Evening bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1895-1912, 1900-01-06


and the father realized that no matter
to what depths of degradation she
might have sunk to him she would al
ways be-mother--.
For a couple of months after Joining
ne Spaniard. Bess had led gay life,
going from camp to camp with hei
Jaramour while he piled his vocation
S gambler, and the novelty of this
estless, rowing existence, with III
nrilling round Of excitement and tn
hitting scenes through which sh
assed served to Danish whatever re
,rets she might otherwise have indulg
1t. But Tito, like all other libertineg
owed with such passionate ardor tina
he fierceness of the flame in shoi
ime burnt itself out, and there re
NAMED of the fires of his love not
,ing.e ember glowing in the ashes q
,urfeited lust at which he could kindl,
| spark of desire. Then, finding him
elf satiated without giving a thought
the wretched creature who had for
lis sake abandoned her child and hus-
Iand-the home that she might have
Inverted into an Eden of domestic
omfort and happiness with little
honest womanly endeavor; who had
topped ron her high place as a wife
nd mother to share infamy with him,
md was irretrievably lost in the mael-
3Crom of vice from which no hand of
ler chaste sisterhood would ever try
o save her, he departed for Baja Cali
fornia without one word of farewell,
md Lett her, a penniless outcast, in a
emote mining camp among the Sierras
IF i,evaua, the only one of her sex in
he place. For the first time Bess
earned the bitter flavor of the apples
Of Sodom; she had plucked the fair
fruit of desire only to find 1t crumble
70 ashes; the sun of her life seemed
below the clouded horizon of
hopeless despair long before it should
nave reached the unclouded meridian
of her womanhood. In this unhappy
time of introspection and futile regrets
the maternal instinct filed her breast
with terrible longing. She looked
Dack on her home life and recalled the
times she had impatiently
the baby's dimpled arms
from her neck and coldly thrust him
away. How often she had left him
to sit alone all day to gaze moodily out
Of the window, without even a parting
kiss. She could see the large dark
yes, full of mournful appealing. gazing
into her own from out the deepest
darkness of the night and often she
started from her uneasy slumbers at
the fancied sound of little bare feet
pattering on tn ecold floor of her room
and with trembling hands would light
the lamp to assure herself 1t was only
a dream, and then walk about the
room, through the nights long hours,
weeping bitterly. Every word of the
cruel scrawl she had pressed into the
child's hand burned before her mental
vision in characters of livid fire. you
can have the brat; don't want him."
And now, God help her! to feel the
dewy lips pressing her own-to have
those dear baby fingers softly strokiag
her cheek as he was wont to do-to lis
ten but once more to the sweet pratt.e
of the child she had abandoned, the un-
happy mother would have endured an
eternity of hell. 1t was as IL all the
best and noblest impulses Of her nature
haa been awakened from a long
trance; in the crucible of grief all the
dross Of her character had been chas-
tened out and the refined gold of Il
newborn mother love remained. The
rough chivalry Of the miners who Lad
believed de Vega to be her husband
prompted them to yield her a sympa-
thy that, II 1t was somewhat clumisly
expressed was at least gen.
uine and substantial in that
it took the form of liberal donations of
provisions, and as they saw her face daily
growing more pale and wan, they Wed
with each other in trying to soften the
asperity of her grief by little acts of man.
ly self-denial and generosity. One would
call in for the express purpose of showing
her some unusually fine nuggets, and then
slip away and leave them lying on table
or window ledge. Another, with touch
of sentiment In his nature, made her room
gay with mountain ash and manzanita
berries; and Others Of the little community
brought long-chershed books and papers
that had passed from hand to hand and
al kaa,, raal a,,I 80