SHORT STORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14814, 18 October 1911, Page 11

SHORT STORY.

COURTING A WIDOW.

It was most unaccountably uncomfortable. I was conscious of it, and yet I could not get my mind off the subject. / It was • still early in the evening, scarcely seven o'clock. Should I go to the theatre, and in'mimic life forget my own annoyances?

I arose, walked to the window and looked out. It was a cold, disagreeable night. Pedestrians hurried by, wrapping * their coats closer about them, while the thousand street sounds came to my oar upon the frosty air with clear metallic ring. I knew it must bo very cold, and instinctively I turned back to the cheerful grate and comfortable armchair. If a friend would only drop in, I thought, if anything would happen to rolievo the tedium. But there was no prospect of it; so, feeling that I never could get through the evening alone, I buttoned up my greatcoat, and putting on ray neck-scarf, started out. I had ho definite idea where I was going, but the secret of all my discomfort was that I was in love with two women. •

Perhaps I wasn't at that momonfc in love with two women, but I certainly was over head and ears in love-with one, and head aqd ears engaged to another. , ,

Now, that certainly was enough to make a peaceful, law-abiding citizen uncomfortable, to make him , afraid of his own thoughts and still more of his own actions. It came about in this way. ■ I had, two years before met Julia Leeds. _' She was a beautiful' girl, had a fortune in her own right, was smart and • intelligent, aJid .was the belle of the city. 1 met her at partics, sociables, concerts, operas; everywhere, in fact; and alter a time I had the extreme satisfaction of learning that J. was preferred to all the crowd of fortune-hunters who worshipped at her shrine. And then it was, in an evil hour, that I proposed and was accepted. Her heart, she assured me, was in my keeping, and had been for a very long time. Bless her pretty face and sweet voice! I can almost hear those musical tones even as I writ*.

I think I believed myself in love with her, though I do not know that I ever paused to'speculate upon the peculiar state of my feelings.

I was a young man, good-looking—so to i speak— I fully believed, a fair share ! of intelligence, and Julia was a beautiful, angelic girl. I had won the prize for which so many were striving, and I was proud of the achievement. I do not think I" cared anything about Julia's dollars. I knew that I would never marry a homely or disagreeable woman if she possessed the fortune of the Astors. I was certain of that fact, for I had been aimed at by two or three rich women, ugly enough to break up a funeral, and never hit. So I knew it was not Julia's money, but Julia's sweet ways and means of making herself attractive. And I had not a doubt when I asked her to let mo share her fortune that my heart was in the matter —had not a doubt that I loved her to the full extent, of which my nature wis capable. But it fell out one day. or rather I fell in one day, the company of Kitty Blanchard. I did not know who Kitty chard -was. I thought at first glance she was a schoolgirl. Perhaps it was the- book she carried in her little, neatly-gloved hand that gave me the impression, or possibly it might have been the jaunty little "jockey" that sat so prettily upon her head, and showed her glossy, curling hair to such advantage. It might have been the short walking dross and the sprightly step, or maybe the very small and very perfectly-fitting boot. I don't know what it was; but I certainly did think she was a schoolgirl, and a very funny little, girlish schoolgirl at that. - But there was something in the glance of Kitty's eye and in the words she spokethough I have no recollection of anythnig sho said—that told me very decidedly that she was far beyond taskmasters. I went home that night, and thought about her until bedtime, and then dreamed about her until morning. For a week I saw nothing, night or day, but black, roguish eyes and dancing curls. I went to parties, and theatres, and concerts by myself, in hopes of meeting her. No use! She wasn't there. ' At last, despairing of ever proceeding any farther independently, I was forced to inquire of the friend who had introduced me— proceeding very distasteful to me, as I did not wish to advertise my business, or, in other words, give him reason to suspect I was at all interested.^ But I did ask him who Kitty Blanchard was, and I was sorry for it the next minute, for the reply was instantaneous: " She's a-widow!" :. ■ Now, if there was any on© thing that I secretly despised, that I had an unmitigated contempt for, it was a widow. I had seen them often—old,widows and young widows, good-looking and otherwise they all ad that melodramatic air about them, had the same way of talking about the doad Mr. Pendograss, or Shuttlecock, or, whatever the name might be, and insisting that there never was so kind and good a man. I don't know why they do this; 1 never heard anyone say. It certainly is not the bait that would hook me.

But Kitty Blancharcl ' had not. ■: once ' alluded to the defunct Adolphus, and' I had certainly talked with her five minutes. \ I wondered how long since the sods were neatly fitted over his resting-place; bow long the little , birds had sung his requiem in the drooping branches of the, etc. y- 1 guess I didn't get any farther than that before I .-"recollected."that Kitty 'wore no weeds, but that eho was very bewitching in an—l hadn't the ghost of an idea whether her dress was blue, green, or grey. 1 could not have told that she wore any dress, only that I remembered it -was short, and that she had a foot which I had been nearly crazy about ever since. I had heard somewhere that a lady was ; best dressed when you could not remember a single thing she had on; so, while I had my doubts about the application of that rule to all cases, I was willing to concede that Kitty Blaucharcl was the best-dressed woman in the city. And the earth must have been heaped a year over that silent resting-place—possibly more—for Kitty, I was certain, differed from the widows I had known. She didn't move around in her black robes, with a cambric to her eyes, for three hundred and sixty-five days, hopping out on the sixty-sixth with beaming eyes and a pink bonnet. No, fir! 1 knew better than that. Just then a horrible- thought took possession of me. Perhaps the earth had never been heaped or the sods fitted; perhaps the little birds had never been notified about the requiem —perhaps the deceased Adolphus was still a resident of this troublesome world.

In that case Kitty was a grass widow —and I didn't like them at all. They were worse, if possible, than the genuine' article. Never had seen one yet that wasn't a— — Well, I did not know, after all, why I should bo so averse to grass widows, or," in fact, widows of any other persuasion. So I discarded . the widow question, and thought only of Kitty's bright eyes and be- J wildering ways. _ . . I am sorry to say it, but I think I quite forgot all about Julia in those days, and after I had again met Kitty and had passed one or two evenings in her society, I know I did. In fact, I did not know that there was anybody else in the world. .___ I was fearfully in earnest. Kitty was everything that was perfect; she sang and danced, -and played and talked and read, and in short did everything that was interesting—and I learned after a while that the sods had been neatly fitted" two years before. She told mo that, and it was the only allusion she ever made to the gone before" sharer of her joys— I'm sure, she never had. This was about the time my trouble commenced. Things had got to just this pitch upon that stormy, cold evening of which I spoke at the commencement of this story. I didn't like Julia any more, and it was astonishing how insignificant her dollars looked to me. So I congratulated myself on being a better man than I had in my secret moments believed. I was certain that Julia Leeds loved me. and I did not know how I was. going to get out of the entanglement; but I couldn't marry her with my heart a burning, seething furnace of affection for Kitty Blanchard. She hadn't any money. I knew that, but I loved her so that I would have been willing to sacrifice-a dozen such fortunes as Julia's for the simplo assurance that I was dear to her. - But I was bargained for, as good as sold,, everybody thought, and I could not ascertain'the state of Kitty's feelings until something should turn up to help me out of my difficulty. .-. ." \, vTwo or three times the thought had entered my brain that I would see Julia Leeds and make a clean breast of it, assuro her that I had all respect and friendship for her, i but that I had been mistaken in my .feelings —that, in short, I loved another. That was the orthodox way of doing things, and it '< was the only way that at first occurred to me. Then, when I reflected, I was afraid: Julia was a bright, high-spirited girl, and belonged to an influential '■ family, and -if she chose to make things unpleasant I knew she would do it. So I felt that I must resort to stratagem-—get Julia in love i With some other fellow, when '.I: would be■, the injured party, and : could not only J display my magnanimity, but also get ; the gentle being whose lightest word, etc. " And now I have got quite back to that ; frosty, cold night mentioned in the opening of this confession. y.

I am now ready to tell where I went. . . : "Why, you went to sec your widow, of course!" exclaims a pronhetio reader. ' No, I didn't. I went to see a very intimate male friend, rejoicing in the euphonious name of C. Ellsworth Percival. Be was a great" lady's man." He loved the whole sex. and they—the ladies, God bless them I— took to him naturally. < I found him, and told my story, and asked him what I should do. \ He didn't know the little widow, he said, but he could roadily imagine, after ; my description, that she was the "one altogether lovely." Quotations were natural to C. Ellsworth Percival, and ho could always express what he meant in language belonging to someone else. " ". - ' 1 Julia Leeds he did know, and tha .would call there a few times, get up a little flirtation, or words to that effect; I : could got jealous, pick a quarrel, break the engagement, marry the widow, and let "Julia find somebody else, , , .;*._.. It was all as easy as rolling off a slippery JogSo it was arranged. ; ~.■;., * C. Ellsworth Percival began calling upon Julia, and I 1 continued calling i: upon the widow, and keeping away from ; Julia. I think I was more happy "for? the next few weeks than mortal has ; right to; expect. I called upon my adored ivitty as often as I could frame an excuse 5 to" go there, and as often as I dared without an excuse. She was gentle, pleasant, everything. ! She liked my • society I knew, but sho had almost wonderful •;■ faculty *of making ? a ■ man feel that he ; had no rights nor privileges in life. I couldn't account for that. Consequently,; I was very much . surprised one evening to find her sitting very close to a long-whiskered v individual, who was tenderly holding ono of those identical little hands that I had been raving about for months. She rose very gracefully, as J entered, andwell, I never did know just how she did it—but ■I ; found out ;by i something she said that I was an 'acquaintance, and that Dr. D'Ariemont—or some such confounded French namewas her affianced husband, or sho was his affianced wife,: Oi something of that-kind—ll didn't know or care what—l was only conscious of the fact that I wasn't anything or anywhere. ,\' I believe I congratulated the widow, and said "I hoped I didn't intrude," talked a few moments about the weather, and made my best bow and got out. -■ * . ;• I must have walked ten miles around the city before :. I ; reached home, - c and I don't think I had taken three successive stem in j all that distance without " confounding*' the i widows and wishing the whole race ; to the

dogs. • . ,' But when I came to my reason a little— it was near morning when I didl made up my mind that I would show her—as though she needed any showing. My mind was made uo—that was certain. * I would call upon Julia Leeds right away. I would apologise for my inattention, and we would be married right away. I slept an hour or two on that. I was a little sore around the heart, and very achy around the head when I awoke. J The postman was earW that morning—• : two letters lay on the table at my bedside.' I took one of them, doubled up the- pillow, raised myself on my elbow, and broke,the seal. ■ ■.•■■"•.■■ "■" '-. jiIt was from C. Ellsworth Percival, telling me that ho was married—that ho had been exposed, took it, had it the natural way, and that the crisis was past, or in other words the ceremony had been performed the evening before. Ho hoped I was satisfied, and insisted that he owed me a debt of gratitude for putting him in the way of securing so lovely and lovable a wife. Then followed some badinage about the widow with the soulful eyes, and many good wishes for my success in that direction. ... - The other letter was from Julia herself, inclcsin? wedding ! cards. The contents :of the letter I do not remember, but I know it was dignified in tone, and that I was informed that I was released from my engagement, that she harboured . no resentment, but that I ; must never, never seek to see her again. ■ - -*_ * '- And I never, never did. !■•'■■'-.