Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1878 — COME TOGETHER AT LAST. [ARTICLE]

COME TOGETHER AT LAST.

Mies Carney walked up the loDg, green lane on her way home from a tea-party. She wore a brown silk dresß and a brown bonnet, and carried a large brown parasol in her hand. The brownß were of different shades, and ran softly into each other, like the tints upon a dove. All the lines of her figure were smooth and rounded. She was a very pretty old lady iudeed, and must have been a very pretty girl, though she was a spinster, and people who believed that ail unmarried women were left upon the boughs of single blessedness because they tempted nobody to pluck them must have owned that it could not be so in her case. Down the lane, coming toward her, walked a gentleman. He was tall and broad; his hair was gray, and his hat was gray; and his Bummer suit was gray; his beard was gray also. He, oddly enough, was softly shaded off like another sort of dove. The green trees were ail about them both, the green grass beneath their feet. The roses nodded over the fence. If these had been two young people instead of two old people, one might have fancied it a lovers’ rendezvous, but they were old. Of course there could be no romance about them. In the middle of the lane, shaded by great chestnut trees, stood au old house. Honeysuckle draped the porch. There was an old-fashioned sweep to the well. It was altogether a thing of the past —no modern cottage of architectural mysteries. It was so old-fashioned that it must have been the same when those two old people wore young. Yes, when their parents wero born doubtless it stood, by no means a new house, just as it stood now. -The pretty old lady in brown reached the gate of this house first. She lifted the latch and stood looking down the road, thinking that it must be that the handsome old gentleman in gray had lost his way and would inquire of her, for Ike lane was no thoroughfare because of a fence and a gate ai d a sigu, with “All persons are forbid so trespass upon these grounds ” nailed urion if. The old lady’s father had put up the sign tho day after the peddler had stolen all liiu pears. No neighbor minded it, but strangers did.

So the old lady waited courteously to tell tho stranger that he might take the short cut through the orchard if he chose. “Ee walks like somebody I know. Who can it be?” she asked herself. Then she suddenly blushed and looked prettier than ever. Yes, certainly, it could not bo because uo one had desired to pluck her that she remainc 1 a faded rose upon the branch—Miss Carney, not Mrs. anybody. On came the old gentleman in his gray coat., and, as he looked at the little old lady, lie doffed his gray hat. “ Madame,” said he, “this is where Mr. Edward Carney used to live, I know. Docs he live here now ?” But tho old lady looked at him with a sudden start. “Oh !” sho cried ; and added, “ No, ho docs not.” “ Ho is—” began the old gentleman. “ It is his tombstone that you can see under the great willow in the highest part of the churchyard,” she said, pointing through the trees. “He was 80 when he died.” “Time flies fast,” said the old gentleman. “ Fearfully fast,” sighed the old lady. Sho was not looking at him now, but at the flowers in the borders at her feet. “ Mr. Carney was a widower when i knew him, and had but one child—a daughter,” said the old gentlemau in grey. “ Sho is living, is she not ?” “ Yes,” said the old lady. ‘ 1 But she cannot be Miss Carney still, ” said the old gentleman. “But sho i-g” said the old lady, and looked him. iu the face again. “But she is, said the old lady, and looked him in the face again. Their eyes met. Hers were brown and his were grey. “People alter out of knowledge in forty years,” said she; “and how on earth I came to know you I don’t know, for you look like your own grandfather, Mark Tur er.” “Ask the old gentleman to walk in, then, Miss Carney,” said he; “ for lie ought to be more weary thau lie used to grow on the some road a life time ago, coming from the mill, you remember, Friscy, every Sunday evening.” “Did yon?” said she, pretending to forget. “ Oh, yes! of course I’ll ask you to walk m, Mr. Turner.” She turned. He followed her. They sat down in the parlor—one on either side of the polished table. Over it, between the windows, hung the looking-glass with its narrow gilt frame. The book-case filled t'.e rcctss. On the mantel-piece were some shell flowers uuder glass. There was the stiff sofa with the black cushion like a slice of a fluted column’ there were the six chairs to match, and the claw-footed sideboard. There had been no children to break or scratch things. All was the same as when he left it last and saw Miss Carney standing in the middle of the floor with her long black hair in curls about her shoulders" and a blue ribbon around her taper girl’s waist. Now he looked at her, and she was really old and stent, but somehow she seemed to be nobody else but Priscv Canuey. J She saw him looking from the furnithought lCe ’ aQ( * i u * e rpreted his

“Yes,” she said, almost angrily “is it not strange? There are the bits of wood, and glass, and china, just as they used to be. There are the oak trees only t,nor and greener. The very grass and flowers might be the same: and here am 1, old, faded nud lonely, and my handsome, bright-eyed father dead in hj s grave, and all I care for gone I wish I were gone also. I think people wno have not seen each other for forty j eurs need not seek each other again I they would not come to me after being all the same as dead for forty ghosts.” iS PreCißely like *‘ ei 4 She looked as though she wanted to cry. “Poor old ghost,” said he, “whom no one wapts to see—not eyep those

who promised to remember him forever. ” “ Forty years is much worse than forever,” said she, “ and 66 is a terribly unromantic age.” “ Yes, it is,” said he; “ but it is a good age enough for ghosts. By the way, do yon like ghost stories ? Let me tell yon one. “ Once there was a ghost—now I think of it, he wasn’t always a ghost; he was a boy once— the son of a miller down by the water-side. He worked in the mill, and was floury and white as a ghost should be most of the time; but he was happy and gay, and many things happened as he nked. One of them was when a certain rioh farmer in the neighborhood came to the milk The grain his servants brought in the great wagons, but he, the farmer, used to drive to the mill with his little daughter in the gig beside him. She was a pretty child,with long curls, and her eyes were big and brown. “ She made a pretty picture in her white dresses and bright ribbons, and she came when she was so young that she used to hold her hands out to this boy and cry, ‘ Come here, ’ittie boy. Show me where the flour sifTs from.’ “ For that was what she liked to see the best, the flour sifting through the fine muslin. Every week she used to come until the miller sent his boy away to schooL When he came home again she was a girl of 16, prettier than ever, and sho remembered asking him to let her see the flour sift, and she talked to him while her father was attending to his business; and the days when she did not come the boy eared nothing for, and the days that brought her were marked and picked out as blessed days. “After a while he got over the shyness that kept him from going to see her, and went, and she was not displeased. She was the mistress of the house, for her mother died young. She used to make tea for him on Sunday afternoon, and after tea her father would put his handkerchief over his head and fall into a nap. Then they used to whisper together. Long after the poor boy came to be a ghost he remembered those evenings, when he was a brightcheeked young fellow, the son of a rich miller, and had the hope of marrying the girl he loved before his eyes. “He thought the girl loved him as well as he loved her, and he had no fears of the future, no thought that trouble could come to him in any way until misfortune overtook his father. The good old man failed. The mill was sold. There was nothing but anxiety at home. At last worse came—his father died soon after his mother. He was very sad ; he was poor, also; but he had hope, for he was beloved by the one he loved.

“ One day he went to her for comfort. He remembered the day ever after. The low-built, old fashioned house, the great oaks, flower garden, the girl in her white dress and blue ribbons who camo to greet him. He was full of life still, but that night, when he turned away from the house, he was a ghost—the miserable ghost of his old self, for he no longer had any faith in love. “ Standing before him, pale and sad, and with tears in her eyes, it is true, he had heard her who had made the world bright for him soy: ‘lt is my father’s will that we should part. I cannot disobey my old parent. ’ “Then she had told him that she loved him as well as ever; but he did not believe her. “ He thought his poverty had turned her heart from him, that she had never felt tenderly toward him, and he left her in anger, believing all that had been said and written about the falsehood of women. Yes, he was turned into a ghost. ” “He might have known she was as unhappy as ho was,” said Miss Carney, from behind her handkerchief; “but what can a girl do when her father threatens to curse her, and sho the only child he has ! Only nothing could make her marry any one else—nothing. That she could do at least.” “But the poor ghost did not know that,” said the old man. “It wandered away broken-hearted. It found its way to the sea first, and then into the battle. For years it was a wretched ghost, greatly to be pitied, and only wishing to die ; but at last it grew content, though never happy, and worked in a great city at a trade it had until it had made a fortune.

“All tlie same, it was a miserable oldbachelor ghost, and never found a mate, and used to say, often and often, over and over again, to itself, that women were all false, and that the woman he loved had been utterly false to him. He supposed her married to some one else, and all this time he grew older and older, and long years lay between him and the happy time when he was a boy.” “Long, long years,” sighed Miss Carney. “ Long, long years.” “But one day,” proceeded the old gentleman, “ one day there came to him out of the past an old, familiar face; and, amidst the whirl of the great city, this ghost talked to it of the green lanes and rippling streams of the spot where he was born, and asked of the house under the oaks, and the girl who dwelt there once—the girl who had been, as he thought, false to him. And this old friend told him something that made him feel suddenly that he might come to life again.

“‘She never married,’ she said—it was a woman. ‘She lives in the old house uow. Other men loved her, but she never loved any other man but you. We all know that.’ “ And then the ghost said to himself —‘ Forty years of life lost,’ and went down to the green country place to haunt his old love, and hear her say sho was sorry to see him.” “Oh, dear! oh, dear!” sighed the little old lady in brown. “How could she help it? All her beauly gone, all her youth ; what could she feel but sorry, and just a ghost herself.” She arose and turned away. He arose and followed her, putting Iris arm about her waist. “Priscv,” he said, “you are the only woman I ever loved. Is not that something for a man to say, when it is true as gospel?” “Yes,” said she ; “and I almost believe you, for—for I never cared for any one else either.” “Then why not do our best to be happy now, Priscy? Why not marry o icb other and live again, not two poor old ghosts ?” “ Well, becauso folks would call us two old fools,” said she. “ Well, let them,” said he. “Very well,” said she, “I don’t care.” Then the old gentleman in grey kissed the old lady in brown, and said, “ What day shall we set, my dear ?” W hat her answer was may be guessed when the village beds, one month later, rang the wedding peal of the old lovers.