Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1919 — A Solitaire for Susan [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Solitaire for Susan

By IZOLA FORRESTER

(Copyright, lfil». by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) If Susan had not lived In semi-re-tirement for the years of her girl blooming It would not have been so tragic. But It did seem as If all Kittery Bend rejoiced with her when Dudley Ames finally made up his mind and left a diamond ring in her hand after seven years ot indecision. If you leave the train at Fairfield Junction and take the trolley eight miles along the shore you come to Kittery Bend. It lies on a small peninsula Jutting out into Long Island sound, one rambling main street, with the residence section crowning Piney Point. Here on the Point Susan had lived with her two brothers ever since her father, old Captain Rogers, had been laid away in the seamen's burial ground behind tlu* old Point church. It had not seemed then as if anybody would ever ride along and play prince of romance to Susan’s dreams. She was too proud and exclusive ever to attend the village social affairs, and no -local suitor has the temerity to climb the hill and show serious attentions before either Susan or her two elder brothers. So the early years of her 'teens had passed and she was twenty-six when Dudley sold off his old rocky home for a quarry and suddenly found courage. Susan stood on the veranda that first day with the new thrill of wonderment yet upon her and the diamond on her left hand. She had always felt it would be Dudley who would ask her to marry him, and yet, now that it had

come true, she felt a curious sense of disappointment. He had been so deliberate and sure. “I guess you’ve known right along now how I felt toward you, Susan,” he had said. “I’ve brought the ring with me and I don’t think the boys can make any fuss about it now. I’ve got as much as any of you.” No, she thought, there would be no fuss. There would be a quiet wedding, and she would simply drive over to the old Ames homestead and take Dudley’s mother’s place there for the rest of her life. And as she thought of it, somehow there came a swift reaction, a vague, haunting longing for all the dreams of her lonesome girl days, when she had dreaded Dudley’s steady calls, and had hoped somebody might come to the Bend and carry her away from the everlasting sameness of things. “You’re In mighty good luck, Sue, ta get a man like Dud,” Dave told her at dinner that night. “You’re not as young as you might be, and, there Isn’t a girl on the Point who wouldn’t be proud to wear that ring on your hand.” * Susan turned the ring about thoughtfully, looking at her other brother. It had always seemed as if Clayton understood her better than Dave, yet he, too, smiled over at her and stuttered gehtly. It was raining after supper that night, raining with a light breeze blowing In off the water, and all the garden lifting its burden of sweetness to the moisture. She slipped a long cloak about her and went out softly, down the back steps into the little path that took the edge of the hlll above the shore. The tall spider lilies ciaught at her thin dress as she passed, and she stepped on wild roses growing low along the path, and the pink bouncing betsies. And, oddly enough, she knew that she was deceiving herself. It was not the beauty of the night calling her; it was the hope of seeing the lights on Neil McCloud’s schooner, down in the little crooked channel that formed the harbor of Kittery Bend. Nell was a newcomer. He had, even trespassed on that hill path up to the Rogers’ place, not knowing that only the family ever took the short cut. And there he had first found Susan, watching alone from the little old pilot house that served as a summer house, and bad come from her father’s first ship, the Three Widows.

After that, every time he came to the Bend he took the hill path, and Susan watched for him, knowing in her heart he was on forbidden ground if the boys were to see him there. Through Jimmie, the grocery boy. she heard of how he stood In the village. “He ain't steady going, Miss Rogers, they say. Sorter wild. Spends all his money soon as he gets it. Says he wouldn’t live on land for anything. He’s been everywhere in that schooner of his. Says he'd Just as soon go 'round the world In her as not. Ain’t afraid of nothing. Gee, I like to hear him talk.*' So perhaps Susan had woven a romance about him because of his wandering tendencies. Nobody ever longed to travel away from the Bend and the vistas of Piney Point as much as herself. She saw the schooner’s lights as soon as she came near the edge of the hill, and even while she held her breath, one hand close to her throat, she heard his voice singing as he came up the path: "Oh, Billy was a bo’eun, bold and brave, William was a gay, young Bailor—” How tall and straight he was beside Dudley's rotund figure, how the rain clung in little diamonds of light to his curly hair as he raised his cap to her. Susan lifted her chin higher, trying to keep back the telltale quiver in her voice when he greeted her. “I’m hearing news about you. Miss Rogers,” he said, with a new ring In his tone. “After four months at sea it’s good to have news, and I wish you all happiness.” “News travels fast, It seems,” she tried to speak lightly. "Faster than the 'Rambler.’ ’’ “I’ve been around the cape and back,” he told her curtly. “And I saved enough to come up here and speak freely to you. You knew I’d be back, Sue.” She shrank back from the authority in his tone. Nobody had called her Sue In years. “Ohs I know I’ve no home to take you to like Dud Ames,” he said. “I was going to ask you to marry me, and we’d take the long trail of the seawinds and go where we wanted to. And I thought you were waiting for me and you knew In your heart why I’d come back. Don’t you suppose I know what they say of me? But do I care? The schooner’s mine and no man can say a word against me. If it wasn’t for the ring on your hand I’d take you down now with me and we’d be sailing before anyone could stop us." Along the path came Jimmie’s whistle on his way home from work. Susan held her breath until he came near, then she called to him gently, drawing the ring from her finger. “Jimmie, will you leave this with Mr. Ames for me on your way, please. He’ll understand. Don’t lose it.” After the boy had gone on, openmouthed and alarmed, she turned to Nell with outstretched, steady hand. “Shall we go down the path together now?” “If you’re in earnest we’ll have to leave tonight,” he said, staring at her white face, and dark, shadowy eyes. “Well stop at New Haven and be married, and go straight on out to sea. There’s no turning back, Sue, you understand that?” But Susan walked before him down the hill path, with a little smile of triumph on her lips, her eyes on the lights of the “Rambler.” After all, in spite of them all, she had found the wings of romance.

It Was the Hope of Seeing the Lights.