Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1925-05-07
he Vanishing Men

L
| state.
Unfortunately the unpleasant flavor
which had attached itself to the mem
DRY of his visit to Beconshire Heath
still clung. He could see Lady Ben
ham-that good old soul who had in
sisted that she never be addressed by
her title-beaming at him as she told
him how sorry she was that business
had called him away so suddenly. He
fels guilty Of the polite lie he had told
to make his exit from the lives of the
Benhams. He could see Muriel's cold
hard expression when, having pressed
her lips to his, she found no response
and told him at once that she hated
him. He would never see her again,
and though it had been none Of his
/ fault, or at least not in large measure,
there would be certain impression in
her mind that he had willfully dis
/ lodged her from her correct and virtu-
Gus pedestal. and Colonel Elversby Ben
hama good friend, provided with a
sense of humor--could not fail to see
the affair through his beloved sisters
unimaginative eyes, Peter had tried
to reach him and found that on forty
eight hours notice he had gone to Mes
opotamia.
Above all, Peter had gone to Eng
land to do a certain thing-to meet
the strange Brena Selcoss and at Ben
hams challenge dissolve the mystery
which surrounded her. All that he had
accomplished SO far had been to look
! once into her wonderful eyes from a
distance and hear from Muriel that
terrible and unspeakable and undis-
closed horrors awaited the man upon
whom this extraordinary young woman,
with her mixture of Grecian and Irish
blood, her gorgeous hair and jersey
cream skin, her American origin and
her inexplicable English isolation, be-
slowed her favor.
! Peter had always said that many men
were really two persons-one, the ac-
tor in life, clothed with a body of flesh
and bone; the other, second person
atty without tangible reality, but who,
/ as counselor possessed of q voice al
most audible, often advised caution,
sometimes played the role of con-
science, was always a friend, but
sometimes took on a damnable, patron
izing manner. 1t was this invisible
friend who had advised Peter to shut
himself up with his attempts at verse
writing and had led him to procure
passage home it was Peter himself who
knew very well that he would not go on
board the Aquitania, that he had come
to England to meet some kind of a
witch woman, that he had seen her
great dark eyes once and saw them
gazing at him out of every corner now,
| that he had committed himself to find
ing out all that was to be known of her
and that in the end he would do some
unconservative, break-neck thing to
throw himself with crash of conven-
lions into her lap and note what hap
pened afterward.
Peters determination, making ready
to reject every advice of his counsel
ing and invisible second personality,
was completely wasted. Brena Selcoss
acted first.
On the third afternoon of his rest
lessness, when the night was falling
and the fog leaned on the exterior OF
! the window panes of his room like a
pile of wet sleeps wool, he had start
ed lyric twenty-five times and TWEEN
| ty-two times baked for meter or ex-
pressive word, had crumpled up the
sheet of paper and thrown it at a
wastebasket. His pencil was blunt !;
! the crumpled sheets, in the evil gray
| light of late afternoon, having missed
their receptacle, lay around the floor
as ii DeWolfe's product were not
poetry but snowballs.
"Pm a nice chump to be writing
verses" he said to himself In the mir
ror. "You look less Of poet than
| liOn-tamer."
Some of Peters friends who are able
! to realize that this man who can play
polo like centaur actually is the au-
thor Of the lines beginning, "Call We to
the souls Of shadows would have
agreed with him. There were strips
of interviewer muscle upon his bare
brown forearms and firmness about
his mouth, both frightened little by
his service with the army, and if there
is a poet in him it is as a Virginia
farmer once told him, "a streak of
something" perhaps indeed part of
that fundamental essence of Peter
which calls him to a many-sided life.
AS he looked at his own troubled
face in the mirror the telephone bell
rang.
"Are you there?" inquired the opera
tor, using the conventional London
phrase. Fright! Wait, please"
He heard voice which came out of
distance like voice which comes
nearer through a damp grove of dark
green trees, like an aroma which comes
forward on the wind, until it rose
slowly to it's full power. When the
words were distinguishable he knew
that some one was asking for him.
eyes, said he, for the moment en-
thralled by the warmth and rhythm of
that voice.
ST Ynl1St see VOu''