The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1881-01-28

from any wrong doing in the affair; that
| it would be my wish-as it was my wish
that he should not suffer q lifelong
burden on his conscience, whether that
conscience was morbidly sensitive OF
not, for the mere sake of our own pres.
emit content, which never would be con.
tent, in fact, while he was restless under
an accusing spirit and I was wretched in
his want of ease.
And 80 he married Adele.
Perhaps it would have been better had
he written me the story of it, and not
have left me to my imaginings. But he
thought the course kindest to me was to
let me think him villain, and be healed
of my hurt the sooner. And then,
too-you must not think i'll of me fol-
saying it, appeared to him SO alto
gether lovely and to be loved that he
could not but believe, cost him what
pang it might, that I should speedily be
happy in the love of one should hold
to be better man.
And from that hour his career began
the career of no commercial traveller,
but that of the son of rich and power
full house, put forward for fresh honors
all the time, now Governor, now Sena-
tor, and when war came, unwilling to
take arms against either his native North
or his adopted South, going with the
others to the villa on the Mediterranean,
where life was long dream of idleness
and ease. He was good husband, I
am glad to know. He never allowed
himself to feel that Adele had done him
an injury; he forced himself always to
look at the other side, and value the adj
vantages he received through connec-
ton with her father. She was gentle
little being, always beautiful, never alto
gether of perfectly strong mind or will
again, but living and breathing through
him; and she lived and breathed through
him for twenty-five years. He could
only be proud of her, in certain way,
at Southern springs, in Congressional
life, as they went through Europe; her
exquisite grace, her dark, large-eyed
loneliness, the simplicity of her always
perfect ladyhood, if one may use the
word, were things always to admire,
and crowds followed her. He also ad-
mired her; he had tender care for her,
a gentle attachment to her, and if he
never loved her, she never knew he did
not. She hardly remembered that he
had ever had his poor, pale passion in the
North. She died at last, thinking of
him as only her own, and thanking him
for the bliss he had given her in his long
faithfulness. But his poor, pale passion
had become an ideal thing to him, a sort
of pole-star round which his soul re-
volved so entirely as to be automatic and
unconscious in its motion. He did not
actively and all the time remember it,
but it helped to shape his course, and it
was always there.
And at last, then, Maskelyn was his
own master once more. But of me, in
his freedom, it did not occur to him to
think as an actual possibility in flesh
and blood. He had never dared to ask
for me; he took it for granted that l
was long since another mans wife. And
when, after some years more, in a man
ner unawares to himself, the memory
began to work in his heart, he came to
the old town again as q pilgrim visits a
shrine, and without dream of finding
me.
And in all these years, after the first
one of unbearable suffering, l had staid
there in my home, doing the duty that
came first to hand, both since it was
duty and since it might prevent my
pain. And the pain had passed at
length, had left only soreness and sor-
row, had become sublimated, as it were,
into something would not lose for its
pang. One by one, father and mother,
sister and brother, had left me; but
still dwelt in the sweet old house, and
sat of summer evenings on the porch
among the honeysuckles. At first I had
thought I could never breathe their
breath again; but at last it had grown
precious to me; it was my all of the
love, of the life, I hoped for. But the
score and more of years had not been
unhappy to me; my daily routine had
taken much thought; the poor children
that l taught, and Belle and Alice
and all the rest, served in some de-
gree to keep me young; for, as said, I
hated to grow old; and if any one
was kind enough to say they would
hardly know me for more than the elder
sister of the two young girls about
me, my skin still so smooth, the color
on my cheek so delicate, the pale gold of
my hair still untouched by silver, it was
apt to move my heart with little pulse
of pleasure, although I knew, in truth,
and for all that, that fifty years must al
ways count for fifty years. Now and
then / heard of Maskelyn in his public
life-I had not exactly thought it wrong,
once when I went to a large city, to buy
q photograph of him, with those of
some other public people; but I kept it
locked away, and allowed myself to
look at it but once every year. And
when did look at it it was only with
one hurried glance of the eye, one
thrill and spring of the heart, lest I
sinned, lest l made him sin, and / wrap
ped it closer away again. But the day
after had seen that face was always q |
day of mourning. And at last I knew
that he had no longer q wife; and year
went by, and year, and year, and he had
not come. Sometimes, in wondering |
and thinking, my heart would beat so |
loud that it seemed as if only fasting |
and prayer would still it, and I |
blushed and burned to think I wasted q