What Answer?. Anna E. Dickinson
is unaware, and remembered what he had once said in talking of him—"If Will Surrey's time does come, I hope the girl will be all right in every way, for he'll plunge headlong, and love like distraction itself—no half-way; it will be a life-and-death affair for him." "Come, I must break in on this."
"Surrey!"
"Yes."
"There's a pretty girl."
No answer.
"There! over yonder. Third seat, second row. See her? Pretty?"
"Very pretty."
"Miss—Miss—what's her name? O, Miss Perry played that last thing very well for a school-girl, eh?"
"Very well."
"Admirable room this, for hearing; rare quality with chapels and halls; architects in planning generally tax ingenuity how to confuse sound. Now these girls don't make a great noise, yet you can distinguish every word—can't you?"
No response.
"I say, can't you?"
"Every word."
Tom drew a long breath.
"Professor Hale's a sensible old fellow; I like the way he conducts this school." (Mem. Tom didn't know a thing about it.) "Carries it on excellently." A pause.
Silence.
"Fine-looking, too. A man's physique has a deal to do with his success in the world. If he carries a letter of recommendation in his face, people take him on trust to begin with; and if he's a big fellow, like the Professor yonder, he imposes on folks awfully; they pop down on their knees to him, and clear the track for him, as if he had a right to it all. Bless me! I never thought of that before—it's the reason you and I have got on so swimmingly—is it not, now? Certainly. You think so? Of course."
"Of course,"—sedately and gravely spoken.
Tom groaned, for, with a face kind and bright, he was yet no beauty; while if Surrey had one crowning gift in this day of fast youths and self-satisfied Young America, it was that of modesty with regard to himself and any gifts and graces nature had blessed him withal.
"Clara has a nice voice."
"Very nice."
"She is to sing, do you know?"
"I know."
"Do you know when?"
No reply.
"She sings the next piece. Are you ready to listen?"
"Ready."
"Good Lord!" cried Tom, in despair, "the fellow has lost his wits. He has turned parrot; he has done nothing but repeat my words for me since he sat here. He's an echo."
"Echo of nothingness?" queried the parrot, smilingly.
"Ah, you've come to yourself, have you? Capital! now stay awake. There's Clara to sing directly, and you are to cheer her, and look as if you enjoyed it, and throw her that bouquet when I tell you, and let her think it's a fine thing she has been doing; for this is a tremendous affair to her, poor child, of course."
"How bright and happy she is! You will laugh at me, Tom, and indeed I don't know what has come over me, but somehow I feel quite sad, looking at those girls, and wondering what fate and time have in store for them."
"Sunshine and bright hours."
"The day cometh, and also the night,"—broke in the clear voice that was reading a selection from the Scriptures.
Tom started, and Willie took from his button-hole just such a little nosegay as that he had bought on Broadway a fortnight before—a geranium leaf, a bit of mignonette, and a delicate tea-rosebud, and, seeing it was drooping, laid it carefully upon the programme on his knee. "I don't want that to fade," he thought as he put it down, while he looked across the platform at the same face which he had so eagerly pursued through a labyrinth of carriages, stages, and people, and lost at last.
"There! Clara is talking to your beauty. I wonder if she is to sing, or do anything. If she does, it will be something dainty and fine, I'll wager. Helloa! there's Clara up—now for it."
Clara's bright little voice suited her bright little face—like her brother's, only a great deal prettier—and the young men enjoyed both, aside from brotherly and cousinly feeling, cheered her "to the echo" as Willie said, threw their bouquets—great, gorgeous things they had brought from the city to please her—and wished there was more of it all when it was through.
"What next?" said Willie.
"Heaven preserve us! your favorite subject. Who would expect to tumble on such a theme here?—'Slavery; by Francesca Ercildoune.' Odd name—and, by Jove! it's the beauty herself."
They both leaned forward eagerly as she came from her seat; slender, shapely, every fibre fine and exquisite, no coarse graining from the dainty head to the dainty foot; the face, clear olive, delicate and beautiful—
"The mouth with steady sweetness set,
And eyes conveying unaware
The distant hint of some regret
That harbored there,"—
eyes deep, tender, and pathetic.
"What's this?" said Tom. "Queer. It gives me a heartache to look at her."
"A woman for whom to fight the world, or lose the world, and be compensated a million-fold if you died at her feet," thought Surrey, and said nothing.
"What a strange subject for her to select!" broke in Tom.
It was a strange one for the time and place, and she had been besought to drop it, and take another; but it should be that or nothing, she asserted—so she was left to her own device.
Oddly treated, too. Tom thought it would be a pretty lady-like essay, and said so; then sat astounded at what he saw and heard. Her face—this schoolgirl's face—grew pallid, her eyes mournful, her voice and manner sublime, as she summoned this Monster to the bar of God's justice and the humanity of the world; as she arraigned it; as she brought witness after witness to testify against it; as she proved its horrible atrocities and monstrous barbarities; as she went on to the close, and, lifting hand and face and voice together, thrilled out, "I look backward into the dim, distant past, but it is one night of oppression and despair; I turn to the present, but I hear naught save the mother's broken-hearted shriek, the infant's wail, the groan wrung from the strong man in agony; I look forward into the future, but the night grows darker, the shadows deeper and longer, the tempest wilder, and involuntarily I cry out, 'How long, O God, how long?'"
"Heavens! what an actress she would make!" said somebody before them.
"That's genius," said somebody behind them; "but what a subject to waste it upon!"
"Very bad taste, I must say, to talk about such a thing here," said somebody beside them. "However, one can excuse a great deal to beauty like that."
Surrey sat still, and felt as though he were on fire, filled with an insane desire to seize her in one arm like a knight of old, and hew his way through these beings, and out of this place, into some solitary spot where he could seat her and kneel at her feet, and die there if she refused to take him up; filled with all the sweet, extravagant, delicious pain that thrills the heart, full of passion and purity, of a young man who begins to love the first, overwhelming, only love of a lifetime.
CHAPTER IV
"'Tis an old tale, and often told." SIR WALTER SCOTT
That evening some people who were near them were talking about it, and that made Tom ask Clara if her friend was in the habit of doing startling things.
"Should