Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1882 — IN A COAT POCKET. [ARTICLE]

IN A COAT POCKET.

Astley Cowper, hat in hand, was just turning the handle of the street-door, when a soft call from the stair-top made him pause. “Are you going to the postoffice, Astley?” ' . “No, not exactly, but near it. Is there anything you want done ?” “Only this letter to post,” and a girlish shape flitted down the stair. Astley watched as she descended, and, with suddenly sharpened recognition of the fact, said to himself, “What a pretty girl Rosamond is!” Brothers are not always so alive to their sisters’ charms, but the fact was that rarely in her life had Rosamond Cowper been so near to perfect beauty as at that moment, when she came down the old stair-case, letter in hand; her cheeks flushed with deepest pink; her eyes shining, and her red lips parted with I know not what happy stir of emotion and expectancy. Two long braids of pale brown hair, thick and glossy as those of German Gretchen, hung down her back. On the fair forehead clustered a fringe of light waving rings, not cut and trained after the manner of the conventional bang, but a happy freak of nature and accident. The slender figure in its white dress had all the rounded grace of youth and perfect health. Over all was an air of virginal freshness, indescribable, but charming. It was one of those bel momenli which come at times to most young creatures. But Rosamond was too much preoccupied to be conscious of her looks, as she handed the letter to her brother, with fingers which trembled a little, and said anxiously, “You won’t lose it, wiil von, Astley?” “Certainly not;” with a superior smile. He "stuffed it carelessly into a side-pocket of his coat, a coat made, like the rest of his suit, of that immaculate white duck, in which our youthful swells delight to array themselves in hot July weather. Forth he went, clean, alert, handsome, the very picture of a luxurious young fellow enjoying a holiday. No thought of betraying Rosamond’s trust was in his mind, and liis steps had already turned toward the postoffice, when a dog-cart drew up sudden y and a cheery hail roused his attention. “Well met, old fellow. I was just going round to ask if you felt like a game of tennis. The Porters sent a note e ir-ly in the morning, to ask me to drive down to the Croft for luncheon and a game, and to bring you.” “All right. I will.” Astley jumped into the cart and in another moment was bowling down the roa l toward the Croft —a pretty country plane some three miles distant. Rosamond’s commission was clean forgotten.

Tennis was followed by luncheon, that by more tennis, and a conversation under the shade of the branching cedars which flanked the ground. Then pretty Mabel Porter proposed a walk, and led the way through a grassy valley to the gorge beyond, where a little brook tore its wild way from higher levels to the water meadows below. The rocks over which the party climbed were slippery here and there, and, in saving Mabel from a fall, Astley himself had a tumble, trifling in itself, but damaging to the duck suit; so damaging in fact that the suit went to the laundress next day. Before its return the weather had changed to that odd, almost autumnal coolness which checkers and tempers the heat of our American summers. It was some time before Astley had occasion to wear it again. When it was taken for use, by mere accident lie was searching for something in the pocket, when his astonished fingers encountered and drew forth a rather thick, flat, hard square of paper for which he could In no way account. His first sensation was one of unmixed bewilderment.

“Why, what on earth? A letter, and ■what letter?”—and he proceeded to smooth the rumpled mass out on the table. A few faintly-written characters were discernible on what had been an envelope. Mr. Dw— Edg r, T. Box 5 New Y—“Dwight Edgar. Why, what does this mean ? I have had no letter from him,” reflected the astonished Astley, still intent on the disorganized fragments. “But stay—this isn’t a letter from him—but to him. How could it get into my pocket ?” Here and there a sentence could be made out, or parts of sentences. “I am so very, very happy, but I can’t tell you about that until” “Ought to have got your letter four days ago.” “So you needn’t go to' Europe, you see, for” and then a blurred signature “Come soon to your own Bos It flashed across him then. This was the letter which Rosamond had given him to post four weeks ago. It had lain in his pocket all this time, and had gone through the wash beside. Here was a pretty kettle of fish. Quickly liis mind ran over the disjointed phrases, reading the half-oblit-erated meaning “between the lines.” The letter was in reply to an offer from Edgar, there could be no doubt of that. Astley had ahvavs suspected that there was a tenderness in that quarter. And Rosamond had said “yes.” What must she have been thinking and feeling all these weeks ? And then a groan escaped from Astley, as it flashed upon his mind that only a fortnight since he had road Dwight Edgar’s name in the list of “sailed for Europe;” read it aloud, with some careless comment. Rosamond was in the room, lie recollected. What had she said ? Had she said anything? He seemed to remember that she got up quietly and left the room. How should he ever tell her ? And what use to tell, when Dwight was gone, gone for years, as likely as not ? Oh, what had his carelessness done ? “I suppose he went because he thought she would have nothing to say tohim,” he said to himself, miserably. The sound of the dinner bell interrupted his unpleasant meditations, and he went down feeling as if he ought to be hanged. Rosamond was in her usual place, neat, graceful, smiling even; but, studying her face with awakened attention, Astley thought that he detected effort in the smiles and the cheerfulness. The sweet face was a little thinner; the wildrose bloom, which was its characteristic, had paled to a fainter pink, and Astley heard his mother ask, “Headache again, my child?” And caught the patient answer, “Just a little,” With increased remorse he execrate^

his carelessness. What ought he to do ? What could he do ? Long and deeply did he study over the question. At last he took a halfmanly, half-cowardly resolution. Confess liis delinquency to his sister he absolutelv dared not, but that night he wrote to Dwight Edgar, made a full exposition of his fault, and inclosed the faintly-blotted scrap that said so little and meant so much. Tliis done, he set himself to wait for the moment when he could produce evidence that, so far as in him lay, he had made amends for his misdoing, and till then he resolved to be silent. Astley was right in his guess. Dwight Edgar had gone to Europe a deeply disappointed man. In the letter, to which Rosamond’s was answer, he had written, “Don’t say no. I could not bear that, nor could I give your gentleness the pain of uttering the word. I will wait two weeks, and, if at their end you have said nothing, I shall go abroad, and travel till I can bear to come home again.” Not a wise arrangement this, considering what chances and changes, including postoflice laxities, are involved in this mortal life; but lovers are not always wise. The two weeks passed without word or token, each slow day deepening his hopelessness, and at their end lie sailed. His final arrangements were made in a hurry, and he had been glad to accept a friend’s benevolent offer of half a stateroom on the over-crowded steamer. It was benevolence very poorly re’warded, for John Blagden found him very dull company. For the first few hours he made some little effort at conversation, then ho dropped all pretenses and sat in moody silence, staring at the backward horizon from which each stroke of the paddles carried them farther and farther. It was no better after they reached London. The two men took a set of rooms together at the Langham, but to all plans for pleasuring Dwight turned a deaf ear. “Go by yourself, that’s a good fellow,” he said. “I won’t bore you with my dullness. I’ll just sit here till posttime and read tho American newspapers’.” “And that is what I loft him at,” explained John Blagden to a mutual acquaintance encountered in the coffeeroom. “Poring over an old Herald, twelve days out—-what an occupation for a man to take up in London! “Poor Dwight, I never saw a fellow so changed in my life. He’s all cut up about something, and I wish I knew what, for really, I have no notion what I ought to do about him. Nothing I can say makes any difference.” And nothing did make any difference till a week after this conversation, Mr. Blagden returned from an excursion to Hampton Court, to find his friend busily engaged in cramming his belongings into a portmanteau, with a light in his eyes and a color in his cheeks which made him seem a different man. “Halloa! I’m glad you’ve come, old fellow. I’m off at once. ” “Oh? Where to?” “Home. Liverpool train at-9 o’clock and catch the Bohemia.” “Home! The States! Why, what does it mean? You were going to Paris with me on Tuesday, you said. ” “Well, so I did intend, but I’ve had letters, and must get back as soon as possible. ” , “Nothing wrong, I hope.” “Not at all; quite the contrary. Everything is right.” Marveling greatly John Blagden turned to the table, where amid newspapers and torn wrappers, and other debris of a just-arrived mail, lay a sheet of closely-written paper with a little heap on it of something odd and blotted. “What’s that?” he asked, with natural curiosity, stooping down to examine it. Dwight Edgar snatched it up. “It’s —it’s nothing,” he explained—“only a letter I’ve had." Then breaking into a laugh at his'friend’s discomfited countenance, the first real laugh which John had heard him give since they left America, he added: “Never mind, old boy, I’ll explain some day. It’s all right, at least I hope it is, and I know I’ve been a dull, unsocial dog all this time. You’ve been awfully good to put up with me, and I’ll try to make amends the next time we meet.”

Meanwhile the days were passing heavily enough in far-away America, where Rosamond bore her secret pain. She had kept the knowledge of her plighted faith as a choice secret, not-to be revealed till Dwight should come. When he failed to come pride kept her silent still. The news of his departure struck in her heart like a blow. What did it mean ? “I will not be base, or little, or suspicious,” she told herself; “there is some blunder. He will come back, he will explain.” But weeks of suspense and uncertainty passed. She could school her wor Is and her manner, but not her face, and that fair face began to look piteous and Avan. Astley, watching her with compunctious anxiety, felt an ever-deepening lieart-ilche. Three weeks had passed since his letter of explanation was posted. Any hour might bring a response, and he haunted the postoffice with a pertinacity inexplicable to his father. “I can’t stand it much longer,” he told liim-elf. “if that fellow isn’t heard from by to-morrow night, I shall make a clean breast of it to Rosy, and confess the whole thing.” And the next evening, “that fellow” still not being heard from, he did it. Rosamond, spirit-fair and fragile in her white dress, was sitting on the doorstep in the moonlight, and sitting at her feet he plunged into medias res. “Rose, do you recollect a letter you gave me to post more than a month ago ?” “Yes,” with a little gasp. “Well, I forgot it.” “0 Astley!” “Yes; it was in my pocket, you know. I was going straight to the office, but something interrupted me—lawn tennis at the Porters’, I believe—and then I sent my coat to the wash, with the letter still in it. I never found it out till the confounded thing came back, and some days after, as I put it on, I happened to feel it in the pocket, and there it was—what was left of it.” Rosamond sat perfectly still. Not a souud came from her lips. Astley waited an instant, as if in hope of an answer, then went on: “Rosy, darling, you mustn’t mind, but I couldn’t help seeing who the letter was for, and that—that—it was something of consequence. It was all blotted and blurred, but a word or two could be made out here and there. I was awfully cut up about it. I couldn’t bear to tell you, and I didn’t knoAv what to do. At last I wrote a full explanation to DAvight, and I put the scraps in my letter.” “Astley!” There was a ring of hope and of dismay in the exclamation. So absorbed were both that neither noticed that some one swung the gate just then. “Yes, I did. It went three weeks ago yesterday, and by to-morrow you ought to hear from him, that is, if he happened to be in London the mail got in. I didn’t mean to teR you till his letter came, but I could xfpit no longer. Just say you forg—•wb^-what

is it?” as Rosamond sprang to her feet with a cry, “Dwight! Dwight!” “She’s fainted!” exclaimed Astley, in an awe-struck tone, as his sister’s head dropped heavily on his arm. But happiness is a better restorative than burnt feathers, and in a little time Rosamond was able to assure Astley of her forgiveness, to smile and ask questions, and finally be left on the doorstep for a long moonlight talk with her truant correspondent. When I saw Mrs. Dwight Edgar at Newport last year, she wore on her wrist a slender‘chain, to which was attached a locket whose lid was a big moonstone. Within was a singular little wad of what looked like paper which had been wet and pressed together. When I asked what it could be, she answered, evasively, “Oh, papier mache; a bit of an old letter which Dwight makes me wear. There’s quite a story about it, but it s too long too tell. ” Her husband chuckled, and later, seeing that I was curious, he told me the story which I have told to you. “And you never saw any one so reformed as Astley is, ever since then,” added Rosamond, with a laugh in her voice. “He’s the most particular creature you ever saw, always fidgeting and fussing for fear he may have forgotten something. If he lives to be a hundred, you m iv depend upon it, he will never again forget another letter in a coat pocket.” —Susan Coolulge, in Youth’s Companion.