The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1876-12-28


taken it; her father would not be begin
ming life over again in his old age; her
mother need not have relinquished her
nurse; her sisters would not be dependent
on distant relative for the charity of
their receipted school bills; she herself
would not be cramped and pinched, turning
old clothes, warming old food, doing the
work that servants in plenty had always
done for her before; listening still to these
tiresome lovers, that did not forsake her
beauty because poverty had joined their
throng.
If crying would have brought him
back, Will Maunder could have sailed to
Betty on flood of tears; but tears being
useless, Betty scorned to shed them. She
mad no idea where he was, except for the
vague rumor that spoke of him as sheep
raising somewhere in the Carolinas. If
she had, having sent him off in her pros
perity, she could not call him back in her
calamity. So she braced herself to bear
her trials as she might, and to bear them,
as she sometimes said to herself, in way
that Will would have approved; and she
laughed bitterly at herself to think of the
sentimental idiot she had been, and of the
innocent young Italian on whom she had
poured out the burden of her vain fancies ;
and her clear dark cheeks Redeemed redder
than their wont at thought of the light in
which the clear-headed Will must have
held her infatuation.
Betty's cheeks, though, had never lost
their carnatlOn; she was no older than be-
fore, so far as her beauty was concerned :;
only into the radiant face there had stolen
d new expression, perhaps called out by
IA tar
toward her sick father and disconsolate
mother, perhaps by he longing for a
once neglected presence, the hope, grow
ing more patient. that it might yet re-
turn-the sense, growing daily more
humble that nothing had betallen her but
what she sadly deserved.
And then the long war broke out, and
in all It's course no word of Will. She
thought he might be in it. She was sure
that his blood must he stirred She
looked for his name in the bulletins, in
the promoted, in the dead and missing, in
the discharged, in the forlorn- hopes; she
longed to do something for him, now that
it was impossible-to encourage him, to
help him, if she could only once find his
Uame. She never did. And when at last
peace was declared, there came through
the obscure channels in which all such
news runs, not to be verified. and yet too
authentic tor disbelief, the report that he
had been a conscript of the Confederates,
had fallen in his first battle, and had died
in hospital.
And her act had killed him! Betty
Wilmarth sat down that day in despair.
For what had she been born, when, out of
her insigniicance, she had wrought such
evil as this? A murderess-that was
what she was! The murderess, too, of
the best friend a woman ever had. BY a
whim, mere whim, she had brought
disaster and ruin on her family-she had
brought strong man down to his grave.
By whim? No, oh no! By the black
ness Of her hearth And it was in sack
cloth and ashes that she sat while summer
and autumn crept by. She loathed her
self. She felt that even God must loathe
her; every one must loathe her that knew
her as Will Maunder's murderess. The
earth was dark; for her the sun ceased to
shine; the faces of all she saw were
blanks, they seemed to belong to people
OF another race; there was nobody of her
race-a woman with the blood of her best
FREUD on her hands! Day after day a
gloom seemed to gather, thicker and
darker, over the world; it was place of
graves; all those that went by were born
only to suffer and die-to suffer and die,
and after death the judgment!
And then, her thoughts getting too
much for her, Betty would start up and
walk for miles, to walk off the horror that
oppressed her, the horror that made life
seem not worth living; that made life
seem impossible to live, and yet did not
let her dare to die. Nothing was any
pleasure to Betty now. Her fathers
affairs had frightened; they had retaken
their old house; her mothers health was
restored; the girls had come from school,
content and happy, and ready to take
Betty's scepter where she dropped it. But
she was pleased for their sakes-for her
self it made no difference. The color
had forsaken her sweet cheeks at length
her eyes were dim with her long crying;
she sat for hours together staring straight
before her, conscious of nothing what
ever but that she had been the death of
viii Maunder.
How she missed him now at every turn
the ready smile, the tender word, the
helping deed, the admiring look, the per.
suasion that she could do nothing wrong
# he were only here in her trouble, he
would clear it all away, as strong west
wind blows the buds. But, no; she would
be having no trouble if she had not sent
Will out of reach; she would see him
again neither here nor hereafter, for the
place where Will Maunder went with his
white soul would be no place for his muir.
deress. How strong he was, in those dead
and gone days! how generous, how brave
and true! and all tor her it might have
been. And she had teen blind till the
need of his daily care had made her turn
and look; and now it was too late. When
the first snow storm of the winter came
and she remembered that it was heaping
his unknown grave, the cold terror of il
chilled her marrow. All the gay Christ
mas season that he used to like so much
she sat in darkness. She forgot hel
father, and all the need of household
cheer, and it was only when she saw the
plying faces downstairs that she resolved
to forget herself, her sin and her grief
and help them all to gather what sweet.
| ness there was in this life she had found
so bitter And she made her New Years
gifts ready, and helped her young sisters
decorate the rooms and the simple table
| they could spread, and lent them bel
! dainty ornaments that she used to value
| SO, and that now, at twenty-five, she was
done with.
1t was a great white snow storm, though
"a fierce, driving, drifting snow-storm-
that wrapped earth and sky when that
day dawned, beginning the eventful year
| They would be friends indeed who adj
ventured through it. The girls and theil
chosen companions, nevertheless, were
Just as gay in the parlors as they could
have been in the sunniest of weather, i'm
aging arrivals, and, when nobody arrived
receiving each other in turn, as if there
were procession of callers at the door
They were none of them so sweet, sc
willful, so charming, as poor little Betty
had been; not one of them had the dark
rich beauty that belonged to her yet; they
never would have the train of gallants a
the door that used to cross its threshold
for Betty's sake. She wondered wha
they found to laugh at; in all the wid'
sad world there was nothing at which sh,
could smile; the very blowing of tn
gale, the whirling of the snow and slee
through the white, cold heavens, seemed
only to answer her own misery. She sa
in the little side parlor off the others
staring through the window with her wilt