Over the border

by Morgan Robertson

[THE VOICES]

The new boy sat, quiet, shy, and abashed, in the seat given him that morning by the principal. His seat mate was a stranger to him, and, being well up in front, right under the desk of the principal, there had been no communication between them. During the morning recess he had made no friends, standing close against the fence that divided the boys from the girls, timidly watching the rough games of the others; and at noon he had run to the new home to which his parents had taken him, with boyish disapproval of the school and the pupils. But now, at three o'clock of this Friday afternoon, he was compelled to change his opinion. The weekly exercises had begun, and, as his last school held no such entertainment, he was intensely interested.

A girl of sixteen played a very pretty march on the piano, and moderate applause was permitted. A boy delivered "Bingen on the Rhine," and received no applause whatever; but the next boy won a little compulsory approval, led by the principal, for declaiming the Declaration of Independence. Then followed more recitation, music, and essay reading, lukewarmly received; but when the principal rose and said, "And last, we shall have a song by Zenie Malcolm," a suppressed commotion went through the school, and each boy sat straighter.

The new boy started, and an unknown thrill surged from heart to brain. He seemed to know that name, but could not recall where he had heard it. The girl called to sing approached from the rear of the school, and he was too well versed in school-room etiquette to turn and look; but when she came into view, crossing the space between the front desks and the low stage, he rose half out of his seat, his eyes wide open, and the delicious thrill of recognition again tingling through him. He had known her; but where, and when? He could not remember, and sat down under the principal's disapproving frown, staring hard at the girl at the piano.

She was about his age—eleven—a rather pretty child, with dark blue eyes, and a wealth of golden hair, confined only by a ribbon, and hanging loosely down her back. And she sang, in a sweet, trembling voice, a lullaby the music of which the boy seemed to know—that is, he anticipated the coming notes of the tune before they left her lips—but he could not recall where or when he had heard it. She went to her seat at the end of it, applauded by the whole school, and unaware of the silent worship of the new boy. All his life he had imagined the angels as having hair of this hue; but he had never seen it on a human being. Dark blue eyes he was familiar with; his mother had them—and the angels, too.

That night he hummed the tune to his mother; but she had never heard it, and with motherly intuition advised him not to think of girls at his age, and to attend to his studies. The boy racked his brains for a few days, trying to remember where he had seen this girl and heard this song, then gave it up. Later, with a larger acquaintance among the pupils, he learned that her parents had moved from a neighboring town only a month prior to his advent in the school. Coincidence was a large word to him at his age, and meant nothing; so he remembered his emotions at first seeing her.

But the strenuous life of a healthy schoolboy is such as to preclude investigation of mental phenomena. He made friends and joined the games of the others. From being shy and embarrassed, he grew to be confident and plucky. He had his fights and won his victories; but never at a time when his small goddess could witness—she was always somewhere else, and other girls applauded his prowess. But she must have learned from these other girls; nothing else could explain the shy little smile she gave him as he came into school one day, both eyes blackened and his coat torn almost in half. She had never even looked him in the eyes before, and he went forward at the stern call of the principal with a glorified joy in his soul that carried him triumphantly through the pain of his punishment.

With his enterprise in playground friction came an enterprise in study. He easily distanced the rest, winning prizes and standing near the head in all classes. With his advancement came a change of seat, and he found himself near her; in a position where, by a slight turning of his head, he could catch a glimpse of the pure, clean-cut little face in its gold-hued framing. But she never returned these glances. He never dared hope that she would; so he never tried to make her acquaintance.

After school he would follow her, at a distance of half a block, until she entered her gateway, and then return to the boys. She lived in a large, well appointed house among others equally well appointed, and, satisfied that her parents were very wealthy, he gave her the additional prestige that riches always carry in the minds of children. He worshiped her more while actually seeking her less. Yet he could not bear too long an absence from her vicinity. He would play truant occasionally, with other boys; but invariably he would be dragged by a longing and a hunger to be near her that was irresistible; and against the derision of his fellows—which he would silence when he met them again—he would shamefacedly sneak into school, bear his punishment for being tardy, and cheerfully make up his studies, satisfied with the one glimpse he could get as he passed her on the way to his seat.

There came a severe winter and an epidemic of sickness among the children of the town; but this school escaped except for these two. She was first to succumb, and for two weeks her place was vacant—two weeks of utter wretchedness and misery for the boy, during which he could not study, nor recite, nor even remember on call the lessons he had learned. He could feel and suffer to the utmost; but, unformed, untrained, unschooled in tact, diplomacy, or any of the amenities of adult life, he could not even arouse himself to ask of her, or to take his mother into his confidence and obtain the relief of knowing the worst. It was not that his emotions took the form of anxiety so much as they crystallized into a sense of loss—a sense of something taken from him, that he could neither find nor name. One morning he saw her in her seat, pale and wan and thin, and the sense of loss left him. He was content now that she was near him, and fretted no more, even suppressing a curiosity as to the nature of her sickness.