Page images
PDF
EPUB

pressed men and sent terror to the renegades. "To the commissary!" the voice. commanded. "To the commissarymarch!" And at the door of the commissary they gathered and drove out the pillagers within and put out the fire kindled beneath the door, and cleared the camp of the last ambitious brave left to tell the tale of one of the bloodiest nights known on the frontier.

When it was all over, the lieutenant gave orders for the care of the wounded and recovery of the missing. The sergeant turned to confer and started back in blank amazement. "I'll be

[ocr errors]

"Remember your work, sir," came the orders cool and steady.. "Send ten men down to the meadow, bring the men into the barracks for treatment."

"See here," broke out the bewildered sergeant. "Weren't you in the guardhouse an hour ago?"

"If I was, it's none of your business. I am Lieutenant Bates, in command of this garrison by order of General Holland. Find that deserter and put him in the guard house."

The sergeant started down the hill. "I'll be damned," he gasped. "He's got more nerve and grit than the other fellow. What'll happen when they get together?"

Down by the big rock lay a still figure clad in the uniform of a second lieutenant. The sergeant paused a minute and touched his arm. There was no response, and the hole behind the ear told the tale.

They carried him back to camp and the next day they buried him. The deserter had come in.

In the morning they looked curiously at the face of the lieutenant in command, and they were silent, for it was not the face of the man whom they had put in the guardhouse. They forgot that he had been clad in the bedraggled uniform of a private soldier, and they forgot that it was not he who had carried the papers. When the belated soul of a man awakens under pressure of a desperate moment and he comes to himself, papers are a secondary matter. Lieutenant John W. Bates, U. S. A., was in command of the garrison.

A CHANGE OF NATURE

BY HUNTLY GORDON

"So long," he said, "as sky be blue,
And earth be green, and skylark sing
For very plenitude of spring;

As long shall live my love for you!

"As winds, complaining dove-wise, woo
The wild flowers shyly blossoming;
So long!" he said.

The sky bewept its change of hue

To earth-like gray; the lark its wing, Grief-heavy, drooped; rude winds did fling Fade flowers aside; the man.-he, too:

"So long!" he said.

A

A LATE FULFILLMENT

BY MAUDE HEATH BLANK

NASTASIA FRISBEE sat on the .back piazza, shelling peas for dinner. Before her stretched

green meadow of the ten acre lot. Through it ran a noisy little brook, shaded by drooping willows, and beyond the brook rose a large rock, across the smooth face of which was painted in staring white letters, "Perry's Pleasant Pills Prevent Pain." On the roof of the barn, nearer the house, was a sign painted in letters that covered the surface, "Curena Cures All Diseases of the Stomach, Liver, and Blood."

the

These two disfiguring advertisements had spoiled the landscape for Anastasia. Her beauty-loving soul revolted at desecration, and more than one dispute, that verged dangerously near to the quarreling line, had arisen between herself and husband on the subject. But the advertising agent paid for the privilege a sum that seemed extravagant to Jabez Frisbee, and his thrifty mind could not conceive the senseless idea of losing ready money, so easily obtained, for a mere notion. So the farm continued to bear the stigma that artistic natures deplore through the length and breadth of the land; Anastasia continued to refer at appropriate seasons, in tones of contempt, to "the barn that the Curena folks hired," and Jabez continued to take the money every spring for space that would not otherwise bring in

a cent.

This condition of affairs had obtained for years, but recently Anastasia had been unaccountably silent on the subject. In fact, the day before when the advertising man had come to make his annual payment, she had not only refrained from objecting to the transaction, but had actually asked the stranger to stay to dinner. Jabez wondered, but like a wise man

had asked no questions, having learned in a long married life to let sleeping dogs lie.

Anastasia was a comfortable-looking, motherly woman, rather stout, with a fresh color and sympathetic mouth and eyes. She was fifty years old, the wife of one of the most respected and influential men in the little town of Gilson, a member of the Methodist Church, of which her husband was a deacon; a grandmother and a sensible, God-fearing woman; and yet, if she had been asked suddenly any time in the past forty-two years what she wished for above everything else, she would have answered promptly, "a garnet ring."

When she was little Anastasia Gates, the youngest of ten children, city boarders. were taken one summer at her home to eke out the precarious living of a New England farmer. Their small homestead of ten acres was about three parts stones, which were laboriously gathered up each spring from the apparently inexhaustible supply, and piled up to be carted off, or built into fences. The crops that could be coaxed. from the inhospitable land during the short season barely sufficed to feed and clothe John Gates' healthy family, so that city people who were willing to pay five dollars a week to look at the view and eat what the family had, without extra "fixins," were looked upon as a direct intervention of Providence in the form of harmless lunatics.

It was on the finger of one of these exotic ladies that little Anastasia first saw a garnet ring, the desire for which possessed her thereafter unceasingly. Her fancy never wavered. No other ring seemed desirable to her. Afterwards, when she saw diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds, it was still for a garnet that her heart cried.

On one red letter day, when it rained so that they stayed indoors, the lady had

called Anastasia to her room, and let her help arrange her bureau drawers and boxes, and seeing the longing in the child's eyes, had allowed her to wear the wonderful ring for an hour. Clasped tightly between two tiny fingers, to keep it from slipping off, Anastasia, for that brief period, tasted absolute happiness. She never forgot it. At any time in the following forty years she could close her eyes and see again the rich red of Miss Lacy's garnet ring.

The next Sunday, when she went to Sunday school a new song was sung, the refrain of which was, "Oh, who will help us to garner in the sheaves," etc., but to Anastasia, as the children sang, it said, "Oh, who will help us to a garnet ring," and for years she believed those were the words she heard.

Once she found a ring in the road as she went home from school-a gold ring set with three small garnets, but before the glory of holding it had fully enveloped her soul, a woman came hurrying out of a nearby house and saw her. She snatched the ring from the child, as if she thought she were a thief, and left Anastasia wondering if she would actually have kept the ring if she could without looking for the owner. She had been too well schooled not to know that her soul was lost if such yielding to temptation was possible, and it worried her for weeks.

As she grew older, she saw the futility of asking her hardworking father for anything not absolutely necessary, and it occurred to her that if she picked berries and sold them she could buy a ring for herself. So she spent three days of the next holiday week picking strawberries in the hilly pasture land, under the fervent June sun, and sold them from house to house. She earned a dollar and a quarter altogether. When she brought the money home her mother advised her to buy the material for a best woolen dress for herself, and told her she was a good child to try to help her parents. Anastasia said nothing of her secret ambition. She did She did as she was told, and only cried herself to sleep two or three nights. In August, when the blueberries ripened, she went uncomplainingly with the older children to pick enough, if possible, to buy her school shoes.

Sometimes she dreamed of finding another ring, far more beautiful than the real one, and set with with one large flashing garnet, but just before she could put it on her finger she always awoke.

As she grew up into a pretty, redcheeked, blue-eyed girl, and went occasionally to parties, the young men of the neighborhood began to pay her attention, and the summer that she was eighteen Jabez Frisbee, the oldest son of one of the most prosperous farmers of the county, asked her to be his wife. Partly because she liked him, but more because young girls were expected to marry as soon as a suitable offer came, she said yes, and preparations for an early wedding were begun.

All the girls she knew who were engaged had engagement rings, and Anastasia had no doubt that Jabez would give her one. She only hoped, almost fiercely, that it would be a garnet but would have thought it unmaidenly to even hint at the kind she wanted. Jabez brought the ring the first time he came to see her after the engagement. It was a plain gold band. He was a prudent young man, and considered it just as well, besides being a saving, to make the betrothal token serve also as a wedding ring. Anastasia said nothing, and after they were married she gave up planning for a garnet ring. It was so hopeless.

A year after their marriage, she and Jabez moved to California, and they prospered well. Jabez bought a small farm, which was clear of debt; he built a neat five room cottage, with a wide back piazza, and he had all the machinery that he considered necessary to carry on the place. He was a "good provider." His wife had all she needed, according to his judgment, and if he had known of her secret longing he would have said without hesitation that it was "all folderol."

Jabez was a good man. His greatest fault was a little "nearness" in money matters, and as he firmly believed economy to be one of the cardinal virtues, it was not likely that he would ever correct himself of that characteristic. His idea of comfort was to buy what was actually necessary, and put as much money as possible in the bank every year. To leave a good bank account when he died was only

second in his wishes to an abundant entrance into heaven, and it might be said that it was second only on Sunday.

When Anastasia's first baby came, and she was so very ill that Jabez feared she would die and leave him alone with the little one, in her weakness and partial delirium she told him faintly that she could. get well if she only had a garnet ring. He supposed that she did not know what she was saying, but as the doctor said she must not be fretted, he brought her a garnet ring from the store and slipped it on her finger. She looked at it, sighed blissfully and slept. She recovered fast, but as soon as she was able to sit up she saw that the ring was of the cheapest pinchbeck, with a glass setting. When she was able to go out again she dug a little hole in the back yard and buried it-she could not have told why.

The years went on. Two other children were born to them, but one lived only a year. The first boy and his sister grew up and were married. Elizabeth, a pretty girl, who looked as her mother did when she was young, had for her engagement ring a very small diamond, and when John became engaged to Drusilla Hicks he gave her an emerald with pearls. Their mother said nothing as to her views on jewelry, and it would not have occurred to either of the children that she could wear any other ornament than the plain gold band, now growing a little thin.

Each

But today, as she sat getting the peas ready to cook, she wore on the third finger of her right hand a heavy gold ring, rather ornate, and set with a large, wellcut garnet. She had had it for more than a week, and had worn it whenever she was alone. She had tried to tell Jabez about it, and to show it to him. Each day her courage failed her, and she determined to tell him that night. night she concluded that morning would be a more favorable time. She had planned various ways of telling him. At one time she thought she would wear the ring until he noticed it, and then explain. At another she planned to tell him first, and then show it to him. Several times she almost began to speak of it, but a queer little chill would creep over her and her tongue felt stiff.

It was not that she was afraid of her

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

The first year after they went to California Anastasia was miserably homesick. She wanted her own people, the old familiar surroundings. The fact that Jabez was making money faster than he could have done in New England made no difference in her loneliness. The hill vineyards never, she was convinced, could look as beautiful to her as a field of clover, and the long, dry summer, with never a shower, and the equally long rainy winter, were separate and unforgivable of-fenses in her eyes. Long after she had become a good Californian and thought with pity of the victims of sunstroke and freezing "back home," she remembered Jabez'sscornful remark that he should think a "woman of her age" was too old to cry like a baby just because she was home-sick.

She remembered with painful distinct-ness little slights and reproaches-not vindictively, but simply because she was powerless to forget. Once, when the first baby was about a year old, she and Jabez went to a small party given by one of the neighbors. Old-fashioned games were played, and Anastasia joined in "hunting the slipper," and was enjoying it with all her cheerful soul until she suddenly saw her husband frowning at her. As they went home he said he was surprised to see a woman of her age acting so foolish. Her face grew hot for years afterwards whenever she thought of the occurrence.

Quite likely Jabez Frisbee had never had the remotest idea of the system of re

[graphic]
« PreviousContinue »