The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1906-01-03

truth. At ali events, they let her so
to the ball-dressed, her mother IN
formed me, like a bride in white, ana
with bright flowers upon her hair. ana
in her breast. My poor little Margaret!
she never wore q white dress and HOW
ers again, save once-and that was on
q day wcll-nigh as fatal in its results
the day she became my wife"
The vicar stopped.
"And at this ball she was told the
truthp' cried Jane. "Oh, MI. Follett,
who had the heart to tell it her at such
4 time?" -
well Jane, l don't understand much
about these things, but l fancy your
sex-far too tender-hearted though they
are in general-have some merciful and
special faculty granted them for not
feeling too deeply the distresses and
disappointments of each other. At all
events it is, I hear, from Womens
hands, not mems, that the most Spar
tan stabs to women invariably come.
Nearly all the people at that ball knew
that Margaret was ignorant OF her
lovers death, and men danced WIN
her, her mother told me, and looked
grave, and constrained, and as though
they wished the$$dance was over, While
she ratified on, full Of high spirits ana
excitement, and with n brilliant flush
upon her face. But-just before supper
two girls-young girls of her own age,
and friends of bers-Were speaking,
perhaps unintentionally, of Margaret,
as she passed with one Of her partners,
and saying how we'll dearest Maggie
bore her bereavement, and what q won
derful blessing it was to have such
iron nerves, and wouldn't people have
thought she might, at least, have ap-
peared ut this ball in mourning?
"She walked straight 70 her father,
with a face cold and white as the face
of any corpse, and babe him take her
home at once. She never upbraided
him or her mother; but from the hour
she knew the truth, she seemed callous
to everything in life, and utterly cold
to their grief and to their Temorse.
Her lover had been dead about a
twelve-month when I first met her,
and some likeness that she. saw, or
thought she saw, to him in me
awakened the first sign of life and
spirits that she had yet shown.
Vt pass over needless details, Jane
the poor deceit toward me, the de-
spairing hope of her parents that i'll
marriage she might forget the past,
the passive Indifference that I mistook
for angelic, girlish difidence. !, have
told you the facts; she married me;
she never loved me-you can imagine
all the rest. She married me and died;
and with her buried, not love alone,
but my youth and my belief in happi-
ness-all that a young mans heart
sums up in the word life From the
hour that I knew that Margaret had
never loved. me, I was. old. l have
never felt any spring or vivid hope or
black despair since then. With me,
these things died a. sudden death. In
natural lives, you know, they molder
with the slow decay of on-coming
years. Who shall say which is best,
Jane-to know intense happiness, and
intense misery, early, and then have
done with both; or to have them spread
out. at intervals, yer twenty, thirty,
forty years of ordinary life? I am in
clined to think I am as content as
most men. ] would not exchange my
lotswith that Of any man blessed with
wife and children in this county. No
great afiiction can come upon me. The
sun can rise upon no day that will find
me robbed Of all / car to live for by
night. What happiness l have is self
contained. I think it is best So"
And I think such a state unnatural
and dreadfulv' cried Jane, with sudden
energy. II think it is death in life;
and I say better real death, q thousand
times, than live in the selfish, stag
nant, lonely content that you say is so
satisfactory. Mr.. Follett, you deceive
yourself in thinking you would not
exchange it for the common cares and
chances of afliction that fall to the lot
of lives whose happiness aud whose
misery depends upon others,
The blood shone through her frail
cheek; her eyes glowed; q strange
tremor, not at all aesthetic, made itself
felt at the heart of the Vicar Of Ches-
terford. It came before him strongly
what a fool Clifford Mohun had been;
what a jewel beyond all price this was
that he had thrown away.
Jane, is it better, do you think, for
men and women to be content with the
ineyitable"-and, whatever the treGior
at his heart, the wears voice was
usually cool and steady-"better be
content with human life as it must and
ever will be. or to bewail the glories
OF our lost Eden-the Eden at whose
gate there stands a fearful angel, the
spirit of our own dead youth, waving
us back for evermore."
"Mr. Follett, I think, though my ac-
| tual life is to be loveless, I am glad to
have the time to look back upon when
when Clifford cared for me, and that
l would rather keep that recollection
of him and be miserable-God help me!
as 1 am. than forget him and grow
happy in such a state as you describe"
For a man of eight and thirty, who
had fully done with youth, Mr.. Fol
lett was smitten with a strange panG
at James words. He remembered sud-
| denly and with a great clearness that
he had come as a priest to console one
of the little ones Of his flock; that