Yet on some days we would forget we were engaged and be quite cheerful and happy; and when I came back from New York, I cried: "Congratulate me, John, I've got an engagement, so we can't nag each other to death for a year at least!" and though that gave a lovely opening for a quarrel he passed it by, congratulating me very gently instead, but very sadly, adding: "You are getting so far ahead of me, dear—and you will learn to despise a man who comes toiling always behind you!"
A statement that came so dangerously near the truth that it threw me into a passion, and we had a battle royal then and there. However, we parted in a gale of laughter, for as John suddenly discovered he was overstaying his intended short visit, he sprang up and grabbed his hat and exclaimed: "Well, good-by, Clara, we haven't indulged in much sentiment to-day, but," drawing a long, satisfied breath, "we've enjoyed a good lusty old row all the same!"
No wonder we laughed. We were a rare engaged couple. Lovers? why Cupid had never even pointed an arrow at us for fun! We were chums—good fellows in sunny weather; loyal, active friends in time of trouble, and, after I came to New York, and found quarreling at length, with pen and ink, too fatiguing, I broke the engagement, and we were happy ever after—our friendship always standing firm through the years; and when, in the Herald's interests, he started on that last long journey to report upon the Japanese-Chinese War, he said to me: "I never understood the meaning of the word friendship until that day when you flung all your natural caution—your calm good sense aside, and rushed through the first cheering message that reached me after that awful St. Louis shooting: 'You acted in self-defence, I know—command any service from your faithful friend,' that's what you said, over your full name, while as yet you knew absolutely nothing. And when I realized that, guilty or innocent, you meant to stand by me, I—well, you and my blessed mother live in a little corner of my heart, just by your two loyal selves."
And when he left me he carried on either cheek as affectionate a kiss as I knew how to put there, and again, and for the last time, we parted in a gale of laughter, as he cried: "You would have seen me in the bottomless pit before you would have done that in Cincinnati!"
"Oh, well," I replied, "we both preferred quarreling to kissing in those days!"
"Speak for yourself!" he laughed, and so we parted for all time.
I had returned to my work in Cincinnati; had thanked the Washington and San Francisco managers for their offers of engagements, and was putting in some spare moments in worrying about the summer, when (without meaning to be irreverent) God opened a door right before me. Never, since I had closed a small geography at school, had I heard of "Halifax," save as a substitute for another place beginning with H, but here, all suddenly, I was invited to Halifax—not sent there in anger, for, oh, incredible! for a four, perhaps six, weeks' summer engagement. Was I not happy? Was I not grateful? One silver half-dollar did I recklessly give away to the Irish washerwoman, who had said: "God niver shuts one dure without openin' anither!" I could not help it, and she, being in trouble at the time, declared, with hope rising in her tired old eyes, that she would "at onct burn a waxen candle before the blissed Virgin!" Poor soul! I hope her loving offering found favor in the eyes of the gentle Saint she honored!
I had a benefit in Cincinnati before the season closed, and so it came about that I was able to get my mother a spring gown and bonnet that she might go home in proper state to Cleveland for a visit; while I turned my face toward Halifax, the picturesque, to play a summer engagement, and then to make my way to New York and find a resting-place for my foot in some hotel, while I searched for rooms to which my mother might be summoned, for I had determined I could board no longer.
If we had rooms we could make a little home in them. If we had still to go hungry, we could at least hunger after our own fashion, and endure our privations in decent privacy. So, with plans all made, I landed at Halifax and felt a shock of surprise, followed by a pang of homesickness, at the first sight of the scarlet splendor of the British flag waving against the pale blue sky, when instinctively my eyes had looked for the radiant beauty of Old Glory. The next thing that impressed me was the astonishing number of people who were in mourning. Men in shops, in offices, on the streets, were wearing crêpe bands about their left arms, and women, like moving pillars of crêpe, dotted the walks thickly, darkened the shops, and gloomed in private carriages. What does it mean? I asked. I never before saw so many people in black. And one made answer: "Ah, your question shows you are a stranger, or you would know that there are few well-to-do homes and no business house in Halifax that does not mourn for at least one victim of that great mystery of the sea, the unexplained loss of the City of Boston—that monster steamer, crowded with youth and beauty, wealth, power, and brains!"
I recalled then how, at the most fashionable wedding of the year in Cincinnati, the bride and groom had been dragged from the just-beginning wedding-breakfast, and rushed off at break-neck speed that they might be in time for the sailing of the City of Boston, and after her sailing no word ever came of her. What had been her fate no man knew—no man knows to-day. The ocean gave no sign, no clew, as it often has done in other disasters. It sent back no scrap of wood, of oar, of boat, of mast, of life-preserver—nothing, nothing! No fire had been sighted by other ships. Had she been in collision with an iceberg, been caught in the centre of a tornado, had she run upon a derelict, been stricken by lightning, been blown up by explosion? No answer had ever come from the mighty bosom of the deep, that will keep its grim secret until the awful day when, trembling at God's own command, it will give up its dead! Meantime thousands of tender ties were broken. The awful mystery shrouding the fate of the floating city turned more than one brain, and sent mourners to mad-houses to end their ruined lives. Halifax was a very sad city that summer.