Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 April 1886 — TWENTY YEARS AFTER. [ARTICLE]

TWENTY YEARS AFTER.

BY THOMAS COLQUTTT.

Louis Culvert was fifty years old—gray and aged beyond his years—the night he sat alone by the bedside of hjs dead wife. The dark, gray shadow of long repressed sorrow which rested upon his face was also set in the face of the dead woman. For twenty years he had carried a dead heart within his breast —a heart dead to every sentiment of love, hope or aspiration; dead to all feeling but a terrible sense of having loved and lost. A deadly, unavailing regret. The wife, upon whose pale face—still beautiful even in death, though wearing upon it that ineffaceable impress of silent wt»e--he often looks, had, on their wedding day, unconsciously dealt the blow which struck all hope and light and joy from his life forever. But she never knew it. She never knew what it had been that so j suddenly changed the eager, hopeful, dem- i onstrativo lover of the morning into the j calm, grave husband of the evening. A ; cloud had suddenly passed over the suu. j and the eclipse was to darken all their lives* ! Ford long time the voung wife hoped he ! would, after a while, become liis old cheerful, affectionate self again, but it was not to be so—never again. It was evident that he' often attempted to shake off the heavy fetters of despair, but always vainly. At these times the efforts of his beautiful and affectionate wife made to cheer him and make him forget his sorrow only seemed in some vague way, she could not understand how, to pain him. He was a good husband—-always kind, affectionate, and faithful, but in every loqk, or word, or gesture the loving wife instinctively felt a reproach, a repulse. In his saddened voice, in his saddened eyes, in his calm, cold devotion she always detected the mournful refrain of something lost. “A glory and a gladness had passed from the earth.” It saddened her early married life; and as she grew older the shadow Fate had thrown across his life fell more darkly still upon hers, until the bright, beautiful girl whom he had married tweuty years ago had long been a listless, silent companion to the silent, hopeless man whose life she had so innocently and unknowingly blighted. To-night, while sitting beside the bed on which she lies with closed eyes and deathcold lips, he has finished reading her letter which caused all their woes. As ho reads he gasps, grows deadly pale and trembles violently. Then, rising, crosses softly to her side and kisses her lips, her cheeks, her eyes; caresses the cold, senseless form far more tenderly than he had ever done the living, miserable woman all the many years of their married life; utters lovingly to the ears forever deaf words of endearment they so long hungered to hear, and which but a few short hours ago would have made the poor, broken-hearted woman supremely happy, even in death. On their wedding morning, twenty years ago, he had carelessly read the first lines of that letter down to where the sheet was folded, as it lay on the table before him, and had turned away dizzy and heart-sick, believing himself an unloved husband. He could only fear that she had been persuaded by others to-wed him while she loved another, or that she was a fair, false-hearted woman who married him for his wealth. So indelibly Mas this terrible fear stamped upon his heart and brain at that unhappy moment that all these years of love and affection, of tender, wifely devotion, had been unable to erase or lighten it. A woman who could practice such deception could dissemble a lifetime if necessary to conceal her duplicity. So he had reasoned. Many times the letter had fallen beneath his eyes, among other papers, but he had turned from it with pain and disgust. It was the serpent that had stung him, and he was too proud and honorable to caress the witness of his betrayal. It was a letter written by his betrothed, only a few days before they were married, to an elder sister. In her haste she had blotted and spoiled it and laid it aside, never dreaming that the siUy, girlish, blotted letter Mould blot and darken then- lines forever. To-night he has unfolded the faded,

blotted sheet, and read the lines below the fold. “Oh, my God! my God!"’ he cries in piteous, heart-broken tones, “if I had only read it all!” It was too late. Far behind him in the misty haze of memory lay the years his hasty, impulsive pride had made miserable. Before him lay the true, devoted, loving wife his coldness had slain. As he holds the old. blotted, time-worn letter between his trembling hands, the long, dreary years roll back, and she is again the perfect bride full of youth and hope, who gave her fair self to him. The time which has seemed an eternity in passing, so heavily freighted was it with hitter, hopeless sorrow, evanishes in a moment, and he sees her again, a radiant vision of girlish loveliness, as he tells liis story of love and listens to lnr tender replies. Again he raises her blushing face and kisses her perfect lips; and again he crosses to the bedside and lasses the cold lips which wear in death the drawn expression of mute, hopeless misery. This letter conjures up strange memories to the lonely man sitting there in that dim light beside the shrouded figure. It is the magic wand which brings the past years with their dead before his view. He beholds himself again, a young graduate of a celebrated law college, eager to enter upon his career—which, with tho confidence of youth and inexperience, htvmeans shall he one continued success; , a steady, unbroken progress onward and upward. And it was even so for years. Success, wealth, and honors came rapidly, but only to fan the flame of his unbounded ambition. Then he met Alice. All. how well he remembers that long-gone afternoon! II was a balmy spring, and the drowsy little village seemed half asleep. He was returning from the postoflice and met her on the street. Their eyes met but for an instant and he passed on, only to turn and gaze. after her thoughtfully. That elianee meeting changed all his afterlife. The dusty village street, the narrow crossing, the tall sycamore on ono side, and the spreading mulberry on the other, beneath whose shades they najt—he sees them all. And again he sees Alice's dark eyes and sweet face which seemed that day to possess a “subtle spell of power, that ever to his life has clung,” and still rests in the closed eyes of the shrouded figure before him. Again he meets her and feels the wild, strange throbbing of his heart as her dark eyes rest upon him. Again he sees the blooming fruit trees on the left in the lawyer’s orchard, and hears on his right the stillicidic hum of bees in the doctor’s flower-garden: sees again the long, narrow street bordered with shade trees which before him stretch on past the hotel and redbrick court house; behind him. down to the railway station on the river bank. Then memory reviews everything until his happy wedding morn. He. with his old habit, involuntarily shudders as be recalls it to mind, but looking again at the letter he says, “No. no; I was in the wrong all the time. God bless her, and pity me!”

After their first meeting he returned to his office apparently a different man. A new power had entered lus life. To ambition -to the simple desire for power for its own sake— Mas mnv joined love. He would, be thought with a lover's extravagance, be great and honorable that lie might be the more worthy of Alice. He would win honors to'share them •\ith her. It was the grand passion-dream of a man’s first love. He came to know her, to worship her. Calm, grave, self-possessed, and successful in all contests with men. he was a humble, awkward bungler in his love affairs. Certainly, with Alice be always appeared at bis worst. It was the remembrance of this that caused him to so readily accept the false meaning of the first few lines of that foolish and really harmless note. It was this self-distrust that blighted her life and his own. A large 'group picture, in which both he and she appear, hangs against the wall. It represents the Sunday-school class which he joined, that he might be near her each Sabbath. With the natural timidity of lovers,they are far apart in the picture, but he has had the artist to copy and enlarge their two faces in a single picture, which also hangs before him. All these years the happy love-light in these trusting, hopeful faces has been a reproach to him; now it is a consolation. He walks rapidly to and fro across the narrow room, restless beneath his load of seemingly unendurable sorrow and regret. At each turn be pauses opposite the door to gaze with a curious expression upon a happy throng in the room beyond, who, in his presence, wear sad faces, and speak in subdued tones, but are now apparently having an extremely pleasant time with wine, cards, gossip, and love-making. He stands again before the pictures for a long, long while, then returns to the bedside, and stands with bowed head and clasped hands gazing upon the dead. Seating himself at the lamp, he again reads the letter slowly and carefully. It Mas short, and ran thus; “MyDeakSister: lam very sorry you are opposed to my marriage with *Mr. Calvert. I know, as you say, that he is several years older than I am, and that our acquaintance has been very short—but you do not understand me. I do not love Mr. Calvert ”

At this point the letter had been folded, and he, on that long ago morn, had read only so far. Now he unfolded the sheet and read on: “I do not love Mr. Calvert simply for his wealth and position, hut for himself alone, anil because I know he loves mo and M ill make me happy. I love him dearly, and will be happy to become his wife,” etc., etc. It M'as a most affectionate letter, and the strong man’s heart broke as he thought hoM’ he had MTonged and slum her with his coldness and cruelty. When the “mourners” in the next room, after a night’s dissipation, came into the chamber of death the next morning, calm and still beside the deathbed, his head resting on his wife’s pillow, his face close to hers and her hand clasped in his, sat Louis Calvert—dead. —Chicago Ledger. It has been lately asserted in scientific circles that the idea that mammals had passed through a period of aquatic growth, as shown by the existence of the whale, should be exactly reversed. That is, the anatomy of the wha’-e has been found to sliom’ that at one time it was a four-footed beast. It rotains evidence of having had at one time a hairy covering, while it also retains sets of rudimentary teeth characteristic of a land animal rather than a marine one. These teeth vanish at an early period of the whale’s life, often even before it is born.