Latter-Day Sweethearts

by Mrs. Burton Harrison

Helen accepted a cup of tea, changed her street costume for a long, close-fitting brown ulster with a sable toque and boa, in which Eulalie told her she was parfaitement bien mise; and, escaping again to the deck, walked up and down a comparatively clear space until the "Baltic" was well down the bay. Then, fairly tired, but unwilling to face Miss Bleecker's chatter, she found a chair forward, where it was not likely she would sit again during the voyage, and with a wisp of brown chiffon drawn close over her face, abandoned herself to melancholy thought.

So this was the end of John Glynn's lamenting for her loss! She, not he, had been faithful to the love they had shared so fondly for a little while, in which she had no longer dared indulge with him. This was the way he had accepted her decision that they must try to forget each other, finally.

During the one week of their secret engagement she had felt immeasurable happiness. But every moment of closer, contact with her young love, a boy in world's knowledge beside herself, though of her own age in actual years, convinced her of the fatal mistake she had made in believing she could give up her present life for him, and clog his career by an early marriage. So she had broken the bond ruthlessly, and her father had never known of its existence. And his consolation so quickly found! Helen's lip curled disdainfully. Some girl he had met in his boarding-house; the kind of thing he had been accustomed to before Miss Carstairs treated her jaded taste to his virile freshness and charming looks, his masterful reliance upon himself, his willingness to take her, poor or rich! The type of girl she had seen in the tumultuous moment beside the rail was puzzling. Not a lady, according to her artificialized standard, but having the frank assurance and belief in herself that had attracted Helen to John Glynn, with a something of good breeding underneath. Cheaply dressed, cheap mannered, perhaps, ignorant of what Miss Carstairs considered elemental necessities of training, but never vulgar.

But whatever the rival, the hurt was that Glynn cared for Helen no more, while she cared just the same. What a fool she had been to believe that masculine fidelity survives the blows of fate!

Masked in her brown veil, Helen sat in her corner, turning this bitter morsel upon her tongue, her eyes vaguely resting upon the passing show of passengers as they came straying up on deck to make the best of a fine afternoon while getting out to sea. Impatiently casting aside her unwelcome thoughts, she tried to interest herself in these people, to speculate upon their identity, purpose, and personality, with the usual rather poor returns, since a ship's company assembled at first view has always the most depressing influence upon the looker-on. Beside her, upon one of the rare seats of a liner that belong to nobody, she espied a shabby little man, in an overcoat like a faded leaf, drop down furtively, then seeing no one inclined to disturb him, relax his muscles and, taking off an ancient, wide-brimmed felt hat, look about him with a beaming smile, prepared for full enjoyment of the hour and scene.

Something in the artless buoyancy of his manner, his meek acceptance of a modest place in life, his indifference to the considerations that oftenest vexed the souls of Miss Carstairs' acquaintances upon making any sort of public appearance before their fellow-beings, struck her with an approach to approval. Her glance toward him was met in the same spirit of prompt return that follows patting upon the head a friendly dog.

"Beautiful weather we're having to go out in, ma'am," he said. "I'm kind of glad to settle down in this quiet corner 'n see the last o' my native land. I reckoned I was in no one's way occupying this little bench a bit. Because, you see, I've walked and walked, inspecting the White Star leviathan, everywhere they'd let me set a foot, till I'm about worn out. Talk about 'seeing New York City'! It's not a patch on this ship for making a man feel his lower limbs, if you'll excuse the expression before a lady. Why, she's a wonder, ma'am, a marvel, and there's literally no end to her. I find myself saying at intervals, 'Thank God, I've lived to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and what's more, to cross it in a floating Waldorf-Astoria,' for so it looks to me!"

"You are fond of the water, then?" said Helen, surprised at her own affability, but on the whole too wretched to care for risks.

"Well, ma'am, I've, so to say, some little experience. I resided formerly in Norfolk, Virginia, and went round to Baltimo, Maryland, on several trips by sea. Know Baltimo, ma'am? Can't exactly compare it to New York, I reckon, but still it's a fine city. Celebrated for its monuments, canvasbacks, and pretty girls, the saying used to be. Worn't dead stuck on canvasbacks myself, though; got overfed with them on my father's plantation when I was a lad, preferred bacon and greens any day in the year. But I'll give in to the praise of Baltimo women to my last breath. Married one of 'em, in fact, an' if God ever sent an angel into a man's life, 'twas she."

Miss Carstairs, to her surprise, detected simultaneously with a tender adoring look coming upon his withered face, a suspicion of moisture in her interlocutor's eyes. She sat up, felt that here was something so out of the way as to verge upon impropriety, made a movement to depart, and finally concluded to remain where she was.