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

! heart, these used-up fifty years, to give
Maskelyn. It is bitter, too, lest people
should smile at Maskelyn-
was sitting in the porch, thinking Of
my years, that day. After all, it seemed
but the day before that had sat there
with the delicious odor of the honey
suckles blowing all about in the dusk,
and Maskelyn sat, at my side, and the
very air we breathed famed to and fro
in the fragrance, full of the dark, sweet
mystery of love. It seemed as If all the
world had been made just to come to
blossom in that evening, stars and winds
and vaults of heaven, the evening that
he first said in words that he loved me,
although our lives had grown together
so for years that we had each
known the thought of the other without
speaking, and knew that there was no
others on earth that could ever come as
close to either of us as the other did.
But this crowned the whole with GER
tainty, and we looked in each others
faces in the CLEANS of the starlight as if
we were the two only people on the
planet. Alas, we were not!
For Maskelyn was still very young,
and the traveller for a commercial house /;
he had his way to make. It was the
morning after that night in the dark
and the dew and the honeysuckle odor
that he left the ring on my finger, and
went off on one of his journeys. He
was to 60 down the river to New Or
leans before he returned; and he took
the steamer Beauxtemps at st. Louis
and it was thirty years before l heard
from him how it all happened. But the
world is full of tongues, and 1 heard it,
all the same, on the four winds that
blow no one knows whittier.
There had taken passage on that
fatal steamer wealthy planter of Lou
isiana, with his wife, an invalid French
lady, and their young daughter, Adele.
She was lovely little thing, this Adele,
and she sang like q bird. Maskelyn
heard her singing one evening, and,
passionately fond of music, he soon
made her acquaintance, and was sing
ing with her. She was as child-like,
too, as she was young and pretty; she
had soon confided to him all her af-
fairs, and he, secure in his plighted love,
and never dreaming of misconstruction
or trouble, became her hourly associate,
and took pleasure in her innocent COM
panionship.
One afternoon they sat in their accus-
toned seat, reading, as it CHANGED, from
the same book. In their occupation
and their talk they had taken no notice
of the excitement of the people about
them; and if they knew they were racing
the Charon, so they had been doing half
the week, and thought nothing of it.
And all at once shrek of countless
voices rent the air; there was shock
and an explosion, as if the bottomless
pit had broken through the bed of the
river. The air was full of flying beams
and falling men and women; the river
was full Of them; and they were two
among them all, afloat but alive.
Afoat in the branches of huge tree
that was sailing and swirling down the
river, and in no immediate danger of
destruction, but exhausted, and unable
to do more than keep the breath they
had for a while. If Others had been
saved, they had reached one of the
banks, or had been picked up by the
Charon's boats. The quick Southern
dusk was upon them before Adele had
done more than open her eyes and close
them again. Neither she nor he had
been seriously hurt, but they were abso-
lutely alone in the thick night and the
rushing river. What else could they do
but comfort one another, poor children,
sitting side by side in the cradle made
by the big branches, and trembling at
all the dark, unknown tumult of the tor
rent, till suddenly, with shock that
might have wrecked them had not their
clothes been caught on the branches,
they were anchored on mud-spit, and
the stream was sweeping by?
The morning dawned redly over the
great sea-like river. Flat.boat and raft
and steamer went along; but no one
saw their signals, or seeing, no one
needed them. Another weary night,
famished and faint, but keeping each
others courage up; and at noon of the
next day they were taken off. But in
two days and nights Maskelyn had
learned that she loved him. And when,
in turn; she learned that her love was in
vain, it was only by force of arms that
he hindered her from seeking the watery
death from which he had rescued her.
The poor little passionate, tropical crea-
ture!
He saw her, however, no more for a
month after the time that he left her
at her fathers door in New Orleans,
where he found the black-robed parents,
who had themselves been saved, but
who had thought their child lost, and
received her as one raised from the
grave, and would have given Maskelyn
their all as her preserver. But Maske-
Ign did not present himself there again;
and it was not till his return from q trip
through the neighboring region that
Adele's father was able to find him, and
to beseech him to accompany him if he
would save his child q second time from
death. And he found her on the brink
of madness.
Compelled by their kindness and their |
grief, he could do nothing but remain,
and add his efforts to theirs. It was |
superb home; wealth and art and eli
mate could hardly do more to make it |
perfect. Perhaps the sense of its ease |