Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1912 — Wooing A Star [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Wooing A Star

By Louise Merrifield

(Copyright, 1911, by Associated Literary Press) Hamilton swung up on the steps of the sleeper. The rescue portion of the train crew had started its twelve-, mile push through the snowdrifts down the track to Moosehead, the nearest telegraph station. There was one chance in fifty that they might meet a relief gang working toward them. And it was Christmas eve. “We won’t get through, sah,” said the porter cheerfully. “Suttinly looks most unpromising for Santa Cialis tonight.” "Never can tell, Sam. You’d better hang up your sock,” Hamilton returned. “I’m sorry for the por devils in the day coaches and tourist cars. How about that private layout we tacked on at Boise City?” “Private car, sah—Mme. Helene Cesare.” ( The name struck a chord that had been Hamilton’s dominant strain for ten years. He knew Helene Cesare. Back in the lean years, when she had been a slender, eager-eyed girl with a golden voice, who frankly hailed from Omaha, he had met her at one of his sister’s musicales in the east. Kit Murray, they called her then. She was about seventeen, with a mass of reddish hair, framing a tense, determined face, with big, dreamy, almost resentful eyes. She had been resentful, too, of his proffers of friendship and assistance so far as her career was concerned. She would win, she had told him, win by sheer work and effort. It had not been with her consent that his sister had bent all her influence toward her success. Yet she had been grateful, too, and had never known how much of it she owed to Hamilton’s love for her. On his way to the private car he met the conductor. “About six hours anyway, sir, possibly more,” he answered Hamilton. “Tough on the people in the cars ahead. There’s nothing to feed them with, and a lot of kids, too.” Hamilton went on to the last car. He met madame’s secretary at the vestibule and gave his card. When he entered the drawing room section,

she had risen to greet him, her fur trimmed lounging cloak slipping back from her shoulders, her eyes full of the same luminous eagerness he remembered well. “Ah, but this is kind of you," she said. “And I am so lonesome, and bored. How much you look like yourself!” The absurdity of her own remark dawned on her, and she laughed richly, happily. “I mean as I remember you, Hugh. Tell me of yourself. Sit there. We will dine presently.” “But we must not, not yet, please,” he interposed. “I have come to you for two reasons; first to see you. You know how I have wanted to.” “But we were on the same little earth, my friend." “Half a world away, and more. You were a planet, child, and I a star worshiper. So —well, I have worshiped as a star should be worshiped.” She looked at him questionlngly, almost anxiously. His eyes regarded her hungrily. This was not the girl of seventeen whom he had loved tenderly, protectingly, this woman with the curved lips and well-poised head, the sure, clear gaze, and voice that stirred old memories into life. "Yet, gazing at the white perfection of her throat and shoulders, her jeweled head, the exquisite lines of her velvet dinner gown, he thought of the mass of warped humanity on the rest of stalled train, hungry, bitter, stunned J?y the prospect of a showbound Christmas. It made no difference to Cesare, her car would be as warm, as brilliantly lighted, her dinner as perfectly served as If she were In her own Parisian apartment. And suddenly he resolved to throw all his chances on one single number. It would prove to him whether any tenderness, any womanliness still lay dormant qnder that breast. “I’m awfully sorry, but I simply cannot stay with you, not with those poor devils ahead stranded. There are children, too, they say. You know what that means, Kit —” The old name slipped out unthinkingly, and she smiled . 1 “It is kind of you to give me the chance to share with them,” she said.* “We will send in all that I have, ex-

cept our own dinner tonight. Does that content you?” “Will you come with me, and sing them Christmas carols?’’ ‘fe’hy not?” She caught the infection of the thought gayly. "I was to sing tonight at some city; where was it? My secretary knows —for five thousand. What then ? We will pour the voice out to your day coach pilgrims, Hugh. I hope they'will like me.” 1 With her hand laid lightly on his arm, she went ahead through the train, and the word spread like tire. The great singer would give her voice as freely to them for their Christmas eve as she gave from her larder to feed them. Hamilton never forgot the picture she made as she stood In the aisle of each of the crowded coaches, head lifted, lips smiling, singing old heart songs and carols that left her audiences in tears. And she enjoyed it as the girl of ten years ago would have done, every minute of her progress, while the children reached to rub their cheeks against her velvet gown and the soft fur, and baby hands were lifted longingly toward her violets. She wore no corsage bouquet by the time they had returned to the private car. There in the cold Vestibule’ they faced each other. Hamilton knew that fate had given him a second chance after ten years. “I thought there was only the soul of the artist left in you, Kit,” he said, gripping both her hands in his warm grasp. “I believed the years had killed ail sentiment in you, and here you go with me and| give your golden voice to poor devils. You never looked so beautiful in your life as when you lifted that baby in your arms, the one that cried for your diamond necklace. Do you know it do you?” “I know that I have missed the better part of life, Hugh. They say a woman who gives her whole heart to art can follow only the one master. I used to believe that when I was a girt, but no more. One cannot be a great artist and interpret the emotions until one has suffered oneself, has—loved, perhaps.” “Love is not always suffering, dear.” “No?” She smiled at him with eyes filled with tears. “I found it so when I wakened after years of work, and found you gone, and only success to carry me on. I found it was most bitter suffering, Hugh.” The fur cloak slipped back from her throat as he held her in his arms, kissing the full, perfect lips and tender eyes. There was a sudden commotion outside in the darkness, shouts and waving of lanterns. The train crew were returning with a relief party. Somebody yelled that the snow plow was pushing its way through the drifts, and the'train would be moving in half an hour. “We will reach Helena by daylight. Then,” said Hamilton, “I am going straight through with you to New York, and we will be married there, before the new year. Does that interfere with your engagements. Kit?” Madame Cesare laughed softly, and gathered her cloak about her as she preceded him into her car. “I shall never say it that way again. Hereafter it shall be, do my engagements interfere with you, Hugh?” “Better not,” he flung back. “1 shall claim all the light of my star if you do.” “When one has won a star, is it not his?” Cesare’s eyes were proud and happy as she answered him. “I have had ten years of all the world can give. Now I ask —only you.”