Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1873-10-16

Il x.lsAA y
/ Sii.terlng, palpltatlng heap at the foot
| !Iiights, with no color in her lips! Some
times 1t seemed as if the girl were tempt
ing TINS kind of fate. 1t was hard,
ollter lie, and nothing but poverty and
soruld misery at home could have driven
her to it. What if she should end it all
some night, by just unclasping that little
nand? 1t looked so small and white
from where Van Twiller sat!
inns trightful idea fascinated while it
CALLED him, and helped to make it nearly
impossible for him to keep away from the
1heater. In the beginning his attendance
had not lnterfered with his social duties
| OF pleasures; but now he came to find it
dlstasteful after dinner to do anything
out read, or walk the streets aimlessly,
uhtll II was time to go to the play. When
that was over, he was in no mood to 60
anywhere bet to his rooms. So he drop
ped away by insensible degrees from his
habitual haunts, was missed, and began to
be talked about at the club. Catching
some lntimation Of this, he ventured no
more IN the orchestra stalls, but shrouded
himself behind the draperles of the
private box in which Delaney and |
| thought we saw him on one occasion.
| NOW, L ind 1t very perplexing to ex-
plain what Van Twil,er was wholly I'M
able to explain to himself. He was
not IN love with Mademoiselle Olympic.
lie had no wish to speak to her. or to
near her speak. Nothing could have been
easier, and nothing further from his de-
sire, than to know her personally. A
Van Twiller personally acquainted with a
strolling female acrobat! Good heavens
That was something possible only with
the discovery OF perpetual motion. Taken
from her theatrical setting, from her lofty
! perch, so to say, on the trapeZe-bar, and
Olympic Zabriski would have shocked
every aristocratic fibre in Van Twiler's
| body. lie was simply fascinated by her
| marvellous grace and elan, and the mag
netlc recklessness Of the girl 1t was
| very young In him and very weak, and no
| member OF the Sorosis, or all the SorOsis-
| tiers together could have been more severe
on Van Iwiller than he was on himself
To be weak, and to know it, is something
of a punishment for proud man. Van
IWlller took his punishment, and went to
the theater Regularly.
When her engagement comes to an
end, )" he meditated, THAT will finish the
business"
Mademoiselle Olympe's engagement
finally did come to an end, and she de-
parted. But ler engagement had been
highly beneficial to the treasury-chest of
the uptown theater, and before Van
Twiller could get over missing her, she
had returned from short Western tour,
ana her immediate temperance was IN
derlined on the play bills.
On dead-wall opposite the windows
of Van Twiller's sleeping room there ap-
peared, as If by magic, an aggressive post
er with MADEMOIsELLE OLYMPIC ZABRIsKI
on it at least a foot high. This thing
stared him in the face when he woke up,
one morning 1t gave him sensation as
if she had called on him overnight and
left her card
From time to time through the day he
regarded that poster with sard0nic eye
He had pitilessly resolved not to repeat
the folly of the previous month. To say
that this moral victory cost him nothing
would be to deprive it of merit. 1t cost
him many internal struggles. 1t is a fine
thing to see a man selling his temptation
by the throat, and wrestling with it, and
trampling it under foot, like St. Anthony.
This was the spectacle Van Twiller was
exhibiting to the angels
The evening Mademoiselle Olympic was
to make her temperance, Van Twiller,
having dine,. at tn cub and feeling more
like himself than he had for weeks, re-
turned to his chamber, and, putting on
dressing gown and slippers, piled up the
greater portion Of his library about him,
and fell to reading assiduously. There is
nothing like quiet evening at home with
some slight intellectual occupation after
ones feathers have been stroked the wrong
way.
When the lively French clock on the
the mantel- pieCe,-a base Of malachitc
surmounted by d flying bronze Mercury
with It's arms spread gracefully on the air,
and not remotely suggestive of Mademoi-
selle Olympic in the. act of executing her
grand flight from the trapeZe,-whcn the
clock, | repeat, struck nine, Van Twiller
paid no attention to it. That was certain
" a triumph. | am anxious to render
Van Twillcr all the justice I can, at this
point Of the narrative, inasmuch as when
the halfhour sounded unsteady, like Il
crystal ball dropping into silver bowl,
he rose from the chair automatically,
thrust his feet into his walking-shoe
threw his overcoat across his arm, and
strobe out Of the room.
To be weak and to scorn your weakness,
and not be able to conquer it, is, as has
been said, hard thing; and | suspect it
was not with unalloyed satisfaction that
an WlIlcf lOuUu UlllScll ldhtug HIS Scdt
in the back part of the private box night
after night during the second engagement
of Mademoiselle Olympic. 1t was so easy
not to stay away.
In this second edition OF Van Twill
lers faulty, his case was even worse
than before. He not only thought OF
| OLYMPIC quite number Of times be-
tween breakfast and dinner, he not
only attended the interlude regularly, but
he began, in spite of himself to occupy
his leisure hours at night by dreaming OF
| her. This was too much of a good thing,
and Van Twiller regarded it so. Besides,
the dream was always the same-a har-
rowing dream, dream singularly adapt
ed to shattering the nerves OF man like
| Van Twiller He would imagine himself
seated at the theater with all the members
of Our Club in the parquette), watching
Mademoiselle Olympic as usual, when
suddenly that young lady would launch
herself desperately from the u.peze, and
come flying through the air like fire
| brand hurled at his private box. Then
the unfortunate man would wake up with
cold drops standing on his forehead.
There is one redeeming feature in this
infatuation of Van Twiller's which the
sober moralist will love to look upon
| the serene Inconsistencies of the person
who caused it. She went through her
role with admirable aplomb, drew her
salary, it may be assumed, punctually,
and appears from first to last to have been
| ignorant that there was miserable slave
wearing her chains nightly n the left
hand nrOSceniIIm box.