The sunny South. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1875-1907, February 15, 1879, Image 1

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

I I I % W Hmns COUi'CTlOiY J. H. & W B. SEALS, J SSwtors ATLANTA, 6A., SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1879. TERMS! $3 PER ANNUM IN ADVANCE. .NO. 189. Tlie Winter Winds. BT MKS. MAKY WAKE. The winter winds are chili and wild, The winter sky is black as doom. And here and there a ragged child, Is struggling through the murky gloom. The winter sky is pitiless— The frozen earth is chill, and gray— But human hearts that throb with life, Alas ! are colder far than they! The sky is mottled in its gloom— The earth is wrapped in shadow deep, But human hearts are wrapped in self, And cannot see their fellows weep! God pity the poor child of want! And pity those who cannot feel; Supply to each, his greatest need, And be with all through woe and weal! Under The Snow. ;bv s. m. A.C . The world without isagleam with snow, Within is the Christmas tide; Now wheeling swift, now circling slow, The waltzers merrily glide ; “ What magic spell hath the baleful power To shadow this time of glow?” -,I dream, 1 dream, 1 am made a flower And shrouded under the snow.” “You are fanciful—and yet not so— O rose of the world most fair, With your starry eyes and your breast of snow And wonderful shining hair, My life is set to your sweet refrain, Each heart-throb I would know.” “ My soul is sad for the streamlet's pain, Ice-fettered under the snow.” “ Look not from the win low. The world is chill Atd weird in its robe of white, The graveyard over the western hill Shows ghastly clear to night. Each hillock old is a crested wave, The North wind waileth low ;” *,I know 1 shall feel, when they makemy grave, The pitiful fall of the snow.” Her lips are yours In their velvet bloom, Her eyes lii their starry pride; You hoid her close, as thro’ gleam and gloom The waltzers merrily glide; One hillside grave you have quite forgot, Yet all too well I know, Your kisses thrill, nor your clasp warms not, Her heart is under the snow. She listened to him without a word beyond ran>ing of her hand as if to ward off a blow. Slllll, '111 Lilt IIID; —OR— A Woman’s Sin and its Pun ishment. BY SIAEY E. BKYAN. (CONCLUDED.) In the softly lighted, luxuriantly warmed par lor of a fashionable hotel, Bertha sat waiting for an expt cted visitor. Some remnant ot a teeling that bad once tyrannized over her being had made her dress herself with peculiar care. Her g arnet velvet robe lay in gleaming folds over the oor, soft laces were at her throat and a twist of pearls with a ruby clasp. If she had been too pale, a touch of 'French rouge had given the needed tone to her complexion and brilliancy to her eyts, that turned restlessly to the door. Suddenly the color deepened under the rouge; a man’s graceful, perfectly proportioned iigere stood on the threshold of the room. But she rose to receive him wiih a queenly seli'-poses- sicn, and met with calmness the bold yet soft glance of his superb eyes and tbo half gallant, half mocking smile with which he bent over her hand. He wool 1 have raised it to his lips, but she drew it quietly away and stood looking at him critically from head to foot, while he laced the scrutiny with a look at once amused, care less and enquiring. ‘You are »s handsome as ever,’ she said at last. ‘The years have not changed you; they never do change soul lets things.’ •Thanks. Time has changed you only to make you more captivating, 1 he said, with that smile that one was sure would be seen to be a sneer if the black, soft moustache did not so shade his month. ‘But why do you speak so hastily cam mea, do you grudge me my poor good looks ?‘ •No, I am glad of them;they will help do what I want.* ‘I inferred from your letter that you wished something of me, though I cannot conceive how I can be of service to Madame, who commands the Sesame ot money, and who, since the thous ands of her obligingly deceased grandfather have fallen into her hands, h&sforgotten her olct friend.’ •Friend !’ Bertha’s sneer was intensely bitter. ‘Enemy, tempter, destroyer!’ ‘He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Wbet tragic tones and epithets ! Pity I have not verve euough to enjoy them; so true is it that one’s tmoiions depend on their dinners. How expect a bread emotion from a narrow din ner? M;iie have been aepressingly contracted. The recollection of them brings me back to bus iness. You want something of me. I am at your Eerc ice, ready to do mon possible far—a surah cash consideration. I am frightfully cut of pocket. ‘ ‘Yet your dress is the perfection of elegance. 1 ‘Ah ! mafoi, one nits! dies.s well, if one starves to do it. Society tolerates a hungry stomach but not a shabby coat. I am bere, as I wrote you, with no money and nothing to do. Had a place in a pretty tair company in Paris, but the prime, must needs have a j-alous husband who miscon strued a few little professional attentions, and there was a quarrel, and yon know I dislike un pleasantnesses. 1 have had other bad fortune — been devilish unlucky in play, and, in short, am regularly thrown out for the season.* ‘Why do yon not raise a troupe of your own and take them West?* ‘Why don‘t I finish the Washington Monu ment? I could do that just as well as I could raise money to get np a troupe and go traveling with it. ‘ It will take but little money. You need only third or fourth rate talent. You have talent and versatility ©Dough to supply many deficiencies. I will advance the money and supply the Star.* 'You? Will you gt on the stage again men- n-t V— | z -' ‘I beg yon will call me no such names, Adol- l phe. I do not choose to be mocked. No, I will 'not go on the stage again, but I have a girl with me here, beautiful as Diana,graceful, gifted with a voice that one hears but once in a cen tury and with an in-born passion for the stage. I want you to draw out and foster that passion and use all your eloquence to make her believe in the noble mission of the stage.* •Its noble mission! Now that’s amusing.* ‘You must never sneer at it though where she is, She is totally unsophisticated a perfect babe in the woods. She has been taught that it is not right for women to act: I have given her other lessons and she has learned them eagerly, but there is yet much to be done. Talk to her in your fervid impassioned way of your noble art make her believe herself one of the chosen, get her consent to go on the stage under your auspices. Give her a Star role. My word for it, she will fill it well. ‘ ‘You give me a delightful part to p’ay. What other leesons shall I learn your wonderful protege ?‘ ‘No other, Adolpbo Verdier. The girl is pure as mountain snow. You cannot cemprehend such purity. Address yourself only to her intellect, make her an actress-not a vic tim. Dare to disregard my wishes and yo* shall repent it- I will close my parse against yon; and I wilt betray you to the police.* ‘You will not carry out that last threat, my angel, for to do it would he to expose yourself, in a great measure, aud if my shrewdness is not ! For she loved Adolph-tor rather she lov, d the ' devoted artint—the nolle, generous man, with the charm of a inystericus, and sorrowful hig her senses bewilderingly**s 3he lay unsleeping on her pillow that nig,., remembering how eloquently he had desorilit'd the stage, and the beauty, the freedom -n artistic; delights of a life devoted to inteyr»bf JxiU e.Drama. ffTpi irittCT— tit"■heau 1 that Apollo might bavoei.vied—upon his hard cotton pillow and mntteing;* ‘A VeDne truly; but Von Lieu what an en fant? Such guileleea e.wsi If I were not eo blase here might be a sematien. But it seems almost a pity—as if one should hnrt a child. However, the blame be oi Bertha’s head. Did she think ‘ And here Adolph, who wa* conveniently void of a conscience, dropped off to sleep. This was the beginning In a week there had been such progress tha Sylvia was studying the first part in a popular alsy nndsr ths instruc tion of her two disintensted frisnds, Adolph found no difficulty in gating together a troupo of nnsmploved, profetsionals, and aftsr a number of rehearsals anda hurried getting up o f costumes and other appurtenances, the troupe took its departure. Pocr Sylvia was like one wrapped in the glamounf enchantment. She heard and eaw s few dBeirdant things in her britf association with the other members of the troupe, but they failed a» yet to raise the veil and give bar a glimpse into the ignoble reality of hsr beautiful dream. India beauty atd splendid gifts of Adolph Verdiw, (who wa* strictly on his good behavior for the time aad concealed effectually thsr«cklsss, dissipated, unprincipled proclivities that had kept him from all success) she seemed to see a type of the profession to which he belonged, the profession, to which she now consecrated herseil with all the ardor of a pure, impassioned imagination, f xalted by love. stood looking at her with a strange expression in her sallow, bony face. •Yon have come for Sylvia,* Bertha said. ‘She is not——’ i j might not be too late. She started up with | more than her wonted energy. She threw her pu'se fnto the woman's lap. ‘Go, ‘ she commanded, and she herself rushed from the house, and hurrying to the telegraph office sent two messages across the wires to that western town where she knew Verdier s small troupe was playing. She came baok toberhou-e aDd waited for the answer, walking the floor in agony. Suddenly she started, she heard Hart- ridge s step in the hall; he had come in without ling or announcement. A sight of his rigid, white face as he entered smote her with fresh apprehension. She sank into a seat and said faintly: ‘You have seen Sylvia?* He came to the end of the lounge and looked at her. Such a look ! It was as though cold steely points were piercing her heart. And Lis voice, when he spoke, was unnaturally cold and calm: ‘I have seen Sylvia, yes,‘ he sail, ‘Ihave seen her in her coffin. She is dead by her own band—accidentally it is said, but I know Letter. Your work is accomplished.* She listened to him without a word ora move ment beyond an involuntary raising of her hand as if to ward off a blow. He went on; ‘If remorse could reach you f r the ruin of an innocent, motherless ‘ She sprang up suddenly, and brought her white, terrible face close to his. ‘Motherless !• she shrieked. ‘ ‘/am her mother, I, her murderer am her mother. She is my child mine. ‘ She fell to the floor in a quivering heap. He stood looking at her a moment, with no soften ing in his stony face. •Then I leave yon to your punishment.* he said, and quitted the house. Terrible was that punishment, for before morniDg, Bertha Huntly was a maniac. No gleam of reason ever after visited her brain. And her victim—poor Sylvi*. She, who might have been the blest wife of one of the truest and tenderest men on earth—the mystery of her death was never cleared away. Adolphe Yerdier and the others asserted, that it was accidental— the rbsalt of a too realistic rehearsal of a tragic stage-scene in her own room, but few believed it so. Looking at her sweet, calm face in her ‘No I haven't come for $vlvia. I hav° mouf, coffin, Hartridge felt that his lily had been tin- ... , . -• fa* f t ,.*Sr3«r t o iae'lajfc. >ifr n»iu i'o b.unssit that Bur at fault, you aim at ignoring the past and sai’- ir.g under very while colors, if not for society 's sake, then for some one's in particular. You rever cared for society; was always bohemian; But that heart of yours :! I know whst a fiery | uncontrollable thing it is. It is that which troubles you now. I can see through your solicitude "for this white-souled Diana that you wish to transform into the star of a poor little batched up, fourth rate theatrical company and sent c ff out west. The girl stands in your way, and you mean to put her out ot it, yet yen don‘t wish her victimized. Yon put her in the hawk's nes‘, yet tell him to keep his claws sheathed. I don't understand your soft heart- ednees, my Bertha. I thought if any dared come between you and the o'jeet of^ that fierce love of yours, you would be as cruel as Queen Eleanor‘8 self. I remember once ‘ ‘Hush ;I have commanded you re mr to bring uu tbe past. I have told you what I wish: I will gc* and bring the girl, but remember if ‘ •Pshaw: 1 interrupted the man, frowning im periously and giving his mustache an angry twirl.* I will not Larm the girl. I am utterly sick of women and affairs of the heart. I am alter money now; a much mors important thing.- ’And you promise * T do, without reserve, I am in no mood for love making. I am growing too old for it, Bertha. Do be reasonable. ‘ •Too old ! He looked as if eternal youth and beanty were his birth-right. But Bertha believed or tried to think tl.a! sue belifved he would regard her threat, if not his promise and she went out and presently returned with Sylvia Fane. She had said to her, •The friend I once spoke to you of on the mountains, is here; come and see him,' And soon Adolphe Yerdier was bending low over the girl's slender hand and she stood, her pure cheeks flushing under the ardent yet respectful homage of those splendid eyes. How rich his voice was; what a charm in his smile, in that graceful, gallant, delightful foreign manner, with its subtly disguised flattery of look and gesture. Then his singing!-a rich tenor that might have made his fortune had he taken the trouble to train it. He sang a duett from H Trovatore with Bertha and his tones thrilled the mountain girl, as no sounds ever had before. That voice and those eyes possessed tory—which she beiievtd him to be A letter came to her from Hartridge before she left, but she hardly read it. Another took months to oil now tuan bSeaa jo fill thorn wi •I‘ve come though to get you to pay for two years* feeding and clothing of the girl. I'm pretty sure its your right to do it by law.’ ‘By law, Mrs. Fane ?‘ “Yrs; if I’m not mistaken; and I don’t think lam. Aint your real name Bertha Miller? Yes, I see it is by your face—I thought I knew that face when 1 saw you first, though I had never seen it except in a picture. I ransacked for that picture among my things, bnt 5 it only turned up last week. Hare it is.” She ran her hand in her pocket, and drawing out a faded photograph, laid it down on the table before Bertha Miller. Faded, but it was Bertha's own face, fresher and more trustful and caDdid in look, but still her face, and she stared at it as if it had been a ghost suddenly upstart ed. Presently, she turned it over. Oa the back was written, ‘VaDderis from Bertha Miller.’ The woman standing over her laid her bony forefinger on the words. “He wrote that. I took the picture from him after I found him out and knew he had left me for you. He was my lawful husband, though he left me, before my second child was born, and pretended to marry you. He was never your husband, though it may be you thought so, for they told me you took on dreadful when you knew you had been deceived, and threatened him aDd ran off so distracted yon left your child behind. And when you came back he was gone, and so was the child. He didn’t come to me. I never saw him nor heard from him till years afterwards, when he came to my honse, an old-looking broken man, without a dollar in hia pocket. He wa* nothing to me; I had given him up and look baok my father’s name, but he wss my children's father, and I gave him money, and pure soul bewildered and terrified at the sud den revelation of wickedness around her—the downfall of her beautiful ideals, the insight into the treachery of the woman she had trusted so fully and the man she believed in and loved —terrified and horror-smitten at finding herself in the midst of and surrounded by snoh evil, she had freed herself from it by the first means that suggested itself to her frenzied mind. Her own hapd had set free the dove from the cruel net spread for it—had “Broken a rose before the 6torm destroyed it.” in the deep, tender ueaniDg of the written off again. ^ It was ^ then he gave me words, aud, Bertba, as she crashed the ietter in her baud, hardened ilier heart sgaiDst the girl she felt strangely pitiful to, ia spite of her cruel scheme against her. As soou as they were gmo, Bertha went back tob»rhome. Hartridge oime at once. He hardly noticed the heightened olor, the eager passion in her eyes as she came forward to meet him. ‘How long it seems siioe I saw you ! ‘were her first words. ‘Where is Sylvia Faoe?’ was his abrupt question. She blanched, and sataer teeth hard, but she answered lightly. ‘Haye you not heard ? She has left me, to be a wandering star. She lecame stage-toad and has joined a troupe and ;one west. She would not listen to RDy rernon ’ •Woman, f vise friend, this is your work,’ Hart- ridge interrupted, seizin; her arm and locking into her white face ancTVoweriag eyes. Your own work, Temptress. You have ruined her; you have rumed me. I will never see your face again.’ The iceberg had indeed a cove of fire. It seeemed to have withered her, t.s she lay, crouched on the flocf after he had left her. But she rallied after a while; she wouid not despair, especially new that Sylvia was gone. She wrote him a long jlausible letter, which part ly served her purpose, and resolved to wait the developments of Time. But though softened to wards her, in part, he would not visit her. He shnt himself in his stndy, and bent to business with unsparing devotion. But one night he dreamed that Sylvia stretched her arms to him across a black gulf and appealed to him with eyes of such piteous wretchedness that they haunted him next da/ aud forced him to shat np bis books and his office and go in search of the troupe, of whose course a western newspaper had informed him. Bertha heard of his depart ure, bat beiievng he weald never take a wife from behind the footlights, she did not gness his int«ntioB. While h« was gone, she had an nnlooked for visit. Mrs Fane came to see her —stalked abruptly into ker room one day and that picture and told me to burn it. He sai you bad been his ruin with your fair face. He said he had seen you, that you had taken up with some play actor and had gone on the stage; and when you asked about your child, he told you it was dead, and you had burst into crying. He was surprised at that, and almost sorry he had not tnld yon the truth.” “The truth ! What do you mean woman—was it not true that my child—my little Lily was dead ?” “No; she wa« living. Re had put her in a convent. He »as Catholic yen know, and she stayed th~?e till he died. She thought you wrr- dead, and grew up “ “Grew up? Aiercilai'Gid! Mrs. Fane, tell me where, who is my child ? ’ “Where she is, yon know beftsr than I do. Who is she? Why she’s Sylvia Fane, and that's wh . I come to a«k yon for—Good gracious ! the woman has fainted ! Help ! Come here, you girl-" But Bertha recovered without help and rose up phaefiy, terrible to look at. Her child? The iitti* b be that had drawn its life from her breast whe- ; . she was hersslf little more than a child— the little partner in these early sorrows and wrongs that had changed a loving high-souled gir* into a bard, bitter, reckless woman. Ah, but if she had had the child to stay with her, to lay its cheek sgaia-t htr’s and clasp her neck with loving arms, she would not have been so nckless, the child’s love would have saved her. How often hud she longed to clasp it and stretch ed ont her empty arms in the wretched lonely night! Now she understood why Sylvia Fane’s sweet face had touched her so, why she had felt that strange yearning for the girl she had yet made her victim—the girl she had sent to her ruin, the dove she had put into the cage of the same beautiful remorseless falcon whose talons had pierced her heart. Oh. what horror was in tbe thought! Her child ! that noble.trusting girl whom she had plotted against so basely. Oh, if it were not yet too late ! She took up Sylvia s last letter—brief, incoherent, tear-blot ted. It was more than two weeks old, yet it I’ve a Utter from thy sire, Baby mine, baby mine; He‘s coming home or lie's a liar, Baby mine, baby mine; He is now chuck full of wine, He is coming o'er the Ithine,^ He had better hide his sign, Baby mine, baby mine. He had better come in scon, Bab- mine, baby mine; I-vebeen waiting since bigh noon, Baby mine, baby mine; I am waiting with a broom, I will chase him ‘round the room, While his nose shines through the gloom, Baby mine, baby mine. Cold Comfokt.—Algernon, under her window in the cold, white moonlight, with a tender ex pression, says: ‘Tis the la-hast rose o-hof stammer, Le-heft bloo-homing alo-none; All its li-hnv-ler companions Ak-lia fa-deh-bed and go-hone— Voice of pa from next window, strained and cracked like,as though the old gentleman didn t have time to look for r is store teeth. ‘All right, young man, all right; just pin a newspaper over it to save it from the frost, and we ll take it in with the rest of the plants in the morning.’ How beautiful is science! A few days ago an academician, rising in his place, made in a tone of the deepest earnestness, the following annoure - ment: ‘Gentlemen, it is with unspeakable satis faction that I have the honor of informing you that thanks to the most persevering efforts. M. P—, our correspondent of the Maritime Alps, has succeeded in inoecu’ating a man with the mange of a dog, a cutaneous disease, which thus far has seemed wholly incompatible with the human temperament.’ {Prolonged enthu siasm .) We have ceased to envy Beaconsfield; he is seventy-three years old. If there is anybody in the world we do envy, it is the young gentle man on the other side of the street, who is mak ing faces and calling us names. He doesn’t go to school, has hulled six bushels of walnuts this tali with his bare bauds, wears his father’s vest for an overcoat, is thirteen years old, and has eaten eleven apples since U o’clock this morning. A countryman drove into Xenia, Ohio, the other day with some friends to meet a train Arriving at the depot, a freight train was stand ing on the side track and the countryman, not seeing any convenient place to tie up, delibe rately hitched his horse to the rear car of the freight and proceeded to promenade tbe walks around the depot while waiting for his train. What was his surprise when he saw his hitek- ing-post pull out for Cincinnatti, with his horse and wagon bringing up the rear iu not the bests of order. It would not be proper to record the remarks of the yonng man on the subject. •No woman of proper self-respect,’ says a wo man’s rights journal, discussing the marriage ceremony, ‘will submit to be given away.’ Per haps not; but, dear woman’s right, to be ‘given away’ is not the worst feature of the ceremony. She is too otteu ‘sold.’