Newton High School - Newtonian Yearbook (Newton, MA)

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18 THE NEWTON HIGH SCHOOL ANNUAL and was very sad. From this time a friendship had grown up between aunt and niece which became more and more devoted and intimate as the years passed. When she grew older she learned that her aunt had had a very sad love affair, but she never asked any questions about it, for fear of causing pain. She had always been sorry for her aunt, and when she was very young she used to weep bitterly when she had to go home after a visit, and leave her aunt there all alone, in her pretty, but lonely little house. ' But yesterday her own unwitting, joking prophecy, and her aunt's agitation, at the coming of their guest, revealed to her the old lady's well-guarded secret. This splendid old gentleman, then, was perhaps once the heedless object of her aunt's girlish and ever faithful love? Who knows? Angelica did not know, but her heart told her that the happiness of one whom she loved was at stakeg and at this thought she had the passionate ambition to be the means of re-uniting, if possible, these two souls that had been so long apart. She knew nothing definitely, but she felt that she had been given a revelation. So, relying un- consciously on the guidance of her own heart, she planned to do her best to aid Cupid in a piece of tardy, long-neglected work. Angelica went about her tasks all the next day as in a dream. Her mind was full of half-formed plansg but a sense of great responsibility, and of some- thing impending, dampened her usual buoyant spirits. The first of her little schemes failed miserably. An early caller interrupted the quiet morning on the veranda which had promised to be the auspicious time for the fulfillment of her hopes. Nor did the cozy luncheon in the garden, tete-Ez-tete, which she had arranged and prepared herself with the greatest care, prove the instrument for Cupid's dart. She began to despair, however, when Mr. Roberts insisted on having her join her aunt and himself in their afternoon tea, so that he could explain to her the botanical history of a flower she had asked him about the day before. There was only one thing that consoled Angelica in her perplexity, and that was hearing Mr. Roberts consent, in answer to his friend's cordial invitation, to prolong his visit until the next day, instead of leaving that night, as he had intended. The very interesting discourse on botany, which he was delivering, was worse than lost on Angelica. The evolution of her next plan was absorbing her whole attention. Now, for one last attempt, she thought, desperately. He leaves tomorrow, perhaps forever, and tonight is his last opportunity to reveal the purpose of his visit, and his reawakened love for Aunt Marie-if he has any. I can't seem to arrange an opportunity for them here at home-in this quiet, stupid little place, too. It's absurd! So they will have to be gotten away to- gether, alone,-somehow! By some happy chance part of that silly fortune telling of mine has come true, and I must make the rest of it come true. A drive is my last resort. A moonlight drive. Praises be, there is a moon! This will account

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THE NEWTON HIGH SCHOOL ANNUAL 17 Angelica Roslind, what are you talking about? Have you-I mean, are you making up all this silly nonsense? Of course I don't believe a word of it, bu-but I can't let you go on. She was preparing to go into the house, and just before she went upstairs she called out to her bewildered niece :- I forgot to tell you, Angelica, but I'm expecting a guest tomorrow, an old friend, Mr. Roberts. i Aunt Marie! you don't mean to say I-. But of course, I just told you someone was coming, and, she added, teasingly, we'll leave the rest to fate and Mr. Roberts, hey, Auntie? But Auntie was gone. It was evening again, but this time the little house on Maple Road was not the scene of such quiet repose as usual. The awaited guest had arrived, and all was astir to bid him welcome. The dainty muslin curtains at the windows fluttered in the cool breeze, and the front door stood wide open. The little mistress herself fluttered back and forth from the piazza to the sitting-room, arranging the newly cut flowers in vases and straightening the disarranged pile of magazines on the piazza table. Had she ever looked daintier, and more girlish? The lavender frock that she wore was low at the neck, and very soft and becoming. The delicate color in her cheeks was heightened by excitement and her silvery hair looked almost golden in the soft light of the late afternoon sun. The evening meal was eaten quietly, but to Angelica's occasional remarks the old gentleman replied in the quaint old-time manner that was particularly fascinating to the young girl. He was a typical old-fashioned gentleman, she thought. Tall, imposing, and still handsome. His gray hair and beard were streaked with white, but his face was ruddy, and his carriage erect. He was not a great talker, but he charmed his hostesses with brief but glowing accounts of his extensive travels and was very enthusiastic in his pleasure at being there. Miss Roslind was cordially hospitable, but very quiet. The evening was spent out in the garden, the old gentleman leisurely smoking his pipe, and going over, in a graphic way, the events of the intervening years, since last he saw his old friendg while she sat with hands folded, her eyes moist, and her heart full, listening again to the voice whose sound had so long been as dead to her ears. Upstairs, alone at her window, Angelica sat thinking, and her cheeks were wet with tears. She had come up to bed with a heavy heart, tonight, with a heart that was touched with an inexpressible sadness. A sudden realization of the pathos of her aunt's life had come over her, and had awakened a note of pain in her sympathetic, loving heart. For the first time she was able to interpret, in the sweet, patient face of the old lady, the record of a broken heart, bravely hidden away. When Angelica was only a little girl, her mother told her that she must always be good and kind to her Aunt Marie, for she had had a great disappointment

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THE NEWTON HIGH SCHOOL ANNUAL 19 for the reins, and if the moon, and the night, and Cupid, and- Mr. Roberts :an't carry out the rest, I guess it can't be done. At this point in her thoughts the postman interrupted Mr. Roberts, and in the general conversation that followed, she slipped off, on the plea of having to write a letter to her mother. Angelica watched them drive off down the moonlit road, and turning with a sigh of relief, went into the house. This part of her little program had been very hard to carry out, for two reasons. First, because their only horse, a bony, jog-trot old mare, was laid up with a sprained ankle, and second, because her aunt was deadly afraid to drive at night. She had cleverly overcome both of the seemingly insurmountable difficulties, however, by persuading a neighbor to offer her aunt the loan of his horse while her guest remained, and by inventing an urgent need of butter for breakfast, which could only be obtained at a dairy three miles down the road. But now they were off, and Angelica's responsibility was over. She was too excited to read, and too lonely to embroider, so she sat down at the piano in the dimly-lighted sitting-room, and gave vent to her feelings in one of those beautiful, plaintive nocturnes by Chopin. She played on and on, one lovely thing after another, for she was a born musician. Time was forgotten, and her restless mood became attuned to the perfect harmony of the music that she played. Carriage wheels roused her, finally, as the last chord of her favorite piece died away, and she fairly Hew out to the veranda as Mr. Roberts was handing Miss Roslind from the little runabout. She stopped, ashamed of her haste, but hesi- tated only a minute. The little hanging veranda-lamp lighted up the faces of the two friends as they came up the steps, arm in arm, and the joy, and con- tentment, and happiness written there, would have been significant to a denser mind and less sympathetic heart than Angelica's. She had never seen her aunt look as radiant and as beautifulg and the only thing she could liken Mr. Roberts to, was a victor leading off, in triumph, a priceless treasure-and she was well pleased with the simile. She rushed into her aunt's outstretched arms, with the tears streaming down her cheeks. Then, half laughing, half crying she managed to say through her tears:- q Now, Aunt Marie, will you ever doubt my predictions again? And Mr. Roberts did not leave the next day.