The Kinsley graphic. [volume] (Kinsley, Kan.) 1890-1940, 1896-09-25
=. PART L.
CHAPTER I.
COPYRIGHT. 1894. BY BRET HARTE.

Robes Land company, and husband of
the Itch widow of John Peyton, of the
Robes ranch, mingled with the outgo-
ing audience of the Cosmopolitan thea
ter at San Francisco, he ELECTED the
usual smiling mods and recognition due
to his good looks and good fortune. But
as he hurriedly slipped through the still
lingering winters rain into the smart
coupe that was awaiting him, and gave
the order "home," the word struck him
with peculiarly ironical significance.
His home was a handsome one, and
lacked nothing in appointmentan and COM
fort, but he had gone to the theater to
'evade its hollow loneliness. Norwas it
because his wife was not there, for he
had a miserable consciousness that her
temporary absence had nothing to do
with his homelessness.
The distraction of the theater over,
that dull, vague, but aching sense of
loneliness which was daily growing up
= on him, returned with greater vigor.
He leaned back in the coupe, and
gloomily reflected. 80.
He had been married scarcely year,
yet even in the illusions of the honey
moon, the woman, older than himself
and the widow of his old patron, had
half unconsciously reasserted herself,
and slipped back into the domination of
her old position.
1t was at first pleasant enough-this
half maternal protectorate, which is
even. apt to mingle with the affections
of younger wonderland Clarence in his
easy. half-feminine intuition of the sex
yielded, as the strong are apt to yield
through the very consciousness of their
own superiority. But'this is quality
the weaker are notapt to recognize, and
the woman who has once tasted equal
power with her husband, not only does
not easily relegate it, but even makes
its continuance a test of the affections,
The usual triumphant feminine con
5 clusion: "Then you no longer love me, .
had in Clarence's brief experience gone
even farther and reached its inscrnta-
BILE climax-"then l no longer love you
although shown only in momentary
hardening of the eye and voice. And ada
ed to, this was his sudden but confused
remembrance that he had seen that eye
ton during Judge Peyton's life, and
that he himself, her boy partisan, had
sympathized with her.
Yet, strange to say. this had giver
him more pain than her occasional
other reversions to the past-to her old
suspicious of him when he was a youth
full protege of her husbands, and a
presumed sutton of her adopted daugh-
ter Susy.
High,natures are more apt to forgive
wrong done to themselves than any alb
straet injustice. And her ,capricious
tyranny over her, dependents and serv-
ants, or an :unreasoning enmity to d
neighbor. or friend, outraged his finer
sense more'than her own misconception
of himself. Nor did he dream that this
was a thing most women seldom under
stand. or understanding, ever forgive.
The coupe ratified over the stones OF
swirled through the muddy pools of the
main thoroughfares. Newspapers and
Geographic, offices We're still brilliantly
lit, and crowds were gathered, among
the bulletin boards. He knew that news
had arrived from Washington that even
ing VI UHc IkTSUdClkSc vi SCSCS-
sion. and that the city was breathless
with excitement.
Had he not just come from the thea
ter where certain insignificant allu-
sions in the play had been suddenly
caught up and cheered or. Kissed by
hitherto unknown partisans, to !the
dumb establishment of a majority of the
audience comfortably settled to money
getting and their own affairs alone?
Had he not applauded. albeit half scorn-
fully. the pretty actress-his old play
.mate Susy--who had audaciously and
.all anonymously waved the American
flag in their faces?
Yes! III. had known it; had lived for
the last few weeks in AN atmosphere
electrically surcharged with .it-and yet
it,had chiefly affected him in his person
al thomelessness: For his wife was a
sautherner, born slaveholdes, and n
seeessionist. whose noted prejudices to
the north had even outruln her late hus-
hand politics.
At first the piquancy and reckleksness
Of her opinionative speech amused him
as part of her characteristic flauer, or
NE q -AIuS thS diuSces " iiASAA lhc
rnaturer intellect always pardons.
BE had never taken her politics aeri-
ously-why should he? With her head
on his shoulder he had listened to her
extraxagant diatribes against the north;
he had forgiven her outrageous indict-
mentsof lis caste and his associates for
the sake OF the imperious but handsome
lips that uttered them. =:
But when he was compelled to listen
to her words echoed and repeated by
her friends and family; when he found
that with the elannishness of her race
she had drawn closer to them in this
controversy-that she depended upon
them for her intelligence and informal
tion rather than upon him-he had
awakened to the reality of his situation.
He had borne the illusions of her
brother, whose old scorn for his de-
pendent childhood had been embittered
by her sisters marriage, and was now
scarcely concealed.
Yet while he had never altered his
own political faith and social creed in
tins antagonistic atmosphere, he had
often wondered. with his old conscien-
tiousness and characteristic self-abne-
cation. whether his own political con-
victions were not merely a revulsion
from his domestic tyranny and alien
surroundings.
. In the midst of this gloomy retro
spect' the coupe stopped with jerk
before his own house. The door was