Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 166, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1915 — Folk We Touch In Passing [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Folk We Touch In Passing

By Julia Chandler Manz

A CARTER OF VIRGINIA When The Woman had settled back in the handsomest of her velvet-lined automobiles her thought traveled across the years that were ended, coming up sharply to the elaborate entertainment of which she had been hostess the evening before, and she smiled a queer twisted smile for which there seemed no reason whatever, for certainly the dinner had been a brilliant affair and had gone off without a hitch. There had been the usual wonderful gold plate and cut glass; the customary perfect cuisine; the same flawless conduct of servants; a brilliant run of repartee, and a hostess whose beauty and charm was an unceasing wonder to all those whose lives she touched. Yet The Woman as she skimmed along over the city streets in her handsome car, smiled her queer and twisted smile as her thought traveled back over the highly successful dinners and scores of other equally brilliant entertainments which she had graced since she became the mistress of The Man’s beautiful home. , When The Woman’s name was announced at the afternoon reception the hostess of the day turned to the Stranger Guest and remarked that the beautiful woman just coming in was one she should cultivate. “She’s a Carter of Virginia, my dear. Belongs to THE Carters. An invitation to her house means an open sesame to society.” The smile of The Woman as she heard, became a wee bit more twisted than formerly, and a flush mounted to the roots of her glittering hair. • Refreshments had been served. The Stranger Guest hovered over The Woman much as if her soul’s salvation depended upon the latter’s pleasure, and other guests at the little gathering openly courted her favor. “Our hostess tells me you are one of the Virginia Carters,” fawned the Stranger Guest, and the flow of small talk ceased an instant awaiting The Woman’s answer. Her fine eyes trav-

eled around the group of faces stamped by the hollow lives behind them, and back again to the eager eyes of her waiting questioner. Then, like a lighted bomb thrown among them came her reply in calculating and cutting tone. “I am sorry,” she said, "but you are quite mistaken. My mother was a Carter, but not a Carter of Virginia. She came from a shiftless little middle West village, and my father was the village blacksmith. My mother wan a farmer’s daughter and the maid of all work for some well-to-do folk in her vicinity. She left school at fourteen and went out to work, and when she was seventeen she married the village blacksmith —a big, fine fellow with plenty of brawn and little of learning. They lived in two rooms where three children came to them —J being the last. "One day a terrible accident happened in the shop and my father, was

killed. My mother loved him, and she grieved herself almost to death, I think we saved her —the babies. We had to be fed and clothed and sheltered you see —it’s a way with babies. So my mother took in washing. We lived in one room and I slept at the foot of the bed. We ate our dinner on a small table by the stove. Sometimes there was not enough to eat, and mother would wish someone would help us, and often'they did — some aid society, or individual, and every time it happened I would go out in the back yard and fling myself in a fit of temper on the ground and claw and paw until I was quite exhausted. You see I had my father’s high spirit, and charity was hateful to me. When I was fourteen I went to work, and step by step I climbed until I became a mannikin in a fashionable importer’s shop. “One day a man came in with his sister. She had won a gown from him on a wager and he had come to help her in the selection, or else to see that she did not pay too much for it. He gave the former reason for' his coming. She said it was the latter. Anyway he liked the mannikin better than the gown, and later he asked me to dinner with hliA. “The man is my husband,” said The Woman quietly. "I was but eighteen when we were married. We lived abroad where he sent me to school for four years before he brought me back to be the mistress and hostess of his house.”

The handsome room was heavy with ominous silence when The Woman’s voice became still. The hostess of the day had given a resentful exclamation in the middle of the recital which told The Woman quite plainly that she did not thank her for her choice of scene for her confession, and the Stranger Guest, who had fawned for The W Oman’s favor, had withdrawn quite to the end of the room during the telling of the sordid little tale, while here and there a smile flitted from shallow face to shallow face in derisive comment, and The Woman, as

she talked,- both saw and understood. “In the two-room house which my father gave my mother when they were married there was no foolish pride. la the one room my mother was afterward able to provide for her babies there was no dishonesty. She made a hard fight but It was a worthy one. And though these years that I have stood silently by while people introduced me "A Carter of Virginia—one of the Carters”—l have been sick with shame; hot with disgust; miserable with hypocrisy and deceit. Why, my own butler has been more honest, Godfearing, and decent than I! “But now you all know and I am glad, glad, glad!** And The Woman made her farewell with a smile that had lost every whit of its twisted queerness, although it radiated something of the amusement she felt in watching the varying «x----pressions of her thoroughly scandaliced auditors. - ?

"I Am Sorry,” She Said, "But You Are Quite Mistaken.”