Crawford avalanche. (Grayling, Mich.) 1879-19??, 1886-04-08
TWENTY YEARS AFTER.
BY THOMAS CoLQUITT.

Louis Calvert was fifty years old-gray
and aged beyond his years-the night he
sat alone by the bedside of his dead wife.
The dark, gray shadow of long repressed
sorrow which rested upon his face was also
set in the face of the dead woman.
For twenty years he had carried dead
heart within his breast-a heart dead to
every sentiment of love, hope or aspiration;
dead to all feeling but terrible sense of
having loved and lost. deadly, unavail-
ing regret. The wife, upon whose pale
face-still beautiful even in death, though
wearing upon il that ineffaceable impress of
silent woe-he often looks, had, on their
wedan wnsh aSA a SoSe an ghr S$
from his life forever.
But she never knew it.
She never knew what it had been that so
suddenly changed the eager, hopeful, dem
onstrative lover of the morning into the
calm, gravS husband of the evening. A
cloud had suddenly passed over the sun,
and the eclipse was to darken all their lives.
For long time the young wife hoped he
would, after while, become his old cheer
full, affectionate self again, but 1t was not
TO be so-never again. 1t was evident that
he often attempted to shake off the heavy
fetters of despair, but always vainly. AT
these times the efforts of his beautiful and
affectionate wife made to cheer him and
make him forget his sorrow only seemed in
some vague way, she could not understand
how, to pain him.
He was good observation-disclosures kind,
affectionate, and faithful, but in every
look, or word, or gesture the loving wife
instinctively felt a reproach, repulse. In
his saddened voice, in his saddened eyes,
in his calm, cold devotion she always de-
tected the mournful refrain of something
lost. "A glory and gladness had passed
from the earth" 1t snddened her early
married life; and as she grew older the
shadow Fate had thrown across his life fell
more darkly still upon hers, until the
bright, beautiful girl whom he had married
twenty years ago had long been listless,
silent companion to the silent, hopeless
man whose life she had so innocently and
unknowingly blighted.
Tonight, while sitting beside the bed on
which she lies with closed eyes and death
| cold lips, he has finished reading her letter
which caused all their woes. As he reads
he gasps, grows deadly pale and tremblss
violently. Then, rising, crosses softly to
her side and kisses her lips, her cheeks, her
eyes; caresses the cold, senseless form far
more tenderly than he had ever done the
| living, miserable woman all the many years
|
ears forever deaf words of endearment
they so long hungered to hear, and which
| but few short hours ago would have made
| the poor, broken hearted woman supIemely
happy, even in death.
On their wedding morning, twenty years
ago, he had carelessly read the first lines OF
that letter down to where the sheet was fold
cd, as it lay on the table before him, and had
turned away dizzy and heart sick, believing
himself an unloved husband. He could
only fear that she had been persuaded by
others TO wed him while she loved another,
| or that she was a fair, false-hearted woman
who married him for his wealth. So indel-
ibly was this terrible fear stamped upon
his heart and brain at that unhappy mo-
ment that all these years of love and affec-
ton, of tender, wifely devotion, had been
unable to erase or tighten it, A woman
who could practice such deception could
| dissemble lifetime If necessary to conceal
her duplcity. So he had reasoned.
Many times the letter had fallen beneath
his eyes, among other papers, but he had
turned from it with pain and disgust. II
was the serpent that had stung him, and he
was too proud and honorable to caress the
witness of his betrayal. II was letter
written by his betrothed, only few days
before they were married, TO an elder sister
and laid it aside, never dreaming that the
silly, girlish, blotted letter would blot and
darken their lives forever.
Tonight he has unfolded the faded
plotted sheet, and read the lines below the
fold.
"oh, my Godl my Godl" he cries in pit.
eous, heart broken tones, "if l had only
read il ALL"
IL was too late. Far behind him in the
misty haze of memory lay the years hi
hasty, impulsive pride had made miserable
Before him lay the true, devoted, loving
wife his coldness had slain.
As he holds the old, blotted, time-worr
letter between his trembling hands, the
long, dreary years roll back, and she i
again the perfect bride full of youth a.t
hop. who gave her fair self TO him. Th'
time which has seemed an eternity In pass