II
The “crowd”, regardless of proper chaperonage, had to be back in Mount Hadley at nine o’clock. But the girl stayed there on the ledge until the final moment of departure. Alarmed companions, missing her, searched the mountain top, calling her name.
The “chaperone” was a hulking maiden whose eligibility consisted in the fact that “come December she was going to be married.” The woman arraigned Madelaine severely.
“... If you ever give me another scare like this, I’ll have you read out of school! The very idea of running off by yourself and moping close to the edge of a dangerous precipice in the dark! I never had such a fright in my life!”
“I’m sorry,” returned Madelaine. “The valley was very beautiful. I stole off to watch the twinkling lamps.”
“Oh—you stole off to watch the twinkling lamps? Rather watch a few twinkling lamps than have some real fun while you’ve got the chance. I wouldn’t be like you, Madge Theddon, for all the money there is in Massachusetts. Why! You simply don’t know how to enjoy yourself——”
“Maybe,” suggested a snippish little prig who had entered the school a couple of years before, “maybe she’s wondering who her folks are!”
The prig’s name was Gridley and she had shown a dislike for Madelaine from the first afternoon. Miss Bernice Gridley had small patience with the quiet smile that played about Madelaine’s lips when the former sought to impress upon whosoever it might concern the vast importance of the Gridley money and blood. “She’s an orphan,” went on the Gridley girl, loud enough for Madelaine to overhear. As Bernice intended she should. “An awful nice feller I got acquainted with at the prom last June told me so. He’s a cousin of hers or something. She was adopted out of an orphan asylum. She’s all stuck-up because her foster-mother happens to have money! I’d rather be poor than a nobody!”
Madelaine’s features burned scarlet. A newspaper was lying on the seat of the trolley beside her. She picked up the sheet and tried to read, hiding her flaming face behind it.
It was the editorial page of that evening’s Springfield Union. In the “goofus” column the staff humorist had included several verses clipped from an exchange. When Madelaine’s sight had cleared, she read the words. Then she forgot the ill-bred Gridley girl. The subject and sentiment was mesmeric and the catty environment faded.
“GIRL-WITHOUT-A-NAME
(From The Paris [Vt.] Telegraph)
“You came to me in my dreams last night,
Dear Girl-Without-a-Name;
A lovely phantom from out the space
That parts our lives, you came.
You greeted me with your eyes, dear heart,
And secrets Peri keep;
I moved with you, with your hand in mine.
Down the mystic glades of sleep.
“We idled long in those glades, dear heart,
The world a purple mist;
Beside an amethyst stream we strolled
And kept that midnight tryst.
The little stars drifted down the sky,
A hush! ... I felt a hand,
And once ... just once! ... came a whisper soft:
‘Dear heart, I understand!’
“I do not know all we said, dear heart,
The night ran swift away,
But all the charm of your presence sweet
Came back from Dream to Day.
It’s not the words that you spoke, dear heart,
That made that tryst so fine,
But that kind night found a subtle way
To bring your hand to mine.
“The tears and toil we may know, dear heart,
Must some day reach an end;
Through miles and years we must search sometimes,
Ten thousand for one friend.
Yet some great noon in the sun-glare bright,
In some vast open space,
You’ll stand, flesh-clothed, with your arms outstretched
And triumph on your face.
“I know few words will be needed then,
Lament nor name nor plea,
We’ll let our eyes speak the message sweet:
‘Grow old along with me!’
A thousand years shall become as one
As heart to heart shall press,
And God shall start all his worlds anew
From that first white caress.
“You may be dark or you may be fair,
You may not have a name,
Though you’ve been sold for a caliph’s gold
That kiss will mean the same.
The soul of man has a thousand lives,
Yet Love has only one,
That leaps alive to the Glory Cry:
‘Dear heart, the trek is done!’
“And so the nights with a velvet tread
Mount softly into years;
The gray days come and the bright days go,
With smiles and fears and tears.
But somewhere off o’er a clean sea’s track,
Each soul’s High Noon is due;
Be strong, dear heart, though the wait is hard;
Till then ... just dreams ... and You!
—“Nathaniel Forge.”
Madelaine read the fine-typed verses again and again. An inexplicable, constricted feeling tightened across her chest. Somehow the lines frightened her, as though a Voice had come from the void and whispered a promise close at her ear.
She finally creased the edges of the column neat and true. She tore away the ragged portions and folded the poem in her purse.
Who was Nathaniel Forge? Why should he write such a poem? She wondered. She saved the poem.