarrassed. Clearly she had misjudged this man. There was no occasion here for haughty glances. He was venerable.
“Yes,” he continued, “I find a rare combination of beauties in Staten Island. The stirring panorama of the bay, with ships from the four corners of the earth, the drowsy little hamlets, and the hills. The words of our national anthem have always seemed to me peculiarly applicable to the island—‘I love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills.’ May I ask if you are a resident?”
“You mean do I live there? Well, no,” said Miss Riordan. “I just go there sometimes, with my friend.[Pg 221]”
“Ah!” said he. “There are so many delightful rambles—hilltop vistas which linger long in the memory.”
Miss Riordan and her friend were in the habit of taking the train at St. George and going direct to South Beach. The vistas on that journey had not appealed to her as memorable, nor had her rambles along the boardwalk been especially delightful; but she did not care to say so.
“I like the country,” she observed timidly, and was enchanted to see by his face that this pleased him.
He went on talking—which was what she desired. She would have sat there for hours, listening to him. Never had she heard such words, never imagined such refinement. She was filled with reverence that was almost awe. And when he talked poetry!
He quoted in his tremulous old voice:
“To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
It was too much! Miss Riordan’s own thoughts did not lie too deep. Her tears welled up and brimmed over. She wiped her eyes with her perfumed handkerchief, and mutely shook her head.
Her companion had long since passed the age of such facile relief. He peered at her in kindly distress, unable to find assuaging words for a grief so inexplicable.
“Please wait a moment!” he said, and with a little difficulty got upon his feet. “Just wait a moment, please! I’ll be back directly.”
She believed him, and while she waited, confident that he would return to her, she thought about this thing in a misty fashion.
Not yet in her life had Miss Riordan attempted to account for her emotions. She felt, and that sufficed. She had no idea why the old gentleman’s discourse upon the natural beauties of Staten Island should have made her weep. She did not know why his talk had so charmed her. She knew only, cared only, that a strange, tearful happiness had come upon her.
“I guess he liked to talk to me!” she thought, with satisfaction beyond measure.
Then she saw him coming toward her again, toddling along in his long overcoat, with a little bouquet of roses in his gloved hand.
“Oh, my goodness!” thought Miss Riordan, beginning to cry again. “Did you ever?”
He sat down beside her, a little out of breath.
“If you’ll allow me,” he said, proffering the flowers. “From one lover of Wordsworth to another. I saw that you were much moved by my little allusion.”
“You hadn’t ought to have done it!” said Miss Riordan, with a sob. “I just don’t know what to say!”
She held the flowers to her nose, and her tears rained upon them. This was her first bouquet. Her next would very likely come when she was no longer able to enjoy its fragrance or shed any more tears.
“A feeling heart!” said the old gentleman. “There! Isn’t that the bell? We’d better make our way on board, madam, or we shall be crowded out.”
“I can’t! I got to wait!” she cried in despair; “but I’ll go with you as far as the gates.”
So she did. When they got there, he removed his hat and held out his hand, standing before her bareheaded and in matchless dignity, in spite of the jostling crowd. She took his hand and squeezed it hard.
“Good-by!” she said. “Do take care of yourself!”