Waterbury evening Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1887-1895, 1891-03-28

sion to the last woman whom he should
ever have dreamed of making his wife.
The dominant influence of Georgina's
being was religion. She had no fam
boyant piety such as cynicism often
sneered at her father for possessing, but
since childhood she had set her spirit In
tune with strong faith, and her adorer'
swiftly found that he must either WOO
her cloalzed with deceit or not at all.
Maynard was a man who had long ago
recoiled from orthodoxy. He believed
in nothing but science and stood amazed
at the very idea of his own capacity to
care for girl whose prayers and
church-goings were the regnant forces
of her existence. Hypocrisy, however,
soon came fatally easy to him. Georg-
mas beliefs clothed themselves with
that same shining tissue of sorcery
which invested the turn of her white
wrist or the curves of her still pearlier
throat. He wanted her just as she was,
and in amorous hatred of displeasing
her he reclxlessly forgot the gravity of
his own falsehoods.
But her father, hedged in by what he
1oathed as the most autocratic conserva-
tisms, became such keen bore to him
during the term of courtship that one
day he hailed with secret relief the
calamity of the old parsons abrupt
death. Maynard's last year at the uni
versity had then Just ended. Georgina
had suddenly been made an orphan and
one dowerless to the degree of penury.
This fact expedited the marriage which
in any case would now shortly have oc-
CURED.
And a miserable marriage it had
proved. The brides awakening was
inevitable; it was also cruelty speedy.
The very word "infidel" had long been
horror to her. She was now called
upon to meet that horror, palpable and
persistent, at almost every step she
took Some women might have loved
O husband all the more dearly because
disillusion had thus roughly handled
him; there are feminine affections
boarding that self-creative energy OF
repair which is like the way its recur-
rent grass heals the raw cash in q
meadow. But Georgina was not
wrought of that clay. She bore May
nard two boys, and by tkis time her
love had grown as autumnal as her
look To save these babes from the
whitening blight of her husbands inn
piety was alike her purpose and her
prayer. There were moments when her
strained mind came near breaking its
bonds of sanity and reeling into that
sort of medea-lilxe bloodshed which now
and then bespatters the columns Of our
newspapers. Her sufferings increased
as those four little childish ears grew
maturer and more receptive. Maynard
would be sure to try and impregnate
the hearts of either son with his devil
ish theories. There began to glimmer
hope concerning Sylvan, however.
The lad showed signs of having inner
tied his mothers religious temperament.
Georgina felt that the devotions which
she imposed upon him were far from
unwelcome. Gerald, on the other hand,
would often yawn and pout with an ir-
reverence that seemed full of dark fore
bodings to the vigilant maternal eye.
Meanwhile Maynard, who had been
blameworthy for not having told his
sweetheart that he was quite without
all conventional creed until the law had
made them one, now acquitted himself
amiably and gently in the extreme.
Perhaps the bitterest thing that he said
to his wife for a long period after their
marriage was the following chain OF
sentences, delivered more in depression
than reproach:
"Well, Georgina, 1 suppose there's
no use of my asking you to sponge OFF
the slate and begin all over again. You
probably think some things are there
which no sponge could wipe out. And
upon my word, If you were to say so, ]
should quite agree with you. Only,
Heaven knows"
Heaven she repeated. "What a
strange word from yO1tr lips, Egbert
n ~
"Who is so devout," he answered, ''not
r sometimes to find such faith very
hard?'
"Oh, won't listen to sbominable
t thoughts like those!'' cried Georgina
- hurrying toward the door. She paused
D before quitting the room, and hurled
}, forth angrily at her husband: GAS i
7 any better proof of Heavens goodness
g were wanted, Egbert Maynard, thar
that you're permitted to stand there
r and insult it without being strucl
9 dead"
: "What conceivable satisfaction woult
there be for it in striking me dead" be
!! gan Maynard, 'if, as you state" But
. she had fed from his profane presence
= and so he left the sentence unfinished
He did not usually wound her lils
y this; he indeed sedulously avoided dc
n ing so. She was always ready witt
3 some attack, peevish or irate. One sum
IS mer day, few months later, some com
II pulsory visit of courtesy took them pas
o the immense pillared pile Of Maryle
q bone Church. Gushing In rich umbrag
from behind their solemn brick walls
n rose the maple-trees, plenteous an
/, vocal; through the iron bars Of oil
. gateways the passer could glimpse occa
II sional gardens radiant with geraniur
? and rose. Bathed in the moist, silver,
70 air of an English June, over this entir
l. quarter brooded a witchery not wove
U by beauty alone. You felt that benin
II those dingy walls a prodigious amour
:, of life must have lived-perhaps some c
s. It poetic or dramatic-and that the mul
4 murs of the big boughs overhangin
l. those secluded doorways might mea
Vi some sort of airy saga concerning it. Th