Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 176, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1916 — Page 3

The Red Mirage

A Story of the French Legion in Algiers

SYNOPSIS. — lo— Oniney, her lover, Richard Farquhar, finds, has fallen In love with Captain Arnaud of the Foreign Lesrion. In Captain Sower's room Farquhar forces Sower to have Preston’s I O. U s returned to him. Farquhar Is helped to lus rooms by GabrleUe Smith. BoWer demands an apology. Refused, he forces Farquhar to resign his commission In return for possession of Farquar’s father’s written confession that be had murdered Sower’s father. GabrleUe saves Farquhar from suicide. To shield Arnaud, Sylvia s fiance, Farquhar professes to have stolen war plans and tells the real culprit why be did so. As Richard Nameless he Joins the Foreign Legion and sees Sylvia, now Mme. Arnaud, meet Colonel Destlnn. Farquhar meets Sylvia and GabrleUe, and learns from Corporal Goetz of the colonel's cruelty. Arnaud becomes a drunkard and opium smoker. Sylvia becomes friendly with Colonel Destlnn. Arnaud becomes Jealous of Farquhar. Farquhar. on guard at a villa where a dance Is In progress. Is shot down by Arnaud. Arnaud Justifies his Insanely jealous action to Colonel Destlnn. Arnaud goes to a dancing girl who loves him for comfort.

Opium Is a deadly drug, but It makea man dream away their Uvea In a sort of artificial peace. Burdened with the flrlef of desertion, racked by disease that Is fatal, buffeted by fate and thoroughly disheartened, a mid-dle-aged man smokes opium to keep hie eenees deadened. Do you think hie action justified?

CHAPTER X— Continued. “I tried to kill him,” he said quietly but distinctly, “and I mean to kill him. That is the only change.” “Is that any change? Has it taught your fair, pure yoipg wife to love and honor you?” He ground his teeth together without answering, and she went on, her voice grown suddenly harsh and contemptuous. “You are a fool, Desire. You are a fool, like all men. What Is there In this one women that you should care? She.is pretty, but others are prettier. I have seen her, for it amused me to have a glance at the wonder who could drive two men to the devil. And what Is she? A charming doll with a child’s eyes and e sparrow’s brain. What else —” The girl rose. She* took one of the long-stemmed pipes from* the table and lighted it at the brazier. The red embers glowed up on to her face,' where •was written a somber inscrutable bitterness. She came back and placed the pipe in his inert haDd. “There!” she said simply. “That is what you have come for. Forgetfulness.” He nodded. Silently he cowered back among the ragged cushions and with balf-closed eyes began to smoke. In the hovel there was perfect silence. As the minutes passed the subtle magic perfume sleeping beneath the rank •weetness awoke, the lurking dreams

«| Tried to Kill Him,” He Bald Quietly but Distinctly, M and I Mean to Kill Him.” and fancies came out from among their shadows and moved lightly to and fro In the brightening circle of firelight Arnaud smiled wistfully at them. Little by little the terrible lines of pain drawn abbot his features passed, leaving them a white peace. A sigh broke from his loosely parted BP* “Sylvia—Sylvia—my wife—” His head dropped back—the strangestemmed pipe slipped from his powerless fingers and fell with a soft thud to the floor. The woman bent over him and kissed him. A. single tear, drawn Ifrom a well of eavage pity, had (dropped on the untroubled brow. - : “God of our fathers,” she whispered Ifrom between clenched teeth, “Thou Go west I am bad—rotten to the heart ant thou knowest also I am not so bad as the woman who sent this man to me.” She knelt down, and with her dark hgad against the sleeper’s knee watched and waited. All was quiet But on the other side of the curtain an Arab crouching beside the brazier awoke. There was

By I. A. R. WYLIE

a Blight smile about his lips as though bis dreams had brought him food for amused reflection, and with a quick glance at his motionless companion he got up and slipped out into the street. It was now toward evening and the great heat of the day was broken. At a white-walled villa on one of the broad avenues he gilded through a Moorish doorway Into the passage. Before him lay the courtyard where two women talked, their low voices mingling musically. At last he came out into the light. His manner was Inimitable in its suggested homage and a hundred unspoken flatteries. - “Madame, it’s Abou-Yakoud who ventures before you," he - said in bis soft Arab Freneh. “Abou-Yakoud, who has seen Mecca and who reads Destiny as an open book. Give me your hand, madame. For a little franc, I will tell you good and evil—what was and what is to come.” Sylvia Arnaud started slightly and turned. “You shall not come in here,” She said impatiently, and yet not without a childish touch of hesitation. “Begging is forbidden. Now be gone!” She tossed a handful of money on to the white stone flags. Each coin rang out like a note of jangling laughter, which- still echoed after her as she passed Into the shadows of the gateday. Abou-Yakoud bent and gathered the nickel pieces from the ground. When he looked up again he stood straight and erect, and the beard bad vanished. “GabrleUe!” be said softly. She turned a little. The warm gold of evening was on her face and softened the stern lines to a mild and noble serenity. “I tnow,” she said. “Your voice betrayed you. And then —sooner or later I felt that you would come, though for what purpose God knows.” “Let ns hope he does not,” he answered sardonically. “I am here on my own business, and my own business has no sanctity about it. I must keep control if I am to win through to the things I want.” “The things you want!” she echoed with deep sadness. “What are they now, Stephen?” He knelt on the marble edge of the fountain and caught her hand. “GabrleUe!” be repeated hoarsely. “GabrleUe!” She looked down at him. Her free hand she laid quietly upon his. “You are cruel to yourself,” she said. “Why have you come, Stephen?” “God knows. I have lied so much In all these ghastly years, GabrleUe. I have lied most of all to my own conscience. I have called you an episode —a folly. I have heaped contempt on you, on my memory of you, and always you have risen as now—the one pure thing that I have loved, my one virtue, my own fidelity—” “Hush, Stephen, we have buried our dead.”

“Yon have —I cannot I tried. At first it was remorse that would not let me—the knowledge that I have ruined you—dishonored you—•” "That is not true,” she interrupted proudly. "No woman —no man—dial ever been dishonored by one action. Honor is not a possession to be lost or broken. It is ourselves —what we are. If you had dishonored me I should be different; but I am not different. I have grown stronger—that is all. I see clearer. lam happy.” “Happy? And your name—your position —your people—all lostl” She smiled faintly. “Those griefs are old an - healed, Stephen. I have a name and a position. They are my own, and I am a little proud of them. I owe you my knowledge of myself and my own strength—some hoars’ illusion, a broader outlook, a deeper understanding of other women’s failures. Let that suffice between ns—” “I cannot.” He sprang up with a wild gesture of protest “It is not remorse that haunts me. I am not die man to feel remorse. I half loved and half despised yon. Then —that night when I came back and found that yon knew me for what I was—a liar, a cheat a common spy, to be bought and sold by every man —and had left me on the very eve of my atonement to yon—then I knew my own madness. From that boar I wanted you.” “It’s too late, Stephen,” she said, “too late. I have burled my dead, dear. I cannot call the dead to life. We are free and we stand atone. We must go our ways, Stephen.” “I won’t plead, GabrleUe. I know you better.” Then suddenly be turned and stumbled blindly Into toe darkness of toe passageway.

CHAPTER XI. Behind the Mosque. Colonel Destinn rode through Sidl-bel-Abbes, and many of those he passed looked after him. One or two of his observers were soldiers wearing a red and blue uniform of the Legion. They saluted first and grimaced only after a cautious Interval. “Norn d’un Petard! Will the devil never grow old?”

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

Women looked after him—AraD women from behind mysterious veils, and Europeans—all with the same feminine Interest in what Is strong. For Colonel Destlnn sat his horse with grace and ease, and the slight erect figure carried the years lightly. How many the years were no one knew. Thus he rode slowly through the pleasant shaded avenues, skirting the nigger quarter, till he reached the plateau. There he drew rein, his keen eyes sweeping the low girdle of olive trees and clustering native hovels to the far side, where the mosque rose up in stately purity against the turquoise sky. Through the graceful archway a double line of Arabs drifted backward and forward in a soft-flowing, unbroken stream of worship, and suddenly Colonel Destlnn set spurs and galloped over the hard clay, scattering the stragglers to right and left “Madame Arnaud!” She turned with a little start of surprise, and freeing herself from the cumbersome red slippers which encased her infidel feet, she came to meet him, her hand outstretched in gracious welcome. "Why, Colonel Destlnn!* You!” « "There’s no one here for whom It is

“Those Griefs Are Old and Healed, Stephen.”

necessary to play comedy,” he answered with brutal directness. “You had my note?” “Yes —” She crimsoned and faltered, and he swung himself to the ground, looping the bridle over hls wrist. “We must get away from the crowd,” he said in the same curt, Imperative tone. “It is fairly quiet behind the mosque. Take my arm. The .rough ground is excuse enough.” “If anyone saw us they would think—” “Nothing that is not true, madame.” She hesitated, half resentful, half afraid. “I am beginning to ask myself what is the truth, coloqpl.” “That Is what I have come to tell you.” They walked on. Overhead, from the high towers of the mosque, an Arab chant drifted down to them through the quiet air—“l extol the greatness of the Lord, of God tbe most high—" They were quite alone now. On their right the white walls sheltered them; to the left the open sunscorcbed plateau. Colonel Destlnn stood still and faced hls companion. “Well,” he said, “have you nothing to say to me?” "I?” She lifted her lustrous brown eyes to hls in simple inquiry. “What should I have to say?” “Your husband Is safe.” “Ob, Desire! Yes, I had forgotten about it almost It was an accident He thought I was about to be attacked. He la so nervous and excitable, and the night was dark. He explained it all—” • “Yes, Captain Arnaud explained everything.” There was a block of stone beside him and he 'set hls foot upon It, leaning forward so that their faces were on I level. “Madame Arnaud! Do you really think I believe you or In you? My child, if your husband had acted as you say, he would have been cashiered for an Intoxicated Incapable; but he gave me hls explanation. It was an explanation which men among themselves —some men—understand and accept—madness on account of a woman. I let your busband go free. Do you thank me?” She made no answer. The graceful knowledge of her power was gone. Her eye* bung on hls with the blankness of a will to abeyance. “You do not thank me,” he went on deliberately. “You would like to' You would like to play the role of the faithful wronged wife. But I am the one person before whom you cannot act, either to yourself or to others. I have seen through you, and yonr little shallow soul knows it All artifice between us is useless. Do not move —stay there!” He caught her hands and held them to a grip of Iron.

Will Sylvia be strong enough to resist the fierce, fire of eensual temptation which Colonel Destlnn holds to her scorching soul? WIN she fail Into a moral abyss?

(TO Bm CONTINUED.t

HOMEMADE PHILOSOPHY

The gasser and the guesser are not in It with the silent worker. Blue sky in your soul will keep the blue devils out of your head. Men are brave because it is Impossible for them to turn tail like their prehistoric ancestors. If you wish to be envied by your neighbors, pretend to know a whole lot of spicy secrets. The Horse Traders’ convention passed resolutions that it is wrong to lie about a dead horse. The true reformer receives brickbat bouquets in life, while the fake reformer secures the politician’s dingbats. The man who cannot sing may have beautiful fiiusic caked In his soul Jn such large globules that he can’t roll them out. When the chocolate-colored coon and the calico-colored possum lie down together, chocolate will be the only visible color.

ALL SORTS

Of English invention Is a watch so mounted In a case that it can be tilted and laid on a table with the dial In an almost vertical position. Early In the present year an order for 130,000,000 pounds of copper was placed with American brokers on behalf of the allied nations in Europe. Replies to the Methodist Temperance society’s query show that the 482 dally papers In this country declining liquor advertisements in February, 1915, had In February of this year increased to 840. Robert H. Ramsey of German-' town. Pa., has spent 16 years composing a chess problem. Many years ago he undertook to construct a four-move study called “Ramsey’s Cage’’ and finally has realized hls ambition.

HITS FROM SHARP WITS

Who doesn’t expect gratitude for kindnesses done averts disappointment. —Albany Journal. The belief that he will come back Is one of the delusions of the down and out. —Nashville Banner. It’s all a mistake about women not being able to take a joke. Just lamp some of the things they marry.—Columbus State. Man Is so constituted that he will do more howling about a sore toe than over a stricken conscience. —Toledo Blade. If Ananias could come back to earth and take a look at some of hls modern disciples he’d feel like a piker.— Memphis Commercial Appeal.

THE GENTLE CYNIC

A woman’s way Is generally the other way. We sometimes wish the fellow who knows It fill would forget some of it. The only thing many a man has done in the past is to dream of the future. It’s all right to have plenty of go, but a man should also have some staying qualities. Unfortunately the people who are satisfied with themselves are seldom satisfied with anything else.

LITTLE LAUGHS

In ye ancient times armor was worn over knight. It’s a pity that poets can’t live od food for reflection. "s If women have no one else to tell a -secret to they telephone. Drivers of delivery wagons are always there with the goods. If every dog had hls day there wouldn't be anything but dog days.

JUST ABOUT WOMEN

A woman will have her way—ls lt*s .pnly a secondhand way. A woman would rather break a tehdollar bill than a ten-eent dish. A widow’s mite Is spelled m-l-g-h-t when she makes up her mind to marry again.

WISE AND OTHERWISE

Heaven never helps the man who to a victim of that tired feeling. A good talker knows when to start*' what to say and when to stop. A pound of common sense to each ounce of learning to about right.

E GYPT An Impression

A CONSIDERABLE amount of nonsense has been written about the spell of Egypt. Cheapened by exaggeration, vulgarized by familiarity, It has become for many a picture post card spell, pinned against the mind like the posters at a railway terminus. The moment Alexandria is reached, this huge post card hangs across the heavens, blazing In an over-colored sunset, composed theatrically of temple, pyramid, palm trees by the shining Nile, and the inevitable Sphinx. And the monstrosity of it paralyzes the mind. Its strident shout deafens the imagination. Memory escapes with difficulty from the Insistent, gross advertisement. The post card and the poster smother sight, writes Algernon Blackwood, in Country Life. Behind this glare and glitter there hides, however, another delicate yet potent thing that is somehow nameless —not acknowledged by all, perhaps because so curiously elusive yet surely felt by all because It Is so true; intensely vital, certainly, since it thus survives the suffocation of its vile exaggregation. For the ordinary tourist yields to It, and not alone the excavator and archeologist; the latter, indeed, who live long In the country, cease to be aware of it as an outside influence, having changed insensibly in thought and feeling till they have become it; It Is In their blood. An effect is wrought subtly upon the mind that does not pass away. Having once “gone down into Egypt,” you are never quite the same again. Certain values have curiously changed, perspective has altered, emotions have shifted their specific gravity, some attitude to life, in a word, been emphasized, and another, as it were, obliterated. The spell works underground, and, being not properly comprehensible, is nameless. Moreover, It is the casual visitor, unburdened by antiquarian and historical knowledge, who may best estimate its power—the tourist who knows merely what he has gleaned, for instance, from reading over Baedeker’s general synopsis on the voyage. He Is aware of this floating power everywhere, yet unable to fix it to a definite cause. It remains at large, evasive, singularly fascinating. Creates Blur In the Mind. All countries, of course, color thought and memory, and work a spell upon the imagination of any but the hopelessly inanimate. Greece, India, Japan, Ireland or the Channel Islands leave their mark and imprint—whence the educational value of travel-psy-chology—but from these the traveler brings back feelings and memories he can evoke at will and label. He returns from Egypt with a marvelous blur. All, in differing terms, report a similar thing. From the first few months in Egypt, saturated maybe with overmuch, the mind recalls with definiteness —nothing. There comes to its summons a colossal medley that half stupefies; vast reaches of yellow sand drenched in a sunlight that stings; dim, solemn aisles of granite silence; stupendous monoliths that stare unblinking at the sun; the shining river, licking softly at the lips of a murderous desert; and an enormous night sky literally drowned In stars. A score of temples melt down into a single monster; the Nile spreads everywhere; great pyramids float across the sky like r clouds; palms rustle in midair; and from caverned leagues of subterranean gloom there Issues a roar of voices, thunderous yet muffled, that seem to utter the hieroglyphics of a forgotten tongue. The entire mental horizon, oddly lifted, brims with this procession of gigantic things, then empties again without a wbrd of explanation, leaving a litter of big adjectives chasing one another chaotically—chief among them “mysterious,” “unchanging,” “formidable,” “terrific .” But the single, bigger memory that should link all these together intelligibly hides from sight the emotion too deep for specific recognition, too vast, somehow, for articulate recovery. The Acropolis, the wonders of Japan and India, the mind can grasp—or thinks so ; but this of Ramesseum, Secapeum, Karnak, Cheops, Sphinx, with a hundred temples and a thousand miles of sand, it knows it cannot. The mind is a blank.

THE SHEIKH'S TOME

Egypt, It seems, has faded. Memory certainly falls, and description wilts. - There seems nothing precisely to report, no Interesting, clear, intelligible thing. “What did yon see In Egypt? What did yon like best? What Impression did Egypt make upon you?” seem Questions Impossible to answer. Imagination flickers, stammers and goes out. Thought hesitates and stops. A little shudder, probably, makes itself felt. There is an Important attempt to describe a temple or two, an expedition on donkeyback into the desert; but It sounds unreal, the language wrong, foolish, even affected. The dreadful post card rises like a wall. “Oh, I liked •> It all immensely. The delightful dry heat, you know —and one can always count upon the weather for picnics arranged ahead, and —” until the conversation can be changed to theaters or the crops at home. Yet, behind the words, behind the post card, one Is aware all the time of some huge, alluring thing, alive with a pageantry of ages, strangely brilliant, dignified, magnificent, appealing almost to tears—something that drifts past like a ghostly full-rigged vessel with crowded decks and sails painted in an underworld, and yet the whole too close before the eyes for proper sight. The spell has become operative! Having been warned to expect this, I, personally, had yet remained skeptical —until I experienced the truth. . . . And it was undeniably disappointing. After time and money spent, one had apparently brought back so little. Monstrous to Bome. For some, a rather dominant impression is undoubtedly “the monstrous.” A splendor of awful dream, yet never quite of nightmare, stalks everywhere, suggesting an atmosphere of Kbubla Khan. There is nothing lyrical. Even the silvery river, the slfnder palms, the fields of clover and barley and the acres of flashing popples convey no lyrical sweetness, as elsewhere they might All moves to a statelier measure. Stern Issues of life and death are In the air. and in the grandeur of the tombs and temples there Is a solemnity of genuine awe that makes the blood run slow a little. Those Theban hills, where the kings and queens lay burled, are forbidding to the point of discomfort almost The listening silence In the grim Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, the Intolerable glare of sunshine on the stones, the naked absence of any sign of animal or vegetable life, the slow approach to the secret hiding place where the mummy of a once powerful monarch lies ghastly now beneath the glitter of an electric light the Implacable desert, deadly with heat "and distance on every side —this picture, once seen, rather colors one’s memory of the rest of Egypt with its somber and funereal character. And with the great del fie monoliths the effect Is similar. Proportions and sheer size strike blow after blow upon the mind. Stupendous figures, shrouded to the eyes, shoulder their way slowly through the shifting sands, deathless themselves and half-appal-ing. Their attitudes and gestures express the hieroglyphic drawings come to life. Their towering heads, coiffed with zodiacal signs, or grotesque with animal or bird, bend down to watch you everywhere. There is no hurry In them; they move with the leisure of the moon, with the stateliness of the sun, with the slow silence of the constellations. But they move. There Is, between you and them, this effect of a screen, erected by the ages, yet that any moment may turn thin and let them through upon you. A hand of shadow, but with granite grip, may steal forth and draw you away into some region where they dwell among changeless symbols like themselves, a region vast, ancient and undifferentiated as the desert that has produced them. Their effect in the end is weird, difficult to describe, but real. Talk with a mind that has been steeped for years In their atmosphere and presence, and you #lll appreciate this odd reality. The spell of Egypt is an other-world-ly spell. Its vagueness. Its elusiveness, its undeniable reality are ingredients, at any rate, in a total result whose detailed analysis lies hidden in mystery and silence —Inscfhtablew