San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1891-09-19


When Adelaide Chenier discovered
that Edgar Julian WAS the man grown
from the boy who had stabbed her and
burned down the dear old Chenier home
stead, the blow was hard one. That
ROsalie loved this man she could not
doubt, and her own experience told her
how disastrous disappointment might be;
and yet how could she suffer this van
dal, this murderous Hessian, this house
burner to marry her sister? She had
never known how to call a northern SOL
der by any milder name than robber.
The scar on her arm where the fiuted
bayonet had passed through would burn
like fire whenever she thought of that
memorable, terrible day in May, 1864,
when weak and bleeding she sat under a
tree hard by and saw that intrepid boy
fend apply the torch to the grand old
home He had already stabbed her and
driven her mother, half frantic with ter
ror, into the wood Who could ever for
get his face. his air, his energetic, force
full movements? His features were
enthusiastically bright. he seemed to
glory in destruction. To Adelaide's
morbid imagination he seemed, as she
looked back through the years, the type
of all that was whitening and blasting.
She smelled again the bitter smoke from
the mountain valleys where happy vii
lagos and embowered country seats were
melting to ashes.
Add to this. personal physical injury,
Disagreement, the horrible insult to a
sensitive nature of having home invaded
and of seeing the old beloved rooftree
in flames. and then the incompatible
-
desolation to a household where a troop
Of handsome brothers and sons are swept
away and a stalwart father and husband
is rendered miserable, hopeless cripple
for life, without decent clothes with
which to cover his poor wreck Of body.
This is drawing the picture.
Adelaide kept silent and brOoded oven
her discovery and its possible results.
Her love for Resale was the flower of
sisterIy affection, intensified in its colors
and perfume since the death of their
mother. 1t was the thought of Rosahe
that restrained her deep, burning resent
ment of this intimate nearness to Edgar
Julian. Perhaps this resentment was
intensified by Adelaides knowledge of
the young mans sterling character and
hCr consciousness of a deep seated regard
for him in her own breast He seemed
proud, strong energetic, manly man,
with lofty aims and keen contempt for
trickery and lnsincerity-a man to be
respected, even loved, without danger.
His northern characteristics, his vim,
his moral intrepidity, his radical patri-
otism had strong influence over this
ultrasouthern girl and she secretly
dreaded to attempt to break it. She en-
joyed his direct way of putting things,
his hatred of shamS. his assaults upon
hereditary aristocracy; she even took a
strange delight in the torture of his war
"reminiscences.
One day he said to her:
1T is shame the way we had to de-
stroy the lovely south in order to per-
petuate the Union Nothing short of the
knowledge that the government is for
ever safe could console ny conscience for |
the part bore in that terrible but glori- |
Gus work.
The lightness of his tone and the ease |
with which he escaped controversy made |
it impossible for Adelaide to find fault |
with him IT,. be ~ into gGncrogs !