The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-01-21

CUriOuSlY enough, anu against dill Gne pro-
visions of his friends, Mr.. Mannering had
mot been thrown back by the excitement.
The sharp sting of these events which
had brought back before him once more
the tragic climax of his life-the time
when he had come back as out of the
grave and found his home desolate, when
his wife had fed before his face, not
daring to meet his eye, although she had
not knowingly sinned against him, and
when all the triumph of his return to life,
and of his discoveries and the fruit of his
dreadful labors had become bitterness to
him and misery, came back upon him,
every incident standing out as if it had
been yesterday.
He had fallen into the dead calm of
failure, he had dropped his tools from his
hands, and all his ambition from his
heart. He had retired-he who had re-
appeared in existence after all his suffer-
ings. with the consciousness that now the
ball was at his foot, and fame if not for
tune secured-into the second desert,
more impenetrable than any African
forest of these rooms in Bloomsbury, and
vegetated there were all these years, for
getting more or less all that had hap
pened to him, and all that might have
happened to him, and desiring only to
linger out the last of his life unknowing
ana unknown. And now into his calm
there had come back, clear as yesterday,
all that terrible climax, every detail of
his own tragedy.
1t ought to have killed him, that would
have seemed the most likely event in his
weakness, after his long illness and per-
haps who could say, the best thing that
could have happened. in face of the new
circumstances, which he could not accept
and had no right to refuse. But no, it did
not suit him.
1t acted upon him as a great trouble
acts on some minds, like a strong stimu-
liant, 1t stung him back into life, it
seemed to transfuse something, some new
revivifying principle, into his veins. He
had wanted, perhaps something to dis
perse the mistS of illness and physical
detection. He found it not in soothing in
fuence or pleasure, but in pain. From the
day when he stumbled downstairs to Miss
Bethune's room on the dreadful report
that she was dying, he begun at once ~
resume his usual habits, and with almost
more than usual strength.
Was it possible that Death, that healer
OF all wounds, that peacemaker in all tu-
mults, had restored a rest that was want
ing to the mans secret heart, never dis
closed to any ear? She was dead, the
woman who unwittingly, without mean
ing, had made his life the silent tragedy
it had been, That she was guiltless, and
that the catastrophe was all a terrible
mistake, had made it worse instead of
better. He had thought often that had
she erred in passion, had she been carried
away from him by some strange gale of
personal feeling, it would have been more
0earable, but the cruel fatality, the net
work of accident which had made his life
desolate, and hers he knew not what-this
was what was intolerable, thing not to
bear thinking of.
But now she was dead, all the misery
over, nothing left but the silence She
had been nothing to him for years, torn
out OF his heart, flung out of his life, per-
maps with too little pity, perhaps with
little perception of the great sacrifice she
mad made in giving up to him without
even protect her only child, but h err
existence had been canker in his life,
the thought that still the same circle of
earth enclosed them--him and the woman
VINO had once been everything to him and
then nothing, yet always something some
Jhlng, a consciousness. a fever, a Earring
note that set all life out of tune. And now
she was dead.
The strong pain of all this revival stung
MN back to strength. He went out in
uenance of the doctor, back to his usual
work, resuming the daily round He had
much to meet, to settle, to set right again,
IN MS renewed existence. And she was
dead. The other side of life was closed
ana sealed, and the stone rolled to the
door of the sepulcher. Nothing could
happen to bring that back, to renew any
consclousness of it more. Strange and
SAD and disturbing as this event was, it
seemed TO settle and clear the turbid cur
rent of a spoiled life.
And perhaps the other excitement and
climax of the life of his neighbor which
Iau oeen going on under the same roof,
nelped Mr.. Mannering in the renewal of
an a. MS own history. When he heard Miss
bethune's story, the silent rebellion
against his own, which had been ever in
ms mind, was silenced. 1t is hard, in the
comparison Of troubles, which people who
nave been more or less crushed in life are
80 Iond of making, when brought into
sufficiently intimate relations with each
0yher, to have to acknowledge that per-
naps brother pilgrim, a sister, has had
more 70 bear than ones self. Even in
misery we love to be foremost, to have
Lue oltter in our cup established as more
V05tVer than that of others. But yet, when
W Mannering heard, as she could tell
Inn, the story of the woman who had
wed so near him for years with that I'M
suspected secret, he did not deny that her
iOS nao been more terrible than his own.
MSS Bethune was eager to commune
cue her own tale in those days of excite
uenI ana transition. She went to him of
mer own accord after the first day of his
leI9rh 10 his work, while the doctor how
cleu ABOUT the stairs, up and down, and
TICu41 u not rest, in terror for the result.
~, ~. holland could not believe that his pa
1teuI would not break down. He would
~, ,ov 20 out, nor even sit quietly in his own
I'm lest he should be wanted, and not
tfsauy at the first call. He could not re-
, r1aln from gibe at the lady, whom he
he. on the stairs. Eyes, by all means, -
r ~g SAID go and tell him all about your
i,,n business. Go and send him out to
LUX after that wretched Hesketh, whom
s eau are going to keep up, hear. all the
NJ Not him doctor The poor unhappy
''u1nR creature, his wife
,..,, On yes; that is how these miserable
4talns get hold upon people of weak
on, linus. His wife! I'd have sent him 10
s@oI' His wife would have been far bet