The Light of Western Stars | Page 4

which accounted for
the remarkable situation in which she found herself. That Madeline
Hammond should be alone, at a late hour, in a dingy little Western
railroad station, was indeed extraordinary.
The close of her debutante year had been marred by the only unhappy
experience of her life--the disgrace of her brother and his leaving home.
She dated the beginning of a certain thoughtful habit of mind from that
time, and a dissatisfaction with the brilliant life society offered her. The
change had been so gradual that it was permanent before she realized it.
For a while an active outdoor life--golf, tennis, yachting--kept this

realization from becoming morbid introspection. There came a time
when even these lost charm for her, and then she believed she was
indeed ill in mind. Travel did not help her.
There had been months of unrest, of curiously painful wonderment that
her position, her wealth, her popularity no longer sufficed. She believed
she had lived through the dreams and fancies of a girl to become a
woman of the world. And she had gone on as before, a part of the
glittering show, but no longer blind to the truth--that there was nothing
in her luxurious life to make it significant.
Sometimes from the depths of her there flashed up at odd moments
intimations of a future revolt. She remembered one evening at the opera
when the curtain bad risen upon a particularly well-done piece of stage
scenery--a broad space of deep desolateness, reaching away under an
infinitude of night sky, illumined by stars. The suggestion it brought of
vast wastes of lonely, rugged earth, of a great, blue-arched vault of
starry sky, pervaded her soul with a strange, sweet peace.
When the scene was changed she lost this vague new sense of peace,
and she turned away from the stage in irritation. She looked at the long,
curved tier of glittering boxes that represented her world. It was a
distinguished and splendid world--the wealth, fashion, culture, beauty,
and blood of a nation. She, Madeline Hammond, was a part of it. She
smiled, she listened, she talked to the men who from time to time
strolled into the Hammond box, and she felt that there was not a
moment when she was natural, true to herself. She wondered why these
people could not somehow, some way be different; but she could not
tell what she wanted them to be. If they had been different they would
not have fitted the place; indeed, they would not have been there at all.
Yet she thought wistfully that they lacked something for her.
And suddenly realizing she would marry one of these men if she did
not revolt, she had been assailed by a great weariness, an icy-sickening
sense that life had palled upon her. She was tired of fashionable society.
She was tired of polished, imperturbable men who sought only to
please her. She was tired of being feted, admired, loved, followed, and
importuned; tired of people; tired of houses, noise, ostentation, luxury.

She was so tired of herself!
In the lonely distances and the passionless stars of boldly painted stage
scenery she had caught a glimpse of something that stirred her soul.
The feeling did not last. She could not call it back. She imagined that
the very boldness of the scene had appealed to her; she divined that the
man who painted it had found inspiration, joy, strength, serenity in
rugged nature. And at last she knew what she needed--to be alone, to
brood for long hours, to gaze out on lonely, silent, darkening stretches,
to watch the stars, to face her soul, to find her real self.
Then it was she had first thought of visiting the brother who had gone
West to cast his fortune with the cattlemen. As it happened, she had
friends who were on the eve of starting for California, and she made a
quick decision to travel with them. When she calmly announced her
intention of going out West her mother had exclaimed in consternation;
and her father, surprised into pathetic memory of the black sheep of the
family, had stared at her with glistening eyes. "Why, Madeline! You
want to see that wild boy!" Then he had reverted to the anger he still
felt for his wayward son, and he had forbidden Madeline to go. Her
mother forgot her haughty poise and dignity. Madeline, however, had
exhibited a will she had never before been known to possess. She stood
her ground even to reminding them that she was twenty-four and her
own mistress. In the end she had prevailed, and that without betraying
the real state of her mind.
Her decision to visit her brother had been too hurriedly made and acted
upon for her to write him about it,