A SHORT STORY.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIV, Issue 256, 5 November 1910, Page 2

A SHORT STORY.

HER DAY OF YOUTH.

(By G. B. Lancaster.)

Gary was hot and very dirty, but for tho moment he was indubitably satisfied with himself and with life. He sat on the top rail of the platform fence with his coat slung over his shoulder and, his black head bare to -the sun. And The pipe that he smoked with long contented breaths made a •cloud of. incense about him. , "

This day had bean a good day for Gary, for his heavy boots were spattered with mud from the very glaciertop, and tho alpenstock at his feet was well scarred by hard usage. And "to Gary the joy of life was in conflict; in the pitting of his strength against the strength of others; in breaking, when the odd lay heaviest that he would be the broken.

All around him res© the Selkirk®, Jheavily white with, winter. The sun jsloped to the west, pointing red fingers down into the canyon where an upcoming train was laboring. The air was sharp like1 champagne, and unutterably still. Through it .'Gary, lieard the grunt and pant of the engine on the upgrade, arid almost he believed that he could have heard it so all across the stillness of the prairies, all through the barren Kockies, until the very seal, of silence -welcomed! it tamong the pine-tree foresifc around the little station hotel.

A little girl bounced out of the hotel •door and ran down the platform to Gary. She was brimming with -school-girl life and health and noisiness and fun, and her eyes were frank and merry as she caught up Gary's tiand between -her own.

"How perfectly lovely of you to come back to say good-bye to me!" «he cried. "And I'll see you down at Boston in the winter?' Sure?"

Gary pulled out his pipe and regarded her; .half gravely. "You'll have forgotten all about me by then, Baby," he said, "and, porhaps, I •fihalLhavo forgottett'all about you." The child swung up her hat by one .strings clapped it on her curls; , and tied it with a. jerk under her-chin. -"You won't," . she cried. ''People <lbn't forget me. . They certainly -<3on!t. 1 send them post-cards. Are you going to. stay here and climb mountains?"

"Sure," he said. "All by .myself. I*lL have no one to play with, Baby." The child's eyes twinkled. She bent forward, mischief breathing from «very kink of her bright hair. "You can have the gray lady," she whispered. "H-shS 'She's just comThe man slid from the rail as the woman passed oy. Then ho turned' «Jown the platform, with1, the child's hand shut into his. He did not jspeak, and Baby looked at him resentfully "What's th© matter?" she said. "I think she's just lovely. Her hands and hor hair, everything is just so." Since he had boarded the train at Vancouver, and found her in it Gary had known that everything about the gray lady was "just so." Since he had met her_ first and .yon her and lost her, all in a brief year, he had known it. More water had run under bridges since that year of madness than he liked to think of, and Virginia was ■odler and he was older. But he had lived since then." ■ There were men who said that he had lived too much. And Virginia? Gary let his eyes rest half quizzically on the gray lady as she passed again, looking neither to light nor to left. "Sho has never lived at all," he told ' himself. "And that is the trouble, as it always was. She won't wake up, and it was too much/bother to make her wake up." His hand1 gripped unconsciously on Baby's, • and .his level brows drew down.

Baby jerked herself free in, anger. "I don't like you today," she declared. "You're no fun at all. And J certainly do like people to speak when they're spoken to." Then Gary .roused himself, and-be-neath the thunder and bustle of the train pulling into the station ran the undercurrent of laughter and talk. A little .while Virginia ' watched them with something in her eyes which the man, had never seen there. Then she - faced about and walked straight into the forest with her grey-gloved hands pressed tight together and her lips

"Be plays with her," she said. "He always liked something to play with; Sho is so young. And I have never been young. I have never been young —and now I am old."

She stood with head up, the grave grey eyes clouded with the listening look, but there oamo no answer. Far off a little avalanche crashed; near by » chipmunk sat up in the leaves with his ears cocked. But the mighty hemlocks and firs were hushed, and1 the xoar of the distant river was just a thread in the great sheet of silence. "Why, yes, said Virginia, very jslowly. "That is it I was never young, and it was youth that he wanted. And—T didn't know it; I •didn't know it—until now."

Ono of the very truest truths of life is the certainty thatl w© can never evade its big things—the big things of love, of pain, or that sudden body-and-love jolt which is called the awakening of the soul. If they come «arly they generally twist the future ■current or ©vents awry. .If they come late they hurt more. That is the only difference. ' To Virginia they liad come late. They had; come late because the creed taught her by her jstately old adamantine grandmother iA. the stately old s tone-and-brick mansion among the Maryland plantations had covered externals only. From her babyhood Virginia had &nown just how to sit and to stand, just how to give an order to a servant, and how to t*lk to men with the same delicate indifference that she used when dipping her slim finger-tips into the old chased finger-bowls. Through babyhood and childhood into something nearly approaching middle age she had walked with her serene step and her serene white brow and her serens grey eyes For a lijttle space Gary had come into her life. He had married' her and taken her.away, beating on her i3till coldness with the fierce heat of his boyish, extravagant love, until she grew colder in dislike of his passion, and he grew fiercier in resentment and pain. So they parted, and Virginia went back- to the Maryland plantation to dream the rest of her life out alone, and Gary went whither his wild star led him, tasting more of good and evil than Virginia read in all her books, feeling the flame of hot life sear him, and going out to meet joy as a man only does go who has . known sorrow. j To Gary the big things of life had j come early. To Virginia they had ! come late. They had just come now. i But in the glare of the great light of understanding that swamped her she » could not remember when they had j been there; could not remember that '

that chilly winding sheet which was all memory could unroll behind her was the thing which she had placidly called "life"; could not remember that the hour had been when she had; not longed, fiercely, piteously, for the rounding outlines and the ripe lips and the frank merry heart that Baby carried through.the world. Virginia was a clever woman, but she was not a wise one. In all manner of philosophy,, of theology, of metaphysics, sh© could have distanced Baby in the first lap, but that wisdom which comes of a woman's1 knowledge of her womanhood was not hers; that trembling dim realisation of the divine which wakes with the first spring of love in a maiden's heart had never been hers; .that all-understand-ing, all-forgiving comradeship which sets the seal of love on a marriage had never been here. She had stood aside and dreamed while the world went by, until all tho riches that it held for her had gone with it. And now her day of youth was g one —ended before its dawn. It was, Baby's warm young hand, that Gary reached out to hold, as he had once reached out for hers; it was Baby s | laughter and frank friendship that brought the laugh to his lips, as she had never cared to bring- it. Virginia ] stared at the snow-hills that were cold as her own heart had been, and for the first time in her life she was jealous, wildly impotently jealous. On the paltform Gary stood with bared head and joking lips until BabyV noisy good-byes and frantic waving hands hadl gone with the rush of the train. Then he turned,and looked up at the gaunt snow-shoulder that lifted through the pines far above him. . j "That—or Virginia," he said. "I wonder—" He chewed his lip a moment, laughed, pulled out. a quarter, and spun it .up. It raised a little spurt of dust as it dropped, and Gary looked at it intently before he lifted it. He wiped it absently, "whistling a little, broken negro melody, and his face was soft with memories. Then he thrust his hand's deep in his pockets, .squared his shoulders, and marched out on the trail that Virginia had taken. From the lower lands the snow was gone, and yeljqw adder's tongues and pale violets and budding ferns glimmered on either side of the track where the sun caught them. The air was iced electricity, and the man drew it down into his big lungs until its vigor glowed in his eyes and gave a sharper ring to his step. H© was free oi the forest land even as of the cities-—free of their lonely -snowplains, and of their narrow, black trails, their sunshiny slopes, their delirious, quick, lived avalanchetracks. And Virginia. Gary stood for a moment, with his brows knit. That sorrow was dead. It gave him no pain to see her now and to pass her by as though ho had never listened for her step, never held her in his arms! The wound was cauterised, and these two days since they left Vancouver had proved that it would not ache hard again. Why he went to seek her now he did not know. Quit© certainly he had no desire to link hands across the past. They had travelled too far on different ways since then. And their steps never had been set in the same trail, anyway. He shook his; shoulders and laughed,' half ashamed. "Why, I just want to see her," he said. Back in the trail where the firs shadows began to loop among th heavy trees? Virginia twisted he hands togetheri "I will be young,', she said:desperately. "I will, I will.' She drew a long breath. Gary wa young. He would bo young when hi shoulders stooped and his black hea< went grey. ; Baby was young. An< what would Baby, do out here amonj this majesty of tall firs and snow bound sky? Virginia knew, for sh had seen from a distance. Baby woul< climb, too; panting, scarlet-faced and joyful. Baby would roll boulder down into the canyons where th water spewed up its white foam. Sh would shy sticks at, the chipmunks she1 would gather every tiny flow© that lifted its head in the crevices and sh© would be glad in it all—be cause she was young. Virginia's white hands, jus stripped of the gloves, dropped b? ,'her sides. Tho light dropped as sud denly from her face. "I would hat doing it," she said. "And i wouldn't make' me feel anything bu a fool. But—l will try." ; .; Ten minutes later Gary came ove: the ridge with a whistle on his lip and his keen eyes taking note of eacl bar of shadow and light on the track Suddenly he pulled up. "The-e devil,' he said blankly. From the low clump of firs thaoverhung th© trail a grey silk stocking and a shoe depended, with the foo" inside, feeling helplessly for a hol< somewhere. Out of th© clump-centr* came sounds of smothered sobbing The blank look in Gary's eyes gav< place to many emotions. Then h< laid hold of the ankle gently bufirmly. The sobbing rose to agitate* incoherences, and the devil in Garj was glad. Never before had Virginis been caught at a disadvantage. "Suppose you wait till I get dowr before you talk any more, Virginia,' hi© suggested. "Then we can meet oi an equal footing." "Oh!" said Virginia, faintly, and n< more She said no more when h< swung himself up to her, and when h< lowered her down in his strong arms or when h© set her before him on th< trail and looked on her bruised hand; and her torn dress and' her grea.i folds of hair falling loose from th( pins. "Well," he said blandly. "Got anything to say?" J

(Virginia flushed, and it> was like the breaking of sunrise over an ice-field. • Tho warm glow ran down to her very 1 1 throat, and her eyes were blazing. i ■! She flung out her hands with a sudden 1 1 vigorous gesture, and her heart was in her voice. "Yes," she cried. 'Laugh as much as you like. I don't care. I want to bo young. T was trying to be young. I threw sticks at tho chipmunks, but I couldn't hit them. And I tried to roll boulders, but they hurt my hands. ! And then I tried to climb a tree. I want to do what young people do. I , will be young. Now laugh. Say what > you like. I don't care. I will be young. I Gary stared at her with contracted . eyes. There was no thought of laugh- ! tor in him. If the Virginia of ten years ago had been like this, what mio-ht not life have held for them . both?' And now it was too late. "You have never been young, he , said slowly, a, great bitterness" in his ''. "I know." Virginia's heart bobbed '■ in her throat. "1 know. But I want .to loam." . ■■ For a space the man and the woman i faced each other, and the pain was Gary's yet, because ho remembered his young love for her. Then ho said, still slowly: , ,' . ~-- "Baby told me to play with the gray lady. I will play with you if you like, Virginia—for two days." "Two days?" said Virginia vaguely. " Just so. Then I am going on to Banff. We've met only once in the last ton years, and maybe we'll meet less in the next ton.. But we pan play a while in between 'without tomorrow and without yesterday 1' Shall we?" The humor had1 como back to Gary's face now, .and a now recklessness, born of desperation, leaped up in Virginia to greet it. , "We will," she cried. "Andcwithout Baby either^"' Comprehension lit suddenly in the 1 man's eyes, and ho dropped them \quickly. The snarl ;had, been' made clnar •on the instant. \ Baby had' ■touched the spring of womanhood in Virginia, and it had leaped out, uncoiling to its length. He put his hand on her arm. "Cbinealong, playmate," ho said. "We'll plan out our | gamers for tomorrow. . ; Among all the children of Gary's circle he was received as an equal by thiat inner free-masonry which takes ho heed of. age. The irrepressible humour. in'■:•: the man bubbled up through sorrow, through reverses through loneliness, and *• every where tfe youth in the world recognised and it. The joke in the present situation' appealed to him hugely. That be should teach Virginia to rjlay | t_i_Virginia,; of all women, Virginia" with> her long, white throat and .her i chilly fingers and her stately tread; He faced the matter in a curiosity un- , tempered by pain. "How could she hurt me—-once?" jhe thought, in wonder. iln sudden greed for all that was > slipping from her Virginia went into the game and found strange joy in ; the doing of it. She gathered up L the treasure of the hours in both ■ hands, and held it to her, making no :. attempt at analysis. But she knew • that she: was awakened, awakened ' into throbbing, vivid life, wi;th the j rose of youth on her cheeks and a i. dawn—false dawn or true —on the i horizon. s Together they made snowKtheri "on -.the mighty mountain-slopes and : pelted them with snowballs until Vir- • ginia grew hot in the contest and •'; Gary derided her in frank delight. They piled nuts in open places _ and! £ watched, in corners to-sec tho squirrels 3 come. They found nicknames and l life-stories for all the people of the »: hotel and swapped jokes until Vir- " ginia's eyes ran over with mirth and > the smile played constantly round her y, lip-corners. ' . I It was a strange game that they t played—an Indian-summer game with ' the red leaves too close to their fall s and the chill of frost coming near and > more near. The man felt it with a l keenness that, grow more bitter \- hourly. Once, when he prayed with s his, soul for her companionship, Virs ginia had said him no. And such as Gary do not go through their Gehenna > and forget it. But, in the new heat df her blood, Virginia, felt no chill. A y glory was in her life, a glory fully blown in a night. She was a woman; " she was young; she_ was" fair, and,; ' above all, she was alive—alive. The 1 hours went singing down the day for » her, and the nights crept, soft and! s warm, .about her. And through them I all she was alive —'alive. ■ I On the morning of the third1 day she \ drew away her blind and looked out • on the rough bridge spanning the » tumbling creek -and en the mountains U standing, a. white army of giants, p ! against the pale sky where the dawn i.'. ran. The air was like new wine, and! > jii struck on her lips sharp andstrong » :as Gary's' kisses were used to 'strike. ! She laughed, gathering up her hair. "He has made me young," she 1 said. "And I am young—for him, for him." Then she went out to meet him in a j ' gay confidence. i I "You said once that it would be two 1 I days only," she cried. "And the 1 evening and the morning are the third i ' day." • ! ' Gary looked at her. The line of his jaw seemed thinner, and his eyes were, ' | dark in the brilliant light. There had! j ;'• been no sleep for him in the night i that.had brought rich dreams to Vir- j i ginia, and his voice was hard. j j"I did what I promised', didn't I?" j 'he asked her. "I've shown you the 1 way to be young, haven't I?" ■ i ■ ! Virginia leaned back her head to | 1 the opening day. And her eyes were '■] bright as the sun. '.'Yes," she 1! breathed. Gary kept his eyes on her. The 1 throat was so round and white and 1 the red lips were so red. "Then,' 'he said, "that is all. I am going out by the morning train." Virginia straightened. She stared at him, not knowing that her eyes were wide and her lips blanched. Gary kept his eyes on her still. "I am going," he repeated. , But yet Virginia did not speak, and : with an effort Gary met the question of her silence. "You never asked me if I were married/ he said. "Perhaps it did not interest you. Or perhaps you knew. I was married two years ago, and I love my wife and my son better than anything on earth—better than . I ever loved you, I think." { Virginia stood very still. Her youth had sprung to full bloom in a day. Now it died in an hour, as the big gorgeous flowers of the tropics j die. ITall had come—the fall of red leaves, red as heart's blood. Gary spoke again stumblingly. "I—l guess you're.not surprised, areyou? It was in all the papers. I thought you'd certainly know. I—" Here Virginia reached out and took hold of the dignity of her middleaged1 womanhood. "Of course I

heard," she said. ."But I had forgotten. It—it did not interest me, you see. I—l wish you all happiness. Good-bye."

"Virginia I—it was only last night I guessed that you , didn't perhaps know—"

Virginia faced him with the soul of her stately adamantine grandmother in her eyes. "Do you remember?" she said. "We played 'without tomorrow and without yesterday.' It is to-morrow now, and'so that day doesn't belong." Then she left him, walking straight and lithely. And she left her day of youth at his feet.