The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1896-06-21
GOING HOME AGAIN
The Wife Had Come Back to
Her Old Self.
NO LONGER A BLANK
A True Story of Sorrow and OF
PathoS.
THE HUS 6AND is A LOVER
He is Full of Reverent Tenderness
Tenderness, Too, not Quite
Certain of Full
Return.

Return.
They had just taken the train from
Raleigh and sat in one seat together.
His head bent low towards hers, and
he watched her with that penetration
that sees the word as it starts fresh
from the heart, before it gets to the
Ilip and his arm was about her neck,
| lust in touch-not close-just about
| her neck close enough to express the
| delicate, reverent tenderneSS-tender
ness too not quite certain of full re-
turn; it was a dazed, eager tenderness,
/ but a tenderness guarded seemingly
against q rush of feeling and by un-
certainty as to full assurance of re-
turn.
| The color did not come and go in his
face; there were no young lights dane
| ing after mother in his eyes; there
was rather in them intentness-
steady intentness-a forced steadi-
ness-a steadiness somewhat after the
fashion of that calmness which is
maintained in an agony of inward UNI
calmness as one tries to keep back the
look of hopefulness from the uneasily,
acutely discerning eye of one that is
loved and near death. Then in that
look of steady intentness, there were
pictures of the long ago, of willows
over winding streams, of winter nights
when cricket songs twinkled in the
midst of twilights that were golden
mornings to them, picturesof n hearth
stone gray with the ashes of the dawn
of death in the home, pictures that
chased one another like flaws of wind
over a rising tide and then, alas! over
tide that was ebbing.
And yet the look was that of steady
intentness-the look of his eyes as
they tried to look into hers-of intent
ness, peaceful, but with a fright so
close behind the peaceful look as to
give it a restless kind of restlessness.
At times, her eyes turned to his, not
smiling eyes-the smiles lay deep and
buried in those ashes of the hearth
stone whence the flame had withered
long ago. Dark eyes, and full, one
instant stranger-eyes-then wifely
eyes, then motherly-then girl eyes
by the willows and her hand would
fall into his, and his old brown, wrin
killed. face would try to smile, it would
smile-but a smile that was not a
smile just as artificial gas-jets through
artificial logs is not the old-time green
log simmering blaze with the cricket
songs. And yet it tried to be a tender
smile, and the voice kept feeling for
notes that were familiar. Sometimes
like this: "Yes, it won't be long now
mother, the next station, and don't
you see the door yonder with the panel
that John put in?'
Yes, she saw it all and that same
backward glimpse so terrible to him
seemed to flash again for an instant
so strangely in her eyes, and then he
would bend over all the closer, and
try to spur himself into all sorts of
homely sayings-he tried to say them
without ceasing, and he took her cheeks
in his hands and held her face towards
his, and he dare not stop his homely
savings. He dare not face another
backward glimpse: he dare not hear
her Voucher word. He must believe
that she was his now as she had once
been, and trihes and tears went in riot
through the minds of those trying 10
philosophize in the midst OF high ten
sion suspense.
"And then" he said in his unceasing
throughout his brain as they will
talk: sthere is Johns grave; you know
when we buried him there, mother;
how the bush has grown that you
too! You always loved these roses,
and he told of the parson and the day
when John ''slippit awa''' He should
not have done so say you--but he
did, and the backward glimpse passed
from her eyes. They were all moth
erly now-full dark and full of tears
tears that filled the interim between
Johns death and now.
For had she not left the home then,
and gone away? 1t was years ago,
the panel of the door had been warped
and scaled in the sun, the panel that
John had put in-and the pickets of
the grave-fence were hidden in the
roses.
The old man had waited for the day
when he could take her from the asy-
lum for the insane over on the hill
near Raleigh.
The doctor had said she could go
home again; that she was calm again,
and would now come back to herself.
But the old man feared some CLEAN
would fall a blade across the way
home. He wanted to see her as he had
seen her then.
In the loss of John, she had lost her
mind, and it is one of those mysterI-
Gus psychological facts that she had
now Tor the nrSb time cOIlo pdth W
her old self in the renewal of the grief
that had made the world blank for her
all these years-and blank for the old
man too.
All this happened few days ago,
and may not all ask that no cloud
stand in the way of the golden twi-
light glow that touches their silver
hair now in their evening with the
love-light, a mellowed after-tone,
though it be, of the young days when
they saw and felt only morning-un-
til John died.
FOURTH DISTRICT CONVENTION.
The Democratic convention of the
Fourth Congressional district of North
Carolina, will be held in Metropolitan