Evening Star Newspaper, June 16, 1925, Page 23

THE EVENING was thinking of it with personal sor- Romance and Sally Byrd BY ELLEN GLASGOW. «Copyright 1925. by the Crowell Publishi row and temperamental satisfaction. ‘A writer, and blind! I can’t help feeling that it would have been better if he had been killed outright, like the friend who was with him.” This time Sally Byrd, not Gerty, was clutching. If she did not hold on to something she knew that she should not be able to stand, that she | should drop straight down to the One of a Series of the year's best short stories. (Continued from Yesterday's Star.) | |a aqueen. She collected her shattered courase | with an effort, picking up. one by one, | the pleces of her happiness. Then, | with a tremulcus gesture, she reached for her little beaded bag which she had laid on the bench, and rose to he feet. “I must be going now,” she said in that small smothered voice | which was so punctiliously polite, Just as if she were trying to make conversation with a visitor. “I am late for school already. If T don't hurry, I'll miss the second class.” You don't mean—you can't mean Sally By s gazing at her with a distressed look in his face, and through some perverted sense of humor he reminded her of one of the children in the kindergarten when he was denied a whirligiz of colored paper. How dreadful of her to think of such things! And yet the more she tried not to think of it, the more | obstinately she thought of it. A ner-| vous feeling came over her that she was going to burst out laughing, not softly like a lady. but in a hysterical | scream that would bring a crowd gathering about her “It—it is such a joke.” she mured 1d the words gave her a| shock because she had not meant to| say them at all. Thev might as well | have been spoken by the fountain, or by the fat man reading his newspa under the locust tree, so little they express anything that she had intended to utter. I am going to Jaugh or ery in a minute,” she addea. “I don't in the least know which it is | going o be.” it down again,” he sald anxiously wing her to the bench. “You aren’t fit to teach school.” The hurt Inok had spread all over his face, and | #ven his clothes seemed to give w v | cuddenly, as if he had wilted inside | of them “No,” she repeated vacantly, e e it such a relief to have some words provided for her to speak, “I am not fit to teach school.” | He put his hand gently over hers Tt felt, she told herself, like a hand that was asleep. “You won't let it make any difference, will you dea Why did he persist in asking that i “You won't stop loving mur- | be. was ' she replied, as pleasantly as she could while this confusion be- | tween laughter and tears was spin-| ning in her mind. *I shan't stop lov- ing vou.” “Then vou'll g0 away with me just the same?” There was a new note in his voice, which she felt rather than heard. as deaf people feel the vibra- fon of sound. Had he grown more eager for her because he suspected that she was slipping away? How alone it made you feel to think that! Couldn't _anything in the world. couldn't love even, bring two per- sons so close that thoughts and sen sations could not come in between them? She drew aw: ¢ very gently. afrald of waking the sleeping hand that cov- ered her own. “Oh, 1 couldn't do that." she replied under her breath.| “Of course, I couldn't do that.” “You can, if you love me, Sally Byrd “But it has nothing to do with love. It has nothing in the world to do with Tov She was eager to make him understand. “It has to do with some thing entirely different.” What this something was she couid | not have explained if he had asked | her, g0 she was thankful in her heart that he did not ask her. She longed to go away with him. Every fiber o her being felt tight with longing: ve she knew that she should never be able to go because an instinct stronger than her longing would hold her back No righteous indignation inspired her. She realized, almost with a shock, that she wasn't Indignant at all. She was even glad and grateful that it had happened. But she couldn't go away with him unmarried. That was one of the things you didn't do, no matter how much you wanted to, like getting drunk because you were | thirsty, or taking off all your clothes hecause you were hot. No, you| might do a great many other things that were not nice: but those particu- | lar things you did not do. “I must be going back to school,* she said again, beginning to waik v. It is awfully late.” ‘Then you mean this is gos Her eyes filled with tears. going away by yourself?” “I'm obliged to. I can't stay on here forever—and, besides, what is the use?" “There isn't any, of course, but it is very nice.” t wouldn't be if T stayed on.” ou mean you'd stop caring?” | No, T don't mean that. In fact, 1| don’t know what I mean. I'm not very jolly myself, and 1've made you unhappy.” At this she stopped and held out both hands to him. “You mustn't think that because it fsn't true," she said. “You haven't made me un- happy. Compared to what I was be bye?” | You are ‘ :,.&;JnARMYthat ;;,,,guardsjbw health Enmdmeyoumenjoyin'l | school | mourned in secret the los | that her tragic lov { hot that she felt as if it would scorch | think about | mother | see | wanted to look at Gerty's face. | word and a smile fore I knew vou, I'm as happy as—as You can't imagine how empty my life was before T knew you.” “But look what I've put into it She smiled at him through her tears. “You've put loveliness into it.” Then she drew a long breath and spoke with a sob in her volce. *“Oh, vou can’t know how much better it is to have an unhappy love in your life than to have nothing at all. His face was softer and finer, more adorable than she had ever seen fit. “If I can ever come back to you hon- estly, T will come back,” he promised, moved to the depths of his facile be- ing : And I'll never forget you. T'l wait for you always.” she answered. | Smothered in Summer’s dust, the| d: weeks, months crawled by like | beetles. While school lasted. ~Sally | Byrd taught her kindergarten with ssion; when school was over, she oted herself to her grandfather, who was beginning, as Aunt Mathilda observed every morning, “to go down hill very fast.” On Sundays. when andfather could spare her. she as sembled a group of pious-minded in fants in the infant class of the Sunday Though she was unhappy, it was not, as she often assured herself, the forlorn, weedv and utterly desti: ture form of unhappiness that Aunt Louisa. who had nothing but neuralgla to remember, was obliged to endure. No. it was the righ, bracing, romantic sorrow of Aunt Matilda, who had of her in fidel lover. Gradually, as the Sum. mer advanced, it seemed to Sally Byrd affair had become | a tonic in her life. Lying awake through the breathless nights, when | the odors of decaying fruits and vege tables crept in on the stagnant air and the vellow moonlight looked so her, her she found that she could shut| eves and withdraw into the| memory of her hopeless love as into some secret garden of fragrance and bloom. No matter how hot and dusty 1nd evil-smelling the street was out- side, she had only to open an imagi- nary green wicket gate, and she was back, in the twinkle of an eye, among dew-drenched flowers. “No, as long have something beautiful to you can’t he a beggar.’ ought Sally Byrd, when she drooped very morning grandfather said | We must find a new way in to economize, and grand piped shrilly after him, “a new way to economize.” ery morn ing Aunt Matilda wailed, “'I feel as if I couldn’t swallow a mouthful,” and Au Loulsa sighed, “If vou had neuralgia you couldn’t go without eat- ing And every morning Sally Byrd hed for cream while she sprinkled sugar on her oatmeal! Then, just when it seemed to her that she had got used to the monot- onv. she met Gerty Cunningham one | afternoon in the street. All Summer | she had avoided Gerty. but it was im ‘ possible, she knew. not to run acre ! her sooner or later. After school be- gan they would be thrown together aga | ghall Byrd. I was just coming to you.” sald Gerty, clutching her | arm. She was a dramatic girl who had once yearned to act in motion pic- tures, and who instinctively clutched everything that came within her reach. “I was just coming to see you, | dear. T thought you might not have heard.” | “Heard what?’ Sally Byrd drew | back a step, not that she particularly disliked clutching, but because she It was not a face, however, when one | looked at {t. that told one very much | except the story of Gerty's tempera- | ment. 1 ““About Stanley. You may, e, have n it in the paper.” | een wh She sounded awfully | stupid, she knew, but why did Gerty | always have to work up to situations ! as if she were playing them on the stage? Was it possible, she asked herself while she waited, that Stanley had got a divorce? In that instant | before Gerty answered she felt like-a ' drowning man who sees a hundred memories of his former life flash | through his mind, only in her e the images were not memories but | anticipations. She saw Stanley re turning to her; she saw herself Stan ley's wife; she saw them going away together; she saw the future stretch ing ahead. like an avenue of bliss, into a ro: haze. Then the light died as it had come, and the roseate | visions faded Into obscurity. Gerty had turned away to toss a to a passing ac- quaintance. “So sorry not to have been at home yesterday. Do come again soon. Yes, my dear,” she had wheeled around on Sally Byrd, “I was saying to mother only this morning that I knew you would be distressed. | He always admired you so. And a writer, too! Of course, that makes it | worse, if anything, as mother say: could ‘make the worst worse. Poor Stanley! His car was struck by a| vou of | coy train at a where in New Jersey, and he was so badly hurt that the: whether he will live or die. say he will lose his eyesight even if he recovers. ‘ It was perfectly evident that pavement and lie there without mov- ing a finger. “Yi 1 think it would have been better.” The echo sounded hollow, but Gerty did not appear to notice it. “I was sure vou would want to write him a word of sympathy. He thinks you so lovely, and of course all railroad crossing some- don’t know yet And they Think of that, dear Gerty The Hub, Seventh & D Sts. STAR, WASHINGTON, 1N o his friends must rally about ‘him now.” “Is it the same address? He hasn't moved, has he?"” “No, it is the same place, that beau- tiful apartment house in Park ave- nue. Mother and I had_tea with him only three weeks ago when we came down from Ogunquit. You never saw anything so artistic as his apartment, and now just to think that he may never be able to see it again.” “are you quite, quite sure that he will be blind if he lives?”” One must leave a wide margin, she was aware, for Gerty's sensational fmagination “‘As soon as we read it i the paper mother called np over the telephone, and the nurse answered. She said they TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 1925. ‘were mnot perfectly positive, but they feared, those were her very words, that he would never re- cover his sight. She seemed glad to hear that mother was a relative, for she sald he was entirely alone thero except for the nurses. If it were not for school, and having spent all our money in Maine last Summer, we'd %o straight back to New York. But at this season of the year we are al ways so dreadfully hard up.” This was truth unadorned, and Sa! ly Byrd accepted it in its simplicity. “When you write to him, tell him that I—that I am as distressed as I can { be,” she faltered. “Won't you write him a note your- self? I am sure he would like to hear Store Hours, 8 to 6 23 from you. Of course T know how |else in the world needed her. shocked you are. Your face is as| Even before she parted from Gerty white as your blouse.” !she had made her decision. She was “Yes, I'll write to him, though there | 80ing to him not because she loved dcesn’t seem ‘anything in the world |him—she could have held out against I can say. hex love forever, she said to herseif ““Oh, it will please him to know you |Put because he needed her so desper are thinking of him |ately. Ever since Gerty had told her Had Gerty ever suspected, she won-|Of the accident & single picture had dered, just how much she thought of |5tood out vividly in her mind. as if him? Well, what did it matter? Gerty | Were flashed there on a blank whit and her mother and her own people, | Sheet by a magic lantern; and this was grandfather, grandmother and the two | the picture of herself leading Stanley aunts, all would know presently. It 4long a crowded street—oh, a street was ot a thing that you could keep |filled with people! Of course it was secret in your'heart like a hopeless dreadful always to see things in pic love. It was not a thing that she|Way, but, if your mind worked this would wish to keep secret now that | Way. how on earth could you help it Stanley needed her more than any one | (Continued in Tomorrow’s Star.) The Hub, Seventh & D Sts. THE HUB Serves the Public With Dependable Home Imported Grass and Cool-Looking Summer Rugs 50c a Week! 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