Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 57, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1908 — FELICIA [ARTICLE]

FELICIA

By Lulu Loretta Baker

Felicia was In the kitchen, reading and looking after some mush alternately. Corn mush and a French -classic are somewhat divergent, but Felicia was a riddle, anyway. And she did not heave a sigh as she left the scenes of the book, and sat down to her solitary supper. _______ “I’m as hungry as a bear,” she said, half aloud. “So am I. Don’t be frightened,” said a voice at the open window. And, being a riddle, she didn’t scream, though no door about the house was -closed, and it was dusk. '' “I’m alone:” Her voice was steady, though her blood was pounding her veins. “There isn’t even a dog here; so if you wish to come in you will have no trouble.” She was even sarcastic. She filled a tumbler with milk from a pitcher at her right, while he came around to the door. "You’re brave,” he said. She did not look up. “I’m very hospitable as well. Don’t hesitate a moment.’’ He sat opposite her, eyeing with real hunger the steaming mush pushed over te him. He bent his head, as if ashamed, and ate eagerly. She looked at him steadily for the first time.

An awful fear, greater, but different from any fear of molestation, clutched aX her. Unconsciously she moved forward , her gaze so piercing that involuntarily the man’s lntellecualeyes fastened upon her as if hypnotized. They stared at each other silently for several seconds, the self-possessed slender girl and the wide-eyed man. "Do you think such method as this of obtaining data is entirely laudable? Some people are easily frightened." Her eyes still on his. and coldly. He jumped from his chair, overthrowing his glass, searching her face. “Who are you?" .> “Felicia Thrawley.” “You are not!” rudely. “Felicia’s iair was brown; yours is almost white, and it is only six years. You can’t he.” "Indeed!” was her only rejoinder. The man’s fingers trembksd. He tried to say something, but could not, and shame overwhelmed him at thought of the great work he had neglected, becoming in the last two years next to a vagrant in reality, instead of posing as one to study the conditions of his cpuntry. And Felicia! Felicia, the clever, the girl whom he used to imagine loved him at times; then as he sought her out, eluded him, seemed to hate him.

“How did you come here?" he managed to say finally. “I live here. I’m living the simple life,” she laughed a little, “hunting eggs, wading in the crfeek, cooking when I like, and incidentally filling a ■mall post as critic.” She named a well-known publication. He interrupted her with a cry of gladness for her strong, ambitious womanhood. And seized by impulse he did not try to fathom, he confessed his neglect of the university’s expectations of him, him whose chair there was as yet filled only temporarily while he, the master at economics and sociology, was tramping the world for .actual knowledge of its conditions. And he had come to love the life so that he had deceived the trustees, his friends and newspaperdom. reveling in the gypsy’s love of woods and hills and flower-tangled paths, though they thought him still diligent in the work '.he set out to do. “Wasn’t it, isn’t it gloriouB?” Telicia was. radiant, the ever-charming Felicia. “What?” he said, dully, as a child who expects to be scolded. “Why, to be half a pagan, forgetting universities, dusty books and problems—”

“You don’t hate me for stopping —’’ “To live awhile?” she finished scornfully. "No, I’ve done as near the same as I could, being a woman. Chloe and Sambo are here with me, delayed in the fields to-night. Father is dead, you know," she added with her face paling. “And I couldn't bear to stay in the town any longer.” "You are alona-” "Except Reindeer; he is In the stable.” She smiled, though her eyes were downcast, her mouth sad. "May I stay, theu? Felicia, love, you know I would never*have stayed away so long if your caprice had not been so puzzling. I was a'raid of you, Felicia!” He had come around to her chair and was bending his luxuriant-ly-covered head against the silvered satin of her hair which fell like a halo around her young face. She trembled; she who was Barcas tic, self-possessed, radiant, and said in quick successionr* “This is a grand old place; ail the hills and trees and tangled woods such gypsies as you and 1 shall need. And the university, which awaits you, is not far away.” She pushed back his careless hair and bid her face against hia throat. After a time they rose and went down the road, in the moonlight, to meet their darkies. r