Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1894 — Silence [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Silence

By Miss Mulock

CHAPTER VIII. "Well, mother, and when are we to have that little talk you promised me now nearly two weeks ago?" “About what, my dear?" “Surely you remember?” A vexed look, passing like a shadow across the round, good-tempered face, Showed that Mrs. Jardine did remember, though she would have been glad enough to pretend she did not, and to shirk the question. “Wnat, that entanglement of yours with the little Swiss girl? Oh, she bas forgotten you by this time, depend upon it; and I was in hopes you had forgotten her." “That was not likely, and I must beg of you not to call it an ‘entanglement. ’ What I have to speak to you about is the very serious < uestion of my marriage. You promise Ito consider it. I have waited, not merely a few days, but a whole fortnight, and you have never said a single word to me on the matter, which, you must know, is so very near my heart. It is rather hard, mother.” It was hard, and to do the young man justice, he had behaved exceedingly well. Never sulky, never distrait, as is the manner of young men in love, he had set his mind steadily to do his best, had been at his mother’s beck and call from morning till night, had gone with her wherever she had wished, and done whatever she told him to do. “Mother.” he said sitting down by her and taking her hand —it was a wet afternoon, and she had just sent the carriage away—“you promised me to think it over —this matter so very near ,my heart. Mother, have you done so? Will you give me your approval, and let me take your love and blessing with me—to Neuchatel.-” “And why J What may be your business at Neuchatel?” He turned bitterly away. “Mother, do you think lam a stone, that you try me so? You understand quite we 1, though you pretend to misunderstand. You know lam going to Neuchatel to ask Madembiselle Jardine to marrv me.” “And then?” “Then, I suppose, we shall be married.” “Might I inquire what you intend to marry upon?” “I have not considered the question of my income; i ut it keeps me, and it is doubtless enough to keep a wife. You pay it so regularly that it is you who can best inform me its precise amount, and whence I draw it for I should like naturally, from this time, to be as independent as possible.” “So you shall be, never fear, and much good may your independence do you. Roderick Jardine, since you will be such a fool, hear first what you have to look to. When I married your father, except that tumble-down place, Blackball, he had not a half-penny. 1 was daft to marry him, I know that; but I was young and I was fond of him. ” Her voice trembled a little. “However, that's all past: and he was a good man and a kind husband to me—always let me do as I liked with my own. fi or everything was my own. and is still, aid 1 will do as I like with it; mind that. ” “Of course; who wishes to hinder you, mother?” said Roderick, gently; for the loud tongue was growing louder and the red face redder. Self-re-straint, he knew, was not one of his mother's characteristics—perhaps that was why he had been obliged to learn it himself. “My money is my own” (“myain,” she pronounced it, dropping, as she always did in excitement, into the speech of her youth). “If ye vex me, and marry against my will, lad, ye may do the best ye can with that wretched hole, Blackball; go and starve in the musty old rooms among the mice and rats, as I dare say your father would have liked to do; but ye’ll get naething out o’ me. I haa thousands—hundreds o' thousands—to spend and to leave; but though you’re my ain, only son, marry that woman, and I’ll neither gie ye, nor leave ye, ae bawbee.” She thought she had overwhelmed him, crushed him; but he stood there, without, any visible change in him, except a certain loftiness of carriage and b ightness of eye. “Don’t let us quarrel over money matters, mother. As you say, do as you like with your own. It I have Blackball I shall be quite satisfied, and so will she. ” “Then you mean to brave me, insult me, and marry hes/” “Not to insult you. But I certainly mean to marry her—if I can.” “With or without my consent?” Roderick waited a minute and then answered, in a very low tone, “Yes. ” “Lad, lad! have ye gone clean daft? Do ye really mean what ye say?” For a iparently, until now, ever accustomed to entire and unquestioned authority, she had re.used to believe him in earnest. “1 shall go back to Switzerland, marry my cousin if I can, and present her here as soon as possible as my wife. If she will not marry, me I—l shall never come home at all.” “ae fear o’ that. She’ll tak’ ye, lad; she’ll jump at ye if she thinks you’ve got the siller. ” “Mother” —Roderick spoke beneath his breath in a white heat of suppressed passion—“mother, how dare you say such things to me? If there is a creature in the world that ought to be sacred to a woman, it is that other woman whom her son loves.” “That other woman, as you call her, is nothing to me. You chose her without my knowledge, and you say you will marry her with or without my consent. Doit. But from that day I will never set eyes upon either her or you." “Be it so.” Roderick sprang up in irrepressible passion, and paced the room once, twice, and then stopped opposite her. “You didn’t really mean what you said? Mother—oh, mother.” The appeal was almost like a cry, but in vain. “1 did mean it, and I do.” “Then, mother, it is no use our talking together any more. Good by.” “Good-by.” Roderick held out his hand, but she did not take it His voice was tender, sad—nay, almost heart-broken; but hers was cold as a stone. ******** Roderick stayed a day in London, at a hotel, the address of which he Bad carefully written out and left upon Mrs. Jardine’s dressing table, waiting vaguely in the hope of some bias ed

telegram that might change his miserable journey into a happy one. Then he started; and when he found himself drifting away from Dover pier under the cold clear winter stars, he felt as if he had cut the cable of his life forever. Reaching the hotel after his long journey, the familiar faces and the bright Swiss welcome warmed his heart. It was Sunday morning—during that miserable week he had almost lost count of days—and all the good people of Neuchatel were gone to church; doubtless also the Reynier family. Still, he could not rest He thought he would just go and see the outside of the house, perhaps hear she was well, and then hover about for a glimpse of her, till he could speak to the professor, her nominal protector, and ask permission, after the fashion of the country, formally to offer his hand. For he was determined no respect, no decorum, should be wanting in anything he did, down to the commonest outside convenances, toward the woman be adored. His hand almost shook as he rang the bell of Professor Reynier s door — for after all he could not pass it—and his voice failed, and his disused French seemed to fly away from him when he faced the little bonne, who at once recognizing him, and breaking into the most courteous of smiles, showed him in quiet like “un amide la famille.” They were all well—they would return irom church immediately—monsieur must allow himself to wait—her master would be charmed to see him. Would monsieur repose himseli in the salon? No one was there, she believed. And for the first moment he believed so, too, and sat down, looking tenderly round on the familiar room—the Paradise where his Eve had appeared to him that first night—making ever afterward the whole world naw. The dear, silent, empty room! .Empty? No! something stirred in a recess; some person, sitting there reading, rose with a i low, listless air, came forward, suddenly stopped. The slender figure, the black dress, the fair, clustering curls! Roderick star ed up. The whole thing was so sudden, so unexpected, that there was no time for any disguises on either side. 1 esides, both were so young; and it is in later lie that love learns concealment. As they stood, these two young creatures, face to face, and quite alone, no human power could have concealed the joy of both. Roderick advanced a step. “Me voici! je suis revehu,” was all he said, speaking in French, as seemed most natural.

“Oui, oui, oui!” and with a glad cry Silence clasped her hands, the first impulsive gesture he had ever seen her use: “oui, il est re\enu!” The minute afterward—he knew not how; in truth, neither ever did know —he felt her in his arms, gathered close to his breast, sheltering and sheltered there as if it were her natural refuge. He did not kiss her—he dared not—but he touched her soft hair as it lay on his shoulder —he pressed her, all shaking with sobs, to his breast he called her byname —first “macousine,” and then “Silence!” An instant more, and putting her a little a; art from him, so that he could look down into her eyes, he breathed, rather than spoke, another word—an English word —“My wife.” Silence shrunk back for one moment, trembling violently, dropped her face, all scarlet, and then lifted it up with a strange pathos of entreaty, almost appeal, as if she had but him in the whole world. “Your mother,” he whispered; “your mother knew it all. ” Roderick drew her back again, close into hi j very heart, and pres ed his lips upon hers. In that long, silent, solemn troth-plight the two became one —forever. Immediately on the family's return from church, Roderick asked for an interview with M. Revnier, and explained everything, while Silence did the same to Mme. Reynier and the girls. There were due congratulations, both formal and tearful, from the simple affectionate Swiss househo d, and then the thing was an accepted fact and the young people were fiances and treated as such, according to the fashion of the country, which holds the bond almost as sacred as that between husband and wife. A week went by, and still he heard nothing, had told her nothing of his own people, except briefly answering her innocent questions, that his mother was quite well and his sister married. This might have gone on still longer, he shrunk so from the cruel task of giving pain to his innocent darling, had it not been for a letter which came one morning, the very morn’ng when he took her to look at the new white cross, and she had asked him to “tell her everything. ” He had told hey a good deal; how the repairs were progressing at Blackball —not restorations, only needful repairs, which he had left in charge of Mr. Black, the factor—desiring that nothing might be altered which was not absolutely necessary. But in reading the letter to Silence, he had omitted the P. S., which ran thus; “I saw Mrs. Jardine this morning. She was quite well; looked exceedingly well. She had let her house for the winter, and was just starting on a round of visits in England. She bade me tell you she had received your last letter, and there w.is ‘no answer.’” Then she was inexorable, this woman who called herself a mother. As Roderick stood beside the grave of the dead mother here and thought of his own, he could almost have forgotten his manhood and burst into an agony of childish tears. “What are you thinking about? Is there anything in the letter that vexes you? or anything that you have not read to me?” She spoke in her pretty broken English; she always talked English witn him now; and she looked him straight in the face with her innocent eyes. “I shall not mind ycur not telling me everything, if you say distinctly, ‘I have reasons. I would rather not’ But still I think it would be better —better for us both, if you did tell me.” “You are right,” he answered, with an almost convulsive clasp of the hand which lay on his arm, which she returned. It was one of the touching peculiarities of hers that, now she was betrothed, she never seemed the least shy or ashamed of loving him. of identifying herself with him, and of belonging to him and him alone, without an atom of coquetry, or exactness,’ or doubt. That delight in teasing, in showing their power, which so many girls—really generous and good girls—have with their lovers, was in Silence Jardine altogether absent. She simply loved him, nothing more. “Now tell me, what is it?” she said. “It will not hurt me. Nothing can hurt me now, except so far as it hurts you. Tell me." So he told her, as briefly and tenderly as he could without compromising the truth. He attributed Mrs.

Jardine's objections to his marriage chiefly to her vexation that his bride was of another country and had no dot. Of the family riches, or his own, he said as little as possible: and, in truth. Silence did not seem to take in that phase of the subject, or be affected thereby. The one thing which struck her—and put it as carefully as he would, it could not fail to strike her like a heavy blow—was the fact that he was marrying her without his mother's consent and hopeless of ever winning it. “We never do that here,” she said, faintly. "It is, I think, impossible, illegal.” “It is not so in our free England," Roderick answered, passionately. “No injustice, even of parents, is allowed to blight our lives. After a man is 21, or a woman, either, both can walk out of their parents’ door and in at any church door, and be married in the face of all the world, which is a right and righteous thing ” “Hush!" she whispered; and he saw that her face was white and the touch of her poor little hand deadly cold. “We will not talk any more of this today. To-morrow. We will part now. Do not walk.” “Not walk home with you. Not see you till to-morrow morning!” “Roderick," she whimpered, putting her c. Id little hands in his. They stood together in the shelter of the cemetery wall: the early December dusk had already fallen, and there was not a creatu: e near. “My Roderick, kiss me—kiss and forgive:” .He kissed her—the sacrament of the lips which only faintly expresses the union, through life and after, of soul to soul, and both were comforted and at peace. Nevertheless in walking homo together, they scarcely spoke a single Word. (TO BE CONTINUED. t