"Well, what's the record to-night J.?" cried Cressler, as Jadwin brought the bays to a stand at the horse block.Jadwin did not respond until he had passed the reins to the coachman, and taking the stop watch from the latter's hand, he drew on his cigar, and held the glowing tip to the dial.
"Eleven minutes and a quarter," he announced, "and we had to wait for the bridge at that."He came up the steps, fanning himself with his slouch hat, and dropped into the chair that Landry had brought for him.
"Upon my word," he exclaimed, gingerly drawing off his driving gloves, "I've no feeling in my fingers at all.
Those fellows will pull my hands clean off some day."But he was hardly settled in his place before he proposed to send the coachman home, and to take Laura for a drive towards Lincoln Park, and even a little way into the park itself.He promised to have her back within an hour.
"I haven't any hat," objected Laura."I should love to go, but I ran over here to-night without any hat.""Well, I wouldn't let that stand in my way, Laura,"protested Mrs.Cressler."It will be simply heavenly in the Park on such a night as this."In the end Laura borrowed Page's hat, and Jadwin took her away.In the light of the street lamps Mrs.
Cressler and the others watched them drive off, sitting side by side behind the fine horses.Jadwin, broad-shouldered, a fresh cigar in his teeth, each rein in a double turn about his large, hard hands; Laura, slim, erect, pale, her black, thick hair throwing a tragic shadow low upon her forehead.
"A fine-looking couple," commented Mr.Cressler as they disappeared.
The hoof beats died away, the team vanished.Landry Court, who stood behind the others, watching, turned to Mrs.Cressler.She thought she detected a little unsteadiness in his voice, but he repeated bravely:
"Yes, yes, that's right.They are a fine, a--a fine-looking couple together, aren't they? A fine-looking couple, to say the least"A week went by, then two, soon May had passed.On the fifteenth of that month Laura's engagement to Curtis Jadwin was formally announced.The day of the wedding was set for the first week in June.
During this time Laura was never more changeable, more puzzling.Her vivacity seemed suddenly to have been trebled, but it was invaded frequently by strange reactions and perversities that drove her friends and family to distraction.
About a week after her talk with Mrs.Cressler, Laura broke the news to Page.It was a Monday morning.She had spent the time since breakfast in putting her bureau drawers to rights, scattering sachet powder's in them, then leaving them open so as to perfume the room.
At last she came into the front "upstairs sitting-room," a heap of gloves, stockings, collarettes--the odds and ends of a wildly disordered wardrobe--in her lap.She tumbled all these upon the hearth rug, and sat down upon the floor to sort them carefully.At her little desk near by, Page, in a blue and white shirt waist and golf skirt, her slim little ankles demurely crossed, a cone of foolscap over her forearm to guard against ink spots, was writing in her journal.This was an interminable affair, voluminous, complex, that the young girl had kept ever since she was fifteen.
She wrote in it--she hardly knew what--the small doings of the previous day, her comings and goings, accounts of dances, estimates of new acquaintances.But besides this she filled page after page with "impressions,""outpourings," queer little speculations about her soul, quotations from poets, solemn criticisms of new novels, or as often as not mere purposeless meanderings of words, exclamatory, rhapsodic--involved lucubrations quite meaningless and futile, but which at times she re-read with vague thrills of emotion and mystery.
On this occasion Page wrote rapidly and steadily for a few moments after Laura's entrance into the room.Then she paused, her eyes growing wide and thoughtful.She wrote another line and paused again.Seated on the floor, her hands full of gloves, Laura was murmuring to herself.
"Those are good...and those, and the black suedes make eight....And if I could only find the mate to this white one....Ah, here it is.That makes nine, nine pair."She put the gloves aside, and turning to the stockings drew one of the silk ones over her arm, and spread out her fingers in the foot.
"Oh, dear," she whispered, "there's a thread started, and now it will simply run the whole length...."Page's scratching paused again.
"Laura," she asked dreamily, "Laura, how do you spell 'abysmal'?""With a y, honey," answered Laura, careful not to smile.
"Oh, Laura," asked Page, "do you ever get very, very sad without knowing why?""No, indeed," answered her sister, as she peeled the stocking from her arm."When I'm sad I know just the reason, you may be sure."Page sighed again.
"Oh, I don't know," she murmured indefinitely."I lie awake at night sometimes and wish I were dead.""You mustn't get morbid, honey," answered her older sister calmly."It isn't natural for a young healthy little body like you to have such gloomy notions.""Last night," continued Page, "I got up out of bed and sat by the window a long time.And everything was so still and beautiful, and the moonlight and all--and Isaid right out loud to myself,"My breath to Heaven in vapour goes----You know those lines from Tennyson:
"My breath to Heaven in vapour goes, May my soul follow soon."I said it right out loud just like that, and it was just as though something in me had spoken.I got my journal and wrote down, 'Yet in a few days, and thee, the all-beholding sun shall see no more.' It's from Thanatopsis, you know, and I thought how beautiful it would be to leave all this world, and soar and soar, right up to higher planes and be at peace.Laura, dearest, do you think I ever ought to marry?""Why not, girlie? Why shouldn't you marry.Of course you'll marry some day, if you find----""I should like to be a nun," Page interrupted, shaking her head, mournfully.
