The White Shadow

The White Shadow by Robert W. Chambers
_Listen, then, love, and with your white hand clear
Your forehead from its cloudy hair._
I.
"Three great hulking cousins," said she, closing her gray eyes
disdainfully.
We accepted the rebuke in astonished silence. Presently she opened her
eyes, and seemed surprised to see us there yet.
"O," she said, "if you think I am going to stay here until you make up
your minds..."
"I've made up mine," said 'Donald. "We will go to the links. You may
come."
"I shall not," she announced. "Walter, what do you propose?"
Walter looked at his cartridge belt and then at the little breech-loader
standing in a corner of the arbour.
"Oh, I know," she said, "but I won't! I won't! I won't!"
The uncles and aunts on the piazza turned to look at us; her mother
arose from a steamer-chair and came across the lawn.
"Won't what, Sweetheart?" she asked, placing both hands on her
daughter's shoulders.
"Mamma, Walter wants me to shoot, and Don wants me to play golf,
and I--won't!"

"She doesn't know what she wants," said I. "Don't I?" she said, flushing
with displeasure.
"Her mother might suggest something," hazarded Donald. We looked at
our aunt.
"Sweetheart is spoiled," said that lady decisively. "If you children don't
go away at once and have a good time, I shall find employment for
her."
"Algebra?" I asked maliciously.
"How dare you!" cried Sweetheart, sitting up. "Oh, isn't he mean! isn't
he ignoble!--and I've done my algebra; haven't I, mamma?"
"But your French?" I began.
Donald laughed, and so did Walter. As for Sweetheart, she arose in all
the dignity of sixteen years, closed her eyes with superb insolence, and,
clasping her mother's waist with one round white arm, marched out of
the arhour.
"We tease her too much," said Donald.
"She's growing up fast; we ought not to call her 'Sweetheart' when she
puts her hair up," added Walter.
"She's going to put it up in October, when she goes back to school,"
said Donald. "Jack, she will hate you if you keep reminding her of her
algebra and French."
"Then I'll stop," said I, suddenly conscious what an awful thing it
would be if she hated me.
Donald's two pointers came frisking across the lawn from the kennels,
and Donald picked up his gun.
"Here we go again," said I. "Donny's going to the coverts after grouse,
Walter's going up on the hill with his dust-shot and arsenic, and I'm

going across the fields after butterflies. Why the deuce can't we all go
together, just for once?"
"And take Sweetheart? She would like it if we all went together," said
Walter; "she is tired of seeing Jack net butterflies."
"Collecting birds and shooting grouse are two different things," began
Donald. "You spoil my dogs by shooting your confounded owls and
humming birds."
"Oh, your precious dogs!" I cried. "Shut up, Donny, and give
Sweetheart a good day's tramp. It's a pity if three cousins can't pool
their pleasures for once."
Donald nodded uncertainly.
"Come on," said Walter, "we'll find Sweetheart. Jack, you get your
butterfly togs and come back here."
I nodded, and watched my two cousins sauntering across the lawn--big,
clean-cut fellows, resembling each other enough to be brothers instead
of cousins.
We all resembled each other more or less, Donald, Walter, and I. As for
Sweetheart, she looked like none of us.
It was all very well for her mother to call her Sweetheart, and for her
aunts to echo it in chorus, but the time was coming when we saw we
should have to stop. A girl of sixteen with such a name is ridiculous,
and Sweetheart was nearly seventeen; and her hair was "going up" and
her gowns were "coming down" in October.
Her own name was pretty enough. I don't know that I ought to tell it,
but I will: it was the same as her mother's. We called her Sweetheart
sometimes, sometimes "The Aspen Beauty." Donald had given her that
name from a butterfly in my collection, the Vanessa Pandora,
commonly known as the Aspen beauty, from its never having been
captured in America except in our village of Aspen.

Here, in the north of New York State, we four cousins spent our
summers in the family house. There was not much to do in Aspen. We
used the links, we galloped over the sandy roads, we also trotted our
several hobbies, Donald, Walter, and I. Sweetheart had no hobby; to
make up for this, however, she owned a magnificent team of
bêetes-noires--Algebra and French.
As for me, my butterfly collection languished. I had specimens of
nearly every butterfly in New York State, and I rather longed for new
states to conquer. Anyway, there were plenty of Aspen beauties--I