It was different with Lyndal, because Mary encouraged him and led him on. She even sent him an invitation to her graduation at the high school where she attended, and where Lyndal often called on her. I remember now that he came to me and asked for a job to earn some money to buy Mary a graduation present. I remember still how hard he worked and how pleased he was at sight of the money he had earned. He bought her a pretty little pin, and the superstitious told him it would prick the love bubble and let out all her affections.
He sent his present by mail, for Mary’s parents were trying to break up the youthful flirtation, and had forbidden her to encourage the young man any longer. He sat away back in the school room on the commencement night, but not too far back to notice the fact that she was not wearing the pin he gave her as a graduation present. No, but at her throat she wore the gold pin Oliver Birdsall had given her. He knew the pin because he saw young Birdsall buy it. This young man was the son of wealthy parents, and would be very acceptable to Mary’s parents. Lyndal saw his rival throw a bouquet of carnations at the feet of Mary at the conclusion of her address. She picked it up and smiled her thanks back to Oliver, and Lyndal read his fate in that smile—Mary Mackey was forever out of his reach.
Oh, the agony of the moments that followed that revelation. Had Mary ever dreamed of the sorrow she was creating for the poor boy when she led him on, would she have done so?
Playing with human hearts is a very dangerous game, yet some heartless, thoughtless people take great delight in love conquests. They find a morbid pleasure in the pain suffered by others. To have some one plainly longing to possess them, satisfies their vanity. Youth is cruel and heartless. To feel that hearts are aching for their smiles is food for their ambition. They want to be heart breakers and the destroyers of peace. The triumphant look Mary glanced at Lyndal as she passed out of the school room on Birdsall’s arm, brought comfort to her giddy soul.
Did she ever regret it? It is hard to tell. Some people love notoriety and to have some one die for them is the climax to earthly triumph. I have often tried to picture in my mind the feelings of poor crippled Lyndal Mason as he walked home through the darkness of the night, with a denser darkness falling like a pall of gloom all around his throbbing heart.
In the morning he did not come downstairs at the usual hour, and when his mother went to his room, she noticed a peculiar odor of laudanum on the air. With a wail of injured mother love she fell upon his stiffened form and kissed his white face in a frenzy of despair. Could Mary Mackey have seen this sad picture, would she have been sorry? I do not know. They say she looked stunned when presented with the message written by Lyndal on that fatal night. It was written with an unsteady hand, and said: “Good-bye Mary—your plaything is at rest.”
TRUE FRIENDSHIP
True friendship never changes, never grows weary of serving, never dies. I have in my mind two men I once knew in Colorado, Barney Kennedy and Fred Gordon—“Little Fred Gordon.” Kennedy was a big, robust son of the Emerald Isle, standing six feet in his shoes, and strong as an ox; Gordon a puny little fellow, born in Iowa, and weighing scarcely 140 pounds. I expected everything of Kennedy, but Gordon was only a little, common place man who would not attract attention.
When the gold excitement in Alaska was raging in 1897 these two men left home together, for they had been both friends and companions for many long years, and struck out for the promised land in hopes of finding the delusive metal. But hunting gold in Alaska is full of danger, privations and hardships, and before the first year had passed away these two friends found themselves 200 miles from a doctor, and Kennedy dying of scurvy. The giant was helpless, and dependent on his little friend. Gordon tried to get some one to assist him in taking his sick friend back to Skagway, but these men had come out to dig for gold, and had no time to waste on dying men who were strangers to them.