The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 14, 1904, Page 13

SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL, 13 generation of h 4 the powers of expres: basket before him was t he at 21 ok to he aordinary size and beauty rings of yellowish ief and de of a do —a doll with soft “Great heavens!” he gasped breath- . as it dawned upon him that the d cheeks were t0o soft and velvety to be of wax “It's actually alive.” n as his wits ralled he rang the three times in succes- anded excitedly, confronting the butler h the door, “Call 1 there staring! totally upset by his started to go— 1 be d again, and then e toa It's no Mr. Hugh!” he quave ast. “It's no use, because the in a sleigh and started off > T closed the dooxr. er stared at him in speech- f a moment, then where the sleeping directed impulse he reached absurd S by not explai v off one of the that served the and wt curled rs und a strange thrill He had never appeal- g for the tt s gre traveled a-touch eamed of mbered why he had tinued as natural- ked to Peter after- y, and see ts cloth- e she re- re he had all hazards. r—no deter- rik ng the child wanted to before she ir d any “The clothes are fine, A re’s no mark of demand- the ake up? struck by this co horrified ejac- mean to tell me it's 1ay of his tone was es themselves low a trick his shyness of women repeated limply. whole fabric of his dreams was shattered in a moment. One couldn’t go traveling about the world with a girl. One couldn’'t hunt and fish and smoke ith a girl! Obviously, since the child was a girl it would have to be turned over to the authorities. But no sooner had he reached this conclusion than a revulsion of feeling same over him. He felt again the ex- quisite touch of that tiny, rose-leaf hand, realizing that its hold upon him - was but the stronger for what he had learned. He fancied now that he could vot left at the minant trait had GRANTLEYS \AL feel the tiny fingers clinging to his. ‘Without further hesitation he sat down and dashed off a note to his cousin’s OF AN . SUGGESTED, ‘PERHAPS [TO l’ETEI? WITh THE PRIVILEGE OLD SERVANT SLYLY, A VALENTIND MR BUGH widow. Would she come at once, wrtn the bearer, to advise him In a very pressing mattér? And so l‘ was ar- ranged that the child should remain as Hugh Grantley's ward. It was St. Valentine's night again, HIS PARTNER'S COMPACT---By Izola L. Forrester Copyright. 1804 by T. C. McClure) ELL, it's the Ilast straw,” exclaimed ‘Wilfred. She pushed away the mass of cord wrappings from In front of her and stood erect, tall, girlish and indignant. “I can’t help his being my godfather, that papa took it into his head estow his name on unborn b 1 But a perfect shame for him to send me such stuff a.r'd call it a valentine. ir own fault, sis. You never s letter, so he think’s you're answered } s boy. He's & bully shot all right Relph t over the dead “See that h., It's horrible.” Wil- the window and looked swept park with an- ave known what was 11d have sent it back h laughed with the of “It's fine ve the horns, too. Wish dad had He probably you're ngster bachelor “and tickled to death over hav- game sent to you. When's he h i ach i glanced at the letter, which .4 crumpled in her hand over the + shack of surprise. » says he will have the pleasure of dining with the family on Valentine’s eve, and thinks that afterward he will Jet me show him the town, as he has not been in New York for seventeen rs.” wdv& rhew!” whistled Ralph. *“Antique, Py e sald Wil- “Must be about 50 or 80, fred, disconsolately. “I hardly know anything about him. He was father's godson in the first place, and the son of father’'s partner who dled. So father gave him his first start out West, and when I came along he was my god- father by proxy, and no one ever heard of him afterward until I got that let- ter last week. I had no idea he was coming on.” “It's too bad you aren't a boy, Will,” he sald with regretful cheerfulness. “But as long as you're not you'll have to stand it, and so will Mr. Wilfred Norman. Maybe he'll like you just the same.” “I don’t want him to like me.” “Maybe he's rich,” wventured Ralph, hopefully. “Never can tell when a fel- low goes West how he will turn out. Better not get sassy.” “Oh, it isn’t that. You can’t under- stand”— She paused vaguely. “Yes, I do, too,” retorted Ralph. “You're worried to death for fear he'll come here and find out we're as poor as Job's turkey.” “I'm not.” “Yes, you are, too. And you're afraid the old boy'll kick up a rumpus because £ just you and mammy and me here, keeping bachelor's hall, and you're wogking yourself to death on a newspaper for a living. Why don’t you write and tell him that the football team you're halfback on has a match on with Cleveland and you won't be home for two weeks?"” Wilfred ghock Her head resolutely. No. I'll see him, and we'll ask him to dinner and thank him for his old dead deer, but that'sall. I won’t listen to a particle of dictating from him.” Valentine’s eve was clear, It had stormed all day and cleared at night- fall, Wilfred was tirefl from the day's work and with a surable perversity declined “dressing as Ralph termed it. “Better make a good impression,” he counseled sagely. “The old boy may be afflicted with enlargement of the heart and leave us a legacy. Anyhow, you don’t look so bad, Will, in a skirt walist.” ‘Wilfred smiled at his tone of serious consolation and took a swift glance at herself in the mirror over the mantel. There was more than a chance of mak- ing a good impression In the reflected figure, trim and business like in black and white, without even a bit of chif- fon to give a touch of femininity. The electric bell buzzed sharply in the hall, and Ralph bolted for the door. An instant’s reconnoitering over the banister, and he put his head back for a final stage whisper. “Here he comes. sis. Look pleasant, please.” Wiltred listened. Bom?ob was asking for Mr. Wilfred Gra And Ralph, the traitor, had said, “Yes, sir,” and was ushering him in without ex- planations. She rose at sight of the figure in the doorway, and a wave of embarrassment swept over her. She had thought of him as 50, a general study in iron gray, with disposition to match. He was not over 35. Tall and fair, with a sturdy Saxon fairness, and gray eyes that met her own in amaze- ment. From the hall came the sound of Ralph's swiftly departing footsteps. “¥ am looking for Mr. Wilfred Gray,” he sald. “I am Wilfred.” She hesitaed, try- ing to cover her confusion with dig- nity. “I should have written and told you, but we thought—I thought—you would not come, and it really did not matter—"' “But it does matter a great deal." he interposed. “‘That black-tail— | She smiled up at him, eyes full of sudden mirth. “I gave it to the janitor.” “And my letter. Great Scott! I've always thought you were a boy, you know. Your father simply said he had named the baby after me, and I was its godfather. myself then to care enough about it to make further inquiries. But now—" “You wanted me to show you the town?" W!lfredliuggelted demurely. “I wanted you for my partner,” he returned shortly, as Ralph came saun- tering Into the room. It was two months later. He had met her uptown, coming from a preliminary view and write-up of the trousseau of a noted society girl, whose Easter wed- ding was to be a feature in the Sunday paper. She was tired, but happy, as they turned into the park, a mass of Boft greens and delicate violet vistas in its springtime beauty. He had been talking ever since they had left Fifth avenus, md she was still silent. “It does not matter in the least over the mistake,” he said. “Half of the mine i{s yours by right, yours and Ralph’s. It was your father’s money that started me out there and his back- ing that enabled me to develop the mine. I never heard of his failure and death until three months ago, and then I made up my mind to come back East and give his boy the help which he had given to me.” He paused. A broad flight of stone steps led down from the white stone bridge over the driveway. Wilfred turned from the walk and led the way down them. “I like it here,” she said. ‘“Whenever I am tired over the eternal write-ups and have to cross the park I rest here. There is a little iron fountain, and a curved Roman seat that looks as if it came from one of Alma Tadema’s pic- tures—you know the kind—and the sun- shine slants down from above, and it all white and cool and quiet as an Ttal- ian garden grotto. Let’'s rest here.” He walted until they had reached the place, and she leaned her head back on thz old seat, and smiled up at him. . He atood beside the fountain. silently I was too much of a Ka' % fingering the chain of one of the drink- ing ladles. The late afternoon sunshine saone on his bared head, giving a tinge of gold to the short cropped halr, ¢ She looked at him with & fin!et. happy satisfaction in her eyes. He was good to look at when one was tired, and somewhat lpncsome. “I am going back West next week,” he said at length. “You must answer me, Wilfred. Even for Ralph's sake you should not refuse. Instead of this steady grind of work, you could send him to college, and give him the oppor. tunitfes his father’s son should have. She shook her head. “It may be right for Ralph. You are ~-ry kind to him, but what about his father's daughter?” He answered her almost roughly. “I don’t know. She is an indepen- dent young person, who positively re- fuses to accept her opportunities.” “The mine?” “And its owner.” “If it were only the owner—" He could hardly catch the words, but bent over her, crushing her hands in his grasp. “Wiifred, is it only the money that stands between, sweetheart?” She looked up at him with troubled, tell-tale eyes. “If there was not so much of it—" “There'll only be half as much after- ward. The rest goes to my partner.” An old man with a roll of music un- der his arm and a daffodi¥stuck in his threadbare lapel, descended the white stone steps leisurely, humming a bar or two of Mignon to himself— “Now I stand in Beauty’'s bower, Tra-la-la, tra-la-la, tra-la-la-la-la—" He stopped short at sight’of two fig- ures in the sunshine beside the foun- tain, and softly went back up the steps to the drive with smiling lips and ret- rospective eyes. 5 “Birds a-mating,” he said, iIn a mumbled undertone, “God bless them alL” ENTINES —5v IOTH but the days that had come and gone between that distant evening and the present one seemed to Hugh Grantley like the links of a long, bright chain. Loosely speaking, it was Valentina's eighteenth birthday, and the old Grantley home, once so quiet and de- serted, now wore an air of gay fes- tivity in honor of the event. Soft lights flooded the rooms, greenery and blooms transformed it into a charmed place. In the library the master of the house, whose gray halrs but made the more distinguished, sat once more be- fore the fire, lost in thought. Owing to that physical perversity that sometimes makes a man appear old when he iIs young and youthful when he is middle- aged, Grantley looked But little older than on that fateful night eighteen years ago. Still something of the old sadness gripped his heart. Love had stolen upon hjm when he thought himself im- mune. Though he did not confess it even to himself, in the depths of his soul he knew that he loved Valentina, not as a guardian or father, but as a man loves the woman he could make his wife. There was a rustle of skirts behind him, like the passing of a breeze, and two soft hands were pressed gently over his eyes. They fell like rosé leaves but every nerve in his body trembled at the touch, and with set teeth he prepared to play his part. She must uever know. “Guess now who holds thee?” com- wmanded a laughing voice, and Grantley, with an inward “Steady, old fellow,” replied in questioning tones, to the hu- mor of the lines— “Death?” There was something electric in the alr. Was it the beating of her heart that he could hear or only the mad throbbing of his own? Would she fin- ish the quotation? With a mighty effort he tried to steady himself—to remember that to her he must seem an old rhan. With lingering slowness the soft fingers trailed away from his eyes and at the same time he heard the-girlish ~gshade of old ivery w Y - GORDO There was that he had tone at once tri He opened his tina with a face d feeling. in the voice d before—a and shamed faced Vale and rigid wi ".‘l'?“d you,” he said 1d before the sever r she vl'noufll in the frost Then her h flower moment. proudly and her e: old childish cor “I love y it Grantley had himsel hand now, an spoke in a manner at once elderly and paternal. “My dear chi Before he could go further Valen- tina stopped him “Please let me take the little cas that you carry your left breas pocket,” A guilty blush So she kn there a bab tace rspread his that he ca turned darling. another mo- ng disgust- “I am too old for yo he 1 broke: —but ment she was in s arms, p that it was she who was so ingly young. “But how d!d you know, dear questioned later, when they had di ,m»“ nf the ques! of years and “How did you know that judgment and in spite ote: “I came ¢ late ome night for a book. made no 1 her face In his sho take the little m your lips.” And so for the second time in his life St. Valentine brought a great hap- pine EY By Ortho VINY’'S VALENTINE. Senga. - (Copyright, 1904, by Otho B. Senga.) 1SS VINY PERKINS scanned the valentines, closely stock of giving careful perusal to the verses at- tached. There wers the wusual rhymes about hearts and and dove, but none darts, seemed to please her. “What's the matter, Miss Viny, can't and love you find nothin’ you like? Shell have some more in termorrer, some with lace paper, all rigged up like a bay-winder. “Well, I'll come in agaimn,” and Mis: Viny passed lingeringly out of the lit- tle country store. “I don’t s'pose any of 'em would say just. what I want,” she murmured thoughgfully, as she went up the lane. ‘I wish I could make up some po'try myself; then I'd have somethin’ that'd hit the‘'mark.” The thought seemed to please her and she hurried into the house. “As soon as I git dinner over and Jason starts for the gristmill I'll put my mind onto it. The idea of a full- grown man bein’ so scart as Silas Simp- sori—it's time somebody took him in hand!” Well for Miss Viny's peace of mind that she could not know that a similar remark was at that Instant being made by Bilas Simpson’s sister. .“It’s time somebody took youtn hand, Silas Simpson; here you've been goin’ to 8ee Viny Perkins for nigh *on to eleven years. Why don’t you spunk up and ask her?” . ““Well, Mandy,” chattered Silas, de- fensively, “I've been kinder tryin’ to lead the conversation up to it—" “Humph!” Mrs. Thompsorf ejacu- lated, derisively. “I've beea into the store to-day look- in’ at valentines,” affirmed Silas, still on the defensive. “Valentines!"”, uttered his sister, with stinging sarcasm, “you'd better hang yourself for a valentine. 'Twould be the smartest thing you could do.” The sarcasm was lgst, but the idea found lodgment in the slow-moviag brain of Silas. Meadeville customs de- manded that a valentine must be at- tached to the knob or knocker of the front door, and the giver was supposed to be entirely unknown to the fair re- cipient. Any sighing swain who sought the aid of Uncle Sam in conveying his tender missive would have been deemed cowardly, to say nothing of the opinion that would have prevailed, from an economic standpoint, regarding the purchase of stamps for such a purpose. The more Silas thought of himself as a valentine the more attractive he considered the idea. He went about, filling the woodbox and doing the other chores requisite on the approach of a cold night and fancied himself a shiv- ering Cupid, with wings and arrow and bow. “That’ll settle it,” he exclaimed hap- pily, unconscious that he was speaking aloud, “if Viny takes me in, why T'll be her valentine—if Viny takes me in.” “Yes, and then she’ll be taken in,” muttered Mrs. Thompson, giving the biscuit dough an extra poke, adding hastily, as if repenting her momentary disloyalty, “however, Silas is a mighty good pervider, if he is slow, and a pleasanter spoken man, take him by and large, never lived.” Mrs. Thompson would have been re- luctant to confess that the probably lonely state of Jason Perkins, in the event of his sister's marriage, had often preyed upon her mind, and that as often she had thought of herself as being a likely person to succeed Miss Viny as the mistress of Jason’s fine old home and broad acres. Airy, fairy cas- tles, under which no solid foundation of reality could ever be placed unless aced Silas could be posing point. That night an inquisitive moon, ris- ing soft over the hilltops, looked down into the peace: valley, and the moon was the only one that saw Silas Simp- son as he hurrfed toward the Perkins farm h his sister's big pollow clothes basket over his shoulder. The curious moon veered .around the big pine tree and watched Sllas as he ad- justed the ropes that were attached to the handles of the basket over the doorknob, arranging for the basket to rest on the upper step. ‘A most singular proceeding,” mented the watching moon. But at Silas’ next move the moon nearly coflapsed, for Silas pinned a paper to his coat sleeve and, doubling his awkward body into t& basket reached up and clanged the big brass knocker. Aloné in the bright, Miss Viny s ted to sound of the ocker, “A valentine she exclaimed; “v . T'll give 'em a chance to scoot. I don’t want to ketch nobody.” She went slowly through the sitting- room into the entry and, pushing back the boit, essdyed to open the door. It was apparently held from the outside. Grasping the knob with both hands she gave a tremendous pull. The door flew open, bringing the basket with it, and emptying its contents in an un- dignified tangle at Miss Viny’'s feet. “For the land sake!"™ she cried, “whatever possessed you, Silas Stmp- son Silas scrambled to his feet and ed to the paper on his sleeve, bore In-large letters the name, Viny Perkins.” “I knew I'd never git my courage up to offer myself to you In any other way, V , and so I thou_ht I'd be your valentine.” “And a pretty mess you've made of it, as usual,” said Miss Viny, sharply. He raised his head manfully; some- thing very tender, almost noble, came over the dull features and straightened the awkward body. “I shan’t make any blunders in lovin' you and takin care of you, Viny,” he said simply A strange, new feeling of submission crept into Miss Viny's heart. “You come in here, Silas, show you what I was just goin’ to send you. I made it myseif,” she added, as she handed him an envelope addressed to “Silas Simpson.” He drew out the sheet of paper care- fully. A big red heart was pasted at the top and the lines below were in Miss Viny's cramped, but legible, hand- writing. He read aloud slowly, in a high-pitched, sing-song tone that In his school days had always been reserved for poetry: If Silas Simpson me will wed, No further groans or tears I'll shed, But hurry 'round, as best I'm able, To cook his meals and set the table. to up & pro- com- warm kitchen, er feet at the point- which “Miss and TN Now, Silas, speak, and I'll say “Yes.” No nged of walting long, I guess; A month from now and I'll be ready To hold your hand before Parson Steady. “You cut out that heart?” he said, hesitatingly, putting a thick forefinger on the scarlet representation. Miss Viny nodded, watching his face with unwonted timidity. “But the verses—they ain’t yours, be they?” in an awed tone. “Yes, they be,” affirmed Miss Viny. tasting for the first time the delights of authorship. Silas gazed at her in silent admira- tion. “I.writ "em in a hurry,” she explained modestly (Oh, the trail of the serpent!), “mebbe if I'd taken more time—"" “Viny,” interrupted Silas with econ- viction, “I never seen any better po'try in print.”