The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1893-05-05

4|ESM' s h. ' % :s;: q. at s: +: :;
tered a deserted
street which led toward the river. He
walked slowly, drawing his furs close
ly about him, for it was very cold.
His heart was filled with forebod-
ings which his wisdom babe him treat
with Indifference, while his passion
gave them new weight and new hor-
ror with every minute that passed.
He had seer with his eyes and heard
with his ears. Beatrice had been be-
fore HIM, and her voice had reached
him among the voices of thousands,
but now. since the hours had passed,
and he had not found her, it was as
though he had been near her in a
Edream, and the strong certainty took
hold of him that she was dead, and
that he had looked upon her wrath
|in the shadowy church.
The fear of evil, the presentiment
[Of death defed logic, and put its own
RECONSTRUCTION and Interpretation upon
me strange event. He neither believed,
nor desired to believe, in a supernat-
ural visitation, yet the inexplicable
certainty of having seen a ghostly
vision overwhelmed reason and all her
arguments. Beatrice was dead. Her
spirit had passed in that solemn hour
when the Wanderer had stood in the
dusky church; he had looked upon
her shadowy wrath, and had heard
the echo of a voice from beyond the
stars, whose crystal tones already
swelled the diviner harmony of an
angelic strain.
The Wanderer was of those who
dread nothing save for the one dearly
beloved object, but who, when that
fear is nee reused by Il real or an
imaginary danger, can suffer in one
short moment the agony which should
be distributed through a whole life
time. The magnitude of his passion
could lend to the least thought Or
presentiment connected with it the
force of a fact and the overwhelming
weight of a real calamity.
Love is the first, the greatest, the
| gentlest, the most cruel, the most If
resistible of passions. In his least form
he is mighty. A little love has de-
stroyed many a great friendship. The
merest outward semblance of love has
made such havoc as no intellect could
repair. The reality has made heroes
and martyrs, traitors and murderers,
whose names will not be forgotten for
glory or for shame. Helen is not the
only m whose smile has kindled
the beacon of a 10 years war, nor
Antony the only man who has lost
the world for a caress. It may be
that the Helen who shall work our de.
struction is even now twisting and
braiding her golden hair; it may be
that the new Antony, who is t o lose
this same old world again, already
stands upon the steps of Cleopatra's
throne. Loves day isnot overyet, nor
has man outgrown the love of woman.
He who has won woman in the face
of daring rivals of enormous odds, of
gigantic obstacles. knows what love
means; he who has lost her, having
loved her, alone has measured with
his own soul the bitterness of earthly
sorrow, the depth of total loneliness,
the breadth of the wilderness of des-
spair. And he who has sorrowed
long, who has long been alone, but
who has watched the small twinkling
ray still burning upon the distant
border OF his desert-the faint glim-
mer of a single star that was still
above the horizon of despair-he
only can tell what utter darkness can
be upon the face of the earth when
the last star has set forever.
Such a man was that Wanderer, as
he paced the deserted street in the
cruel, gloomy cold of the late day.
Cold and dim and sad the ancient
city had seemed before, but it as a
t~housandfold more melancholy now,
more black, more saturated with the
gloom of ages. From time to time
the Wanderer closed his heavy lids,
scarcely seeing what was before him,
conscious of nothing but the horror
which had so suddenly embraced his
whole existence. Then, all at once,
he was face to face with some one.
A woman stood still in the way, a
woman wrapped in rich furs, her
features covered by a dark veil which
could not hide the unequal fire of the
unlike eyes Sc keenly fixed on his.
"Have you found herr" asked the
soft voice.
'.She is dead," answered the Wan
derer, growing very white.