The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1909-01-20


ing to a new plan Ii beginning any
thing new that the project is at last
to be revealed to her. The good So
ciety, the spirits d'elite, whom she
had so longed for but never yet en-
countereG, she not did encounter
here any more than in other places,
and a sense of dull certainty settled
down upon her, after a while, which
was depressing. Such impressions
are modified after a time when the
idealist finds out that however much
his or her surroundings may cost the
reputation, there is always a certain
pond of goodness and of the agreeable
and sympathetic in the dullest mind
when you come to know it. Surrey,
however, no more than any other
place, discloses these homely, COM
forting qualities all at once, and the
pride of disenchantment came. The
real light upon the glamor OF the
Imagination may come, and Carry
felt herself settle down. 1t is a pro-
cess which every dreamer has to go
through.
But it was a long time before her
mind would consent to the settling
down, which took place slowly, but
surely as the days and years went on.
Beaufort was in reality a little stirred
up at first by the revival of so many
old plans and thoughts, though it was
in his mind, not in hers, that they re-
vived. He was constrained by a hun
dred subtle influences to resume at
least the attitude OF a student. Her
voice, which was SO pretty, the gen.
tie feminine music of a true though
small singer, was such a reproach to
him as words cannot describe. She
had picked up her thread, so slight,
so fragile, as 1t was, and resumed e
little melodious strain with enthusi-
asm not less, but greater, than when
she had dropped it in the despair of
parting with her lover. Her little
form brought back to him faint I'M
sayable echoes of that past which
seemed to be a thousand years off.
What was it that he had intended to
do that she remembered so well,
which to him was like a forgotten
dream He could not pick up his
thread; he had smiled at himself by
turns during the progress of the in
tervening centuries over the futility
of his forgotten embition. II, too,
used to mean great things" he had
said with a laugh and a sigh to the
younger men-the sigh had been
fictitious, the laugh more genuine.
What a fool any man was to think
that he could do! What a silly bust
ness. to think that with your feeble
hands you could upset the economy
of ages! The conceit, too! but he
had been very young, he had said
to himself, and youth is an excuse
for everything. That any faithful
memory should preserve the image OF
him as he was ia those days of de-
fusion, ambition and self-opinion,
had seemed incredible to him. He
was half affronted, as we'll as aston
ished, that Carry should have re-
tanned that visionary in her mind,
but still her expectation was a curious
stimulus. And the first steps into
which he was forced by It deluded
her as well as himself. He began to
orange his books, to search, as he
persuaded himself, for old notes, a
search which occupied a great deal OF
time and involved many discoveries,
amusing to him, delightful to her.
For weeks together this investigation,
through all manner of old notebooks,
occupied them both and kept Carry
very happy. She was full of excite
ment as to what each new collection
would bring forth. He had q great
many notebooks, dating not only from
his college days, but even from his
school times, and there was rarely
one of them out of which some little
fossil of the past, ONE scrap of verse
or translation did not come. Carry,
delighted, listened to them all as to
so many revelations. She traced him
back to his boyhood, and fouisl a
pleasure beyond description in that
record of all his intellectual vagaries,
and the hopes an .mbitions they ex-
pressed. Perhaps had she read them
calmly with her own eyes, although
those eyes yer full of glamor, faint
lights of criticism might have arisen
and revealed the imperfections. But
he read them to her in his mellow
voice, with little explanations, rem
iniscences not disagreeable to himself,
and which suggested other and more
frightened recollections, all of which
were delightful to his admiring wife.
1t was not till Christmas, when she
suddenly woke up to the passage Of
time by the startling reminder of
little Toms return from school for
the holidays, that she suddenly re-
membered how much time had
passed. To be brought suddenly to a
pause in the midst of ones enthusi-
asm is always disagreeable, aud the
thought had been moving in Carry's
mind for several days befors she put
it timidly in words:
TO be Continued.