Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1879-01-23

sue COulu dOfIS6; anu ILtIe DGlly w IL
marth's black lashes were we. with tears
that she could not account for, and that
surely she never dreamed that she
should be shedding because Will
Maunder was away. She had reason,
presently, to miss that kindness to some
purpose. Her father was in that same
year thrown from his wagon; and he
lay but partly conscious for weeks
afterward, and for months he never left
his room nor quite recovered his intel
ligence. In those weeks and months,
unfaithfal clerks and book-keepers en-
riched themselves and impoverished
Mr.. Wilmarth; and when he finally re-
covered, it was to the wreck of what
had once bid fair to become a great for
tune. off Will Maunder had been
with me-" said Mr.. Wilmarth. "strang-
ers and hounds would have had no
chance to fleece mel"
1t was true. Betty heard it with
shiver. She lad thought as much,
many time, yet put the thought away;
bat now her father declared it so,
seemed to make the fact sure. And
why was not VIII with her father? For
no reason, but that she had in reality
driven him away. Then they owed all
their misfortunes to her headstrong
folly! If Will Maunder-noble. patient,
forgiving, honest VIII Maunder-had
been in her fathers business, this dis
aster never would have overtaken it;
her father would not be beginning 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 because poverty had
Joined her throng.
If crying would have brought him
back Will Maunders could have sailed
to Betty on a flood of tears; but tears
being useless, Betty scorned to shed
them. She had 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 prosperity, she could not
call him back in her calamity So she
braced herself in a way VIII could 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 the thought Of the
light in which the clear-headed Will
must have held her infatuation.
Betty's cheeks, though, had never
lost their carnatiOn; she was no older
than before, so far as her beauty was
concerned; only into the radiant face
there had stolen a new expression, per-
haps called out by the necessity of so
much tenderness toward her sick father
and disconsolate mother, perhaps by
the longing for a once-neglected pre-
sence, the hope, growing more patient
that it might yet return-the sense
growing daily more humble, and nothing
had befallen her but what she sadly de-
served.
And then the long war broke out and
in all its course, no word Of Will She
thought he might be in it. She was
sure that his blood must be 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 encour-
age him, to help him, if she could only
once find his name. She never did.
And when at last, peace Was declared,
there came through the obscure chan
nels in which all such news runs, not
to be verified, and yet too authentic for
disbelief, the report that he had been a
conscript of the confederates, had fallen
in the first battle and died in the hos
pital.
And her act had killed him! Betty
Wilmarth sat down that day in utter
despair. For what had she been born,
when out of her insignifcance, she had
wrought such evil as this9 A murder
ess-that was what she was! The MUIR
deress, too, of the best friend woman
ever had. By whim, a mere whim,
she had brought disaster and ruin on
her fanily-she had brought strong
man down to his grave. By whim?
No, oh, no! By the blackness of her
heart! And it was in sackcloth and
ashes that she sat while summer and
autumn crept by. She loathed herself
She felt that even God must loathe her;
every one must loathe her, as Will
Maunder's murderess. The earth was
dark; for her the sun had 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 friend 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 we're born only 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 made life seem not worth the liv-
ing; that made life seem impossible to
live, and yet did not let her dare to die.
Nothing was any pleasure to her now.
Her fathers affairs had frightened they |
had retaken the old house;her mothers
health was restored the girls had come
from school, content and happy, and
ready to take Betty's sceptre where she
dropped it. She was pleased for their
sakes-for herself it made no difference.
The color had forsaken her sweet face
at length; her eyes were dim with her
long crying. She sat for hours together,
staring straight before her, conscious of
nothing whatever but that she had been
the death of VIII Maunder.
All the gay Christmas morning that
he used to like so much she sat in dark