The Heart of Arethusa

by Frances Barton Fox

Ross liked Timothy immensely. He liked his bigness, and his honest youngness, and his clean-heartedness, written all over him. Elinor liked him too. And the boy had not been in the house five minutes before Ross and Elinor both had read his story in his blue eyes. Those blue eyes never once left Arethusa.

Arethusa's tongue certainly seemed swung in the middle during the rest of this day. But then there were two whole months and over to make up. They came within really dangerous hailing distance of an affray several times, sad to relate, when Timothy planted himself in one position, immovable, and she firmly entrenched herself in another. He did not seem to be able to approve of a single thing she had to tell him about the various and sundry occupations with which she filled her days in Lewisburg. But a person in so supremely felicitous a mood as Arethusa was in at the prospect of her very own Party, could not actually quarrel with anybody, however obstinate he might be; so the hours sped happily by, and the pitfalls were somehow avoided.

"Doesn't Timothy look just perfectly heavenly when he has on a dress suit?"

Arethusa asked this pointed question very proudly of her parents when she led him into the library that evening after dinner, to show them how nice he looked, just before the Party came. She held him by one hand, quite as if she had been a fond mother exhibiting an only child whose toilette was solely of her personal making. One could easily have imagined her actually responsible for the cut and fit of Timothy's suit.

But he did look well, undeniably. Ross said that Baldur the Beautiful might have looked just like him, if they had ever worn dress suits in Valhalla, with his wavy blonde head and his sea blue eyes, and his splendid bigness. Although Arethusa knew no myths of the Northland, something about Ross's compliment to Timothy pleased her; she was proud to show him off as such a handsome creature.

But Timothy very nearly spoiled matters by inquiring who sent her the flowers she wore at her belt, as they stood together in front of the library fire, in such an "I-have-a-right-to-know" manner, that she slapped him and told him to mind his own business. And so the Party, after all, began for Timothy with unhappiness.

Arethusa was wearing a white dress on this Occasion, but it was a glorified White Dress, of such beauty, that some other name would surely have to be found for Miss Letitia's loving effort; it would be clearly impossible to speak of them both as "white dresses." Her hair was piled high on her head in a way that Timothy had never seen her wear it, and that he vaguely did not like, because it made her look so much older. And in her low-necked gown and wearing the flowers another man had sent her, she seemed to Timothy more than ever of a world apart. She was like an Arethusa met for the first time. He wished intensely that he could gather her up and carry her back to the country where he considered she so indisputably belonged, to be the old Arethusa once more. He looked gloomily down the length of the library, which had been cleared for dancing of all its furniture, and that presented an expanse of shining floor on which the firelight danced and gleamed enticingly, and wished another wish. He wished that he himself had stayed at home. Why had he gone contrary to the dictates of his common sense and come in answer to that telegram? Arethusa did not really want him; did not really care, now that he was here. She was altogether changed; and, thought Timothy, rather soberly, his head resting on one hand as he leaned against the mantel-shelf and stared down into the fire, it was not at all for the better.

But Timothy was to be still more unhappy before the evening had got fairly started. For in Arethusa's transparent face and her eyes lifted adoringly to the Wonderful Mr. Bennet, the very first time he saw her dance with him, poor Timothy read his Certain Doom. As he had predicted before she had ever left the Farm, so it had come to pass.

Timothy left his station by the tall library mantel and wandered across the room to an inconspicuous corner, where he propped his manly form up against the wall and followed Arethusa with his eyes, totally unregardful of anything else in their line of vision, as she swayed and dipped like a snow fairy in her airy white gown, about the room. He was no great adept in the concealment of his feelings; his tragedy was visible so that all they who ran might read, even the swiftest.

He refused to dance. And he could have danced, knowing how very well. Was not Arethusa's present proficiency some evidence of this fact? But Timothy was sure that his heart was broken; and how could he dance with a broken heart? So he sulked in his corner and the moments of the Party sped by joyfully and all too quickly, for everybody else. Arethusa's guests, with the sole exception of Timothy, seemed to be having the very best of times.