Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 81, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 April 1913 — MEMORY HELD HIM [ARTICLE]

MEMORY HELD HIM

And His Reverie Took Him Back to a Far-Away Country Home.

By RICHARD POST.

It was a full half hour after the curtain rose when Travis saw her. Even then he was doubtful. In the maze of pretty girls who weaved through the intricate and bewildering combinations of dances and inarches oh the stage he could not be certain that the alight, girlish figure was Cecile Raymond. Now the chorus formed in a billowy line of white and surged forward like a foam-crested wave to the footlights. The girl he watched was third from the end in the second line and the young man could not distinguish her features. “A very common-place chorus,” Miss Davis commented to her escort, as the curtain fell. “I thought that little'brunette near the end in the second row/ was, well — quite pretty," he ventured. Miss Lorene Davis glanced at him sharply. “It’s all a matter of opinion of course,” she replied, acridly. “As for myself, I haven’t seen ever a passably good-looking woman on the stage tonight.” But Ralph Davis was paying scant attention to her remarks. For a moment memory held him. Was it Cecile Raymond? Could it be she? “Why not?” he asked himself bitterly. “Who knows where she went or how far may have fallen since she slipped away from Lancaster two years ago? Then Cecile wished to be a grand opera star.” He smiled with a synicism beyond his years. “They so often end up in the chorus —it may be after all,” he concluded. “If she —” and then his honesty of thought drove back the reproaches he started to heap upon Cecile. “No, it was my fault, just mine,” he admitted. “I was too ambitious, I didn’t dare to ask her when I had little to offer. Cecile on her part was impatient and went away to make a name for herself. It was all my fault,” he repeated, unconscious that he spoke aloud, “What’s your fault?” Miss Davis asked, turning a wondering glance upon him. Ralph came out of his reverie suddenly. “That I didn’t bring a box of candy for you,” he replied with quick self-possession. He hailed a boy and bought an expensive two-pound pack-, age. For an instant Travis’ eyes rested on the woman at his side. Superbly gowned. Miss Davis possessed a regular if somewhat colorless beauty. Her good breeding showed Itself in every line of her face and if there was a certain hardness in her features, too much of a steely glitter in the pale blue eyes, the amount of her father’s fortune atoned for any deficiencies. Certainly, Travis, two years before a nobody and now only a rising young man, perhaps undeservedly credited with two engineering triumphs, should thank his stars of fortune that it was he who was favored to sit at Miss Divis* side. Travis knew well that in the next box was Edgerton Green, contender for the hand of the girl who that evening favored Ralph with her smiles. To be in his place the young man doubted not that Green would have given all he possessed. “Certainly,” Travis reflected, "I should consider myself lucky.” But strangely enough he was dissatisfied. The girl was probably not Cecile. Even If she were, what was she to him? Two years on the stage, in the ballet! With his somewhat austere training he shuddered to think what her life must have been. No; if the dancer should prove to be Cecile, she held no interest for .him. Yet, when the curtain rose, fiFYorgot the woman beside him and with an unconscious eagerness leaned forward in his seat, his eyes strained to catch the first sight of the diminutive figure, third from the end—second row. The pretty conceit of the second act was the appearance of the “Tiger-Lil-les.” The ballet, a few minutes before gowned in dainty white, now appeared in flaming crimson, their heads crowned with scarlet and yellow caps, fashioned in the shape of a lily. Then it was that Travis knew the one whom his eyes sought was indeed Cecile Raymond. The gorgeousness of her costume only accentuated the pallor of her cheeks, the feverish luster of her large, brown eyes, the (lead blackness of her massed hair. Cecile knew him. He read that in the first glance. Despite stage decorum herleyes continually wandered toward his box. She executed the lively, rollicking dance mechanically, keeping time and step with the skill of long habit But the man, leaning forward in his seat, unconscious of the stately girl at his side, of the multitude of men and women about him, knew intuitively that Cecile’s thoughts were with him, as his were with her. In bis reverie fancy took him back 1 once more on a peaceful river in the far-away country of his home —Cecile’s home. They were together, hardly more than boy and girl, in a canoe drifting slowly down the stream. The month was August, the sun agllsten on the swiftly flowing water of midchannel, but they coasted along the bank in the deep shade of the overhanging trees. And there, at the edge of the bushes, tell tiger-lilies grew, their crimson coloring resplendent against the background of green. Together they had picked the lilies—-to-

« gether that summer afternoon of the long ago. He wondered idly if the girl on the stage remembered. In the instant something happened. The ballet had swung far to the,left, almost below his box. Suddenly Ce- . die's white face grew even whiter, she swayed and fell in a little heap. The line of dancers swung around and passed her, away to the senter of the stage; Too well trained were thpy to allow even for an instant anything to bre%k the flawless mechanism of their execution. Somebody from the wings would drag out the girl who had fallen; the play must go on. But before a stage hand could reach her Travis had climbed the railing of the box and leaped upon the stage. Bending for an instant over the unconscious girl, he quickly raised the slender form and bore her in his arms, away from the glare of lights and the blatant music to the quiet of a dressing room —any dressing room, it did not matter to the commanding young man, whose face so set and stern made men obey him. “Cecile, Cecile,” he whispered, “my dear little tiger-lily. And the girl opening her eyes, smll-' ing wistfully, understood that he referred not to the tawdry splendor of her garb, but to the days, So many weary weeks and months and years before when they had drifted together on the quiet river and gathered the gorgous lilies on its banks. “I was so tired,” she murmured. “And now you’ve come, Ralph, and it’s all right.” “Starved herself, the poor little thing,” the motherly wardrobe woman explained in a low voice. “She wouldn’t* do like many of the girls,” the woman motioned toward the stage from which waves of applause rolled as the ballet scampered into the wings. “She was paid only fifteen a week and had to provide her own clothes. The chick hasn’t had a square meal in a month. No wonder she fainted dead away.” “It was all a mistake, just a misunderstanding,” Travis said in a low voice and the woman nodded with comprehension. “But it will be all right now, just as she said.” With the tenderness of a woman the young man lifted the slight form and carried her to a couch. Meanwhile in the theater Edgerton Green had taken Travis’ place at Miss Davis’ side. When Ralph thought of the woman he had left alone in the box he regretted his unavoidable rudeness. She was welcome Ito think of him as a cad or howevei else "she pleased. For he had Cecile, he had found again his little girl of the tigerlilies, and amid his happiness nothing else of this world mattered. (Copyright, 1913. by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)