She waved me a farewell, and, with a faint, sad smile, she moved away. As she reached the door, however, she turned, and, with a look of kindly meaning, said, “Trust you in all things.”
I sprang forward to clasp her to my heart; but the door closed on her, and I was alone.
CHAPTER XXV. “ON THE ROAD” IN CROATIA
I passed half the night that followed in writing to my mother. It was a very long epistle, but, in my fear lest, like so many others, it should not ever reach her, it was less expansive and candid than I could have wished. Sara's name did not occur throughout, and yet it was Sara's image was before me as I wrote, and to connect my mother in interest for Sara was my uppermost thought. Without touching on details that might awaken pain, I told how I had been driven to attempt something for my own support, and had not failed.
“I am still,” I wrote, “where I started, but in so far a different position that I am now well looked on and trusted, and at this moment about to set out on a mission of importance. If I should succeed in doing what I am charged with, it will go far to secure my future, and then, dearest mother, I will go over to fetch you, for I will no longer live without you.”
I pictured the place I was living in, and its climate, as attractively as I was able, and said, what I verily believed, that I hoped never to leave it. Of my father I did not venture to speak; but I invited her, if the course of our correspondence should prove assured, to tell me freely all about her present condition, and where and how she was.
“You will see, dear mother,” said I, in conclusion, “that I write in all the constraint of one who is not sure who may read him. Of the accident by which the address I now give this letter reached me, I will tell when I write again. Meanwhile, though I shall not be here to receive it at once, write to me, to the care of Hodnig and Oppovich, and add, 'to be forwarded.'”
I enclosed a little photograph of the town, as seen from the bay, and though ill done and out of drawing, it still conveyed some notion of the pretty spot with its mountain framework.
I had it in my head to write another letter, and, indeed, made about a dozen attempts to begin it. It was to Pauline. Nothing but very boyishness could have ever conceived such a project, but I thought—it was very simple of me!—I thought I owed it to her, and to my own loyalty, to declare that my heart had wandered from its first allegiance, and fixed its devotion on another. I believed—I was young enough to believe it—that I had won her affections, and I felt it would be dishonorable in me to deceive her as to my own. I suppose I was essaying a task that would have puzzled a more consummate tactician than myself, for certainly nothing could be more palpable than my failures; and though I tried, with all the ingenuity I possessed, to show that in my altered fortunes I could no longer presume to retain any hold on her affections, somehow it would creep out that my heart had opened to a sentiment far deeper and more enthralling than that love which began in a polka and ended at the railway.