Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1882 — ROMANCE OF A GLOVE. [ARTICLE]

ROMANCE OF A GLOVE.

“ Does it please, Kitty ? ” “Oh, it is splendid! 1 could not have suited myself half so well, had I heen left to choose.” “ But you have not seen the wine cellar yet. It is a treasure of its kind. Let's go down again.” They went down the ptairs together, he talking gayly, she with a troubled look on her face. After duly admiring the place she put a timid hand on his arm and said: “ But, Arthur, dear, let s have no wine in it.” “ Why ? ” he asked, in surprise. “ Because I have Resolved, if I am ever the mistress of a house, there shall be no liquors kept in it—no ‘ social glasses ’ for friends.” “ Why, Katy, you are unreasonable. I did not know you carried your temperance opinions so far as that. Of course I shall keep wine in my house, and entertain my friends with it, too.” She raised her face appealingly. “Arthur ! ” she said, in a tone of voice ( which he knew how to interpret. Arthur’s brow grew cloudy. “But you cannot fear for me?” he said, with half-offended pride. “ I must fear for you, Arthur, if you begin as he did. And I fear for others beside—for the sons and husbands and fathers who may learn at our cheerful board to love the poison that shall slay thei.”

They went up the steps again and s%£ on the sofa in the dining room for a few moments, while Katy put on her hat and drew on her gloves. The argument was kept up. It is unnecessary that we should repeat all that was said on both Sides. It ended at last, as similar discussions have ended before. Neither was willing to yield—Katy, because she felt that her whole future happmess might be involved in it; Arthiw, because he thought it would be giving way to a woman’s whims, and would sacrifice too much of his popularity with his friends. He had bought this house, paid for it, and furnished it handsomely, and in a few weeks was to bring Katy as its mistress. All the afternoon they had been looking it over together, happy as two birds in ane wly-finished nest. But when Arthur closed the door and put the key in his poeket, in the chill, waning light of the December afternoon, and gave Ketty his arm to see her home, it was all “broken up” between them, and “To Let ” was put on the door of the pretty house the very next morning. It was the most foolish thing to do ; but then lovers can always find something to quarrel about. They parted with a cool “ Good evening,” at the door of Katy’s lodginghouse. She went up to her room to cry ; he went home hurt and angry, but secretly resolved to see her again and give her a chance to say she was wrong. He would wait a few days, however; it would not do to let her see that he was in a hurry to “make it up.” He did wait nearly a week, and when he called at the modest lodging house where he had been wont to visit so often, he was told that Miss Gardiner had been gone three days. “Gone where?” he asked, slow to believe. “ She did not tell me, sir. She said stie was not coming back. Her aunt lives at Bristol.” 'He then took the next train to Bristol, and investigated, but neither there nor in any other place, though he searched for months afterward, did he find sign or trace of Katy Gardiner.

All this happened more than a year before I saw Katy, but we three “factory girls,” who lodged at Mrs. Howell’s with her, of course knew nothing about it. She came to the factory and applied for work. The superintendent thought her too delicate for such work, but she persisted, and, in fact, she improved in health, spirits and lqpks after she became used to the wore; and simple fare of the factory girls. She was a s-tranger to us all and it seemed likely she would remain so. But one day Mary Basoom’s dress naught in a part of the machinery, and before any one else could think what to do, Katy had sprung to her side and pulled her away by main strength from the terrible danger that threatened her. After that, Mary and Lizzie Payne and I, who were her dearest friends, were Katy’s sworn allies. We all lodged together then in the big “Factory boarding-house.” But Katy took it into her head that we should have so much nicer times in a private lodging to ourselves ; and when she took anything into her head she generally carried it through. In less than a week she had found the very place she wanted, arranged matters with the superintendent, and had us sheltered under Mrs. Howell’s vine and fig tree. We four girls were the proud possessors of a tolerably large double-bedded apartment, with a queer little dressing-room at-tached—-“and the liberty of the parlor to receive visitors in”—a proviso at which we all laughed. This was “home ” to us after the labor of the day. In deed and in truth, Katy made the place so charming that we forgot the factory girls when we got to it. She improvised cunning little things out of trifles that are usually thrown away as useless, and the flowers grown in broken pots in our windows were a wonder to behold. She always had a fresh book or periodical on her table, and, better than this, she brought to us the larger cultivation and the purer taste, which taught us how to use opportunities within our reach. “ What made you take to our style of life, Katy ?” asked Lizzie one evening as we all sat in the east window watching the outcoming of the stars and telling girlish dreams. “ Destiny, my child,” answered Katy, stooping to replace the little boot shehad thrown off to rest her foot. “But you might have been an authoress, or a painter, or a—a bookkeeper, or—” Lizzie’s knowledge of the world was rather limited. Katy broke in upon her : “ There, that will do. I was not a born genius, and I hate arithmetic.” • “ But you did not always have to work for a living, Katy,” said May; “you’re a lady, I know. ” Katy laughed a qufeer, short laugh. “Yes,” she said, “ and that’s why I don’t know how to get my living in any way but this. So behold me a healthy and honest factory girl.” She rose, made a little bow, and a flourish with her small hands, and we all laughed, although w§ had said nothing funny.

“Milly,” said she, ** please light the lamp and get the magazine, while! hunt up my needle mad thread. Ladies, I find myself under the necessity of mending my gloves this evening. Oh, poverty, where is thy sting ? In a shabby glove, I do believe, for nothing hurts me like this, unless it be a decaying boot.” Katy’s gloves were a marvel to us. She never wore any but of good quality, and alwavß of the same color—a brownish, neutral tint that harmonized with almost any dress—but just now a new pair seemed to be the one thing needful, from the appearance of the ones she brought out. She sat and patiently mended the little rents, while I read aloud, and when she had finished the gloves looked almost new. The next day was Saturday, and we had a half-holiday. Katy and I went to make some trifling purchases, and on our way home stopped at a big boardinghouse to see one of the girls who was ill. When we came out, Katy ran across the street to get a magazine from the news shop, and came hurrying up to overtake me before I turned the oorner. She had the magazine open and one of her hands was ungloved, out it was not until we reached home that she found she had lost the glove. It was too late then to go and look for it. We went and searched the next morning, but could not find it Katy mourned for it “ It was my only pair, girls,” said she, tragically, “ and it’s a loss that cannot be replaced.” ***** * What people called a “panic” had occurred in financial circles in the spring after Arthur Craig had lost his Katy, and almost without warning he found himself a poor man. He left his affairs in the hands of his creditors, having satisfied himself that they could gather enough out of the wreck to save themselves—and set his face to London.

He had been educated for a physician, though fortune made a merchant of him. Learning from a friend that there was an opening fcr a doctor in Fenwick, he came thither and began to practice. Dr. Sewell had gone off on a visit, leaving his patients in charge of the new doctor; so it came about that on that Saturday evening he was on his way to visit Maggie Lloyd, the sick girl at the lodging-house, when, just after turning the corner near the news shop, he saw a brown glove lying on the pavement. He was about to pass it by, but a man’s instinct to pick up anything of value that seems to have no owner made him put it his pocket. He forgot all about it the next minute. But when he had made his call and returned to his consulting-room, in taking a paper from his pocket the glove fell out, and he picked it up and looked at it with idle curiosity. It was old but well preserved. It had been mended often, but so neatly as to make him regard mending as one of the fine arts. It had a strangely-familiar look to him. Little and brown and shapely, it lay on his knee bearing the very form of the hand that had worn it. And as he gazed at it there came to him the memory of an hour, many months past, when he had sat by Katy’s side on the green sofa in the diningroom of “their house” (alas)! and watched her put her small hands into a pair of brown gloves so much like this one. Ever since that never-to be-forgotten day the vision of his lost love, sitting there in the fading light, slowly drawing on her glove, her eyes filling' as they talked—quarreled, we should say, perhaps—had gone with him as an abiding memory of her, until he had come to each shade of the picture—the color of the dress, the ribbons at the throat and the shaded plume in her hat. He looked at the little glove a long time. He had thought it might belong to one of the factory girls, as he found it near the lodging house. But it did not look like a “ factory hand’s” glove. He would ask Maggie Lloyd, at any rate. So he put it carefully in his pocket until he should make his calls the next ingHe had suffered the glove to become so associated with the memory of the past that was sacred to him that he felt his cheek burn and his hand tremble as he drew it forth to show it to Maggie, who was sitting in the comfort of convalescence, in an arm chair by the window, watching the handsome young doctor write the prescription for her benefit.

“By the way, Miss Maggie, do you know whose glove this is?” Maggie knew at once. It was Miss Gardiner’s glove. “Miss Gardiner 1” The name made his heirt beat again. “ Is she one of the factory hands?” “ Yes, but she lodges with Mrs. Howell, quite out of town, almost; she was here to see me yesterday.” “ Oh, I see !” said he, not the most relevantly. “ And can you tell me how to find Mrs. Howell’s house? I suppose I could go by and restore this glove to its owner.” Maggie thought this unnecessary trouble, but she gave the required direction, and he went out, saying to himself : “It can’t be Katy, of course, but this glove shall go back to its owner.” * * * *• * * Mary and Lizzie went to church that Sunday morning. Katy declared she couldn’t go, having but one glove. I stayed at home with her, and offered to keep Mrs. Howell’s children for her, and so persuaded that worthy woman to attend worship with the girls. And this is how it came about that while we were having a frolic on the carpet with the children in Mrs. Howell’s rooms, we heard a ring at the door, and Bridget having taken herself off somewhere, there was no help for it but for one of us to answer the summons.

“ You go, Kilty,” whispered I in dismay, “ I cannot appear.” Katy glanced serenelj at her own frizzy head in the looking-glass, gave a pull at her overskirt and a touch to her collar, and opened the door. Immediately afterward I was shocked to bear her utter a genuine feminine scream, and see her drop to the floor; and that a man, a perfect stranger to me, gathered her up in his arms and began raving over her in a manner that astonished me. He called her “his darling,” and “his own Katy,” and actually kissed her. I was surprised at myself afterward that I hadn’t ordered that gentleman out, but it never occurred to me at the time, and when Katv “came to” and sat up on the sofa and heard his speeches, Bhe seemed so well pleased that I left them, and took the children up to our room, fie-mg bewildered all over. What shall I say further? Only that Katy lives in a pretty house in the town, known as Dr. Craig’s residence, where we three “ factory girls ” have a home whenever we want it. And there are no liquors found on the sideboard nor at hejr table. One day I heard Arthur say: “You were a silly child, Kate, to run away from me. I should have given up the point at last, I know.” “ But there would have been the splendid cellar and the ten thousand a year,” answered she. “It would have been such a temptation. We are safer as it is, dear. ” Character is human 'nature in its best form. It is moral order embodied in the individual. Men of character are not only the conscience of society, but in every well-governed state they are its best motive power; for it is moral qualities in the main which rule the world.— Samuel Smiles. Never compare thy condition with those above thee; but to secure thy content look upon those thousands with whom thou wouldst not, for thy interest,' change thy fortune and oopdi^iop.