From Jest to Earnest

by Edward Payson Roe

"Mr. Harcourt!"

"Well, you see, miss, he came last night to see you, for one of the girls said he asked for you, and when he found you was out on the river he just seemed beside himself. We was a-lookin' out upstairs, and we first saw the light a-coming up after the tide turned, and we screamed to him and the coachman, and Mr. Harcourt he came upstairs like a gust o' wind. Your door stood open, and in he rushed in a way that I thought he'd break everything."

"There, that will do. I understand. You need not mend the curtain. You must be tired after all your fright, and can rest awhile this afternoon, as I shall."

A beautiful color dawned in Alice's face. She was recovering from her languor and weakness with marvellous rapidity. It was not strange, for no elixir was ever distilled so potent as that which now infused its subtile spirit into heart and brain.

But a few hours before, the wayward but good-hearted companion of her childhood, the manly friend of the present and future,—she would permit herself to think of him in no other light,—had seemed lost to her forever; to have had in fact no real existence; for if Harcourt had been content to act De Forrest's part the evening before, Alice Martell would have soon shaken off even his acquaintance. But De Forrest's words had suggested that the Harcourt of her dreams still existed. She had seen another trace of manly, considerate feeling in his thoughtfulness of the servants' fears, and of their comfort. And now the torn curtain and broken glass suggested the impetuous action of one who thought of her peril rather than of the trifles around him.

Twice now she had been told that Harcourt was "beside himself," and yet never had madness seemed so rational; and her eyes dwelt on the marks of his frenzy before her with unmixed satisfaction. If he had been cool then, her heart now would be cold.

She could not rest, and at last thought that the frosty air would cool the fever in her cheeks, and so wrapped herself for a walk upon the broad \ piazza. Moreover, she felt, as Lottie had, that she would be glad to have no eyes, not even her father's, witness their meeting. She felt that she could act more naturally and composedly if alone with him, and at the same time show the almost sisterly regard through which she hoped to win him to his better self.

As she paced up and down the piazza, in the early twilight, her attention was attracted to a spot where some one, instead of going deliberately down the steps, had plunged off into the piled-up snow, and then just opposite and beyond the broad path were tracks wide apart, as if some one had bounded rather than run towards the river.

She ceased her walk, and stood as one who had discovered a treasure. Did these footprints and the torn curtain belong together? She felt that it could not be otherwise. There was, then, no cold-blooded, cowardly Harcourt, and traces of the real man grew clearer.

"But how could he reach the river in that direction without risking his neck?" and she indulged hi quite a panic as she remembered the intervening steeps. She longed yet dreaded to see him, that she might ask an explanation of the traces she had found; for, having done him injustice, she generously meant to make him full amends.