Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1903 — Miss Jo’s Romance [ARTICLE]

Miss Jo’s Romance

HER full name, of course, was Josephine, her Christian name, that is, which is romantic enough for a three volume, but her surname took away from whatever romance it had ever held, and Miss Jo had never changed her name. Josephine Stallabrass, an unmusical combination, but common enough In a country abounding with Medlocks, Mortlocks and Gulvers, Hitches and Abbies, unmusical aIL Miss Jo was neither young nor old. Some people are the same age all their adult life. - Her face had not a wrinkle, her eyes were blue, clear and penetrating, her skin as supple as that of a child, her mouth not small, but well shaped. It Is difficult in a few words to fully describe the beauty or otherwise of a person, and It Is not our business here to make a pen and Ink portrait of Miss Jo; but her pervading expression, her atmosphere one might almost call It, was one of deep, grave peace. Jo, In days gone by, had suffered keenly, had bent, not broken, under the cross she carried, as Is the way with brave women, and the outcome bad been what we now find her at forty, a helpful, strong woman. She was poor—the neighbors did not know how poor, or of course help would have been proffered—but managed to pay her way and no more; she could Just make both ends meet, but they did not overlap by a hair’s breadth. Her father had owned the mill and left but little behind him when he died; the mill itself had passed Into other hands, but Miss Jo still occupied the little cottage attached to It The rooms were low ceilinged and black panelled, boasting quaint oldfashioned furniture. In the livingroom on the ground floor, red tiled and some inches lower than the lintel of the door, was an old oak settle that one could almost see one's face In, for thrifty housewives had burnished it for a couple of centuries or more. Miss Jo had occupied this house all her life Since her school days she had never slept out of it, and now, with the soft June twilight falling upon it, for once In her life she felt and almost rebelled against the unutterable loneliness. The mill house stood at the end of a long narrow lane, with six foot ditches on either side and giant elms, their branches intertwining, arched the roadway and made a twilight on the brightest day. If any one had peeped Into the living room now and looked at its tenant's sweet face he would have seen that an expression almost of despair rested upon it Miss Jo’s rent was due; the amount was only four pounds, and she was utterly unable to pay It; moreover, this was the last quarter of her tenancy, and she knew that nothing would Induce her landlord to renew her lease. He wanted the cottage for a gardener. There was nothing upon which she could raise money. Had she known It a collector would have paid her ten times the amount she owed for the old oak settle, had she been willing to part with it; but no collector had ever clapped eyes upon It She had a very small store of eggs and poultry, but so had every one. As she stood at the door watching the blinking lights of the alehouse at the end of the lane, the past came before her very vividly, and her eyes were tear-dimmed. Twenty years before Guy Hale had come to lodge with them for some months. An extension of the line was being made and he was In charge of a section. As to his actual social position, It was superior to hers, and he was well-read and Intellectual; but his father, marrying again, had turned him adrift, and he had taken to engineering as a duck takes to water, and went through the mill thoroughly—greasy. grimy and happy. He was older than she, and a young widower, but his married life had been a short and wretched one; they had separated, and he showed Jo the account of her death by shipwreck. The twain fell In love. It is honest to say that he fell in love for the first time In his life, while Josephine gave him a whole-hearted, passionate devotion .that no one but her lover knew her to be capable of. They had been “cried” twice, and on the third occasion the quiet, halfempty little church had been startled by the “I forbid the banns!” In the dipping tones of a Londoner. And the strange woman—town, not country bred, bedecked and bedizened, called Guy “husband!” The shock nearly killed the loving woman. Then her father died, and she managed to eke out a very scanty living by doing odd dressmaking jobs for the farmers’ wives, and for a time she had a few little pupils, too young even for the village school The small blackboard on Its trestles stood In the bay window now. Guy never wrote to her, but every year on the anniversary of her blrthday. which should also have been their wedding day, he sent her a birthday card. She had nineteen of them now, and they came from Canada. They were quaint things, made of two thicknesses of birch bark laid one upon the other, with a fringe running rounds of strings of fibre, sometimes of silk.

She carefully treasured them In the lavender scented drawer In the living room, and had wept over them many times. It was the twenty-fifth of June now, her fortieth birthday, the last she would ever spend In the Mill House, and a strange fancy seized her. From out the long drawer upstairs, from Its wrappings of soft paper, she took her wedding dress—it was to be her shroud, too; that she had long ago settled, and she held It up and shook out the folds of the skirt It was of lilac-colored material and cuffs and collar were edged with lace. She put It on, laughing mirthlessly, and looked at her attire In a long, old-fashioned mirror coeval with the settle downstairs. Slim, graceful and erect she stood; her ring of tiny diamonds on the left hand caught the light; her hair, more than ever gold burnished, looked like a halo. There was a smile on her lips as she went down the narrow, boxed-in stairway. The door was still open, tho blackboard lay on the table, and on it, written large in the handwriting she knew and loved: “Guy Hale, 25th June, 1903.” Then. I think, she fainted. “Jol Jo!” Bearded and bronzed, the man had stepped Into the room and raised her. Her hand lay upon his breast, his arm was around her and he pressed his lips to hers. She revived almost at once and sprang from him, standing erect, looking taller and more graceful than ever In the well-fitting wedding gown. “How dare you? How dare you?” she gasped. “Who has a better right, Jo? After long years, Jo, sweetest and most faithful.” "You have a right? You have a right, Guy?” “You gave me the right twenty years ago, my poor, thin, wan Jo!” “She Is dead!” Her voice was soft, tremulous, eager. “You, who know me, know I should not be here If she were not” He did not attempt to embrace her again, but stood apart while this new wonder sank Into her heart This woman, the girl woman of forty, had starved for love, pined and fretted for one look from the eyes she so dearly loved, for one cadence of the voice that had just rang clear in her ears. And hope fulfilled held her straitly tonguetied. “Come to me, Jo.” There was a flutter In his tones that was not there before. He held his two hands out to her as If they had been manacled at the wrists, big and ungainly In everything he did. Gently, looking straight into his honest eyes, she patted the two brown hands, and the girl-woman, who rarely shed a tear, was sobbing happily upon hla breast • * • • • »

“Bat why do I find you still here, my Jo? I thought you would have taken one of the new houses over Barrington way. We were to have settled there when we married, dear heart” “Guy—this ia my last night In the old house.” And she told him of the overdue rent, of the awful struggle the last few years had been, and what from pride her lips did not tell him her eyes did. "But, child, you had a birthday card from me every year!” “1 have nineteen, I think.” There was no “think” about It; she knew the exact number.

“Then you have about eight hundred pounds In the house. If you have kept them. My dear, things have prospered with me beyond all knowledge. I went to Canada when—when we parted, and one of my patents was taken up almost at once—that was a tiny fortune. Then I discovered a method of treating stubborn ore—but this, of course, is Greek to you, and don’t wrinkle your forehead like that, Jo; It la most unbecoming—and so from one thing to another things have gone well with me and I am well off. Perhaps I might even be able to satisfy your brute of a landlord. I might even afford to buy the house and the mill.”

“But what has this got to do with those quaint birthday cards?" “Oh, I forgot that part!” She bad brought the bundle from the drawer, and taking one up he pulled at one of the little tabs of red silk and withdrew a twenty pound note. “You were a blind girl, Jo." In a few minutes the kitchen table was a veritable Tom Tiddler’s ground. Opening each card in its order gave an index of his prosperity. Beginning at twenty the notes ranged up to fifty and a hundred pounds. In the last one received that morning were two bank notes of a hundred pounds each. And then Miss Jo did a thing she had never done before; she began-to sob hysterically, and, sinking down on the floor at the seated man's feet, hid her face upon his knee. . They talked for more than an hour; the man’s sudden advent, the story

he had to tell seemed too wonderful to be true, all the past years seemed dreamlike and utterly unreal. They were taking up the thread of life where they had dropped It where, Indeed, it seemed that fate had cut It; and she saw no change In Guy Hale, nor he In her. When he rose to go he said, half laughing: “Is your namesake, old Stallabrass, still parish clerk?” “Yes Why do you ask? He will be at the ‘Bell’ now." ‘Oh, nothing particular,” and he kissed her again, “only I have a special license In my pocket and It has to be lodged with the authorities a day or so before the ceremony.”

Once again Miss Jo stood at her doorway watching the blinking lights of the alehouse, the figure of her lover silhoutted now and again against the red glow. Then the door opened and he hesitated for just one moment on the threshold; then she heard the roar of voices from farm hands and lime burners as Guy entered the sanded parlor and took his accustomed seat But, rich or poor, married or single, Miss Jo will always retain the pet name that has distinguished her. She will never be called Mrs. Hale In the village. “Miss Jo” will always be “Miss Jo.”—New York News.