trinkets into his glove and laid them into the earth with a strange feeling that he was attending the obsequies of something precious. Then[Pg 36] after he had walked a few steps he deliberately returned and unearthed the things, restoring them to his pocket. He had had a sudden realizing sense that he was parting with what he might need sorely. There was not money enough in his pocket to carry him far nor keep him long, and these trinkets would help out. They were no more an identification than all the rest of him. Why throw them away? He looked regretfully at the ashes of his two fine handkerchiefs, the last he would ever have with that initial. And he would need them. He turned and looked back over the road he had come in the night and seemed to see all the things he was leaving, his home, his friends, his club, his comfortable living! What a fool he had been. If he had not angered his father and annoyed his mother, and got “in bad” with all his relations everywhere, they would have stood by him now and helped him out of this scrape somehow, just as they had always done before. [Pg 36] Then in the mist of the distance where the panorama of his life had been passing there arose a face, smiling and sweet, with a rose flush on the cheeks, a light in the eyes, sunshine in the hair, and he remembered! As he looked the face grew white and the lids fell over the blue eyes and she was gone! Sick with the memory, he turned and fled; on feet that were sore, with limbs that were aching, with eyes that were blinded with unaccustomed tears, he stumbled on across rough fields, through woods and meadows and more woods, always woods when he could strike them. And coming out toward evening with a gnawing[Pg 37] faintness at the pit of his stomach, where he could see across a valley, he noted a little trolley-car like a toy in the distance sliding along the road, and a small village of neat little houses about a mile away. Eagerly he watched the car as it slid on across the land, almost as small as a fly it seemed, and soon it was a mere speck on the way to the village. Where there was one trolley there were more. Could he dare try for the next one and go to that village for something to eat? He could not go on much longer without food. Or else he would fall by the wayside, and the publicity which his mother so hated—that kind of publicity which was not pretty—would be sure to find him out. He must not drag down his mother’s and his father’s name. He must hold out to save them so much at least. [Pg 37]
Prev.
Back
Top