Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 127, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1911 — White Roses [ARTICLE]

White Roses

By CELIA MYBRVER ROBINSON

(Copyright, 1911, by Associated Literary Press.)

The room was bright with the soft light of shaded lamps and the red *k»w of an open fire and redolent of the spicy breath of roses. On a little spindle-legged table the blossoms were glowing in a mass of deepest crimson. Their heavy fragrance made Margaret's head throb and she pressed her hands to her eyes, wearily. In her ears the applause was still ringing. From pit to gallery the storm had swept and again and again she had been recalled. When she had, with difficulty, eluded the blackcoated throng about the stage entrance, she had sunk back in the cushioned depths of the barouche, too weary to do more than smile faintly In appreciation of her manager’s extravagant praises. Prom the little church on the corner came to her the hymning of the choristers, practicing the Sunday music, their fresh glad voices rising exultantly. She put her hands to her ears, as it to shut out the sound, and then, crossing the room, seated herself at the Piano, touching the keys softly. At first her fingers wandered idly, caressingly. bat after awhile they evoked a plaintive little air, and she sang, her glorious voice filling the room with melody. She broke off with a little discordant note and leaned her head against the music rest, like a tired child. Presently she rose and stood regarding herself in a long glass. Her cloak bad fallen to the floor and she stood revealed in all the magnlflcance of her stage gown, glittering with Jeweled trimmings and billowy with costly lace. The coils of her hair were thrust through and through with jeweled pins and about her throat was a necklace of diamonds. She turned ber bead this way and that, watching the gems flash and sparkle. Then she drew from the bosom of her gown a note and read the words again that ■he had read and reread many times, m smile of scorn curving her lips. He had sent her the note with the diamonds and the roses this morning, and tonight she had promised him an answer. It waa much that he offered her—wealth, position and an old, if tarnished, name—and his love! She drew the crimson roses from the bowl and then thrust them back with a gesture of loathing. They were too heavy, too sweet, too gorgeous. They reminded her tog, forcibly ol him. They suggested too strongly the dollars and cents expended on them. She sank into a carved chair, and, taking a photograph from a silver holder on the desk looked critically at the cynical, worldworn face. As she pushed the picture back into the holder a pile of letters met her eye; she remembered that her maid had reminded her of her mail, cm her return from the theater, but in the crowding thoughts which had submerged her, she had forgotten it. She pushed aside the letters contemptuously. She was used to. and weary of the effusions. But as she pushed them from her a little oblong box met her eye, and beside it, addressed in the same handwriting, lay a letter. With a smothered exclamation 6he bent nearer, and her face showed oddly white under the rouge. With trembling fingers she tore open the letter and read: “My Little Love: “You will doubtless be surprised to hear from me. In your new and gorgeous surroundings the old life must seem to you like a dream; the old friends, like people of a dream. But to me you are ever the same Margaret —my little love. “Even in this sleepy village rumors of your great fame come to us. I hear you have the world at your feet But It haa not spoiled you, I know. For your beautiful voice and your beautiful face, Ged gave you a beautiful soul. You will grow weary of your gaudy, empty life some day, for love must conquer in the end. “I passed our old trystlng place today. The roses were in bloom all ■bout it A rush of old memories came to me and I plucked some of the half-opened buds to send to you. "Goodbye, my dear, my dear, “With faith and love, .

"R." She tore tie cover from the box and drew out a cluster of white roses. From the flowers In her hand she looked at the crimson blooms In the bowl, and again at the blossoms in her hand; little blossoms they were, looking insignificant and meagre beside their regal sisters, but she pressed them to her lips, a rush of tears blinding her. Then she bowed her head upon her hands —not sobbing—only remembering. The noises of the street grew faint and far; Instead, the grass was green beneath her feet, the sky was blue overhead, and under a canopy of little white roses she stood, her head upon her lover’s breast, listening to the first whispers of love. The lumbering of some heavy vehicle roused her. With a sudden impetuous movement she unclasped the diamond necklace from aoout her throat and heaped it in a glittering pile upon the desk, and tossed the photograph upon the glowing coals. Then she rose, white and trembling; the voices of the choristers still hmynlcg in the grey old church,

came to her. She stood listening, with the roses crushed to ber breast. After a while she went Into the room beyond, and. kneeling down, drew from a drawer an oblong package. She shook out the folds of s white muslin gown and smoothed it caressingly. a, Laughing softly, she slipped out of the heavy, silken gown and donned the simple white one. She let down her heavy hair and braided it in one long plait, washed the rouge from her cheeks, and pinned the white roses in the laces at her throat Then she went back to the sitting room and stood before the mirror, regarding, with grave eyes, the face that looked back at her; no longer that of a world-worn woman, but of a radiant girl. The little maid stared when she entered with a card, but Margaret was too engrossed to note her surprise. “I will see him," she said, and there was a hard note in her voice. She was standing with her back to the door and at first he did not recognise her, but as she turned and addressed him, he went forward dramatically. * “Ah, it is you, Madamolselle? It Is a new role, then? It is something that I have not seen before, is it not so? It is not Elsa, nor Marguerite, nor any of those others, and yet— Ah, Madamolselle, you are always beautiful, but tonight you are more than beautiful, you are —" She held up her hand. “No,” she said, “It Is not Elsa nor Marguerite, nor any of those roles that you have seen me play so many times. It Is an old role which I discarded years ago, but which I have resumed tonight, and which I hope to continue in throughout my life. It is a role which I have played many times, the only requisites of which are simplicity and truth, and the applause, the only applause worth while, the appreciation of truth and honest hearts.”

“When I came to the city,” she went on, "this great, throbbing city, with Its beautiful, sad, wicked life, I was a young girl, untutored in the hard lessons of the world. I had lived among people whose women were good and men honest and I thought all men and women good and honest When I think of the simple, untried girl I was and the dangers that menaced me, I shudder, even now. “But the world was good to me. My voice and the beauty men say I possess, stood me in good stead. The world offered me its poor best, and I was dazzled with its glitter and gleam. I was like a fly, caught in a golden web, fascinated and yet afraid. “Today, Monsieur, you asked me—you did me the honor to ask me to become your wife; you offered me wealth and position—" “And my love, Madamolselle.” “And your love. Tonight I give them back to you with these.” She held out the great string of diamonds. “You did me a great honor, and I thank you for it, but tonight an influence that has exerted itself throughout my life has spoken to my heart in a voice which cannot be silenced. And so I am going away. I am going back to the old role again, the role of the simple, happy, quiet iife. I shall marry a man who is not great, perhaps, as the world counts greatness, but who —” “But Madamoiselle, what of met Do I deserve no consideration? Am I to be thrust aside so? Surely I—■** “You cannot say anything of me—you cannot accuse me more mercilessly than I accuse myself. But because I have wronged you, would you have me make my wrong still deeper? My heart is far away in the southland tonight where these little white blossoms came from.” The Frenchman stood with bowed head. For the first time it came to her that it was given, even to this worldling, to love sincerely. A great pity, born of the new beauty and light in her own life, stirred within her heart She layed her hand for a moment on bis. •Forgive me,” she said. He raised her hand and kissed it, reverently. “Madamolselle,” he said earnestly, “do you know what you are relinquishing? Are you prepared to forego all the luxury, the pleasure, the splendor of your present life—to give up that which has become almost a part of your being?—to give up all this for a life narrow and petty—a life dull and, perhaps, even sordid?” She raised her head proudly, and he thought he had never seen her more beautiful than when she answered him. “No,” she said, “it is not sordid, and it will not be dull. Monsieur, It will be glorified by love.” For a moment he stood in silence. Then he raised his head and looked into the clear eyes: “Ahl Madamolselle, it is worth an eternity of misery—one hour of love such as that” He touched her hand again with his lips, and then went quickly from the room, without a backward glance. She sank down beside the window, resting her bowed head on her arms, and on the night air came to her the voices of the choristers, triumphant. Joyous.