The Somerset herald. [volume] (Somerset, Pa.) 1870-1936, 1895-05-08
WHEN SHE WAS THIRTY
BY LOUISE CHANDLER MouLTox.

1t was Eleanor Gray's thirticth birth,
day. Suddenly she awOke 10 tn,
knowledge that youth, with its vague
hopes and dreams, was over. She had
never quite understood how swiftly The
years were passing. One day was 81
/ like another and the heart in her was
50 young she half thought that she her
self was young girl still, aud that love
might be waiting round the corner.
Hitherto hope had held her by the
hand. But somehow there was a cruel
positiveness in the number so. so
many years had she lived, the years of
charm and expectancy. What could
there he to come now? But what had
there been i'm the past?
She went back in her thoughts over
the life she had lived and regarded it
n If it had been that Of some other per-
son. She had been born in the wrong
family, she said to herself-that was
the beginning. They loved her well,
the practical, unimaginative parents
whose child she was, but they had new
er understood what she meant. Her
ways were not "a their ways, nor her
thoughts a their thoughts. They had
been proud Of her in some uncompre-
hending fashion, but they had smiled
at her aspirations and ambitions rs at
the amusing vagaries ola petted infant.
They gave her the harp on which she
wanted to play, just n they had given
her the talking doll she coveted and
made friends with when she was a
child. They let her buy herself poetry
books, Just as they had LET her buy
swee;meats. They We're good and dear
oh, 80 good and dear she said to
herself on this morning of her thirtieth
birthday. But they did not know her.
No one had ever known her. OF that
she felt certain.
She took a little hand mirror from
her dressing table and began Ia study
her face in it. The features had not
changed very much since she was 20.
Perhaps the eyes were a little more
sad, and the checks had not quite the
wild rose bloom that belonged to them
ten years ago, but really there was not
50 very much difference Then she
held the glass nearer and looked in it a
little more closely. There were-yes,
there were-wrinkles, slight, yet un-
mistakable, nj the corners of her eyes.
They were big blue eyes, by the way,
with black iashes. The young gold of
her hair was turning to autumnal
brown. And the lips that had never
been warmed by kisses seemed TO have
grown thinner.
''Yes,n she said, "ah, yes, am old
er, / can see it in the glass. ! am
not 50 pretty a was, but what good
did the prettiness do? Who ever loved
me really unless''-She did not finish
the sentence. If she had, il would
have been 'unless Tom did"
And then she laid down the glass,
and her thoughts went on long jour
ney, back to the faraway days when
Tom Rhodes used to come home with
her from all sorts of places and look at
her with such eloquent eyes that she
had not forgotten their language even
vet. She had never let him go farther
than looking, however. The world
her unconquered kingdom-was all be-
fore her in those days, and she did not
mean to take Tom for prime minister.
He was "A dear good fellow. She used
always to think that when she thought
about him at all. But there were
poets in the world, and painters and
statesmen, and Tom-was only Tom.
He taught school in the winter and
was busy on his widowed mothers
small farm in the summer, and try how
YOU would you could not fancy him in
the aspect Of cOnquering hero. so
she had kept Tom from speaking, and
finally his mother had died, and he
had sold the little farm, had gone away
10 that vague part of the world known
i'm those days as tout west" What he
had done there or what had become of
him who knew Not Eleanor, at any
rate.
She wondered il il were such keen
torture to other women To feel that
they had grown old. Ii seemed to her,
lust then, that youth was all-all. She
had quafied it, wine, and now in the
cup were dregs only. And then she
sadly smiled. What wine had she
ever quaffed, after all? People used
TO call her beautiful-and surely she
must have been at at least pretty
what good had it done her? The right
suitor had never come. Or the few
who seemed to care for her she thought
in this hour only of Tom. She re-
membered tones and looks. Shy flow
ers, shyly given tender little cares for
her comfort in small things. But in
those old days her ambition scared far
beyond Tom. Would it have been far
better had she cared for him? Would
he have understood her? Would love
have made that possible: For she felt
now that her deepest longing had al
ways been to be understood. Love that
was given to the external Eleanor
would never have been enough. She
must meet some one who had the Key
to her deepest soul, must she live and
die more solitary than any monk ol
! old i'm his hidden hermitage.
Could il be that she had thrown