Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1894 — UNIFED AT LAST [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

UNIFED AT LAST

BY MISS M E BRADOON

CHAPTER VlU—Continued. He left* the house when Constance Went out fcr her daily drive in the park, and strolled in the same direction, caring very little where he went upon this particular afternoon. The Lady's Mile was thronged with carriages, and there was a block at the corner when Gilbert took his place listlessly among the loungers who were lolling over the rails. He nodded to the men he knew, and answered briefly enough to some friendly inquiries about his luck in Yorkshire. “The filly ran well enough,” he said, “but I doubt if she’s got stay enough for the Chester.” “Oh, of course you want to keep her dark, Sinclair. I heard she was a flier, though.” Mr. Sinclair did not pursue the conversation. The carriages moved on for a few paces, at the instigation of a pompous mounted policeman, and then stopped again, leaving a quite little brougham exactly in front of Gilbert Sinclair. The occupant of the brougham was Mrs. Walsingham. The stoppage brought her so close to Gilbert that it was impossible to avoid some kind of greeting. The widow’s ■ handsome face paled as she recognized i Gilbert. It was the first time they . had met since that unpleasant inter- • view in Half-Moon street. The opportunity was very gratifying to Mrs. Walsingham. She had most ardently 1 desired to see how Gilbert supported his new position, to see for herself how far Mr. Wyatt’s account of him might be credited. She put on the propitiatory manner of a woman who has forgiven all past wrongs. “ Why do you never come to see me?” she asked. “I scarcely thought you would care to receive me, after what you said when we last met,” he replied, rather embarrassed by her easy way of treating the situation. ? Let that be forgotten. It is not fair to remember what a woman says when she is in a passion. I think you expressed a wish that we might be friends after your marriage, and I was too angry to accept that proof of your regard as I should have done. I have grown wiser with the passage of time, and, believe me, I am still your friend.” There was a softness in her tone which flattered and touched Gilbert Sinclair. It contrasted so sharply with the cool contempt he had of late suffered at the hands of his wife. He remembered how this woman had loved him; and he asked himself what good he had gained by his marriage with Constance Clanyarde, except the empty triumph of an alliance with a family of superior rank to his own, and the vain delight of marrying an acknowledged beauty. Before Mrs. Walsingham's brougham had moved on, he had promised to look in upon her that evening, and at 10 o clock he was seated in the familiar drawing-room, telling her his domestic wrongs, and freely confessing that his marriage had been a failure. Little by little she beguiled him into telling her these things, and played her part of adviser and consoler with exquisite tact, not once allowing him to perceive the pleasure his confession afforded her. He spoke of his child without the faintestexpression of affection, and laughed bitterly as he described his wife’s devotion to her infant. “I thought as a woman of fashion she would have given herself very little trouble about the. baby, ” he said, “but she continues to find time for maternal rapture in spite of her incessant visiting. I have told her that she is killing herself, and the doctors tell her pretty much the same; but she will nave her own way.” “She would suffer frightfully if the child were to die, ” said Mrs. Walsingham. “Suffer! Yes, I was thinking of that this afternoon when she was engaged in her baby worship. She would take my death coolly enough, I have no doubt; but I believe the loss of that child would kill her." Long after Gilbert Sinclair had left her that night Clara Walsingham sat brooding over all. that he had told her upon the subject of his domestic life. “And so he has found out what it is to have a wife who does not care for him,” she said to herself. “He has gratified his fancy for a lovely and is paying a heavy price for his conquest. And lam to leave all my hopes of revenge to James Wyatt, and am to reward his services by marrying him. No, no, Mr. Wyatt; it was all very well to promise that in the day of my despair. I see my way to something better than that now. The loss of her child would kill her, would it? And , her death would bring Gilbert back to me, I think. His loveless marriage has taught him the value of a woman’s affection.”

CHAPTER IX. THE BEGINNING OF SOBROW. Sir Cyprian did not again call at the house in Park Lane. He had heard of Constance Clanyarde s marriage during his African travels, and had come back to England resolved to avoid her as far as it was possible for him to do so. Time and absence had done little to lessen hie love, but he resigned himself to her marriage with another as an inevitable fap.t, only regretting she had married a man of whom he foad by no means an exalted opinion. James Wyatt was one of the first persons he visited on his arrival in London, and from him he heard a very unsatisfactory account of the marriage. It was this that had induced him to break through his resolution and call in Park Lane. He wanted to see for himself whether Constance was obviously unhappy. He saw little, however, to enlighten him on this point. He found the girl he had so fondly loved transformed into a perfect woman of the world; and he could draw no inference from her careless gayety of manner except that James Wyatt had said more than was justified by the circumstances of the case. t Instead of returning to Davenant for the autumn months', ~~Mr: Sinclair ahose this year to go to Germany, an

extraordinary sacrifice of inclination, one might suppose, as his chief delight was to be found at English race meetings, and in the supervision of his stable at Newmarket. Mrs. Sinclair's doctor had recommended change of some kind as a cure for a certain lowness of tone and general derangement of the nervous system under which his patient labored. The medical man suggested Harrowgate or Buxton, or some Welsh waterdrinking place: but when Gilbert proposed Schoenestbal in the Black For-’ est, he ca ight at the idea. “Nothing would be better for Mrs. Sinclair and the baby," he said, “and you’ll be near Baden-Baden if *,'ou want gayety." “I don’t care for brass bands and a lot of people,” answered Gilbert; “I can shoot capercailzies. I shall get on well enough for a month or so. ” Constance had no objection to offer to this plan. She cared very little where her life was spent, so long as she had her child with her. A charming villa had been found half hidden among pine trees, and here Mr. Sinclair established his wife, with a mixed household of English and foreign servants. She was very glad to be so completely withdrawn from the obligations of society, and to be able to devote herself almost entirely to the little girl, who was, of course, a paragon of infantine grace and intelligence in the eyes of mother and nurse. The nurse was a young woman belonging to the village near Marshbrook, one of the pupils of the Sunday school, whom Constance had known from childhood. The nurse-maid who shared her duties in London had not been brought to Schoenestbal, but in her p’ace Mrs. | Sinclair engaged a French girl, with sharp dark eyes and a very intelligent manner. Martha Briggs, the nurse, was rather more renowned for honesty and good temper than for intellectual qualifications, and she seemed unusually slow and stolid in comparison with the vivacious French girl. This girl had- come to Baden with a Parisian family, and had been dismissed with an excellent character upon the family’s departure fcr Vienna with a reduced staff. Her name was Melanie Duport, and she contrived very rapidly to ingratiate herself with her mistress, as she had done with the good priest of the little church she had attended during her residence at Baden, who - was delighted with her artless fervor and unvarying piety. Poor Martha Briggs was rather inclined to be jealous ot this: new rival in her mistress’ favor, and derived considerable comfort from the fact that the baby did not take to Melanie.

If the baby preferred her English nurse to Melanie, the little French girl, for her part, seemed passionately devoted to the baby. She was always eager to carry the child when the two nurses were out together, and resented Martha’s determination to deprive her of this pleasure. One day when the two were disputing together upon this subject, Martha bawling at the French girl under the peculiar idea that she would make herself understood if she only talked loud enough, Melanie repeating her few words of broken English with many emphatic shrugs and frowns and nods, a lady stopped to listen to them and admire the baby. She spoke in French to Melanie, and did not address Martha at all, much to the young person’s imdignation. She asked Melanie t j whom the child belonged, and how long she had been with it, and whether she was accustomed to nursing children, adding, with a smile, that she looked rather too lady-like for a nurse-maid. Melanie was quite subdued by this compliment. She told the lady that this was the first time she had been nurse-maid. She had been lady’s-maid in her last situation, and had preferred the place very much to her present position. She told this strange lady nothing about that rapturous affection for the baby which she was in the habit of expressing in Mrs. Sinclair’s presence. She only told her how uncomfortable she had been made by the English nurse’s jealousy. “I am staying at the Hotel du Roi,” said the lady, after talking to Melanie for some little time, “and should like to see you if you can find time to call upon me some evening. I might be able to be of some use to you in finding a new situation when your present mistress leaves the neighborhood." Melanie courtesied. and replied that she would make a point of waiting upon the lady, and the two nurses moved on with their little charge. Martha asked Melanie what the foreign lady had been saying, and the French girl replied carelessly that she had only been praising the baby. "And well she may," answered Miss Briggs, rather snappishly, “for she s the sweetest child that ever lived: but, for my own part, I don't like foreigners, or any of their nasty, deceitful ways." This rather invidious remark was lost upon Mlle. Duport. who only understood a few words of and who cared very little for her fellowservant’s opinion upon any subject. In spite of Gilbert Sinclair s protestation of indifference to the attractions of brass bands and crowded assemblies, he contrived to spend the greater part of his time at Baden, where the Goddess of Chance was still worshiped in the brilliant Kursaal, while his wife was left to drink her fill of forest beauty and that distant glory of inaccessible hills which the sun dyed rosy red in the quiet even tide. In tranquil days, while her husband was waiting the turn of Fortune’s wheel in the golden salon, or yawning over “Galigriani" in the read-ing-room, Constance’s life came far nearer happiness than she had ever dared to hope it would come, after her perjury at God’s adtar two years ago. Many a time, while she was leading here butterfly life in the flower-garden of fashion, making dissipation stand for pleasure, she had told herself, in some gloomy hour of reaction, that no good ever could come of her marriage; that there was a curse upon it, a righteous God s anathema against falsehood. And then her baby had come, and she had sh'ed her first happy tears over the sweet small face, the blue eyes looking up at her full of vague wonder, and she had thanked Heaven,.dor this new bliss, and believed her sin forgiven. After that time Gilbert had changed for the worse, and there had been many a polite passage at arms between husband and wife, and these encounters. however courteously performed, are apt to leave ugly soars. But now, far away from all her frivolous acquaintance, free from the allengrossing duties of a fine lady’s existence, she put all evil thoughts out of her mind, Gilbert among them, and abandoned herself wholly to the delight of the pine forest and baby. She was very gracious to Gilbert when he chose to spend an hour or two at home or to drive with her in the pretty little pony carriage in which she made njost of her explorations; but she made

qo complaint, she expressed no curiosity as to the manner in which h» amused himself or the company he kept at Baden-Baden, and though that center of gayety was only four miles off. she n«ver expressed a wish to shaie in its amusements. Gilbert was not an agreeable companion at this time. That deen and suppressed resentment against his wife, like rancorous lago's jealousy, did “gnaw him inward," and although his old nassionate love still remained, it was curiously interwoven with hatred. Once when husband and wife were seated opposite each other, in the September twilight after one of their rare tete-a-tete dinners, Constance looked up suddenly and caught Gilbert's brooding eye? fixed on her face with an expression which made her shiver. “If you look at me like that, Gilbert," she said, with a nervous laugh, “Ishall be afraid to drink this glass of Marcobrunner you've just poured out for me. There might be poison in it. I hope I’ve done nothing to deierve such an angry look. Othello must have looked something like that, I should think, when he asked Desdemona for the strawberry-spotted handkerchief." “Why did you marry me, Constance?” asked' Sinclair, ignoring his wife's speech. There was something almost piteous in question, wrung from a man who loved honestly, according to his lights, and whose love was turned to rancor by the knowledge that it had won no return.

“What a question after two years o f married life! Why did I marry you? Because you wished me to marry you; and because I believed you would make me a good husband, Gilbert; and because I had firmly resolved to make you a good wife." She said this earnestly, looking at him through unshed tears. Since her own life had become so much happier, since her baby caresses had awakened all the dormant tenderness in her nature, she had felt more anxious to be on good terms with her husband. She would have taken much trouble, made some sacrifice of her womanly pride, to win him back to that amiable state of mind she remembered in their honeymoon. “I've oromi-ed to meet Wyatt at the Kursaal this evening,” said Sinclair, looking at his watch as he rose from the table, and without the slightest notice of his wife's reply. “Is Mr. Wyatt at Baden?" “Yes; he has come over for a little amusement at the table—deuced lucky dog—always contrives to leave off a winner. One of these coobheaded fellows who know the turn of the tide. You’ve no objection to his being there, I suppose?” “I wish you and he were not such fast friends, Gilbert. Mr. Wyatt is no favorite of mine.” |to bk continued. ;