In A Field

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Title:     In A Field
Author: Margery Verner Reed [More Titles by Reed]

A CHILD of three or four was playing in the tall grass among the nodding buttercups and daisies. I watched her as she played. She seemed a fit companion of the flowers, this sweet babe. I longed to feel the touch of her little fingers on my face.

But as I advanced to where she was playing I stopped abruptly with the sense of sudden chill. My heart even grew cold.

Was I having a vision, was it an intuition of the future--or was this a meaningless phantom!

I had been reading of late a modern philosopher whose translator had made much use of that somewhat ghostly word. Perhaps that was what had given rise to this inexplicable thing. For as I stood there watching the child there flashed across my consciousness a changing vision of her destiny.

It was terrible.

It struck me that it might be better if she could be taken now while innocent and sweet.

I caught myself back from the act of judging life and death.

I had been the momentary victim of a freakish fancy.

I gazed at the child again, and I saw a strange thing, as clearly as I see you now.

She, a young woman, was standing amidst scattered wilted flowers, with parted lips and wide horrified eyes. It seemed a land far off, some land under the burning sun.

She cried out, a cry of anguish. She was there to hide from herself and tortured by the memory of what she once had been.

I saw her again, this time on the sea, still trying to escape from herself, from the tyranny of her lost innocence.

And then I saw her in a rapid succession of scenes, again and again--gambling places, drinking,--sometimes listless and distraught--sometimes forced and eager--with wonderful, costly jewels. But they were too heavy. The price of them was weighing upon her soul.

THEN a grave, alone under leaden skies of some Northern country. No flowers now, only the moaning wind--the cold rain.

I LIFTED the child in my arms and kissed her.

[The end]
Margery Verner Reed's short story: In A Field

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