Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 November 1884 — TEDDIE. [ARTICLE]

TEDDIE.

BY GEORGIANA FEATHERSTONHAUGH.

A leaf tinged with scarlet, peeping here and there among the maples as the wind parted the swaying branches. The rustling sound of the grape-vine Against the arbor, with its bunches of luscious, half-ripe fruit. The full note of the cricket, hidden in some mysterious crevice, whose form, though invisible, makes its presence known by the shrill, almost impatient, chirrup; all were omens of the dying summer, who, as it stepped lightly into the footsteps of the August day, took no heed of the balmy winds as they whispered their last good-by to the forest. Come where my love lies dreaming, sang a clear tenor voice inside the arbor, and iu another instant a tall form was leaning against the doorway and peering cautiously within. “How you frightened me, Teddie.” “Oh! pray do excuse me, I really didn’t know you were here, Dorothy,” he said, leaning his tall form more firmly against the arbor, with an air of having come to stay. “No, I suppose not,” Dorothy replied, “when Aunt Joe informed you that I had gone to the arbor you no doubt pictured me seated upon the roof, and to be sure you were singing, ‘come where my love lies dreaming’ to that huge bunch of grapes you so admired the other day.” Teddie whistled. “Well, I will make no confession, but give the grapes the benefit of the doubt; though* if they were ripe I would half believe that you bad been indulging too freely, and the ■effect was they have made vou a trifle ”

“Sour, I suppose,” Dorothy said; ■“don’t be afraid of hurting my feelings. When that paragon of amiability, Teddie Forrester, is around, every one else is cross by contrast.” Teddie hummed the rant he had sung outside of the arbor. “I didn’t know ■you had such a good opinion of me before,” he said. “Have you ever heard that grape-juice will make people quite brilliant, when ordinarily they are very commonplace individuals?” “Oh, indeed!” Dorothy replied, leaning her head against the side of the arbor in a weary fashion, and regarding him through her half-closed eyelids; “that accounts for Teddie Forrester’s frequent bursts of wit.” Teddie shrugged liis shoulders. “I fear my amiability lias proved unfortunate for me,” he said, breaking oft’ the bunch of grapes he had particularly admired one day, and throwing them one by one at the half-reclining figure of the girl. “After having tramped all the way from Lookout Hotel through the broiling sun, you haven’t even had the hospitality to ask me in, or invite me to a seat beside you,” the young man said, iu a tone lialf-injured, halfchiding. Dorothy laughed.. “I am familiar ■enough with your peculiarities to know ithat, if you desire a thing, you never wait for an invitation or hospitalities to be offered, so, yoq why I ’thought you preferred standing. ” Teddie Forrester dropped the denuded grape stem and walked leisurely ■to a seat a few rods from Dorothy. •“Do you suppose I would have the temerity to cross the threshold of your aunt’s door had she not bidden me do so?” he asked; “or even have eaten the delicious piece of pumpkin pie •without her having offered it? but, untlike her niece, she has not the gift of ■reading my peculiar nature, and she 'took me for an ordinary person, and, not willing to disenchant her, I allowed her to believe me such.” It was a fact which, after much observation, had made itself apparent to Dorothy, that, next to her own golden pumpkin pies, l*er Aunt Joe ■admired Teddie Forrester, though she had frequently been known to pronounce him extravagant, and to be giving himself up utterly to the vanities -of the world. “It is actually the middle of August,” Teddie said, abruptly. “ Why do you remind one of things ao unpleasant as that the summer is waning, and suggest to one’s mind the necessity of wearing their winter cloak another season ?” Dorothy said, a trifle •discontentedly. Teddie Laughed sardonically. “ That win be scarcely necessary if you go on encouraging the Count Yon Auer, as you have been doing all the season. ” “Is tins to be an arbor lecture?” the girl asked, folding her hands together, and assuming a patient, listening attiJtade. thistime,” Teddie said, calmly; apropos of the Count, it just reminds me that I have a bit of news from *he hotel. with referen e to the Count, you know, hence my visit to Maplewood Oottage.” 1 All the weary languor from Dorothy’s dace quickly vanished, and she opened her eyes very wide, and looked intently the speaker, who, being satisfied that he had at last aroused Iter curiosity, with the perversity of his nature asked suddenly, “ Will you go to the hop over »t, the ho: el to-night?” A shade of disappointment ovo up ead

appointed at her reply. He felt that he had been wanting in diplomacy in wandering from his subject. “Oh, well,” he said, “I might have known that the news of the Count’s accident had already reached you, , therefore your reason for not caring to ! go to the hop.” “ I heard of no accident to the Count,” Dorothy returned, lapsing into her old state of weariness, feeling that she had been too eager in her interest when Teddie had mentioned the Count’s name. Teddie elevated his eyebrows, while a strangely guilty expression crept into his face. “The young cub got a ducking this morning,” he said, with almost heartless indifference; “he slipped over the side of the yacht, and if it hadn’t been for me lie might have now reached that ‘sweet by-and-by.’ ” Dorothy made no demonstration of surprise or regret, for she was uncertain whether the Count had in reality met with so serious an accident, or whether it was but a fabrication of Teddie Forrester’s jealous brain; for the Count had the day before invited her to a drive behind the spirited horses, which, though the envy and admiration of not a few of the men at the Lookout Hotel, were a fear to a less clever driver than the Count. And now the day had advanced far into the afternoon, still she had received no message from the hotel that the projected drive had been abandoned. “Then you positively refuse my invitation,” Teddie said. “Positively, this time, Teddie, I do.” Dorothy replied, though she withheld her reason, which, if not wholly in ignorance of, Teddie had acted well the part of feigning. Dorothy was never surprised at Teddie Forrester’s tyranuical ways, or the air of proprietorship he was in the habit of assuming toward her; it had always been a self-imposed custom of his ever since she had known him, and that had been no inconsiderable length of time; and now, when she had escaped from the heated city to spend a couple of months at Maplewood Cottage with her Aunt Joe, she had not been surprised to hear, a few weeks later, that Teddie Forrester had taken up his quarters at the Lookout Hotel; Teddie, whose ample fortune could give him access to any part of the globe to spend a holiday, but whose generous allowance of jealousy confined him to the indifferent accommodation of Lookout Hotel, varied by a drive down the dusty but picturesque Crabtree road. He was jealous of this Count Von Auer, who, through an accident, had found his way to Maplewood Cottage and there first made the acquaintance of Aunt Joe and Dorothy, after which his thoughts were divided between bis great cattle ranche in one of the Western Territories, where he spent six months of the year, and the fresh beauty of this naive American girl, while Dorothy did sometimes acknowledge to herself that the Count’s deferential ways were often pleasanter than the free air of proprietorship of Teddie.

“No; if the Count does not come, and thinks it not worth his while to send an excuse, I will not go to the hop to please Teddie Forrester, and I don’t really believe I will ever marry him, though I dare say he will appear in Aunt Joe’s parlor some of these days with a priest and a ring, and say, ‘ Dorothy, I have come to marry you,’ and I will most likely say, ‘Yes, you pest,’because I always say yes to Teddie in the end, and also to be rid of going back to the city and teaching the ‘ young idea how to shoot.’” “There is the Count.” And Aunt Joe says that for a foreign nobleman he seems like quite the genuine article, though he is a trifle vague about the origin of tlie geneological tree. Dorothy was seated upon the front porch, waiting impatiently for the Count to appear down the Crabtree road. “If he shouldn’t come at all,” she thought to herself, “it would be a great disappointment; besides Teddie would so glory in it if he should ever hear!” The sight of the Count’s spirited horses coming down the Crabtree road, raising a cloud of dust in tbeir wake and bearing the Count himself, made Dorothy’s heart beat quickly, and scattered- the thoughts of Teddie to the wind.

It certainly was much pleasanter bowling along, if it was only upon Crabtree road, than waltzing in the heated parlor of the hotel with Teddie Forrester,admiring every young woman in the room, but not even hinting that her white dr«»s os tks pink rpses were becoming. “Ah, Miss Bassett, yon cannot imagine how that bit of rolling land reminds me of my ranch; it only wants an unpretentious house right there,” pointing with his whip, “and you have the general aspect of my house in the far West.” A trifle dreary, Dorothy thought, and an Eden scarcely alluring enough wherein to spend six months out of one’s existence. Dorothy heard the Count’s voice in her ears, which to her seemed to have grown painfully matter-of-fact, but his words came to her indistinct and far away, for her thoughts had drifted back to Teddie Forrester, and she wondered what voung woman at the hotel he was favoring with the greatest number of waltzes.

A rumbling of -wheels caught Dorothy's ear; somebody was coming quickly behind them, and in a moment a village cart passed them, in which was seated Teddie, Teddie in an immaculate evening toilet, and an injured expression upon his fare, as he turned his head inan opposite direction. As Dorothy and her companion drove along, the Count quite uncons -ious of the tragedy going on before him, and Dorothy almost crushed by the heartless conduct of Teddie, a vivid flash of lightning caused the two spirited animals to plunge suddenly forward. Dorothy and the Count glanced behind them, and perceived that the small dark cloud that had forbode no evil in the early evening had gradually become a ma s of black clouds banked up in the west, and wore now rapidly overspreading the heavens. The Count turned the horses’ heads; further ou was a wild stretch of coun-

try, containing no habitation in which !to find shelter. To reach the hotel bej fore the storm broke was their only alternative. | Dorothy shuddered as she drew her light shawl around her and glauced uneasily at the lowering clouds that j seemed almost to touch the earth. I The day had been, nearly without j warning, precipitated into night, and ! the irregular row of trees upon the steep bank on either side of them were : swayed in wild confusion as the wind | moaned through their branches, and I now the clouds, so long threatening, poured down their torrents upon the earth. A sudden flash of lightning, which lit up the black and jagged rifts of clouds, shone in the miniature lake that had been formed by a depression in the road, and the thoroughly frightened animals, startled into a new fear by the glistening water, plunged forward and in a moment the Count had lost control over them. He was as powerless to compete with the strength of the two horses as a straw to withstand the force of the blast. “Jump!” he cried, throwing the reins from him. “The earth is soft and there will be less danger than by running the risk of being dashed to pieces. ” Dorothy turned to look about her, when she saw the Count spring from the seat upon the road and was left in the darkness, while she, alone, was borne rapidly along, the carriage swaying from side to side beneath her. Something had happened, she knew, for she felt herself come with sudden force upon the ground, and she knew no more. When she returned to consciousness she was again riding along Crabtree Road, but the rain had ceased and a star or two shone above. Some one was holding her very firmly, and her head was rolling in a ridiculous fashion upon her comjtanion’s shoulder, by the jolting of the village cart. Dorothy looked up. “Thank heaven you are not killed outright! ” Teddie said, with an unmistakable quaver in his voice. “I thought at least your arm was broken when I lifted you up.” Dorothy stretched out that member quite firmly. “No, Teddie,” she said, “not my arm, but my heart, because when you passed us this evening you turned your head the other way.” Teddie smiled and felt comfoided, for he knew that Dorothy had not been seriously injured in any way. Years after, sauntering through one of the streets of New York, the attention of Teddie Forrester and his wife, Dororthy, was attracted by a man exhibiting a dancing bear to the populace. A half-derisive laugh from some one standing in a group made them glance around. “Do you see that man with the bear ?” the man who had laughed asks his companion. “Well, years ago he was the overseer of my ranch over in one of the Territories, and, while I was on a visit to Paris, he ruined one of mv best spans of horses, killing one outright and maiming the other, while playing the role of a foreign Count at a small water-ing-place.” Teddie Forrester and liis wife pressed forward to scan the features of the owner of the bear. A wild burst of merriment issued from Teddie’s lips, while a curious glow of mortification dyed Dorothy’s face. It was the Count Yon Auer.