The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1914-08-15
WHOM GOD HATH JOINED

lhb uO bnSy apply hOAS
W trenchantly than to our
theories and teachings with
regard to marriage. Were W. more
honest, there might be fewer we'd
dings, but there would also be fewer
divorces.
Louise Morton had no such icono-
elastic ideas. She was one of the wo-
men who had, all her life, called a
spade IAN agricultural implement"
To her, delicacy and what she termed
modesty were the requisites to NOR
atty and decency-whether they were
true or false. Left a widow with an
only daughter, she had trained this
daughter as If she were preparing her
for the life of a nun. When the girl
married, bore a child, lost her hus.
band, and died. the mother took the
orphaned grandbaby to her lonely
heart and held her close there, fig
uratively, until a man of whom she
approved. because she liked his bear
ing and manners toward herself, and
with whom the unsophisticated girl
had fallen in love, asked the devoted
grandmother to give her darling into
his keeping.
1t would be untrue to say that the
grandparent did not shrink from part
ing with her grandchild, but the feel
Ing of grief was not unmixed with
one of relief that the responsibilities
which she had carried alone for SO
many years were to be shared by an
other, and that the girls future hap
piness was assured. That is the way
some parents and guardians think of
the marriages of their charges-espe-
cially men who can provide comfort
ably for them. They lived happily
forever after" is their idea of the
finale to girlhood, courtship. and mar
rage. The man or woman who knows
life may be pardoned the cynical
smile caused by this conviction Of the
idealist.
Mrs. Phelps was such an idealist,
and she talked much to Louise Of the
romance of love and marriage, the
MO of two souls. the merging of
two indiyidualities into one perfect
whole where there would be mutual
affection. trust, and comprehension.
And Louise, talking with the man who
mad been won by her fresh young
beauty and glrlish innocence, told
him of these theories. AS Tom Mar
shall was a mar Of the world, he was
glad that his soon-to-be bride knew
nothing of the life that he knew, and,
to humor her, he expressed his agree
ment with all her views of the exis-
tence they were to lead together.
When the Marshals had been mar
ried for a year, they seemed to the
outside world to be happy. The dis
Illusion that had come had been re-
ceived by the wife dumbly. Even
her husband did not suspect the in
ward shudder with which she saw the
Ideal changed for the actual, the ro-
nance for the reality. All the happy
anticipation of motherhood of which
she had read and heard was
hers. She fashioned the tiny gar
ments as she would have embroid.
cred al altar-cloth, and met the
anguish of birth as a martyr
might endure the suffering that would
admit him to glory. When she awoke
from the Inconsistencies following
the pain and found her tiny baby
dying beside her, she smiled wanly at
her husband.
Il once read" she whispered, about
helping God find a soul In the dark,
and that's what l have been doing.
But I've found It,"
Tom Marshall was glad that she
was happy and safely through her
trial. Away down in his heart there
!urbed a shadow Of disappointment
that the baby was a girl. But it's a
fine Kid he acknowledged to the
doctor. "And perhaps the next one
will be a boy"
When he said as much to his wife
she looked at him with wondering
eyes. II cannot understand" she
said family, how any woman can
dare go through such anguish twice.
Yet, two years later. when the sec
cad was coming, she wrote to her
gIandmother-now living In her old
home IN the south-telling her of the
approaching event, and hoping that
the elderly woman would try to be
as confronted as she was at the pros
pect. Children are all that makes
life worth living" she wrote. But
on reading the letter. she erased Q
part of the sentence and wrote In its
stead. Children are among the things
that make life worth living" Ever
her grandmother must not suspect the
truth.
When the second little girl was
month old the nurse left, for LouisI
was able to be up and about. She diC
not confess 20 doctor or nurse how
weak and "shaky" she felt. She woult
get up, she determined, SO that shl
could take r of Constance, tn
older baby, herself. She was not sat
tsfed when the little one was out O
her sight. She would not trust am
ignorant, perhaps coarse, servant will
her child. Since her marriage shl
had grown morhldly sensitive with re
gard to all things that we're not re
Aned, or that were vulgar or cor,
tnon.