Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1898-10-06
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see all quickly before the short day
ended.
1t was Donald who showed Anne
some of the singular sides Of the city's
life.
During this season of pure frost when
the electric wires spanning. the city
were turned into glacial ribbons and
the noise of traffic on the frozen ground
was like the clamor from brass, she
often found herself treading the narrow,
uphill streets in the lower quarter of
| the city so see some marvellous Find"
of his.
Once it was an old Russian musician,
political exile. The room they found
| him in was wretched, but in corner
stood samovar OF copper fit for a
princes table. This and the Amati on
the old mans knee were the only visible
relics of sumptuous past Bending
over the decaying fire, he had played for
them wild and terrible music, which
awoke strange fancies. 1t seemed to
whisper of spirit haunting familiar
but empty house, where moonlight
streamed through the bare windows; iu
shrieked of shipwreck, mumbled Of
witches dancing in haggard dawn,
prayed for life while the block and the
headsman waited The unsyllabled
desolation of the exile's life, it had
haunted her for days.
Although working in the office of o
world known newspaper, she had never
seen the wonders of the mechanism used
in it's construction until one midnight
Donald took her down to the pressroom.
There was weighty but soundless vi
bration as she went down the stone
stairs, but when the iron door was
pushed back the noise was so tremen-
dous it leaped out like bar and struck
her. A gust of air accompanied it which
seemed to suck her down the ladderlike
stairway against her will until, dazzled
and bewildered, she stood on little
bridge overlooking plateau of steel
that leaped and shivered in gigantic
sockets. Bare chested men like sweat
ing pygmies stood between the big ma
chimes, and above them, monster of
many jaws, the roaring presses snapped
up the paper. On the first page there
was portrait of murderer, and this
was repeated all over the gaslit space.
On every side the sinister visage with
eyes turned obliquely toward her came
riding into view, and the glittering
clamps seized it, seemed to crush ir fu-
riously until, like the stone Sisyphus,
rolled, it appeared again, and the task
was necessarily continued.
1t was Donald who showed her tho
underground restaurants where che
newspaper ''hacks' plunged in the ear
ly morning hours for coffee that was
like fluid blessing. She went with
him to all sorts of queer and stored
monks. Once they had tea in place
known only to few privileged scrib-
blers This was in sort of cul de sac
a swinging lamp lighting the way up
the long alley. Separated from the noise
of the town and waited upon by genial
French most and his wife, they had
seemed in Paris, for the secretive niche
in the crowded street might have strayed
from one OF Hugo's stories and settled,
out of countenance, in Q commercial at
mosphere.
Together they went to well known
studios where all was harmony and
beauty-idols sombrously contempla-
tive, medieval windows, wood carving
from India and rugs from Damascus.
She had watched the last touches put to
q landscape, had seen q sculptor make
lips of clay smile as if he had called life
there.
Donald had taken her behind the
scenes of theater, and she had watched
the progress of a play from the wings,
had gazed with critical eyes and sense
of illusions lost at the mechanism OF
what had SO often enchanted her-exits,
entrances, cues and prompter's book.
And they had read much together
the exquisite prose of Huysmans and
Mallarme, Kipling's crushing phrases
painting the arid glitter of India,
"Tess," bare armed and fawn eyed, low
ing tragically in a setting of clover and
dawn mists; the fatalism of the "Ru-
baiyat" and the wholesome cynicism of
Thackeray.
They shared all together as comrades
and confdants. The boy in Donald and
the piquant schoolgirl only masked in
the woman clasped hands and laughed.
CHAPTER TX.
One morning late in January Anne
opened the sheets of The Citizen and
saw this item among the shipping news
"Among the passengers on the leu
tonic, which arrived in port last night,
were Mrs. Lansius Ericsson and Miss
Olga Ericsson. The latter is the latest
of our young countrywomen to return
to America with London reputation
for beauty"
Five days later Anne stepped from the
raw afternoon into DR.. Ericsson S house.
Her aunt had been in charge but a little
while, yet the old house under her reign