Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 140, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 June 1911 — The Tryst [ARTICLE]

The Tryst

By GRACE M. PETERS

The night wind blew the loosened tent-flap fitfully. Tap, tap, back and forth It fluttered, vaguely persistent, until Eversham finally wakened. He opened his eyes and looked out into the dim perspective of the forest. Yes, there they were, the tall straight conifer trunks without number —hoary, pathless, suggestive of Ineffable Eversham did not stir he breathed very quietly. He wished to cheat time into forgetting him and the ecstasy of the forest dream—the dream that he had dreamed every night since first he took the fever; more than that, the dream that had been his soul’s life for twenty years, since she failed to keep the tryst and the joy of life bad died. Now he was dying—so the strange nurse and doctor who moved about his bedside had said early in the evening. When he heard a triumphant thrill had shaken his hot, dry body, for he knew that tonight at last he should know the truth—the *dream would not break off, a fragment, as it had always done before. It was so cool in the murmuring forest—just sueb a night as that other long ago when he left his tent and went down to the river to meet her. Was that twenty years ago or only the last sundown, as It seemed? It had been a wild country In those days; strange things often happened, and when she did not keep the tryst and never was seen again no one had wondered very much. They said that others had loved her as well as he, and that some young Lochinvar had come out of the West and borne her away down the river—the swift swirling river that had only chattered on tauntingly as the sun went down and the dark came on and be waited alone and she did not come. He could hear the faint murmur of It now. What was that? The doctor was trying to rouse him, but he lay cunningly still. They could not snatch him back from the forest again—the time was far too short. The balsam boughs on which he lay were very sweet, and then there was the moon Just rising over the pointed hemlocks. He could not see the moon, but he knew that It was up for the reflection struck the pall of water In the tent. It was a blase, worn-out old moon, neither silver nor gold, but the drunken copper color of a useless candle burning out toward daylight. He would look at IL Eversham crawled to a mossgrown log that lay mouldering oytside the tent. Ah, now he could see the black, swift river with the endless mute forest on the other bank. There was where the red campfire had burned each night. He fancied he saw the lurid fire nowj dancing and glowing with elfish light over half forgotten faces of old companions. Wild snatches of their song and laughter seemed borne on the night wind down the river—down toward the trysting place that stood out a shapeless mass of rock above the seething current. Eversham suddenly drew a sharp painful breath of wonder. Something was moving at the trysting place—something vague and indistinct but surely neither shadow nor mist. What was It? Could It be she? Had she come afr-Jast to keep the tryst now that he was. dying? The thought made him tremble with ecstasy—he could not bear so much joy all at once. “Oh, my darling, my darling.’’ he whispered imploringly, with all the pent-up love of twenty years in his tone.

Yes, there she stood, beckoning and smiling, elusive, a shadow among shadows. Her lips moved as if she spoke, but the words wbre lost in the roar of the water. Eversham sprang to his feet—he cared no longer for the and the doctor; they could not hold him back now. He was dying and he cared not for that—was she not waiting to keep the tryst? The useless old moon was almost set, and it was very dark as he groped his way through the fantastic lacy network of shadows down to the rock on which she stood. “Oh, my darling, my darling,*' he cried, stretching out his arms. But she turned from him, and bowed her head and wept. “Look into the treacherous river,** he heard her say. <r What do you see? I slipped and fell—Ah, why did you not know?” Eversham grovelled at her feet In agony. “My darling, my darling,” he cried again. But his voice met only Its own echo reverberating from across the swift flowing He stood at the tryst alone. “Come rest with ma" a voice crooned from the swirling water far below. “Come rest with me In my river bod. Twenty yean have I waited, dear heart. Come rest with me. forever.” Brenham gave a mighty cry—bo leaped out into the darkness; and then then was quiet The old moon had set, the tryst was kept. The doctor and the nurse who had watched by the bedside since early evening knew that the fever with Ito rootless phantoms would trouble Brenham no more—ha had found peace at last.—Boston