Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1895 — Silence [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Silence

“I would give my life to see my husband a great man, and to help him to become one!” said she, with a suppressed passion which quite startled Roderick. Then, laughing again, as if half ashamed of her own earnestness, “Suppose since we cannot buy books, you '■ ere to set to work and write one? “You little Solon!” cried Roderick, and said no more. But there was a gleam in bis eye, a'hope in his heart. Something in his wife’s words had stirred in him that ambition which every man has, or ought to have, else he is no true man at all—the wish to do something, to be something, to cease drifting aimlessly down the stream of life, in the passing pleasures of the day, but to take firm root somewhere, strike root downward and bear fruit upward. And the woman that hinders him from doing this is no true wife, but a mere parisite that smothers and impedes the growth of the tree. Ay, even though she may garland him as gorgeously as the lianas do the trees in Western forests, with what she calls love, but which Is in truth the merest selfishness. She was a born mistress of a household, this young Mrs. Jardine; none the less so because of a something in her beyond it all, which made her often stop a moment in her daily labors to look at “the blue hills far away,” to listen to the singing of the burn in the glen, or the birds in the garden, and perhaps carol a ditty herself there, when she was gathering flowers or pulling fruit out in the open air, for they had no piano, and she would not hear of buying one till the book was done and they had plenty of money. “My darling, you are in one thing unlike all women—at least, all that I ever knew. You invariably prefer what you have instead of what you have not. Suppose, now, just for a change, you were to begin worrying my life out because I can not give you half a dozen servants and a carriage and pair, or take you out into society? My wife, do you mind being poor?" “Do you? When you are a Jardine — we are both Jardines, for that matter—and you are to be a great author, or a great man, some day?” “Evidently my wife does not believe the two synonymous,” said Roderick, laughing and coloring. “Not quite, because the author may fail; whereas the man who does his work—any work—as conscientiously as you are doing it, must always be, in one sense, a great man. Also the one is the world's property, the other is mine!” She put her arms round his neck; he leaned against her, for he was, In truth, a good deal tired. His book had been bothering him, and he was not used to being bothered, not accustomed to the endless labor, the perpetual struggle between impulse and perseverance, moods of errant fancy and deliberate, mechanical, matter-of-fact toil, which all professional authors Understand but too well.

“It’s done at last,” said he, almost with a shout, as, one late autumn morning, with the scent of clematis and jasmine coming in at the open window, he finished his book, writing, in his best and neatest hand, “The End” on the final page. “And, yet lam half sorry! I have killed them all, or married them—made them quite comfortable, anyhow—and now I rather miss them. They had grown such companions; had they not, dear?” Silence smiled; but yet, as she tenderly tied up the MS., carefully counting the pages, to be sure that none were missing, a tear fell on the last one. It was so dear to her, this first work of her husband's, done in their first year of married life, and full of so many associations. She was sure, even if it came to the twentieth edition, she should never cease to remember and cherish it, every line. “Twentieth editions do not come every dfly, even to celebrated authors,” said Roderick, saplently. “I should be glad to sell eveu the first five, aud get the money.” . “Money—l am afraid I had forgotten the money,” said Silepce—as. Indeed, she, had. But for a good many days after, when, the excitement of work over, a reaction came, and Roderick looked more pale and ill than she had ever seen him, she began to count over her little store, as If by counting she could double it, and to long, day by day, for the letter which was to bring the hope of that despised neces-sity-pounds, shillings and pence. The last and hardest came one day when they had been rather brighter than usual. Silence had persuaded her husband to walk down with her to the obnoxious cotton mill, in which she had become much interested—having instituted, or rather carried on anew, a school for the mill girls, which had been the favorite work of Miss Jardine. “You will let me do it, just because she did it?” was the entreaty which Roderick could not resist. So every Sunday, while he took the long stretch across the country which she had insisted upon after the labors of the week, she had gone down to an empty room at the mill and kept school there for two hours. To-day the girls recognized her with delight, and her husband, pleased with hjer pleasure, glad, too, of any, relief in his monotonous life, had talked to the “hands,” examined the machinery, and acknowledged that there /might be a worse lot in life than to be master of a mill. I “At one time I wanted to be an engineer, but my mother thought the profession not ‘genteel’ enough. She would have put me into the ‘house,’ but I loved machinery, I hated trade. . You would. not have wondered, had vou ever kilown my grandfather Pat-

I erson ” Roderick stopped. “But he is dead, and he was a clever man, I and an honest, in his own. way.” It was one of the things which Silence most loved in her husband, part of the infinite respect deepening every day, which would have made her pass over so many little faults in him, that she never heard him speak ill-natured-ly or unkindly of any humau being. “I almost wish that I had been in our firm, or some other, that you might—’ ‘walk in silk attire, And siller hae to spare.’ But after all, my wife, you would not have cared to see me a millionaire, and a money-grubber—Grub street seems a deal nearer my mark.” They both laughed aud entered the house gayly—almost for the first time without looking on the hall table for the vague expectation of something. It was not till Silence had taken off her hat and began to make the tea that she saw a large carrier’s parcel with the “eminent publisher's” label outside —one, of these neatly done up, Innocent-looking parcels which often carry with them a stroke of absolute doom. “Let me open it,” said Silence—and her husband let her. It was a civil note, a very civil note, placed on the top of the MS., and expressing a great regret that the latter was found “unsuitable.” In reading it Roderick’s hands shook nervously and his color went and came. “Never mind, it does not matter; it was what I should have expected,” was all he said. “No, it does not matter,” said Silence, firmly. “They only say it is ’unsuitable’ to them. It may suit some one else. Let us try.” “Yes, let us try,” echoed Roderick, mechanically, his hand before his eyes. “And if we fail—‘We fail; We screw our courage to the sticking place, And we’ll not fail.’ “My Lady Macbeth,” said he, scarcely able to forbear a smile at the sweet, broken English, and the brave heart which tried so hard to keep up Ills own. “Then let us once more get together to ‘murder sleep’—or only a publisher. Whom shall the MS. be sent tb next?” That very day—for Silence never let any grass grow under her feet—she repacked the MS. and sent it to another house. From whence it came back at once, unopfened, as all arrangements were made up—in fact, the head of the firm was just starting for Switzerland. He, honest man—for publishers are but men, though poor authors will uot believe it—being perhaps a little worn out with a year of worries—the genus irritable are the most worrying folk alive—added a well meant but unnecessary sting to the effect that “he would advise the author to try another tack—historical novels never sold.” “Then I had better burn it,” said Roderick, quietly. But as he advanced to the fire there was an expression in his face which his wife had never seen before. She flung herself before him in an agony of tears. “You shall not. It is mine, mine, whether the world likes it or not. We will never give in; we will try and try again. Don’t you remember Bruce aud the spider?” “A good simile; because in the meantime I might lie in this horrid cave and starve. Thank you, my dear. No, I had rather go out, take my sword in hand, and die fighting!” He laughed loudly, and then he, too, burst into tears.

Without any words, Silence laid her husband’s head on her shoulder, soothing him less liko a wife than a mother, or rather a combination of both. The worshiped ideal, the “queen” of boyish fancy, had long ago melted into a mere woman—not perfect, but yet trying hard to be “as good as she could.” both for love’s sake and for the sake of that Love Divine which is at the root of all. And so she was gradually becoming what a man so sorely needs his wife 'to be—comfort, solace, strength; his fellow-laborer as well as his counselor; neither superior nor inferior to himself, only different. And in this character she made the wisest suggestion that could have been made, and which the day before he had absolutely scouted—that they should go away for a few days; accept the latest of the many invitations of good Mrs. Grierson, and visit her—not at Richerden, but at the coast. “You know she said all the Richerden people will have left by now,” added Silence, hesitating. “That means we need not fear meeting any of our relations or friends—we tabooed folk,” answered Roderick, bitterly. Nevertheless, fa his present condition, the very thought of change had a certain relief in it. “She is a dear soul—old Mrs. Grierson. I told you you would like her, and you did.” “Very much.” “Suppose, then, we were to strain a point and go.” Silence did not tell him that straining a point was, as regarded money matters, more difficult than he knew; but she did somehow manage it, and they went. Not, however, until after many consultations, the luckless MS. had again gone forth on its quest for a publisher; this time almost without hope, but simply in the carrying out of that “dogged determination” which Roderick declared he now for the first time recognized in his wife. “If I had had it,” he strid, wistfully, as they sat i together on the deck of one of those river steamboats, where all the disagreements of overcrowding and holiday-making cannot neutralize the pleasure of sea and mountain and loch. “If I had had it, how much more I might have done’.” “You never know you have got it till you try.” “My dear heart!” In the sanctity of very private life Roderick sometimes called his wife “my heart,” or “my soul”—which was a great deal nearer the truth than many an idle pet-name. “Oh, this; is delicious,” said he, as he drank in the salt air and amused himself with Silence’s delight in a beauty which she declared made Scotland “better than Switzerland,” the broad estuary running up into long hill-encir-cled lochs, where porpoises tumbled and white gulls wheeled screaming

overhead, and the lights and the shadows came and went, producing “effects” such as are seen lowhere but in this rainy, sunshinj land; a country which beyond all others seems to be a country with a soul, especially on its coast And Silence, who, though brought up among mountains, had ' never seen the sea except when she I crossed it at Calais, watched all these I wonders with perfectly childish delight | ’ “How happy you are,” said RoderI ick, looking at, her. “Why not when-we two are together I —always together?” Roderick smiled, not in gratified vanity—he had very little of that; but recognizing—as in selfish passion men never can recognize—the sweetness o/ being able to make another humau being perfectly happy. Mrs. Grierson’s welcome was a treat to get She was of those old people whom all young people love —sympathetic, unexacting, expending whatever she could, and especially upon anyone that needed it the warmth of her childless, motherless heart. Narrow she might be in her opinions— at least some of the new generation, even Roderick himself, had thought so; but in her acts she was wide as charity itself. And her house was one of those —not too many in this world—where guests feel entirely “at home.” The young folks were left almost entirely to themselves, sitting out on the lovely shore or climbing the heights—the same where Roderick had a year ago sat and dreamed of the then unseen and Incredible She—as he told her once when she sat beside him. They wandered about, perfectly content, till dusk, when they came in, aud submitted placidly to the sweet severities of mte dinner. Mrs. Grierson belonged to one of the “old” Richerdeu fiimiJies, and cherished the refined formality mainly imitated by rhe uouveaux liehes of that society. “But you seem quite at home,” said Roderick to his wife. “You might have been a Richerden lady all your days, so well you play your part.” “1 don't play it at all, dear. I really enjoy myself—l enjoy everything—with you. How terrible it must be”— witli a sudden shiver—“l hardly know which would be most terrible, having to part from one’s husband, or parting, conscious that oue was not sorry to part. Now, you and I are not always ‘good,’ my Roderick. Sometimes we vex one another—l don't believe a bit in your Dunmow flitch of bacon! Why, we have not been married six months, aud I am sure we have quarreled at least twelve times.” (To be continued.)

CHAPTER XI—Continued.