Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1905 — THE ELOPEMENT [ARTICLE]

THE ELOPEMENT

He was a middle aged man, intensely respectable iu appearance and Inclined to portliness. On his return from bla office In the evening he found a letter waiting for him on the table in the hall. It was addressed to him In hla wife’s handwriting. He took it into the library with him, selected a comfortable chair in a good light and adjusted his reading spectacles. Here followeth the letter: “My dear George, I have eloped. If I say it in this plain and direct way, without periphrasis and without breaking it to you gently, it is because you must for some time past have been expecting something of the kind. I credit your intelligence with that. "We have been married ten years, and, as you pointed out the other day, we have never exchanged one angry word with each other. Somehow that seems to me to speak for Itself. The dead level of decency has never been disturbed. You, as a correct and orthodox solicitor, regard this with intense satisfaction. I confess that Ido not. To me the dead level has become —well, pretty deadly. It sounds perhaps an exaggeration, but I almost wish that you had on some occasion completely lost your temper with me and used me violently. Perhaps it would have been better still If you had permitted me to lose my temper with you. You never did. Your discretion and tact are beyond all praise. At the same time they have proved fatal to the woman who Is your wife. I have been through ten years of it. The time is up! “There is really a good deal of broken contract about it on both sides. Ten years ago I was pretty and you were romantic. It was understood between us—tacitly, I admit—that this kind of thing would continue. It was not continued. At the present moment lam quite well preserved and you are a solicitor, and we never exchange an angry word. Nor do we ever exchange a word of affection which could be fairly called hysterical or idiotic. “The fact Is that for the better part of ten years I have been acting a part magnificently. I have acted the part of a housekeeper so splendidly that at times I have deceived myself and believed that I really did take an Interest in the tradesmen’s books. Perhaps the self deceit went further than that. I deceived myself into believing that I really enjoyed the portentous and extremely dull dinners that we give every month. I deceived myself into believing that our well regulated and rather somnolent affection was the placid happiness of married lovers. But all the time romance has been alive in me, and the flame on the altar is not yet burned out. The flame will not burn forever. One gets older and older. The cold night Is coming. I have an hour still to enjoy. “All this came to me after you had left for the office this morning. You will never know how nearly I dashed your silk hat from your hand, kicked it across the hall and went into hysterics. That hat had somehow become the symbol of my ugly, well groomed, respectable life. I went Into the kitchen and gave orders (I was able to get the red mullet, after all), and then I went upstairs and packed. I have told the servants a plausible story, and yon may be able to save a scandal If yon back It. Really, there is nothing to be surprised about. Given gray monotony and a romantic woman and another, and what else can be expected? “And now you ask who the man la. Your eye flashes over your visiting list. Which of the men that have eaten your bread and your salt at your portentous dinners can have done this treacherous thing? You may make your in Ind quite easy, George. There is no man in the question. I have lately come to the conclusion that men are a good deal overrated. I am eloping all by myself, and I think it will be perfectly beautiful. I need not worry about money. My own £2OO a year will not give me the carriage with the two fat horses and the big house and the portentous dinner, but I have grown to value these things very little. Two hundred pounds will be quite enough for ine. By the time that you get this letter I shall be in Paris. I shall not write another letter, but you shall know my address from time to time. This will facilitate the work of the private detectives if you are idiot enough to waste any money on them. “And, seeing that I go all alone, perhaps it should not be called an elopement, hut simply a holiday. And if it is just a holiday It may one day be over, and then I may return to work again. I promise nothing.” The letter was signed with her Christian name. The man who had read it meditated for some time and then rang the bell. “Look here,” he said to the man who answered it, "there is some red mullet for dinner tonight I wish you’d Just find out from cook how she means to do It There should be wine in the sauce; some port Tell her so. She probably knows, but I want to make certain. Yes, and look here; go out and get me a stall for the Frivolity tonight. That’s all, thanks.’’—Barry Pain in Sphere.