The Brown Study

by Grace S. Richmond

Julius scanned her face. "He writes me," said he, "that instead of staying only six months it's likely to be a year before he can come North. The Company who picked him to go down and put this thing through has decided to make a much bigger thing of it than was at first intended. Too bad, eh? Fine for him; but a year's quite a stretch for a chap who, as I recall it, went away with some reluctance—just at the last."

Dorothy met his intent eyes without flinching. "He is so interested in his work I should say it was not too bad at all," she responded.

She then was allowed to make her escape, while Julius went back downstairs, smiling to himself. "That shot told," he exulted.

In her room Dorothy opened her letter. If Julius's news were true she would soon know it. Out of the envelope fell a small packet of photographs, but it was not their presence alone which had made it so bulky. The letter itself was three times as long as her brother's.

Dorothy eagerly examined the photographs which had fallen out of Kirke Waldron's letter. They had been taken all about his camp in Colombia and the surrounding country, picturing the progress that had been made in the development of the mines. In one or two of the pictures, showing groups of native workmen, she made out Waldron's figure, usually presenting him engaged in conversation, his back turned to the lens. But one picture had been taken in front of his own shack with its palm-leaf thatching. He was standing by the door, leaning against the lintel, dressed in his working clothes, pipe in hand, looking straightforwardly out of the picture at her and smiling a little. The figure was that of a strong, well-built, outdoors man, the face full of character and purpose, lighted by humour. The steady eyes seemed very intent upon her, and it was a little difficult for her to remind herself that it was undoubtedly his fellow engineer and friend, Hackett, at whom he was gazing with so much friendliness of aspect rather than at her far-away self.

The letter, however, toward its close set her right upon this point. He had told her of his decision to stay and see the full development of the mine through, in spite of the wrench it cost him to think of remaining a year without a break. Then, going on to describe the taking of the photograph, he had written:

"The Company is very glad to get as much as we can send it of actual illustration of our labours, so we make it a point to snap these scenes from time to tune. There is one picture, however, which was not taken for the Company. Hackett asked me to hold the lens on him for a shot to send to somebody up North there, so he went inside and freshened up a bit and came out grinning. I grinned back as I took the picture, and said I was glad to see him so cheerful. He replied that the smile was not for me—that though he had apparently looked at me he had really been looking through me at a person about as different from myself as I could well imagine.

"It's a poor rule that doesn't work both ways, so I then took my place by the door of our palatial residence, and gazed—apparently—at Hackett's Indian-red visage. I found it entirely possible to forget, as he had done, the chap before me, and see instead—well—look at the picture! And please don't let those lashes drop too soon. When I imagine them they always do!"

It was thus that the correspondence went on. Dorothy never replied directly to such paragraphs as these, but she did send him, a few weeks after the arrival of the Colombian photographs, a little snapshot of herself taken in winter costume as she was coming down the steps of her home. It was an exquisite bit of portraiture, even though of small proportions, and it called forth the most daring response he had yet made:

"I know you wouldn't want it pinned up in the shack, and it's much too valuable to risk leaving it among my other possessions there. So I carry it about in an old leather letter case in my pocket. I hope you don't mind. I'm a little afraid of wearing it out, so I've constructed a sort of a frame for it, out of a heavy linen envelope, which will bear handling better than the little picture…. You are looking straight out at me—at me? I wish I knew it! Won't you tell me—Dorothy? You can trust me—can't you? There are some things which can't be said at long distance; they must wait. I get to feeling like a storage battery sometimes—overcharged! Meanwhile, trust me—Dorothy!"