Books › The Red Book 1907-01: Vol 8 Iss 3, 1907 › scan 37
Scan 37
The Red Book 1907-01: Vol 8 Iss 3, 1907
54 lines. Read by computer on 17 September 2026. Printed page 326. See the scan on archive.org.
1with its song of life and its possibilities? After all, what were they—these possibilities?
3He checked them off bitterly. Success, love, happiness—bubbles all. One by one they had floated before him, alluring, illusive, and glittering with many hues; one by one they had burst at the touch of his fingers and in their place was emptiness.
5The sun went down, a huge red ball, and the autumn twilight gathered. Mechanically he buttoned his coat closer and lay down upon a bed of withered leaves in the shelter of a rock. He wanted to think, but a strange numbness overpowered him. She had gone and the summer was, her note had said, "an episode pleasant to remember but irrevocably closed."
7The minutes lengthened into hours. Overhead an owl hooted as it flew from tree to tree with a soft whirr of wings; somewhere on the hillside a fox barked sharply, and a rabbit scammed to his burrow with a quick flourish of little furry legs and an indignant wiggle of a stumpy tail.
9In the silence which ensued the brook began to talk, and insensibly the boy listened as he lay wakeful and smarting upon the leaves.
11It spoke of many things. Of life which must be lived, hour by hour, day by day, and of all that makes it possible; of happiness; and of the sorrow by which it is sometimes achieved; of the fire of pain, kindled to purify the gold in humanity; and of success, sometimes born of failure, through much suffering.
13It spoke of Woman.
15When morning broke there was a man beside the brook. A man chilled to the bone by the long October night, and very sore at heart.
17Professor Gastrow adjusted his spectacles and looked critically at the figure before him. A figure too pink and white and dainty to accord with the dingy room, with its rigidity of outline and unmistakable lack of feminine occupation.
19"I thought you would succeed," he remarked dryly.
21She nodded, and smoothed her glove carefully.
23"I won't do it again," she said defiantly. "I thought it would be funny, but it was n't."
25"No?"
27"It was horrid," she continued slowly, "at the end, I mean. He cared so much, you know, and I—well I think I was beginning to care, too."
29"Nonsense," he interrupted, irritably; "you were dull, that is what is the matter with you. You have fairly earned your winter abroad, and you shall have it."
31"Thank you, father," she returned, composedly. "It was dull among the hills at uncle's until he came. It was a strange thing, though, for you to ask your daughter to do—to deliberately hurt a man. It seems cruel."
33"Nothing of the kind," he returned brusquely; "it was necessary. I explained the reason."
35He arose, took a violin from the closet and carried it into the adjoining room; opening the dusty case carefully he laid the instrument upon the table, after adjusting the strings to his satisfaction and playing a bar or two with the lingering touch peculiar to a true musician.
37"He will be here soon," he remarked, as he returned to his daughter, "you had better go."
39But the girl shook her head positively.
41"I have a right to see the result of my work," she said soberly.
43The afternoon wore on, shadows lengthened outside, and the room grew dim with the gathering dusk.
45"It looks," remarked the old man, anxiously, "as if he would not come."
47But the girl had recognized a step in the hall without.
49"He's here," she said quietly.
51Archer entered slowly and glanced with dull, unseeing eyes about the room in which he had worked, dreamed, and hoped, for so many years. By degrees, however, the familiar objects asserted their right to recognition and he felt a dim sense of comfort in their companionship, as well as surprise that they should be still unchanged.
53On the table at his elbow lay his violin, and involuntarily his hand wandered toward it. He thought he would return it to its case; music, as well as something
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