Weekly Caledonian. (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1919-1920, 1919-04-02

ly There comes Sudden luminous
Bump in the Machinery and Those
Who Are Listening Feel That
Something Has Gone Wrong Some
Where or a Substance Gone Be-
tween the Stones that Has Been
Annihilated Mercilessly.
Alice Hold had declared that the
! light had been burning beneath Mary
Purses door far into the morning
after the night we had spent at the
big Boston auditorium hearing Mibb
Henderson's concert. What of those
hours? Why had Mary's light been
burning? Only the good God knows
what passed in that gentle woman's
heart after she closed the door and
found herself alone with her NOM
cries and her soul. The rest of Us
may merely surmisc.
She took off her hat and cloak and
hung them away. She #tarttd to
prepare herself for bed. Before the
mirror she met the sight of her own
features. She wilted suddenly into
the nearby rocker and with enarlcd
red hands claspcd before her con-
vulsively, with wet eyes and bowed
head, the past rose before her and
Knocked her.
Her mothers face came to her in
those midnight hours. Once again
she sat in a tiny caves bedroom and
heard the frogs piping down in the
marsh. She IUulnGyed once more to
Paris with Herb Truman behind
Monday Washing. Once again, too,
she smelled the fragrant nipping au
tumn night outside with the comfort
and the elegance showing in the
mammoth Truman House behind the
clumsy young man who had loved
her and gone away with broken
heart to escape a loveless marriage.
Her mothers funeral, the old russell
apple tree, the birth of Thomas JOS
hua, the nights with Jack in the little
tenement on Pleasant Street,
all the sweet and sad memories which
every man and woman can call up
in the quiet hours thinking backward
over the days that are gone,
all these came before her and only
heightened and intensified her loncli
ness. For she was lonely. Though
she had the six boys, she was lonely
with a healtache that only those who
have loved deeply and lost much can
ever know.
And Mabel?
Mabel had been cheap, hcartless,
cold, calculating. But great au-
dience had applauded her. Mammoth
bouquets had been brought to her and
presented in public. She had made
a success of her life, indeed! She
had money to enjoy life to its mea-
sure. Her figure had not yet lost its
girlish lines entirely. Every day was
a day to be lived and its full allot
ment of enjoyment extracted.
And she, she was only a
plain, hum-drum, no-account mother
Of six ordinary boys, working dreary
lay after dreary day up in a grubby
title Vermont printing office with
nothing ahead but work and toll and
worry and disappointment! 1t didn't
seem fair not at all! And in that one
awful night with the hotel lights
burning brightly, the poor woman
ought out very solemn fight that
very normal man and woman since
inc bagn has had to fight out at
omc hour for himself: is there
God in His Heaven and if so, why
loes He permit such injustice in the
world He has created?
After time the tired out over
worked, lonely soul found herself
vcr on the bed. ,
And her pillow was wet with tears '
UGH as it had never been dampened i
With before. I
To the Henderson girl had come {
Tory enough. To the Wood girl,
orrow and work and disappointment
,erc her portion. And all because r
he had followed the dictates of her $
cart and the manner of girl which
he was in her soul. S
Was it worth the price? h
"Dear, dear father!' she moaned h
YER and over again. "Give me
,rength to go onward! For am y
cry near the end, very very i
ear the endw =
1t is time to close the second por- a
on of this story now and pass on +
ard to lfc's evening. But before ~
e write "Part the Third" at the top :.
f a new sheet of fools-cap, let us .
It down here one great grim anec-