June 14, 15, 16, I glanced through without finding anything of interest, and it was tiresome work. Oh, why did I not realize at the time these papers were fresh and new that they held a "pearl of wondrous whiteness?" It would have saved all this trouble. But likely Mammy Lou had used the very one to kindle the fire with. That would be worse than tramping the rare jewel in the ground! Ah!
Was it prophetic that just as I was thinking over the words "rare jewel" the object of my search met my eyes? Of course, you are not stupid, my journal, and you have long ago seen that I was looking diligently for all the news, but mostly the picture of Richard Chalmers, the good-looking young David who might slay the monster Goliath, if he would take his smooth pebble from a brook and not from a brewery!
Well, it was the picture I found, and his name was in big letters beneath. I looked at the face first, then quickly at the name, but I put the two together with difficulty.
"So Richard Chalmers is you!" I said aloud in my surprise. Then I stared at the picture as steadfastly as Ahmed Al Kamel must have looked at the portrait of the princess, the first woman's face he had ever seen. A feeling of superstition came stealing over me and daring me to say that this was only a happen-so.
"So it's you," I repeated without moving my eyes from the picture, "and that must be why I felt such a curious interest in this political business."
The stuffy heat of the tight little room, the piles of dusty old papers, the politics and rumors of politics were all forgotten in a twinkling as my memory bounded back and even took in the details of the landscape that dull day last November when I saw him first. Alfred Morgan had asked me to drive with him out one of the pikes where he had a call to make. I was at Cousin Eunice's and he had called me by telephone to ask me to go; Cousin Eunice and Ann Lisbeth were wrestling over an intricate shirt-waist pattern, but they both stopped long enough to insist that it was too cold for me to go so far out just for the fun of going. But I insisted equally as firmly upon going, so Ann Lisbeth made me wear her motor bonnet and long fur coat, which were very becoming.
Our route lay out one of the pikes which I like most, a beautiful driveway, with a lovely little Jewish cemetery about three miles out. I found that it was cold, and when we reached the cemetery I asked Alfred to put me out so that I could walk around a bit and try to get warm—while he made his call just a short distance farther up the road. He could honk-honk for me if I had wandered out of sight by the time he came back. We frequently did that way.
Then it was that I first saw Richard Chalmers, coming out of the little red lodge house at the gates of the cemetery. He was dressed in gray, with a long gray overcoat and a soft gray hat; and his fairness made no break in the dull monochrome of the surroundings. The brilliant-hued lodge, with the Oriental dome, made the only warm spot of color in my line of vision, but he was looking at me, too, and I am sure he saw other spots of color, for my face flushed somewhat as I recognized him as being the first man I had ever seen in my life whom I cared about looking at.
He must be tall, for the coat he wore that day was quite long, but I do not remember taking in any details except his face. This was natural, for it appeared to me then as being a very good face to look at, even aside from the peculiar charm which afterward made me remember it so. Cameo-like in its distinctness, with steel-gray eyes, it reminded me of the face I used to tell Jean about years ago when we each had an Ideal. "Cold-blooded and lean as Dante," my description had been in those bygone days, and Richard Chalmers' face strangely fitted it, though by no means so cold nor so lean as I had formerly thought necessary for perfect charm. It was only lean enough to be intellectual-looking, and, if the keen gray eyes were cold, they were also strong. His hair was short and of a very light-brown color; I remembered this distinctly, for he had taken off his hat as he bade good-by to whoever was inside the lodge, and he had stood a moment bareheaded as he saw me, and looked at me with a degree of well-bred surprise. There was nothing unusual in this, for, in driving out the country roads with Alfred and Doctor Gordon, I have often observed that when two well-dressed people pass each other they usually look. Each one is likely wondering what the other is doing so far from the madding crowd.
I was wondering what he was doing, Anglo-Saxon that he so evidently was, coming from a Hebrew cemetery; then he untied the hitch-rein of a horse that was restlessly twitching its head at a post near by, jumped into the light buggy and drove off. Alfred and I passed him a little later on, for he had been driving slowly, evidently to the distaste of the horse. The creature was just the kind of animal you would expect a man of his appearance to drive—slim and satiny and fast. Alfred slowed up as we were passing, for the horse had drawn quickly to one side of the road and was trembling with fright. The man in the buggy held a tight rein and spoke a soothing word to her, then turned and regarded us again. My heart bounded as our eyes met, and I wondered why he had driven back to town so slowly.