I could find out where she is on the road, I might still write and explain all," he thought, with a gleam of hope that quickly faded as he recalled the treacherous nature of his rival.
"If I wrote to her, he would intercept my letter. He will be on the watch for that. There is no use trying and hoping. I have lost her forever—bonny, brown-eyed Geraldine!" he sighed, hopelessly.
As he returned to his work at the engine-house, he felt as if he had just closed the coffin-lid over a well-beloved face.
Such hopes and dreams as had come to him since he met fair Geraldine were hard to relinquish; they had brought such new brightness into his prosaic life; but he felt that all was over now.
True, he felt that he had made a strong impression on the girl's heart, but his rival would soon teach her to forget that he had ever existed.
But in a few days hope began unconsciously to reassert itself. He decided to call on Cecilia Carroll to inquire if she had any news.
He went that evening, and she told him that Geraldine had not written yet.
"But I found out from a manager the proposed route of the company, and I have written to her, and told her about you," she added, out of the kindness of her heart.
"Clifford Standish will take good care that she never receives your letter," he said, bitterly, as he told her how the actor had intercepted the note he had sent to Geraldine.
"I suspected as much, the grand villain!" cried Cissy, indignantly. "So now I shall write to her again and expose him!"
She did so, but no answer came to either of her letters.
Clifford Standish was too wily to permit Geraldine to receive them. He easily got possession of her mail, and destroyed it without a pang of remorse at his selfish heart.
CHAPTER XII.
THE LETTER THAT NEVER CAME
"Write me a letter, my dear old friend,
I love you more and more,
As farther apart we drift, dear heart,
And nearer the other shore.
The dear old loves and the dear old days
Are a balm to life's regret;
It's easy to bear the worry and care
If the old friends love us yet."
Yes, pretty Geraldine, piqued and unhappy over her cruel disappointment in love, had joined the Clemens Company, the manager of which was also one of the actors—Cameron Clemens. He played the clever villain in "Hearts and Homes," his special play, while Clifford Standish took the hero's part.
Geraldine threw her whole heart into her work, and succeeded so well that she was promoted in a week, owing to the illness and withdrawal of the second lady from the company. It was the part of an ingenue, which just suited Geraldine's youth and naivette. She could act it to perfection without laying aside her pretty naturalness of manner.
They traveled from town to town, staying just a night or two in each place, usually drawing full houses, and Geraldine proved a great attraction, winning always so much admiration that it was a wonder her pretty little head was not turned by flattery.
It might have been had not her heart been so sore over its brief, broken love-dream.
To have known a man but two brief, bright, happy days, and not be able to forget him, it was absurd, she thought, in desperate rebellion against her own heart.
And yet, through the busy weeks of travel, study, and acting, Harry Hawthorne's image staid in her mind, and his voice rang through her dreams, sweet and low and tender as it had always been to her whenever he spoke.
In her waking hours she knew him light and false; in her dreams he was always tender and true, and inexpressibly dear.
"Last night in my deep sleep I dreamed of you—
Again the old love woke in me and thrived
On looks of fire, on kisses, and sweet words
Like silver waters purling in a stream—
A dream—a dream!"
Through all the changing days in which the silent struggle against a hopeless love went on in her young heart, Clifford Standish was ever near, patient, tender, devoted, telling her with his yearning eyes the love she was not ready to listen to yet.
And in spite of herself, Geraldine found a subtle comfort in his devotion.
It was a balm of healing to her proud heart, so deeply wounded by Harry Hawthorne's trifling.
Many hearts have been caught in the rebound in this fashion, many true loves won.
True, there are many proud ones who do not prize a love they can only have because it has been scornfully refused by another.
They will say, resentfully:
"I will not accept a love that is given me only because it was left by one who did not prize it."
Others, more humble, will gladly accept the grateful love of a wounded heart that finds consolation in their tenderness.
Clifford Standish, madly in love with Geraldine, was glad to accept such crumbs of love as might fall to him from the royal feast that had been spread for Harry Hawthorne.
So he hovered by her side, he paid her the most delicate attentions, anticipating every wish, and found ample reward as he saw himself gaining in her grateful regard.
At the same time the arch-traitor was intercepting the few letters that came to her, and the ones she wrote to Miss Carroll.
For Geraldine had long ago gotten over her pet with her friend, since she know in her heart how dear she was to Cissy, and that the girl had advised her for her own good.
Geraldine had found out that the career of an actress—even a young, pretty, and popular one—is not always strewn with roses.
She had to study hard, and she did not enjoy traveling all day, or even half a day, and then appearing on the boards at night. Sometimes the hotel accommodations of country towns where they stopped over were wretchedly indifferent. Sometimes her head ached miserably, but she must appear on the boards, all the same. And the free-and-easy ways of some of the company did not please the fastidious taste of the girl.
Now and then she found her thoughts returning to the old days behind the counter at O'Neill's with Cissy and the other girls, with an almost pathetic yearning. Secretly she longed to be back again.
How she wished that Cissy would write to her now, and beg her to return, so that she might have an excuse for following the dictates of her heart.
At last, believing that Cissy was too proud and stubborn to write first, she penned her a long, affectionate letter, through which breathed an underline of repentance and regret that her chum would be sure to answer it by writing:
"Come home, dear. I told you that you would get sick of being an actress."
But Geraldine was too weary and heart-sick to care for a hundred "I-told-you-so's" from the triumphant Cissy. What did it matter so that she got back to her dear old chum again and their cozy little rooms, and even to what she had once called her slavery behind the counter.
She recalled what Harry Hawthorne had told her about it being a slavery of the stage, too; then put the thought from her with an impatient sigh.
"What do I care what he said about it?" indignantly, then sighing, "even though I have found it to be, alas, too true!"
She wrote her letter to Cissy, and after that her heart felt lighter. She knew her chum would be glad to get the letter—glad to have her back.
"Dear, I tried to write you such a letter
As would tell you all my heart to-day.
Written Love is poor; one word were better!
Easier, too, a thousand times to say.
"I