Newspaper Page Text
*
VOL. VII
J• ii. & W, B» SKA r.«}pKoppjF.'n'jRs.
ATLANTA, GA., SEPTEMBER 10, 1SS1.
Terms In Advance:
Single,Copy, 5e.
NO. 317
Love and Money.
“Love is potent, but money is omnipotent.”
Out in the twilight, a’one in the lane.
All the old sweetness steals o’er me again 1
All the old longing, forgotten of late.
Stirs in my heart as I stand at her gate !
Silent and dim is the cottage to-night
Smothered in roses, cream tinted and white
Jessamine blossoms besprinkle the sod.
Dusky and still are the paths that she trod.
Oh. for one moment to meet her. and see
Just the old look, that shone only for me I
Why am 1 sighing here—what can I do?
“L'amour fail beaucop, mais V argent fait tout/c
Little white Rose, there were true knights of
old—
Heroes who counted love dearer than gold ;
Men with strong arms, who could fight for their
way;
Why were we born in this world of to-day?
Why does society smite with a sneer
Wretches who wed on three hundred a year ?
Why—But a truce to these follies of mine!
I am no knight of the diys of lang sine:
Only a lounger with duns at his heels,
Only a dreamer who maunders and feels.
Only a trifler who sighs after you;
“L'amour fait beaucop, mais l'argent fait tout!"
Safe in the cottage that nobody knows.
Sleep, and forget me, my little white Rose !
Heartsick anil weary. I turn from your gate,
Tired of the strife betwixt passion and fate;
There will he parting and pain if we meet;
Better to leave you than grieve you my sweet;
Aye, it is true, as some poets can tell.
Love is best proved with a silent farewell.
Out in the twilight I wander again.
Through the deep gloom of the oak shadowed
lane
Back to the crowd that cares nothing for you ;
“L'amour fait beaucop, main Vargent fait tout!"
—Selected.
THE TWO EXILES.
(Concluded )
The autumn rains set in early, and the
winter was unusually severe. Arnold had a
purpose which kept him hard at work and
very happy in those days.
During the long December nights he was
shut up in his office, plodding on his maps
and papers, or smoking in dreamy comfort
by the fire. He was seldom interrupted, for
he had earned a reputation socially in the
consequences. On the evening of New Year’s
day be crowed the street to the Dyers’ and
asked for Mi s Newell. She presently greet
ed him in the parlor, where she looked, Ar
nold thought, more than ever out of place
among the bead-baskets, and splint-frames
inclosing photographs of deceased members
of the Dyer family, and the pallid walls,pene-
tential chairs, and crude imaginings in worst
ed work. Her apparent unconsciousness of
these abominations was another source of
irritation. It is always irritating to a man
to see a charming woman in an unhappy and
false position, where he is powerless to help
her. Arnold had not expected it would be a
very exliilerating occasion,—he remembered
the Dyer parlor,—but it was even less pleas
ant than he had expected. Captain Dyer
was there, and told a great many stories in a
loud, tiring voice. Miss Frances sat by with
some soft white knitting in her hands, and
her attitude of patient attention made Arnold
long to attack her with some savage pleasant
ries ou the subject of Christmas in a mining
camp. It seemed to him that patience was a
virtue which could be carried too far, even in
woman. Ttei Mrs. Dyer came in, and ma
noeuvred her husband out into the passage;
after some loud whispering there, she succeed
ed in getting tim into the kitchen, and shut
the door. Arnold got up soon after that, and
said good-evening.
Miss Newell remained in the parlor for
some time, moving softly about. She had
gathered her knitting closely into her clasped
bands; the ball trailed after her, among the
legs of the chairs, and when in her silent
promenade she had spun a grievous tangle of
wool she sat down, and dropped the work out
of her hands with a helpless gesture. Her
head drooped, and tears trickled slowly be
tween the slender white fingers which cover
ed her face. Presently the fingers descended
to her throat and clasped it close, as if to still
an intolerable throbbing ache which her half
suppressed tears had left.
At length she rose, picked up her work, and
patiently followed the tangled clew until she
had recovered her ball; then she wound it ail
up neatly, wrapped the embroidery in a thm
white handkerchief, and went to her room.
With the fine March weather, fine in spite
of the light rains, the engineer was laying out
a road to the new shaft. It wound along the
hill-side where Miss Newell had first seen the
green trees by the spring. The engineer’s
orders included the building of a flume, carry
ing the water down from the Chilano’s plan
tation into a tank built on the ruins of the
rock which had guarded the sylvan spring.
The discordant voices of a gang of Chinamen
profaned the stillness which had framed Miss
Frances’ girlish laughter ; the blasting of the
rock had loosened, to their fall, the clustering
trees above, and the brook below was a mass
of trampled mud.
The engineer’s visits to the spring gave him
no pleasure in those days. He felt that he
was the inevitable instrument of its desecra
tion; but over the bill, just in sight from the
spring, carpenters were putting a new piazza
round a cottage that stood remote from the
camp, where a spur of the hills descended
steeply towards the valley. Arnold took a
great interest in this cottage He was fre
quently to be seen there in the evening,
tramping up and down the new piazza, and
offering to the moon, which looked in through
the boughs of a live oak at the end of the
piazza, the incense of his lonely cigar. Some
times he would take the key of the front door
from his pocket, enter the silent house, and
wander from one room to another, like a
restless but not unhappy ghost. The moon
light, touching his face, showed it strangely
stirred and softened. His was no melancholy
madness.
Arnold was leaning on the gate of this cot
tage one afternoon, when the sc* >ol mistress
came down the trail from th - camp. She
did not appear to see him, but turned off the
trail at a little distance from the cottage, and
took her way across the hill behind it. Ar
nold watched her a few minutes, and then
followed, overtaking her on the hills above
the new road, where she had sat witn Nicky
Dyer nearly a year ago. ,
•‘I don’t like to see you wandering about
here alone,” he said. “The men on the road I
are a scratch gang, picked up anyhow, not
GALLANTRY INI THE OLDEN TIMES. L:
like the regular miners. I hope you are not
going to the spring 1”
“Why?” said she. “Did you not d ink to
our return?”
“But you would not drink with me, so the
spell did not work; and now the spring is
gone,—all its beauty, I mean. The water is
there in a tank, where the Chinamen fill their
buckets night and morning, and the team
sters water their horses. We’ll go over there,
if you would like to see the march of modern
improvements. ”
“No,” she said; “I’m not fond of looking
at graves. Let us sit down awhile.”
A vague depression, which Arnold had
been aware of in her manner when they met,
became suddenly manifest in her paleness
and a look of dull pain in her eyes.
“I had no idea you would be so cut up
about the spring,” he said. “I wish I hadn’t
told you in that brutal way. I’m afraid I’m
not many degrees removed from the prime
val savage, after all”
“Oh, you needn’t mind,” *e said, after a
moment “That was the only thing I cared
for here, so now there will be nothing to re
gret when I go away.”
“Are you going away, then? I’m very
sorry to bear it; but of course I’m not sur
prised. You couldn’t be expected to stand it
here; those children must have been some
thing fearful”
“Oh, it wasn’t the children, particularly.”
“Well, I’m sorry. I had hoped”—
“Yes,” said she, “what is it you had
hoped?”
“That I might indirectly be the means of
making your fife less lonely here. You re
member that ‘experiment’ we talked about
at the spring?”
“That you talked about, you mean.”
“I am going to try it myself. Not because
you were so encouraging—but—it’s a risk any
way, you know, I’m not sure the circum
stances make so much difference. I’ve known
people to be wretched with all the modern
conveniences. I am going East for her in
about two weeks. How sorry she will be to
find you gone! 1 wrote to her about you.
You might have helped each other. Couldn’t
you stand it, Miss Newell don’t you think,
if you had snother girl?”
“I’m afreid not,” she said very gently.
“I must go home. You may be sure she will
not need me; you must see to it that she
doesn’t.”
They were walking back and forth on the
hill.
“I was just looking for the cottonwood
trees; are they gone too?” she asked.
“Oh, yes; there isn’t a tree left in the canon.
Don’t you envy me my work?”
“I suppose everything we do seems like
desecration to somebody. Here am I making j
history very rapidly for this colony of ants.’
She looked down with a rueful smile as she
spoke.
“I wish you had the history of the entire
species under your foot, and could finish it at
once.”
“I’mnot sure that I would; I’m not so fond
of extermination as you pretend to be.”
“Well, keep the ants if you like them, but
I am firm on the subject of the camp-chil
dren. There are blessings, you know, which
brighten as they take their flight. I pay my
monthly assessment for the doctor with the
greatest cheerfulness. If it wasn’t for him,
in this climate, they would never die.”
“Please don’t!” she said wearily. “Even I
don’t like to hear you talk like that; lam
sure she will not.”
He laughed softly. “You have often re
minded me of her in little ways; that was
what upset me at the spriDg. I was very
near telling you all about her that day,”
“I wish you had!” she said. They were
walking towards home now. “I suppose you
know it is talked of in the camp,” she said,
after a pause. “Mr. Dyer told me, and
showed me the house, a week ago. And now
1 must tell „ you about my violets. I had
them in a box in my room all winter. 1
should like to leave them as a little welcome
to her. Last night Nicky Dyer and I planted
them on the bank by the piazza under the
climbing-rose It was a secret between Nicky
and me, and Nicky promised to water them
until she came; but of course 1 meant to tell
you. Will you look at them to-night, please,
and see if Nicky has been faithful?”
“I will, indeed," said Arnold. “That is
just the kind of thing she will delight in. If
you are going East, Miss Newell, shall we not
be fellow-travell6rs? I should be glad to be
of any service.”
“No, thank you. I am to spend a month
in Santa Barbara, and escort an invalid
friend home. I shall have to say good-by,
now. Don’t go any further with me, please.”
That night Arnold mused late, leaning over
the railing of the new piazza in the moon
light. He fancied that a faint perfume of
violets came from the damp earth below; but
it could have been only fancy, for when he
searched the bank for them they were not
there The’new sod was trampled, and a
few leaves and slight, uptorn roots lay scat
tered about, with some broken twigs from i
the climbing-rose. He had found the gate j
open when he came, and the Dyer cow had
passed him, meandering peacefully up the !
trail
"The crescent moon had waxed and waned
since the night when it lighted the engineer’s
musings through the wind-parted live-oak
boughs, and another slender bow gleamed in
the pale, tinted haze of twilight. The month
had gone like a feverish dream to the young
school-mistress, as she lay in hersmall,upper
chamber, unconscions of all save alternate
light and darkness, and rest following pain.
When at last she crept down the short stair
case to breathe the evening coolness, clinging
to the stair-rail and holding her soft, wnite
draperies close around her, she saw the pink
light lingering on the mountains, and heard
tbe chorus to the Sweet By and By from the
miner’s church on the biff. It was Sunday
evening, and the home was piously “emptied
of its folk.” She took her old seat by tbe
parlor window, and looked across to the en
gineer’s office. Its windows and doors were
sunt, and the dogs of the camp were chasing
one another over the loose boards of the
piazza floor. She laughed a weak, convulsive
laugh, thinking of the engineer’s sallies of
old upon that band of Ishmaelites. and of the
scrambling, yelping rush that followed. He
b id gone East, no doubt. She looked down
tbe valley where the mountains parted sea-
weird, the only break in the continuous bar
rier of land,—interminable stretches of con
tinent, closing in about the atom of her own
identity. The thought of that immensity of
distance made her faint.
There were steps on the porch,—not Cap
tain Dyer’s, for he and his good wife were
lending their voices to swell the stentorian
cborns which was shaking the chnrch on tbe
hill; the footsteps paused at the door, and
Arnold himself opened it. He had evidently
not expected to see her.
“I was looking for some one to ask alout
you,” he said. “Are you sure you are able to
be down again?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve been sitting up for several
days. I wanted to see the mountains
again.”
He was looking at her intently, whfle she
flushed with weakness, and drew the fringes
oi her shawl over her tremulous fingers.
“How ill you have been! I have wished
myself a woman, that I might do something
for you! I suppose Mrs. Dyer nursed you
like a horse.”
“Oh, no; she was very good; but I don’t
remember much about the worst of it, I
thought you had gone home.”
“Home! Where do you mean? I didn’t
know I had ever boasted of any reserved
rights of that kind. I have no mortgage, in
fact, or sentiment, on any part of the earth’s
surface, that I’m acquainted with.”
He spoke with a hard carelessness in his
manner which made her shrink.
“I mean the East. I am homeless, too,but
all the East seems like home to me.”
“You had better get rid of those sentiment- I
al, backward fancies as soon as possible. The I
East concerns itself very little about us, I
can tell you! It can spare usj”
She thrilled with pain at his words.
“I should think you would be the last one
to say so,—you who have so much treasure
there.” EMM*
“Will you please to understand,” he said,
turning upon her a face of bitter calmness,
“that 1 have no treasure anywhere—not even
in heaven.”
She sat perfectly still, conscious that by
some helpless fatality of incomprehension
every word she said goaded him, and fearing
to speak again*
“Now I have hurt you,” he said in his
gentlest voice. “I always hurting yon. I
oughtn’t to come near you with my rough
edges! Til go away now, if you will tell me
yon forgive me.”
She smiled at him without speaking, while
her fair throat trembled with a pulse of
pain.
“Will you let me take your hand a mo
ment? It is so long since I have touched a
woman’s, hand! God! how lonely I am!
Don’t look at me in tha' way; don’t pity me,
* iood I b
in all my life I never was so clearly estimat-
«*• an «i soul and found wanting. I
dont blame her, you understand. When I
left her, three years ago, 1 saw my way easi
ly enough to a reputation, and an income,
and a home in the East. She never thought
of anything else. I never taught her to look
for anything else. I dare say she rather en
joyed having a lover working for her in the
unknown West She enjoyed the pretty let
ters she wrote me; bat when it came to the
bare bones of existence in a mining camp
with a husband not very rich or very distin
guished, she had notningto clothe them with.
You said once that to be happy here a woman
must' not have too much imagination; she
hadn t quite enough. I had to be dead honest
with her when I asked her to come. I told
her there was nothing here but the moun
tains and sunsets, and a few items of pictur
esqueness which count with some people. Of
couree I had to tell her 1 was but little better
off than when I left, except for exDerience.
A man s experience is something he cannot
set forth in its value to himself. She passed
It over as a word of no practical meaning.
There her imagination failed her again. She
took me frankly at my own estimate; and in
1 *? U8t 1 put myself at the
u ,ad ® a very poor show on
paper. She didn t raise me up and put a
garland on my head and give me a high seat
at table. I suppose I must have expected
something of the kind. We are alwayssur-
pnsed when we get our deserts. She proposed
that I should come East and accept a super-
mtendentship from a cousin of hers, the own-
er of a ran factory in one of those shady
New England towns women are so fond of.
She intimated quietly that he was in politics,
this cousin, and of course would expect his
employees to become part of his constituency.
It’s a very pretty little bribe, yon see, when
you add the—the girl herself, it’s enough to
shake a man—who wants that kind of a girL
lm not worth much to myself, or to any
body else, apparently, but by Heaven I’ll not
sell out as cheap as that! It all amounts to
nothing, except on« more illusion gone, If
there is a woman on this earth who can love
a man without knowing for what, and
take the chances of life with him without
counting the cost, I have never known her.
I asked you once if a woman could do that,
You hadn t the courage to tell me the truth,
I wouldn t have been satisfied if you had.but
I’m satisfied now.”
“I believed she would be happy; I believe
she would be now, if only you could persuade
hertotry.” : —- -= — —
, I, nem
persuade al
dying for lovu of her! I don't rsnaid myself
dbyna* * ~ •
' nature to promote the happi-
'ndivid-
a8 invented
ness of woman, in the aggregate or indi.._
ually. I know there are men who do—let
them urge their claims. I thought she loved
me—that was another illusion. She will
probably marry the cousin, and become the
most loyal of his constituents. He is wel
come to her; but there is a ghostly blank
somewhere. How I have tried you 1 You’ll
be in bed another week for this selfishness of
mine.” He stopped, while a sudden thought
brought a change to his face. “But when
are you going homer’
‘ ‘I cannot go,” she said. Her weakness
came over her like a cloud, darkening the
room and pressing upon her heavily. “Will
you give me your arm?”
At the stairs she stopped, and leaning
against the wall looked at him with wide,
hopeless eyes.
“We are cut off from everything. My
friend will not need me now; she has gone—
alone. She is dead I”
Arnold took a long walk upon the hills
that night, and smoked a great many cigars
in gloomy meditation. He was thinking of
two girls, as young men who smoke a great
many cigars without counting them often
are. He was also thinking of Arizona. He
had fully made up his mind to resign, and
depart for that problematic region as soon as
his place was filled; bat an alternative had
presented itself to him with a pensive attrac
tiveness—an alternative unmistakably asso
ciated with the fact that the school-mistress
was to remain in her present isolated circum
stances. It even occurred to him that there
might be some question of duty involved in
his “standing by her,” as he phrased it to
him; elf,
1 she got her color back.” There
or I shall lose what little manhood I have
lest!”
-What is it?” she said, leaning towards
him. “There is something straDge in your
face. If you are in trouble, tell me. It will
help me to hear it. I am not so very happy
myself.”
“Why should I add my load to yours? I
seam always to impose myself upon you.first
my hopes, and now my—no, it isn t despair;
it is only a kind of numbness. You have the
fatal gift of sympathy, or you would never
have seen my little hurt.”
Miss Frances was not strong enough to bear
the look in his eyes as he turned them upon
her, with a dreary smile. She covered her
face with one hand, while she whispered.—
“Is it—you have not lost her?”
“Yes! Or, rather, I never had her. I’ve
been dreaming like a boy all these years. ‘In
sleep, a king, but waking, no such matter.’ v
“It is not death, then?”
“No, she is not dead. She is not even false;
that i», not very false. How can I tell yon
how little it is, and yet how much! She is
only a trifle selfish. Why shouldn’t she be?
Why should we men claim the exclusive
right to choose the best for onrselves? It was
selfish of me to ask her to share such a life as
mine. And she has gently and reasonably
reminded me that I’m not worth the sacrifice.
It’s quite true. I always knew I wasn’t. She
said it very delicately and sweetly—she’s the
sweetest girl yon ever saw i She’d marry me
to-morrow if I could add myself, such as I
am—she doesn’t over-rate me—to what she
has already; but an exchange she wasn’t |
prepared for. She’s gentle, but she’s cool—
was an unconscious appeal in the last words
he had heard her speak which constrained
him to do so. He was not in the habit of
pitying himself, but had there been another
soul to follow this mental readjustment of
himself to his mutilated life, it would snrely
have pitied the eagerness with which he clnng
to this one shadow of a doty to a fellow-
creature. It was the measure of his loneli
ness.
It was late in November. The rains had
begun again with sonnd and fnry; with
ranks of clouds forming along tbe mountain
sides, and driven before the sea-winds up
ward through the gulches; with days of
breeze and sunshine, when the fog veil lightly
lifted and blew apart, showing the valley
always greener; with days of lowering still
ness, when the veil descended and left the
mountains alone, like islands of shadow ris
ing from a sea of misty whiteness.
On such a lowering day Miss Frances stood
at the junction of three trails before the door
of tbe blacksmith’s shop. She was wrapped
in a dark blue cloak, with the hood drawn
over her head. The cool dampness had given
a clear, pure glow to her cheeks, and her
brown eyes looked out with a cheerful light.
She was watching the parting of the mist in
the valley below, for a wind had sprang up;
and now the rift widened, as the windows of
heaven might have opened, giving a glimpse
of the world to the “Blessed Damozel” All
was dark above and around her; only a sin
gle shaft of sunlight pierced the fog, and
startled into life a hundred tints of bright
ness in the valley. She caught the sparkle
on the roofs and windows of the town ten
miles away; the fields of sunburnt stubble
glowed a deep Indian red; the ycang crops
were tenderest emerald; and the line of tbe
distant bay a steel-blue thread against the
horizon.
Arnold was plodding up the lower trail on
his gray mare, fetlock deep in mnd. He dis
mounted at the door of the shop, and called
to a small Mexican lad with a cheek of the
tint of ripe corn.
“Here, Pedro Segnndol Take this mare
up to the camp I Can yon catch?” He tossed
him a coin. “Bueno I”
“Mucho buenol” said Pedro the First, looks
lng on approvingly from the door of his
shop.
Arnold turned to the school mistress, who
was smiling from her perch on a pile of wet
logs.
"I’m perfectly happy!” she said. “I hear
the bluebirds, and smell the salt-marshes and