Cape of Storms: A Novel

by Percival Pollard

And so the day wears on, and the program dwindles. There are several trotting races, a pacing event, a running race, and some bicycle exhibitions. The day is to be topped off with a balloon ascent, the balloonist, a woman, being billed to descend, afterward, by way of a parachute.

But to neither of these two spectators did the events of the program seem the most interesting of the displays. It was the country people themselves that had the most of quaint charms. Miss Dorothy Ware was become so saturated with the polish of cosmopolitan views, and the manners caught from extensive travel, that these scenes, once so familiar and natural, now struck her as very strange and extraordinary. In Dick the air of the metropolis had so keyed him up to the quick, unwholesome pleasures of the urban mob that this breath of country holiday filled him with a pleasant sense of rest. Never again could he be as these were, but he could, in a far-off, dreamy way, still appreciate their primitive emotions. They were all so ingenious, so openly joyful, so gayly bent on having a good time, these country folk! They strolled about in groups of young folk, or in couples, or in family parties. She casts a wistful look toward a fruit-stand; he must go promptly and buy her something. He bargains closely; he is mindful, doubtless, of the fact that there is still the yearning for the merry-go-round, the phonograph, and the panorama, to be appeased.

In the West the sun was taking on the dull red tone of shining, beaten bronze. The haze of dust began to lift, mist-wise, up against the shadowgirt horizon. From thousands of lips there presently issues a long drawn "Ah-h!" and the unwieldy mass of a balloon is seen to rise up over the meadow. A damsel in startling, grass-green tights floats in mid-air upheld by the resisting parachute, and drops earthward to the safe seclusion of a neighboring pasture. Vehicles are unhitched; there are some moments of wild shouting and maneuvering, and then the stream of humanity and horses pours out into the dusty road, and in a little while the fair grounds are merely a place for the ghosts of the things that were.

When it was all over, when he had said goodbye to Miss Ware and her mother, a sense of loneliness came over Dick, and he sank into one of those moody states that nowadays invariably meant torment. He could not remember to have talked to Dorothy of anything save commonplace and obvious things, and yet with every glance of her eye, every tone of her voice, the old glamour that he had felt aforetime had come upon him again. She was no longer the same, he had observed so much; the girlish exuberance and forth-rightness had given way to a more subdued manner, a fine, but somewhat colorless polish. Something, too, of the sparkle seemed to have gone from her; her smile had much of sadness. It flashed over him that never once had either of them referred to the words with which they once had parted. Had it been his fault, or hers? Once, she had let him hope, had she not? He remembered the dead words, but he smiled at the dim tone that yon whole picture took in his memory. It was as if it had all happened to someone else. Well,—perhaps it had; certainly he was separated by leagues of too well remembered things from that other self, the self that had said to a girl, once, "Dorothy, will you wish me luck?"

But in spite of the changes in them both, Dick felt that her charm for him was potent with a new fervor. He could not define it; it seemed a halo that surrounded her, in his eyes at least. The sardonic recesses of his memory flashed to him the echo of his foolish words to Mrs. Stewart, at the opera. "Oh, damn the past," he muttered, hotly. He would begin all over again, he would atone for those pretty steps aside; he would pin his faith to the banner of his love for Dorothy. For he felt that he did love this girl. He longed for her; she seemed to personify a harbor of refuge, a comfort; he felt that if he could go to her, and tell her everything, and feel her hand upon his forehead, her smile, and the touch of her hand would wipe away all the ghostly cobwebs of his memory, of his past, and leave him looking futureward with stern resolves for white, and happy, wholesome days.

Surely it would be madly foolish to let a Past spoil a Future!

He saw the grin upon the face of Sophistry, and set his lips. No, there were no excusing circumstances; he had gone the way of the world, because that way was easy and pleasant. Only his weakness was to blame.

"She is as far above me," he said, before he went to sleep that night, "as the stars. But—we always want the stars!"

As for Miss Ware, it need only be chronicled that she was very quiet and abstracted that evening, so that her mother was prompted to remark that "Lincolnville don't appear to suit you powerful well, Dorothy." As a matter of fact, the girl was afar off, in thought, and her eyes were bright with tears because of the things she was remembering.

She had loved Dick, on a time. And to realize that never, in all time, would her conscience permit her to satisfy that love—that was bitter, very bitter.