The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1931-01-23

| Of Aimee, the dear, sweet elf, untu-
tored as gamin, product Of hard.
| cruel conditions, small angel of de-
light. But somehow, try as he would,
he could not visualize compatibility
between his mother and this sprite.
She would not, could not, know
about his mother, for instance, dear
little foolishness that he did. And
| Aimee wore her blond hair in a riot
of careless curls over her head. To the
mother of Ben, there had always been
something untidy and brazen in a
young girl who wore her hair
biZarrely. Countless times she had
commented on it, If such head ap-
! peared in the few public places they
| frequented. Then Aimee was forever
| hitching her adorable shoulders to adj
just tiny gilt safety pin on her I'M
dergarment or STOPPING to pull at a
wrinkling stocking. Quaint, dear things
when Aimee did them, yet things that
in the eyes of his mother, Ben knew,
would seem bold.
Ben began to realize that he was
| about to be confronted with the prob
lem of the cruelest kind of renunci-
alton a man can be called upon to
make. Even to attempt to Introduce
| madcap Aimee into the tidy, arranged,
speckless life of his mother was too
| fantastic to consider. Aimee must
have realized it, too.
They never discussed the small
mother of Ben. They never dared.
But always she was there, between
them. Like a shadow. Like a dread.
There came the time when the soul
| of Ben, rent with doubt, with fear,
with love, began to set up such tor
ment within him that he realized that
between himself, his heart and his
God, there must be a reckoning.
1t was not fair to the elf, Aimee,
even though she was renouncing moth
ing more than a tawdry life, to en-
crOach into her youth in this fashion.
There was never hesitancy or doubt
in the mind of Ben, though, as to what
his ultimate decision must be.
To begin with, Aimee was outside
the faith so scrupulously fostered by
the mother of Ben. That in itself
would be the equivalent of a dagger
thrust into her faithful old soul. More
than that, Ben knew, even though his
pity and his love flowed out all the
more to Aimee, that she had not been
what his mother would have called
good girl" Life had battered her,
but to Ben the sweetness in the child
which he was redeeming, more and
more, was simply unsmirchable.
He loved her. Strangely, oh so
strangely, once you knew the elf of
girl herself, Aimee loved him. Not for
the security he offered, not for the
stability that in the beginning had
drawn her. Aimee loved this round,
little man because the soul in him
burned like lighted lamp for her.
They came to be more and more
silent together. The brooding, sad 81
lence of something impending. Time
and time again, Ben braced himself
for the sacrifice. Time and time again,
the sweet eyes of Aimee, panied be-
fore they were really hurt disarmed
him Of intention.
And all the while their secret trysts
went on. And all the while the name
of Aimee never so much as crossed
the lips of the demure little mother
upstairs, living her life TRANQUILITY in
the warm protection of her son.
Life sometimes seems to have al
most persistent pattern. There came
the day, finally, when Ben found the
strength to take into his hands a sit
uation that was rapidly becoming un-
bearable. He resolved to take Aimee
to motion picture theater that eve-'
ming and on the way home stop at an
ice cream parlor they sometimes fire.
quented, and try to find the words to
tell her the heart-hurting facts of his
enforced remuneration.
At six o'clock Ben closed his store
as usual, to go upstairs for the steam
ing hot meal his mother was sure to
have waiting for him. Foods that he
liked, delicacies that had been espe-
cially thought up for him.
There, sure enough, on the table,
steaming and fragrant, was his dish
of soup, and opposite it his mothers.
She was already at her place, a smile
on her lips, but her head so strangely
backward, in a lolling position.
The mother of Ben was dead. Had
died Of heart stroke while she sat
waiting for her son to arrive for din
ner.
The smile remained, even after she
was tilted in the front parlor in q
softly lined mauve and black coffin.
That smile somehow became a bea-
con for Ben. 1t helped him, through
the pain and bewilderment, to find his
way to a decision that he came finally
to realize his mother would have made
had she lived.
What further aided and abetted
him in this decision to make the little
elf Aimee his wife was a small object
he found in his mothers lower dresser
drawer, tucked under a five-dollar bill
and a little envelope sof blue sachet.
1t was a bit of his mothers hand
work. An embroidered piece Of trous-
seau lingerie, with the name AIMEE"
worked into the hem.