Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 April 1920 — LEAP YEAR AND SUZANNE [ARTICLE]

LEAP YEAR AND SUZANNE

By JESSIE DOUGLAS

<(0, 1920, by McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) “I’ve an Ideal” cried Suzanne Melrose, banging the table with the handle of her knife to attract attention. “I say, people, let’s take the ski jump at midnight There’s no moon, so it will lie fairly dark. How about it?” “Hear —hearl” came a chorus of -voices. “Sure thing—jolly good sport!” “All settled, then,” said Suzanne, and returned placidly to her consumption of Maryland chicken. • Of all the merry, care-free crowd gathered for the winter sports at Agawam Lodge on Lake Adironack, Suzanne was the most daredevil and the most persistent in her pursuit of pleas- • ure. Lithe, glowing with health, she ■was the life of the party —quite too much to suit Cameron Stuart, whose one pursuit was Suzanne herself. He would have preferred a little less gregariousness on Sue’s part and more of an inclination to spend some time alone with him. But his pleadings had effected nothing more than a peremptory stamp of the girl’s expensively shod foot. “Some <iay I’ll settle down,” she had declared, “and do nothing but boss the servants and say ‘How divine’ at old ladles’ musicales, but now, right now, I am going to havemy fling and play the game for all there is in It.” Cameron, watching'the play of expression across the girl’s piquant features, loved her more than ever. The nlne yeara’ difference in their ages made him more tolerant of her youthful spirits than a younger man might have been. Sue’s parents, feeling the urge of the sunny Florida regions more potent than the call of the north, had dispatched the girl and her fifteen-year-old brother to the Lodge, under the wings of various friends already foregathered there. Dwight was really not strong enough to engage In the energetic sports of the season. A constitutional tendency to feel fatigue quickly and a slight heart weakness ■often barred him from strenuous activities, much to his disgust. His one great friend was Cameron Stuart. And after dinner Cameron sought out the boy and begged him not to make one of the party taking the jump. “Are you going?" asked Dwight. “Of course,” said Cameron. “You know I play watchdog for your sister.” “She needs one,” returned the boy frankly. But he did not say he would not go. Just at the age when a boy most feels himself a man, he resented, even from Cameron Stuart, any Implication that he was not perfectly well able to hold his own with the rest Eleven o’clock saw a laughing mackInawed crowd with waving scarves and woolly tarns set out across the snow-blanketed grounds of the Lodge. Past the iced chute for the toboggans, across the blackness of the lake. Into the shadowy forest they tramped, skis slung across their shoulders. At the jump Itself the skis were carefully strapped on and tested. Suzaifne herself led off, sailing gracefully out Into the air and landing triumphant on the snowy stretch a hundred and thirty feet below. One by one they took the leap, and by the time Suzanne had regained the crest only Cameron and Dwight remained.

Dwight had never attempted it before, being satisfied with the lesser Jumps near the lodge. And Sue could not recall having seen Cameron take it either. As she approached Cameron stood on the brink as if Irresolute, gazing down Into the darkness below. Suddenly he turned, stooped down to unstrap the skis, and remarked quiet* ly, “I guess I’ll.not take it after all?’ Suzanne stared at him in unbelief. Cameron Stuart a coward 1 She hardly noticed that Dwight also was taking off his skis. She was merely thankful that the rest of the crowd, plodding slowly up the slope, had not witnessed Cameron’s act. “Cameron Stuart,” she said with cutting emphasis, “nevernever ask me to marry you again." Her head high, she moved away. And Cameron little knew the pain In her heart —only the great emptiness in his. Some nights later Cameron sat gazing soberly into the smoldering depths of the huge fireplace in the heavybeamed living room of the Lodge. The crowd had gone sleighing, but he had chosen to stay here alone. Whit use, he mused bitterly, to tantalize himself watching Sue flirt with first one and •then another of the men in the party, to catch glimpses of her profile as she talked to some man beside her, sending what messages he knew not with her starry eyes. No, he did not care to go. What was more, he would leave the Lodge tomorrow. Sue thought he #ae a coward. Since the day when he had not taken the jump she had avoided any chance encounter with him. Some one opened the door. Cameron looked quickly up. There stood the girl who had been in his thoughts, a glorious picture in soft brown mink, with a furry toque perched jauntily askew on her tawny hair. “Oh,” she said slowly, tauntingly. “Home—where it is safe!” Cameron sprang to his feet thundered, “don’t dare use those words to me, or that tone. You come with me.” The girl, stunned, stood stilt In all her life nond had ever spoken to her like that Cameron, matriiing up mackinaw and cap from a settle, grasped her arm and led her unresisting to the door. Taking down ’MI skis from the rack in the outer hall, still without a word, Ouneron

strode rapidly over the snow, Suzanne following meekly, like one hypnotized. Arrived at the spos where Cameron had shown the white feather, according to Sue. the man buckled on the skis, took the start, and leaped off. Presently he was hack, Agala,.le jumped. Suzanne, ready to take back all she had ever said, was silenced by the look on his face when he returned. Again he leaped. This time he did not come back so quickly—ln fact, he did not come back at all. Sue waited waited —then, fearing she knew not what, ran quickly down the slope, tn and out through, the trees. What was that dark object on the snow —prostrate? Not Cameron 1 But It was’ Cameron —Cameron with one foot badly twisted. “It’s nothing,” he managed to say, and tried to stand, then crumpled up. Suzanne knew it was no time to protest her sorrow and repentance. Like the very deer that she had of startled In the forest* the girl sped back to the Lodge for help. A week later Cameron, limping slightly, walked on the sunny south veranda of the Lodge. Beside him was Suzanne. Suddenly she halted him, a soft hand laid gently on his arm. “Cameron,” she said, "don’t you like me?” Cameron shut his lips. Then, "Every one does that. Sue,” he said casually. Even as he had resolved to marry no one who thought him a coward, no less would he have anything to do with this girl, moved temporarily by pity and a feeling that she was rather responsible for the accident.

Sue’s most dare-devil (mood took possession of her. “Cameron,” she said, “if. X have -ever wanted anything, I have gone out and got it. And what Is more Important in life than the man you want to marry? And I want to marry you!” Cameron looked at her amazed. No, there was no doubting that expression of almost desperate sincerity. Then she covered her face with her hands. “Forget what I just said,” she murmured brokenly. "It was unwomanly. But I thought —I thought you really carted.” “My darling girl,” Cameron’s tender voice left no doubt as to whether he really cared. “My darling girl!” Presently Cameron told her why he had refuesd to take the jump. "At the time I was so hurt by your readiness to accept the unworthy explanation that I let It go at that. I realized that your brother ought not to take the jump, but knew that he would not undergo what would seem to him the humiliation of being the only one to refuse to do it. All he needed was an excuse —and my not doing it made it easy for him.” “Forgive me, dear,” said Sue humbly. “And forget that I asked you what you should have asked me!” “You only availed yourself of your privileges,” smiled Cameron. "After all, it’s leap year. And while sometimes it doesn’t pay to take a leap,” he eyed his foot whimsically, “sometimes It does!” . “When we do it together,” whispered Suzanne. •