Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 March 1881 — TIT FOB TAT. [ARTICLE]

TIT FOB TAT.

They were coming back from Observatory Bock. The setting sun was casting long shadows athwart the waving field of grain and stealing slowly down the rocky hillsides. She was a facinating woman. Her face was beautiful beyond description, and her voice had a subtile power, a caressing undertone that sent a thrill through every fiber of her companion’s being. She and her widowed mother were staying at a spacious farm-house in a lovely Connecticut valley. She had come there to recuperate from her social dissipations of the past winter in New York, and to gain strength for new dissipations and triumphs in the fast approaching autums. It was rumored that she had broken many hearts and ruined more men’s lives than she cared to count; but then rumor often lies. He was a tall, sunburnt man, with dark blue eyes, and a mass of waving blonde hair. He was clad in the garb of a simple farmer, but he did not look wholly like a tiller of the soil. His brown hands were too shapely and his carriage too elegant for a man country-bom and country-bred. Still, lie had been working on the Meadow farm during the summer, and in all his leisure moments had been the constant shadow of the woman at his side. Ho way a, man of passionate impulse, and his heart was capable of an all-ab-sorbing love or an all-devouring hate. As they walked slowly down the hillside in the rich evening light, the lady chatted half familiarly, half condescendingly with her companion, while he listened with the partly eager, partly abstracted air of a mail plunged in some deeply interesting experiment. She talked with an air of conscious social superiority, and he listened or replied like a man with a hidden purpose and a hidden strength. As they came to a low stone wall he took her hand to assist her in surmounting it. Upon the other side of the wall he still retained Iter hand. She turned upon him with a look full of astonishment.

“Thank you for the assistance, Mi Chapman,”' she said coldly, striving to withdraw jlier hand from liis. “I am quite able to proceed alone now.” He made no answer, but still held the little hand in his strong grasp, while with his eyes he seemed trying to search the innermost depths of her heart. A crimson flood illuminated her face. “Mr. Chapman, you will be kind enough to release my hand at once.” This with freezing hauteur. “Bur suppose I want it,” he said quietly, with a look full of meaning; “suppose I tell you that I want you for my wife; suppose I declare that I love you, that your beautiful face enslaves me, that your soft voice sets my heart on fire, that I can not, I will not live without you.” • 1 His eyes were glowing like living coals, anil liis face appeared transfigured with the passion of the moment. Then losing all liis cool self-control, he burst forth in the full tide of hia overmaster ing love. “Ah, Christine, my darling, my queen, my life,” he cried passionately, “let me claim you as my own, let me take you to my heart, let me make you my wife. I am starving, Christine, actually starving for a little love from you. Say you love me, darling, or,” he added hastily, “if you do not now love me, say you will try to. Give me a fragment of hope, dear, a little crumb with which to appease the terrible hunger at my heart.” He had dropped on his knees at her feet and was looking eagerly, longingly into her fair flushed face. With a great effort she wrenched her hand free. Then with gleaming eyes and a tone that cut him like a knife, she said:

“You could have hardly chosen a more fitting opportunity or a better place in which to insult me, sir. Whether you are a brute or a driveling fool I cannot tell. I hardly know whether to feel pity for your ignorance or anger at your audacity. You marry me, you!" she exclaimed with an insulting laugh. “Do Ave mate cows with canaries, or jackals with lambs? Come, sir, I will allow that your speech is a little better than the average country clod; I will acknowledge that your manners bear some degree of refinement: in short, that you are a little above your station in life; but to marry you, to live on carrots and turnips with you, to contemplate a life of patchwork quilts and rag carpets, why surely you are insane, raving mad!” She burst into cruel laughter at the picture she had drawn, and then, not even deigning to glance at the bowed head of the man beside her, she turned upon her heel and moved slowly away. With a bound he was before her again. “Miss Cannell, Christine, hear me,” ho cried eagerly, “you wrong me, you do me cruel injustice. I am a gentleman, every inch your peer,” he added proudly, ‘ ‘and I am rich, very rich. I can gratify your every wish, I can surround you with every luxury. I—” She cut him short. ' ‘Enough. I thought you were crazy before, now I know it. You a wealthy man! Do men of means masquerade in homepun, in cotton jeans? Do men of means toil day after day in the broiling sun for mere pleasure? An inspiring pastime truly for a rich man. ” “But let me explain my position to you, Miss Cannell,” he cried as a last resort. “I came to this place—” “To work; that is obvious. Do not prevaricate further, Mr. Chapman,’’with a scordful accent upon the title, “it makes no difference to me what you say, for I will not believe you. I tell gold by its glitter. You have served to amuse me in my idle hours, and for that I thank you; but I now see I was wrong to be so familiar with one below my station in life. I cast you from my mind as Ido this glove, and will forget you as soon.” Without another word she left him.

Chapman watched her till she gained the house, a world of misery shining in his eyes. Then he mechanically stooped and recovered the glove from its hidingplace in the grass, and placed it in a pocket next to his heart. The following day Miss Cannell and her mother departed for New York. .*** * * * * A brilliant evening reception was in progress at Mrs. Goldrim’s fashionable mansion on Fifth avenue. A throng of beautiful women and distinguished men surged up and down the spacious draw-ing-rooms. A dazzling light from the crystal chandeliers fell upon the gay crowd, and the dreamy notes of a serenade by Schubert stole softly into the rooms from the overhanging conservatory where the musicians were concealed. 1 Prominent among the galaxy of beauty shone Christine Cannell’s fair face and bewitching eyes. She was leaning upon the arm of a man who was conceded, even by the jealous masculinity, to be the lion of the occasion. He had just retured from a four years’ ipojourn in Europe, where he had achieve}

lame as a pungent and witty correspondent of several promident journals in London and New York. Unlike the ordinary journalist, he was reputed te b® m*mensely rich; therefore, it had not been fortune but fame that induced him to take up his pen. , , Since his return to New York he had been markedly devoted in his attentions to Miss Cannell. He had met her two months previous at a fashionable watering place, and it was rumored that the erstwhile adamantine heart of the beautiful woman clinging to his arm had succumbed to his manifold attractions of person and mind. Envious gossips would have it that his purse was the subtle influence that had metamorphosed Christine Cannell from the cold, impervious being of old into the gracious, almost lovable, woman of the present „ , . _ , A keen observer would certainly have declared, seeing Miss Cannell at this moment, that her heart was aroused; that a warmer feeling than that of selfish interest had at last been awakened in her breast. As they slowly threaded their way through the crush she was talking to her companion in that magnetic voice that had hitherto been her greatest weapon/, but was now her greatest friend. He seemed entirely absorbed in her sparkling conversation, and a smile lingered now and then upon his usually firmly compressed lips as she entertained him with sparkling bon mots or indulged in caustic repartee. He had said but little. When he did speak, however, the lovely woman seemed to listen to his words with her soul in her ears. “By Jove!” said an important-looking youth, who with a companion of his own set had been glued to the wall by the great crush, ** there goes that fellow Chapman again, with Christine Cannell. I am decidedly glad she has met her match at last. If she ain’t gone on that newspaper chap I’ll go without my coat for the rest of the winter. You ought to have seen the way she froze me last summer at the Grand Union. I made a casual remark to her on the piazza one evening about the stars, and by thunder, the way she just turned those eyes on me—simply looked at me, you know — made the chills carom all over my vertebrae. I can feel ’em yet. See the way she’s looking at that prig now. It beats me out of sight. Suppose he has got money and all of that, ain’t other men just as good?” And young Hatstraw squared his shoulders and looked into his immaculate shirt-front with a ridiculous air of ruffled complacency. Mrs. Grundy also waved her fan perplexedly, and society in general wondered what was going to happen. * * * # * Mrs. Goldrim was giving one of her famous fetes champetre at her magnificent country seat on the Hudson. Chinese lanterns and elegant transparencies gleamed out from among the ‘trees upon the lawn; and through tlie low, opened French windows of the villa a gay throng whirling hither and thither in the intricacies of the dance were visible.

Outside, in secluded nooks under the trees were various couples engaged in all stages of that highly mysterious occupation— ‘ ‘flirting. ” In a rustic summer house on that side of the grounds overlooking the majestic river, a lady and gentleman had just seated themselves. Apparently they were the best of friends, for the lady placed her liaud familiarly upon her companion's arm and called his attention to the lovely scene, faintly lighted by the rising moon, spread out before them. For a moment the gentleman said nothing, but looked straight before him, with a gloomy expression on his face. Suddenly he turned to his companion. “Christine, does the name of Chapman ever bring to your mind an unpleasant episode of some years ago?” “Unpleasant episode? Why, what can you mean, Carl ? You know nothing connected with your name can be unpleasant to me. Are we not engaged to be married?” The gentleman’s face looked strangely contorted in the growing light of the moon, and his eyes seemed filled with a smothered fire that might break out at any moment into a fierce flame of passion. Looking full into his companion’s face, he said shortly: “Your memory is strangely remiss, Miss Cannell. ” Something in the altered tone of his voice frightened the woman. ‘ ‘ Merciful heaven, Carl, what is the matter?” she cried. He sprang from his seat as if unable longer to control his words and planted himself directly in front of the now terrific woman. Then with blazing eyes devouring every change of her features, he said: “Christine Cannel, to-morrow I sail for Europe for another, absence of four years. ” His companion seemed for a moment stunned by this abrupt announcement. Then she said slowly, and in a dazed manner: “You are going to Europe; and I?” “And you,” with bitter sarcasm “why, you, perhaps, will remember me better during the coming years than you have during those that have passed. ”

She looked at him in dull amazement, repeating slowly to herself in a strained, unnatural tone: ‘ ‘Going to Europe. Going to Europe. ” He interrupted her impatiently, hastily. : “I seel must refresh your memory, Christine Cannell. Most people will think what I have done and am going to do is fiendish, devilish; I know better—it is an act of mere justice, the sequel to a charming little comedy enacted six summers ago among the Connecticut hills. Do you remember, my dear Miss Cannell,” with a bitter laugh, “the poor day laborer, as you were pleased to term him, with whom you amused yourself during the idle summer days nearly six years ago? Do you remember how you aroused his love," and how, in return, he sued for yours? Ah! I see you begin to recollect. Does my name recall to your mind now an unpleasant episode connected with it ? Do you recollect how you treated the poor farm laborer’s honest avowal of his love for you? Do you remember how you scorned and spurned him; how you called him a brute and a driveling fool; how you declined a life with him of carrots and turnips, and patch-work quilts and ragcarpets, as you picturesquely put it? Ah, you do remember now, i see you do ”

“Oh, Carl! spare me, spare me!” she moaned in agony. * “Spare you; did you spare me then, madam? When I was on my bended knees before you, when I begged you to listen to an explanation from me; when I promised you a name, riches, love, everything a man holds dear, did you spare me?” “O my God, my God, he has no mercy! Carl, you will kill me. I shall go raving mad if you continue.” “Ah” he sneered, “it is my turn now, madam. You did not know the poor laborer was a man of wealth working quifetly, patiently, day after day, in search of that greatest of boons, good health. You would not listen to my explanation then; by heavens you shall hear me now!” He looked at her for a moment without saying a word, as if gloating over his present triumph, while she shivered beneath his gaze as if stricken with augue. Then she murmured with trembling lips: “Why did you not tell me your true position at first? Why did you leave me in ignorance of your station?” “Simply, madam,” he replied bitterly, ‘because I wished to win your heart and not your hand. You saw fit to make a plaything of me and east me off, Even poor daoeived lovq triumphed

over my reason, and I tried to make yon understand, tried to buy you, but you would not hear me. You said you told gold by its glitter. Very well. I resolved to let your motto work its own result I banished myself to Europe for four years, and then returned to find you still unmarried, to win what little heart yon have, to become your affianced Husband. Was not the finger of fate in all that? You had not forgotten completely the miserable man whom you had crushed.” “Ah, Christine Cannell, my nature u an evil one. lam a true lover and a hard hater, and I hate you bitterly for the insult you put upon my manhood; I detest you so thoroughly for your false, heartless character; I despise you cordially for your lack of all that is womanly, that I wonder how*l could have the patience to perfect and carry out this just retribution—for I know that you love me, know that for the first time your cold heart has felt the nearest approach to the divine passion of which it is capable; and I glory in the thought that I am the instrument of punishing you for the scores of manly hearts you have broken by your abominable siren ways and manners.” The poor woman sat huddled in her chair, limp, almost inanimate, the moon shedding its cold rays full upon her wUite, despairing face. From time to time she moaned, almost inarticulately. “Carl, you are killing me, killing me!” Chapman laughed hoarsely. “Killing you!” he exclaimed. “Did you ever think of how you killed, murdered the b st and purest of my passions—my love ? Did you ever think of how you emptied my heart of its warmest feelings and filled it with black, bitter, misanthropical hate ? And you talk of my killing you! Christine Cannell, men may say that I have worked out only my revenge upon; they may say that it is unmanly, less than human; but you know in your heart of hearts, you know only too well, that you ax - e but receiving justice. You know that you have wrecked my life as completely as you have done the lives of others. “Do you see this?” he continued, drawing a glove from his pocket; “you once wore this, and the last time it left your hand was upon a beautiful September day six summers ago. You threw it from you with these words: “-‘I cast you from my mind as I do this glove, and will forget you as soon.’ “Ah, you remember it now. Well, Madame; as I have said, I sail for Europe. There is a little Christian charity in my composition, nothing but poor, weak human nature, and before I go I thiuk it my duty to return your glove and with it your own words: . “‘I cast you from my mind as I do this glove, and will forget you as soon. He threw the glove at her feet, and without another word, without a backward glance, strode from her presence. Half an hour later a merry couple passing the rustic summer-house noticed a white heap lying motionless on the floor. It was Christine Cannell in a dead faint. And society wondered what had happened. ______________