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

Silence

By Miss Mulock

CHAPTER IX—Continued. Reaching the Reyniers’ door, Roderick did not offer to e.iter. In truth, he felt that the usual social evening would ba as impossible to him as to Silence. In their present crisis of pain they needed either to be quite alone with each other or entirely apart. Still, when he saw her next morning, looking deadly pale, b ,t assuming a faint smile of welcome, and sitting down beside him in the old way, though he noticed, with a slight he itation, as of doing as a duty what had before been so natural and sweet, Roderick's heart sunk. He waited in a fever of apprehension for what she had to tay, or rather he tried to prevent her saying, by talking about what he had been writing in the matter of Blackball. To all of which she answered only by a pale smile, then Maid, gently: “You forget, my friend, the matter We had to speak about this morning. ” “No, Ido not forget—but 'yesterday, when I spoke of our marriage,it seemed to pain you. ” “It will not to-day, for I have been thinking it all over, and -” “You are trembling! You are ill, my darling.” “Oh, no!” gently putting aside and then yielding to his tender caress. “Don’t mind me, I am not ill; but 1 lay awake the whole of last night, and it is trying when the morning breaks upon one and there is no rest, no division between two days—two such dreadful days. ’’

“Dreadful! Why? What do vou mean?” She took his hand and stroked it with a gesture almost motherly. “Listen to me. I have a good deal to say, and you must listen. You will? I shall not hurt you, my Roderick—not very much! And that I love you—ah, you know it—only too well,' if that were possible. But it is impossible! Were you a vain man, or a tyrant, or selfish, it might harm you, and I should be afraid; but you are none of the three. You are Roderick, my Roderick! I shall never love any man in this world but you!” “Of course not, it would be very wrong.” But suddenly his attempt at a smile faded in a vague terror. "Why tell me.this? What do you mean?” “I think”—she spoke very slowly and softly—“l think we ought to part. ” For a moment Roderick was completely stunned. Her whole manner was so quiet that a stranger might have imagined she felt nothing, that she had no feelings at all. A slight quiver about the mouth, atigh er compression of the fingers—she had taken her hand away from his and clasped them together on her lap —that was all. Shallow people might have wholly misjudged her; even her lover did, a little. “And—you say this—quite calmly—as if you did not care;” “Not care! Oh, mon Dieu! mon Dieu!” Then she turned imploringly to Roderick. “Do not be angry with me, Ido not deserve it; only listen, it is for your good I speak. Yesterday I believed—you made me believe—that it would be the best thing in the world for you to marry me. Now, I doubt. “Now it is over. 1 have made up my mind—that is, so far as, being fiancee, I have a right to make up my mind. I think it would be best for you to go home at once, anl tell your mother that we have parted, that’we thought it best to part. ” Roderick sat dead silent. “Otherwise, think what will happen! j You will be comparatively poor—’’ “And you are afraid of poverty?” The moment he had said the words he felt their meanness, their utter untrueness,' and passionately begged her pardon. “What need?” Silence answered, half sadly. “The question is not whether you hurt me, or 1 you, or whether we vex one- another, but whether we do what is right, absolute r ght. That is the real heart of love. If I thought a thing right, 1 would do it, and help you to do it, though it killed me—ay, even though it killed us both.” “I understand you,” he said, with a quietness that was a marvel even to himself. “But it is a very difficult matter to decide, and we must decide, for our whole two lives hang in the balance. Let me go away and think it out alone—quite alone.” He roe with a grave, sad air, and went to the door, then came back and kissed her hand. “My love! my only love! Yes, I have found you. • It is not every man’s lot so to find you. Whatever happens, I thank God.”

Without more words he went away to his favorite “thinking place.” a quiet walk along the lake shore. Many an hour had bo spent there within the last few months, but never such an hour asthis. He would go back with the fiat of life or death in his hands. Byron, who wrote so many false things, wrote one true one: Mau’s love is of man’s life a thins; apart, ’Tts woman's v hole existence. At least, this is true} of most women: and she of whom it is not true is scarcely a woman at all. Though all the time Sophie sat chatting beside her Silence neither wept nor complained, asked no sympathy, and be-trayed-by-no word that anything was amiss, still, when the door, opened and she saw her lover appear, a shiver ran through her, which made the kindhearted Sophie with a troubled and anxious, look, immediately disappear. “My love,” he said, “l“have been thinking over everything, trying to see the right and wr. ng of things—simple.right and wrong, without relation to ou selves at al). My father could do it, and used to say he believed I could when I was tried. I hope so; I hope I can judge calmlv, without being either selfish or unjust Am I?" “no; a thousand times no." “My darling, we must love one another—we must be married. You left it to me to decide, and I have decided. It will be a pang in some wayfc— a risk In others—but it must be: it ought to be. Love is best Come. ” “I would have lived,” she cried—“yes, I wpuld have lived. <,'ne has no right to break one’s heart and die till God chooses. But life with you, and life without you-oh, the difference.” Roderick clasped her in his arms, and they wept together like little Once again Roderick wrote to his aether, informing her that he had de-

layed his marriage for three months, hoping against hope that after all it might not he the saddest of weddings, ; without a parent’s blessing, but that, ’ whether or no, it must be. He al--1 lowed her no possibility of believing j that he could change his min 1. ; While opposing, he never deceived I her, for deceit is always cowardice, and ’ whatever he was, Roderick was no coward. It was on one , Sunday afternoon, which they were spending with the good Reyniers at Chaumont. They had climbed the hill through the long 1 pine woods, and were now standing ' watching that lovely view, the triple chain of Sakes, with its long line of snowy Alps beyond. The air was mild I and soft; there were violets in the woods. It felt like the first day of ' spring, which always comes, as it were, with a message of promise to the young. Ay. and even to those whose I youth is only a rever-fulfilled remembrance. | "Silence,” Roderick said, as he took I in his the hand that would be his own i through life, “I have finished all the I work I had to do here. Now, when shall we go home?” “Home?” “Your new heme, and mine; the home [ we are to share together.” Startled, she faltered out something 1 about “waiting a little longer.” “I have waited. It is now nearly nine months since the day at Berne, when—- ** *1 did but see her passing Dy, And yet I love her till Idle ’ ” “That would have been very foolish,” said Silence, with a naive gravity; “unless you have followed up the acquaintance, and come to know me 1 well.” Suddenly putting her two hands in her lover’s—“ You do know me, faults and all, so take me; and oh! he good to me: 1 have only you!” “And I you. You will be goed to me also? ” She smiled. “Little use in talking, but I think there will never come a day when I would not cheerfully die, if my dying could help you. My living Will, much more. So 1 mean to live.” And she looked up fondly, with all her soul in her eyes, at her young bridegroom. Would she forty, fifty years hence, see in the old man’s face that of this lover of her youth, the face forgotten by all but her.' God knows! but it is good to believe so. The marriage was arranged, of course, to be quite quiet. All the usual Swiss festivities, the soiree aux bouquets before the wedding, and the ball after it, were of necessity omitted. The Reynier family alone were to “assist” at the ceremony, for which the girls implored Silence would, for one uay only, put off her mourning and assume proper bridal white. She assented, “because my mother would have liked it. She used often to talk of the day when she would dress me as a bride.

“And she would be glad, so glad! if she know that you were taking care of me,” said Silence, with a bright smile, though her tears were dropping down. “Al.-o a little, that I was taking care of you. She used to say it was my metier always to take care of somebody. Therefore, adieu, my mother! Y'ou will not forget me, wnerever you are; nor I j ou. ” She laid her cheek on the white headstone in a pa sion of sobs, then suddenly checke 1 them all, gave her hand to her bridegroom, and suffered him to lead her away home. 1 e did not see her again till next morning, when Sophie, Marie and Jeanne Reynier led into salon and left be-ide him, shutting the door upon them both, the whitest, loveliest vision; More like an angel than a woman, he thought then, nor ever ceased to think, though he never saw it but once in his life, on that wonderful wet morning when the Deluge itself teemed to have come back upon Neuchatel, as if to sweep away with its torrents all his old life, and begin the new life with his wedding day. Suddenly he stooped and kissed, not her lips, but her han I. She looked suprised for an instant, perhaps ju t a little hurt then perceived at once the deep emotion, the tender reverence. “Oh, my love, my love forever! Thank God!” said she or rather breathed than said it, as she put both arms round his neck and clung to his bosom. She was but a woman after all. Soon after Roderick led his bride, both quite calm now and smiling, to the two carriages waiting below. He and she and the good Reyniers drove through the soaking streets to the damp, empty church, where, strange contrast to his sister's brilliant marriage, they two stood alone, with not a creature of their own blood beside them, and heard the old minister in ; his unimpassioned voice addrrss them as “mon cher frere et ma cnere stour,” recommending them to obssrve “une inviolable fidelite, une entiere confiance, et une affection toujours plus profonde. ” Then, having answered the few questions of the Swiss marriage liturgy, simple and Protestant, not unlike his native Presbyterian service, the young bridegroom listened as if in a dream to the final blessing. “Que Dieu, notre Pere en Jesus Christ, fasse reposer Sa benediction sur vous, qull seelie dans vos ejeurs le lien que vous venez de former, qu’ll sanctifie de plus en plus, et que vous viviez ensemble en Jesus Christ, dans I’attente du jour ou ceux qui se seronte aimes en Lui, seront reunis dans Son sein pour I’eternite. Amen.”

CHAPTER X. A “flat” at a Richerden terrace, furnished after the true Richerden style, not tawdry certainly, but very solid; solid and ugly. Large-patterned flowery carpets, and curtains to match, there being just that slight difference in shade which some people think “of no consequence,” but which to others is a daily torment, setting their teeth on edge like an untidy room, or a piano out of tune, or any other of those small avoidable miseries which make all the difference between real and sham redifference between real and sham refinement. But the sense of harmony in color and form, a thing quite independent of riches, and often attainable in comparative poverty, was mostly unknown to, and disregarded by, the wealthy inhabitants of this excellent town. No blame to them; only a little painful to those who happen to be differently constituted. “When I look around the room, I feel exactly like a cat with its back rubbed up the wrong way,” said Roderick, trying to make a joke of his annoyance at finding the sort of “home” to which he had brought his wife, so very different from what he had desired, or even expected. -They had beefi traveling a month abroad, and had begun to weary of hotels, and look forward eagerly jp the settled life of dual solitude, which to all people who are truly “one afi'd one’’—without need of that ‘Shadowy third,” which marks, alas! the sad imperfectness of married union—is, and ought to be, the most entire felicity.

And felicity it was—even though theirs had been a sad hopie-coming—-not a soul waiting there to welcome the bride. It was now two days since they had arrived, yet not a visit, not a card, not a letter, came to show that any body remembered there were such people in the world as Roderick Jardine and his young wife. “We might as well be in the desert of Sahara, only there it wouldn’t rain, as it seems always to do here,” continued he. “What a change! We left spring, we come back to winter.” “I don’t mind it. And I like the merry’ crackle of the open fire,” said Silence, who was kneeling before it, the blaze brightening her sweet face, upon which had already come the mysterious look which even a week of marriage sems to bring, the deep, contented calm of a girl who has passed Into a woman, whose lot is settled, whose life is filled. For good or ill, God knows! but it is filled; and all uncertainty is ended. “Do not vex yourself, dear,” she said. “Though, I allow, it might be a prettier salon, or parlor. Is not parlor the word?” “Drawing room; parlor is not half genteel enough for Ilicherden,” said Roderick, laughing. Well, whatever it is, it is very comfortable. lam quite happy in it—with you. And I like our being here, all alone, with no ‘receptions.’ We shall not need to have any, I suppose?” “No ‘at home,’ you mean? to receive our wedding callers? Apparently we shall have none to receive. Oh, there is the door-bell.” [TO BE CONTINUED ]