The Plum Tree | Page 3

man-o'-war.
On an impulse shot up from the dustiest depths of memory, I turned the
old geography sidewise and examined the edges of the cover. Yes,
there was the cache I had made by splitting the pasteboard with my
jack-knife. I thrust in my fingernail; out came a slip of paper. I glanced
at Burbank--he was still busy. I, somewhat stealthily, you may imagine,

opened the paper and--well, my heart beat much more rapidly as I saw
in a school-girl scrawl:
[Illustration: (handwriting)]
[Transcriber's Note: the image is approximately this:
Harvey Sayler hait Elizabeth Crosby love
with the letters "H", "a", "r", "e", "y", "S", "l", "e" in the first line and
"E", "l", "a", "e", "h", "r", "s", "y" in the second line, in that order,
struck out, as marked by the game mentioned in the following
paragraph.]
I was no longer master of a state; I was a boy in school again. I could
see her laboring over this game of "friendship, love, indifference, hate."
I could see "Redney" Griggs, who sat between her and me, in the row
of desks between and parallel to my row and hers,--could see him
swoop and snatch the paper from her, look at it, grin maliciously, and
toss it over to me. I was in grade A, was sixteen, and was beginning to
take myself seriously. She was in grade D, was little more than half my
age, but looked older,--and how sweet and pretty she was! She had
black hair, thick and wavy, with little tresses escaping from plaits and
ribbons to float about her forehead, ears, and neck. Her skin was darker
then, I think, than it is now, but it had the same smoothness and
glow,--certainly, it could not have had more.
* * * * *
I think the dart must have struck that day,--why else did I keep the bit
of paper? But it did not trouble me until the first winter of my
launching forth as "Harvey Sayler, Attorney and Counselor at Law."
She was the daughter of the Episcopal preacher; and, as every one
thought well of the prospects of my mother's son, our courtship was
undisturbed. Then, in the spring, when fortune was at its coldest and
love at its most feverish, her father accepted a call to a church in
Boston, eight hundred miles away.

To go to see her was impossible; how could the money be spared,--fifty
dollars, at the least? Once--when they had been gone about four
months--my mother insisted that I must. But I refused, and I do not
know whether it is to my credit or not, for my refusal gave her only
pain, whereas the sacrifices she would have had to make, had I gone,
would have given her only pleasure. I had no fear that Betty would
change in our separation. There are some people you hope are stanch,
and some people you think will be stanch, if--, and then there are those,
many women and a few men, whom it is impossible to think of as false
or even faltering. I did not fully appreciate that quality then, for my
memory was not then dotted with the graves of false friendships and
littered with the rubbish of broken promises; but I did appreciate it
enough to build securely upon it.
Build? No, that is not the word. There may be those who are stimulated
to achievement by being in love, though I doubt it. At any rate, I was
not one of them. My love for her absorbed my thoughts, and paralyzed
my courage. Of the qualities that have contributed to what success I
may have had, I put in the first rank a disposition to see the gloomiest
side of the future. But it has not helped to make my life happier,
invaluable though it has been in preventing misadventure from catching
me napping.
So another year passed. Then came hard times,--real hard times. I had
some clients--enough to insure mother and myself a living, with the
interest on mortgage and note kept down. But my clients were poor,
and poor pay, and slow pay. Nobody was doing well but the
note-shavers. I--How mother fought to keep the front brave and
bright!--not her front, for that was bright by nature, like the sky beyond
the clouds; but our front, my front,--the front of our affairs. No one
must see that we were pinching,--so I must be the most obviously
prosperous young lawyer in Pulaski. What that struggle cost her I did
not then realize; no, could not realize until I looked at her face for the
last time, looked and turned away and thought on the meaning of the
lines and the hollows over which Death had spread his proclamation of
eternal peace. I have heard