HIS CHANCE.
The summer day was nearly gone, and only a few clouds caught the gleam of sunset in the west. A woman of thirty, with a sweet, sincere face, came out of a cottage and walked to the little farm gate that opened on the main road winding across the Iowa prairie. The cottage sat in a small grove of trees, and farther off were neat outhouses, a stable and dairy. Flowers bloomed in a little bed near the front gate, and several hives of bees sat under cherry trees in the front yard. Everything around the neat cottage, from the well-kept vines which climbed over the porch to the orchard and fields of corn, clearly showed that Thrift and Industry were the handmaidens that lived there.
The woman was not pretty, neither was she handsome, but her face was of unusual intelligence and strength. Her hands showed work, and a few gray hairs shone over her temple.
At the little gate she stood while the shadows grew darker around her. There were chirpings of summer insects, and presently down the walk stalked a huge St. Bernard, looking like a great bear in the twilight. He seemed to think the woman had been out alone long enough, and his very way of walking showed that he knew he was her protector. He stalked up and thrust his big cold nose into her hand as it hung listlessly by her side. She started, but closed it over his mouth with a caress, saying:
“Rex, you are silly about me.”
A buggy came out of the gloaming down the road, and stopped at her gate. The woman turned pale in the twilight, as she recognized the middle-aged man who came toward her, holding out his hand: “Jennie—I—well—it’s me!”
He would have opened the gate, but the dog growled savagely, and she hooked the latch hastily, as she said:
“Ralph—why—why—I thought—but don’t try to come in—Rex—I could not control him.”
She was so agitated she could not speak further. Her knees shook, and she clung to the gate, half leaning.
“I have been back a week,” he said slowly. “You haven’t changed much,” he added, eyeing her closely while she flushed under his gaze. “I never expected to see you again.”
“No—no—don’t try to come in—Rex—Rex!”
The great dog had rushed at the gate as the man tried to open it again, and she held her hand on the latch.
“He don’t seem to know your friends from your enemies,” said the man with a cynical laugh.
“I think he does,” she said quietly, “better than I have ever known them.”
He looked at her quickly. Then he tried to laugh.
“Why—Jennie—you know I haven’t seen you in so long.”
“I never expected to see you again. I was not looking for you now,” she said.
“I never thought I’d ever come back, but the Klondike—well, a man pays two dollars for every dollar’s worth of gold he finds there.”
“Tell me about yourself,” she said, still leaning on the gate, one knee resting on the lower plank for support.
“Well, Jennie, after we had our little quarrel and you broke off with me—”
“You are mistaken,” she said quietly. “You left, Hugh, without a word—without telling me good-bye. There was nothing left to do but to send you your ring.”
“We won’t quarrel again, now, Jennie. I have come back to you to tell you—”
She had been looking closely in his face, and her heart beat wildly. She had seen it all—the bravado way, the flushed recklessness, the sign everywhere of dissipation, of modesty gone, of truth, of the old manhood.
“Not that,” she said, quickly interrupting him, “but of yourself. Tell me where you have been and—and what doing.”
He laughed coldly.
“Well, after we split up I went West, then to the Klondike. But it was a nasty life. As I said, I have made nothing, and I hoped all the time to make a fortune and bring it back to you, Jennie.”
“Was it true—that I heard—the trouble?”
“Why, yes, I did get to drinking too much, and got into trouble—but the papers had it overdrawn. I returned him his money. Now I have come back to you—to tell you I still—”
“You need not tell it,” she said quickly. “You could tell nothing I would believe now. You are not the man you were before you left, and never will be. Then you were weak, but honest and sober. Now you are weak, but dishonest and a drinker. And you must not come in—no—no—you are not the Hugh I once knew and loved.”
She sobbed in a quick way as she said it, but went on quietly:
“After you left you know mother died, then father, and I was left alone. Our little farm—well, I’ve paid off the mortgage. It was hard work, but the five years have passed so quickly. They always do when one works for love. I changed the old-fashion farming ways. I planted orchards and raised bees. I diversified my crops. I—well—” she laughed hopefully for the first time—a laugh which brought a pang to his heart, for it was the old laugh. “I am not yet started in that, for I am so enthusiastic a farmer and poultry raiser and stock woman that I’ll talk shop all night if you let me. Anyway, they say I keep posted and up with the times, and I have time, too, for good reading.
“Hugh,” she said quickly, after awhile, “really I have thought of you often, but I will not deceive you. You have gone out of my life. I have heard enough—before you came—heard it, seen enough. In all our lives, our romances I mean, it is imagination that counts more than the reality. Common sense and farm work,” she said, “will cure it, and I—think—I know I am happier than if I were now married to you—to you as you are, Hugh,” she added more tenderly.
“But—but, Jennie, I’ll change; give me a chance.”
“Why, Hugh, that is what you had, and I mine. I have watched nature since I’ve been a farmer, and I notice she never gives but one chance. There are too many of her children that must have a chance.”
He turned with a rough laugh and oath and walked off.
“I’ve come home jus’ to make a fool of myself,” she heard him say with another oath.
But she did not pale even. She turned and walked in, the dog following her.
“I am so glad I saw him anyway,” she said, patting the dog’s head. “Now, I can forget him so easily. Oh, Rex, life—life—how strange it is, but we all have one chance. Oh, I am so glad I had mine, and it has given me this sweet home and you. For it were better to love a dog that is honest and true than a man who it not.”