Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 166, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1913 — Page 2

RICHMENS CHILDREN

Iftis‘fr*tioQS C £>r DOMJ.IVWTN Cogyrifckt CO.

SYNOPSIS. BUI Canon, the bonanza kins, and his daughter. Rose, who had passed up Mrs. Cornell us Ryan’s ball at San Francisco to aeoocnpacy her father, arrive at Antelope. XVomlaick Ryan calls on his mother to hew a ball invitation for his wife, and Is refined. The determined old lady refuses to reoognlse her daughter-in-law. Domlntok ted been trapped Into a marriage with Bernlee Iverson, a stenographer, several yean his senior. She squanders his mosey, they have frequent quarrels, and he stipe away. Cannon and his daughter are snowed in at Antelope. Dominick Ryan Is rescued from storm In unconscious condition and brought to Antelope hotel. Antelope la cut off by storm. Roes Cannon nurses Dominick back to Use. Two weeks later Bernice discovers In a paver where husband Is and writes letter trying to smooth over difficulties between them. Dominick at lest Is able to Join fellow snowbound prisoners In hotel parlof.

CHAPTER VII-—(Continued.) "Didn't the people at the Rocky Bar Hotel try to dissuade you from starting?" said Buford. “They muht have known It was dangerous. They must have been worried about you or they wouldn't* have telegraphed up.” “Oh. I believe they did.” The young man tried to hide the annoyance the questions gave him under a dry brevity of speech. “They did all that they ought to have done. I’ll see them again on my way down.” "And yet you persisted!” The actor turned to Rose with whom, as he sat. beside her at table, he had become quite friendly. "The blind confidence of youth, Miss Cannon, isn’t It a grand, inspiring thing?" Dominick shifted his aching feet under the rug. He was becoming exceedingly irritated and impatient, and wondered how much longer he would be able to respond politely to the conversational assiduities of the stranger. “Now,” continued Buford, “kindly satisfy my curiosity on. one point. Why, when you were told of the danger of the enterprise, did you start?” "Perhaps I liked the danger, wanted it to tone me up. I’m a bank clerk, Mr. Buford, and my life’s monotonous. Danger’s a change." He raised his voice and spoke with sudden, rude defiance. Buford looked quickly at him, while his eyebrows went np nearly to his hair. “A bank clerk, oh!” he said with a falling inflection of disappointment, much chagrined to discover that the child of millions occupied such a humble niche. "I —I —was not aware of that." "An assistant cashier,” continued Dominiok in the same key of exasperation, “and I managed to get a holiday at this season because my father was one of the founders of the hank and they allow me certain privileges. If you would like to know anything else ask me and 11l answer as well as I know how." His manner and tone so plainly indicated his resentment of the other’s curiosity that the actor flushed and shrank. He was evidently well-mean-ing and sensitive, and the young man’s rudeness hurt rather than angered him. For a moment nothing was said, Buford making no response other than to clear his throat, while he stretched out one arm and pulled down his cuff with a jerking movement. There waß constraint in the air, and Rose, feeling that he had been treated with unnecessary harshness, sought to palliate it by lifting the book on her lap and saying to him: "This is the book we were talking about when you came in, Mr. Buford, •Wife in Name Only.' Have you read It?" She handed him the ragged volume, and holding it off he eyed it with a scrutiny all the more marked by the way he drew his brows down till they hung like bushy eaves over his eyes. "No, my dear young lady. I have not. Nor do I feel disposed to do so. 'Wife in Name Only!’ That tells a whole story without reading a word. Were you going to read it?” “No; Mr. Ryan and I were Just looking over them. We were thinking about reading one of them aloud. This one happened to be on the pile ” "To me," continued Buford, "the name is repelling because it suggests sorrows of my own." There was a-pause. He evidently expected a question which undoubtedly was not going to come from Dominick, who sat fallen together in the arm-chair looking at him with moody IU-humor. There was more hope from Rose, who gazed at the floor but said nothing. Buford was forced to repeat with an unctuous depth of tone, "Suggests sorrows of my own," and fasten his glanoe on her, eo that, as she raised her eyes, they encountered the commanding encouragement of his. "Sorrows of your own?" she repeated timidly, but with the expected questioning inflection. "Yes, my dear Miss Cannon,” retained the actor with a melancholy which was full of s rich, dark enjoyment. "My wife is one in name only." There was another pause, and neither showing any intention of breaking it, Buford remarked: "That sorrow Is mine." "What sorrow?" said Dominiok hraskly. "Ttaa sorrow of a deserted man," retamed the actor with now, for the

By GERALDINE BONNER

Authors Tflß HONBBH l /"TOMOTgpVtfS IANGLE^

first time, something of the dignity of real feeling in his manner. "Oh,” the monosyllable was extremely noncommittal, but it had the air of finality as though Dominick intended to say no more. "Has she—er —left you?” said the girl a low and rather awe-stricken voice. The actor inclined his head in an acquiescent bow: ■ 1 —— “She has.” Again there was a pause. Unless Buford chose to be more biographical, the conversation appeared to have come to a deadlock. Neither of the listeners could at this stage break into his reserve with questions and yet to switch off on a new subject was not to be thought of at a moment of such emotional intensity. The actor evidently felt this, for he said suddenly, with a relapse into a lighter tone and letting his eyebrows escape from an overshadowing closeness to his eyes: "But why should I trouble you with the sorrows that have cast their shadow on me? Why should my matrimonial troubles be allowed to darken the brightness of two young lives which havenot yet known the Toys and the perils of the wedded state?” The pause that followed this remark was the most portentous that had yet fallen on the trio. Rose cg&t a surreptitious glance at the dark figure of young Ryan, lying back In the shadows of the arm-chair. As she looked he stirred and said with the abrupt, hard dryness which had marked his manner since Buford’s entrance: “Don’t take too much for granted, Mr. Buford. I’ve known some of the joys and perils of the wedded state myself.” . The actor stared at him in openeyed surprise. "Do I rightly understand,” he said, “that you are a married man?” “You do,” returned Dominick. "Really now, I never would have guessed it! Pardon me for not having given you the full dues of your position. Your wife, I take it, has no knowledge of the risk she recently ran of losing her husband?” “I hope not.” "Well,” he replied with a manner of sudden cheery playfulness, “we’ll take good care that she doesn’t learn. When the wires are up we’ll concoct a telegram that shall be a masterpiece of diplomatic lying. Lucky young man to have a loving wife at Of all of us you are the one who can best realize the meaning of the line, ‘ ’Tis sweet to know there is an eye to mark our coming and — Dominick threw the rug off and rose to his foet. "If you can get Perley to help me I'll go upstairs again. I’m tired and I’ll go back to my room.”' He tried to step forward, but the pain of his unhealed foot was unbearable, and he caught the edge of the table and held it, his face paling with sudden anguish. The actor, startled by the abruptness of his uprising, approached him with a vague proffer of assistance and was arrested by bis sharp command: "Go and get Perley! He’s in the bar probably. I can’t stand this way for long. Hurry up!” Buford ran out of the room, and Rose somewhat timidly drew near the young man, braced against the table, hiß eyes down-bent, his face hard In the struggle with sudden and unfamiliar pain. "Can’t I help you?" she said. ley may not be there. Mr. Buford and I can get you up stairs." "Oh, no,” he answered, his words short but his tone more conciliatory. "It’s nothing to bother about I'd have wrung that man’s neck if I’d had to listen to him five minutes longer.” Here Perley and Buford entered, and the former, offering his support to the invalid, led him hobbling out of the door into the hall. The actor looked after them for a moment and then came back to the fire where Miss Cannon waß standing, thoughtfully regarding the burning logs. "I’ve no doubt," he said, "that young Mr. Ryan is an estimable gentleman, but he certainly appears to be possessed by a very impatient and ugly temper." Buford had found Miss Cannon one of the most amiable and charming ladies he had ever met, and it waa therefore a good deal of a surprise to have her turn upon him a face of cold, reproving disagreement, and remark in a voice that matched it: "I don’t agree with you at all, Mr. Buford, and you seem quite, to forget that Mr. Ryan has been very sick and is still in great pain." Buford was exceedingly abashed. He would not have offended Miss Cannon for anything in the world, and it seemed to him that a being so compact of graciousness and consideration would be the first to censure an exhibition of 111-humor such as young Ryan had Just made. He stammered an apologetic sentence and it did not add to his comfort to see that the was not entirely mollified by it and to feel that she exhaled a slight, disapproving coldness that put him at a

great distance and made him feel mortified and ill at ease. CHAPTER Vlll. The Unknown Eros. The ten days that followed wefe among the_ most Important of Dominick Ryan’s life. Looking back at them he wondered that he had been so blind to the transformation of his being which was taking place. Great emotional crises are often not any more recognized, by the individuals, than great transitional epochs are known by the nations experiencing them. Dominick did not realize that the most engrossing, compelling passion he had ever felt was slowly invading him. He did not argue that he was falling in love with a woman that he could never own and of whom it was a Bin to think. He did not argue or think about anything. He was as a vessel gradually filling with elemental forces, and like the vessel he was passive till some Jar would shake it and the forces would run over. Meantime he was held by a determination, mutinous and' unreasoning as trbe determination of a child, to live in the present. He had the feeling of the desert traveler who has found the oasis.' The desert lay behind him, burning and sinister with the agony of his transit, and the desert lay before him with its to be faced, but for the moment he could lie still and rest and forget by the fountain under the cool of the trees. He did not consciously think of Rose. But if she were not there he was uneasy till she came again. His secret exhilaration at her approach, the dead blankness of his lack of her when she was absent, told him nothing. These were the feelings he had, and they filled him and left no cool residue of reason wherewith to watch and guard. He was taken unawares, so drearily confident of his allegiance to his particular private tragedy that he did not admit the possibility of a defection. A sense of rest was on him and he set it down —if he ever thought of it at all —to the relief of a temporary respite. Poor Dominick, with his inexperience of sweet things, did not argue that respite from pain should be a quiescent, contented condition of being, far removed from that state of secret, troubled gladness that thrilled him at the sound of a woman’s footstep. ■ No situation could have been invented better suited for the fostering of sentiment. His helpless state demanded her constant attention. The attitude of nurse to patient, the solicitude of the consoling woman for the disabled, suffering man, have been, sinoe time immemorial, recognized aids to romance. Rose, if an unawakened woman, was enough of one to enjoy richly this maternal office of alternate cosseting and ruling one who, in the natural order of things, should have stood alone In his >

"I Don't Agree With You at All, Mr. Buford.”

strength, dictating the law. Perhaps the human female so delights in this particular opportunity for tyranny because it is one of her few chances for indulging her passion for authority. Rose, if she did not quite revel in it, discreetly enjoyed her period of dominance. In the beginning Dominick had been not a man but a patient —about the same to her as the doll is to the little girl. Then when he began to get better, and the man rose, tingling with renewed life, from the ashes of tbe patient, she quickly fell back Into the old position. With tbe inherited, dainty deeeptiveneaa of genera tlbna of women, who, while they

were virtuous, were also charming, she relinquished her dominion and re treated into that enfolded maidenly reserve and docility which we feel quite sure was the manner adopted by the ladiea of the Stone Age when they felt it necessary to manage their lords. She was as unconscious of all this as Dominick was of hia growing absorption in her. If he was troubled she was not. The days saw her grOW* ing gayer, more blithe and lighthearted. She sang about the corridors, her smile grew more radiant, and every man in the hotel felt the power of her awakening womanhood. Her boyish frankness of demeanor Was still undimmed by the first blurring breath of passion. If Dominick was not in the parlor her disappointment was as candid as a child’s whose mother had forgotten to bring home candy. All that she showed of consciousness was that when he was there and there was no disappointment, Bhe concealed her satisfaction, wrapped herself in a sudden, shy quietness, as completely extinguishing of all beneath as a nun’s habit. The continued, enforced intimacy into which their restricted quarters and indoor life threw them could not have been more effectual in fanning the growing flame if designed by a malicious Fate. There was. only one sitting-room, and, unable to go out, they sat side by side in it all day. They read together, they talked, they played cards. They were seldom alone, but the presence of Bill Cannon, groaning over the fire with a three-weeks-old newspaper for company, was not one that diverted their attention from each other; and Cqra and Willoughby, as opponents in a game of euchre, only helped to accentuate the comradeship which leagued them together in defensive alliance. The days that were so long to others were to them of a bright, surprising shortness. ‘ Playing solitaire against each. other on either sicW of the fireplace was a pastime at which hours slipped by. Quite unexpectedly it would be midday, with Cora putting her head round the doorpost and calling them to dinner. In the euchre games of the afternoon the darkness crept upon them with the stealthy swiftness of an enemy. It would gather In the corners of the roomwhile Cora -was still heated and flushed from her efforts to instruct Willoughby In the intricacies of the game, and yet preserve that respectful attitude which she felt should be assumed in one’s relations with a lord. The twilight hour that followed was to Dominick’s mind the most delightful of these days of fleeting enchantment. The curtains were drawn, a new log rolled on the fire, and the lamp lit. Then their fellow prisoners began dropping in—the old judge stowing himself away in one of the horsehair arm-chairs, Willoughby and Buford lounging in from the bar, and Mrs. Perley with a basket of the

family mending, and the doctor all snowy from his refunds. The audience for Rose's readings had expanded from the original listener to this choice circle of Antelope's elect. Tbe book chosen had been "Great Expectations," and the spell, of that greatest tale of & great romancer fell on the snow-bound group and held them entranced and motionless round the friendly hearth. The young man's eyes passed from faoe to face, avoiding only that of the reader bent over the lamp-illu-mined page. The old judge, sunk comfortably into the depths of his arm-ohalr, listened, and cracked the

joints of his lean, dry fingers. Willoughby, his dogs crouched about his feet, looked Into the fire, his attentive gravity broken now and then by a slow smile. Mrs. Perley, after hearing tbe chapter which describes Mrs. Gargery’s methods of bringing up Pip "by hand," attended regularly with the remark that "it was a queer sort of book, but some way or other she liked it” When Cora was forced to leave to attend to her duties in the diningroom, she tom herself away with murmurous reluctance. The doctor slipped in at the third reading and asked Rose if she would lend him the book in the morning “to read up what he had missed." Even Parley’s boy, in his worn oorduroys, his dirty, chapped hands rubbing his cap against his nose, was wont to sidle noiselessly in and slip Into a seat near the door. The climax of the day was the long evening round the fire. There was no reading then. It was the men’s hour, and the smoke of their pipes and cigars lay thick in the air. Cut off from the world in this cranny of the mountains, with the hotel shaking to the buffets of the wind and the snow blanket pressing on the pane, their memories swept back to the wild days of their youth, to the epic times of frontiersman and pioneer. The judge told of his crossing the plains in forty-seven and the first Mormon settlement on tbe barren shores of Salt Lake. He had had encounters with- the Indians, had heard the story of Olive Oatman from one who had known her, and listened to the sinister tale of the -Donner party from a survivor. Bill Cannon had “come by the Isthmus” in forty-eight, a halfstarved, ragged lad who had run away from uncongenial drudgery on a New York farm. His reminiscences went back to the San Francisco that had started up around Portsmouth Square, to the” days when the banks of the American River had swarmed with miners, and the gold lay yellow In the prospector’s pan. He had worked there shoulder to shoulder with men who afterwards made the history of the state and men who died with their names unknown. He had been an eye witness of that blackest of Californian tragedies, the lynching of a Spanish girl at Downieville, had stood pallid and sick under a pine tree and watched her boldly face her murderers and meet her death. The younger men, warmed to emulation, contributed their stories. Perley had reminiscences bequeathed to him by his father who had been an alcalde In that transition year, when California was neither state nor territory and stood in unadministered neglect, waiting for Congress to take some notice of her. Buford told stories of the vicissitudes of a strolling player’s life. He had been \ln the Klondike during the first gold rush and told tales of mining In the North to match those of mining on the "mother lode.” Willoughby, thawed out'of his original shyness, added to the nights’ entertainments stories of the Australian bush, grim legends of tha days of the penal settlements at Botany Bay. Young Ryan was the only man' of the group who contributed nothing to these Slerran Nights’ Entertainments. He sat silent in his chair, apparently listening, and, under the shadow of the hand arched over his eyes, looking at the girl opposite. But the Idyl had tovend. Their captivity passed into its third week, and signs that release was at hand cheered them. They could go out. The streets of Antelope were beaten Into footpaths, and the prisoners, with the enthusiasm of children liberated from school, rushed into open-air diversions and athletic exercise. The first word from the outßide world came by restored telegraphic communication. Consolatory messages poured in from San Francisco. Mrs. Ryan, the elder, sent telegrams as long as letters and showered them with the prodigality of an impassioned gratitude on the camp. Perley had one that he could not speak of without growing husky. Willoughby had one that made him blush. Dominick had several. None, however, had come from his wife and he guessed that none had been sent her, his remark to Rose to "let her alone” having been taken as a wish to spare her anxiety. It was thought that the mall would be in now in a day or two. That would be the end of the fairy tale. They sat about the fire on these last evenings discussing their letters, what they expected, and whom they would be from. No one told any more stories; the thought of news from the “outside” wsb too absorbing. It came in the early dusk of an afternoon near the end of the third week. Dominick, who was still unable to walk, was standing by the parlor window, when he saw Rose Cannon run past outside. She looked in at him as she ran by, her face full of a Joyous' excitement, afcd held up to his gaze a small white packet. A moment later the hall door banged, her foot sounded in the passage, and she entered the K,oom With a rush pf cold air and a triumphant cry of: "The mail’s come." He limped forward to meet * her and take from her hand the letter she held toward him. For the first moment he looked at her, not at the letter, which dwindled to a thing of no Importance when their eyes met over it. Her faoe was nipped by the keen outside air into a bright, beaming rosinees. She wore on her head a man’s fur cap which waa pulled down, and pretaed wlspa of fair hair against her forehead and cheeks. A loose fjjrlined coat enveloped her to her feet, and after ahe had handed him his letter she palled off the mittens she wore and began unfastening the clasps of the coat, with fingers that were purplish and cramped from the cold. "There's only one for you,” she said. "I waited till the postmaster looked all through them twice. Then I made him

give it to me and rad hack here wtiH It The entire population of Antelope's in the post-office and there's, the greatest excitement" Her coat was unfastened and she* threw back ita long fronts, her figure outlined against the t gray fur lining.. She snatched off her cap and tosaeg, it to an adjacent chair and with a quick hand brushed away- the hair It had pressed down on her forehead. “I got seven,” she said, turning to the fire, "and papa a whole bunch, and the judge, quantities, and Willoughby, three. But only one for you) —poor, neglected man!" Spreading her hands wide to the blaze she looked at him over hen shoulder, laughing teasingly. He had; the letter in his hands still unopened. "Why," she cried, “what an extraordinary sight! You haven't opened it!"’ "No," he answered, turning It over* “I haven’t" *Tve always heard that curiosity* was a feminine weakness but I never!

Ho Was Reading the Letter, His Body Close Against the Window-Pane.

knew till now,” she said. “Please go on and read it, because if you don’t I'll feel that I’m preventing you and I’ll have to go up stairs to my own room, which is as cold as a refrigerator. Don’t make me polite and considerate against my will.” Without answering her he tore open the letter and, moving to the light of the window, held the sheet up and began to read. There was silence for some minutes. The fire sputtered and snapped, and once or twice the crisp paper rustled In Dominick’s hands. Rose held her fingers out to the warmth, studying them with her head on one side as If she had never" seen them before. Presently she slid noiselessly out of her coat, and dropped it, a heap of silky fur, on a chair beside her. The movement made it convenient to steal a glance at the youngman. He was reading the letter, his body close against the window-pane, his face full of frowning, almost fierce concentration. She turned back to the fire and made small, surreptitious smoothings and jerks: of arrangement at her collar, her belt, her skirt. Dominick turned the paper and there was something aggressive in the crackling of the thin, dry sheet. "Perley got a letter from youj mother,” she said suddenly, “that he was reading in a corner of the postoffice, and it nearly made him cry.” There was no answer. She waited for a spaoe and then said, projecting the remark into the heart of the fire. “Yours must be a most interesting letter.” She heard him move and looked quickly back at him, her face all gay challenge. It was met by a look so somber that her expression changed as if she had received a check to her gaiety as unexpected and effectual as a blow. She shrank a little as he came toward her, the letter In his hand. “It is an Interesting letter,” he said. “It’s from my wife.” Since those firat days of his Illness, his wife’s name had been rarely mentioned. Rose thought it was because young Mrs. Ryan was a delicate-sub-ject best left alone; Dominick, because . anything that reminded him of Berny was painful. But the truth was that, from the first, the wife had loomed before them as a figure of dread, a specter whose presence congealed the something exquisite and uplifting each felt in the other's heart. Now, love a,wakened, forcing itself upon their recognition, her name came up between them, chilling and grim as the image of death intruding suddenly into the Joyous presence of the living. Thfe change that bad come over the interview all in a moment waa startling. Suddenly it seemed lifted from the plane of every-day converse to a level where the truth was an obligation and the language of polite subterfuge could not exist. But the woman. who hldea and protects herself with these shields, made an effort to keep It in the old accustomed pleoe. "Is—is—shs well?" she stammered, framing the regulation words almost unconsciously. “She’s .well,” be answered, “she’s very well. Bhe wants me to come home.” (TO BE CONTINUED.)

Country Without Manufactures.

Panama haa practically no manof&otures. The principal exports are bananas, cocoanuts, hides and skins, ivory, nuts, rubber and hardwood, of which tbe United States receives the greater portion. More than half of the imports are furnished by th* United States and constat chiefly eg, foodstuffs, textiles and hardware.