People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1896 — TWO FAILURES. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TWO FAILURES.

He ■was not much of a man to look at as he leaned back in the chair opposite the city editor in the dingy little newspaper office. His rough, sandy beard showed several weeks’ growth; his blue eyes had an uncertain, vacant expression in them that verified the story told by his breath; his clothes were shabby, and his old overcoat, even in the warmth of the office, was buttoned up close under his chin in a way that suggested a dearth of other clothing. He did not look like a gentleman. The city editor opposite, even in his shirt sleeves, with the ugly green shade pulled down over his eyes, had a patrician bearing that wUs unmistakable. They were not at work. They waiting for the telephone to ring up the account of the hanging down at Scoop. The office was dark except for the one incandescent light that swung over the city editor’s table, and the figures of the two men on either side stood out in bold relief, showing sharply the contrast between them—a contrast so decidedly in the city editor’s favor. Yet there had been a time, ten years ago, when Mrs. Marvin, the social leader of the town, then a mining camp, had refused to allow Hetherly, the city editor, to lavish his attentions and affections upon her pretty sister and had smiled on Sherwin. Hetherly and Sherwin were friends. They had been chums at college, where Sherwin, the more brilliant of the two, had coached Hetherly all the way through, and solved his problems, translated his Greek and written his daily themes. A few years after they graduated they had met in the west unexpectedly and had renewed the friendship. For more than a year they worked together on a daily paper. It was not strange, after having learned during his college course to believe that Sherwin was all-powerful, that Het,herly should turn to him when the course of his love affairs failed to run smooth. Sherwin was equal to the emergency. It was a comparatively simple arrangement. Mrs. Marvin favored Sherwin and Elsie, the pretty, little hazel-eyed sister, favored Hetherly. The scheme by which Hetherly and Elsie profited everything and Sherwin nothing was first put into execution the night of a fireman’s ball, to which

Sherwin took Elsie. There was little resemblance between the Sherwin in the tightly buttoned old overcoat and slouch hat and the Sherwin in dress suit who called for Elsie that night at Mrs. Marvin’s. While Ire waited for her he sat in the back parlor and talked to Mrs. Marvin with as much composure and good-fellowship as if he had not been plotting to dec-'ive her. Elsie came downstairs in her fluffy white gown and long white cloak, her dark hair piled high n the top of her head, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks flushed, and bringing with her the fragrance of the roses Sherwin had sent her. And Sherwin, looking at her as she stood a moment in the doorway, did not wonder at Hetherly’s desperation. They went to the hall and Sherwin danced the first dance with her -and: then left her, not only to dance with Hetherly, but to walk home with him i after the ball. That was in the spring, and all summer the little drama went on. Sher- I win took Elsie to parties and Hetherly I took her home. Sherwin took Elsie to j drive and they drove out of town into the spicy pine forests, where Hetherly was waiting for them. While Hetherly and Elsie drove Sherwin lay on his back on the pine needles and kinne- J klnick and read the magazines he had

brought with him, until they returned. Then "he drove the young lady home and Hetherly returned by another way. After awhile Sherwin seemed to lose interest in the stories and topics of the day. His magazines lay uncut on the ground beside him while he watched the disappearing carriage until it was lost to sight on the farther slope of the hill. Then he would throw himself down with his face toward the sky that seemed scarcely higher than the tops of the pine trees and philosophize on life in general. As the summer waned his philosophy grew bitter. One day he reached out for a little cluster of the gray-blue Oregon grapes that grew close to his hand, half-hid-den under their rich crimson and darkgreen foliage. He studied them for a moment, noting their artistic beauty, and then put them in his mouth, finding a keen relish in their bitterness. “They’re like everything else in lifq.” he mused. And Elsie found him cross t 1 unreasonable as, they drove back to town. He had not sympathy with her enthusiasms and he expressed his lack of it sharply and abAiptly. He saw no beauty in the scarlet sumach against the gray cliff; he saw nothing remarkable in the chipmunks that hur- ' ried Across the road and along the fallen trees by the way; he had no desire to get out ahd dig ferns when they saw them, tall and luxuriant, by the roadside. And the view of the town as they saw it first from the top of the long road cut but of the lime roek—the scattered little town encircled by mountains, some in the shadow and some glorious in the fast-vanishing sunlight, stretching away till the faroff peaks were blue and hazy against the sky—he had seen it hundreds of tunes, so had she. What was there to rave about? Sherwin’s part in the affair Mrs, Marvin never knew, but she did learn enough to know that opposition in the matter of her qjster’s love affairs was useless. And early in the winter Hetherly and Elsie were married. Elsie was just 18, and childish, frivolous and light. Most of Hetherly’s friends doubted the wisdom of his course. He was young and had his way to make in the world, and Elsie, with her pretty face and irresponsible, inconsequent ways, seemed the last woman in the world to be the making of a man. Sherwin was not present at the wedding. He was called out of town a few days before on urgent business. So said the note which brought his congratulations and accompanied the little Dresden clock. He did not come back. Some one heard from him a few months later in Kansas City, where he was doing police reporting on a daily paper. Then his friends lost track of him. Hetherly and his wife went east, the Marvins moved away, and they, too, dropped out of the life of which they had been a part. People are not long missed in those western towns that have so little that is permanent. It was nearly ten years after that Hetherly returned and got a position on his old paper. A few months later Sherwin, his life wrecked by the weakness that had always stood between him and success, drifted into town and applied for work on the old paper. No one else would have given it to him, but Hetherly had never been in a position to refuse Sherwin anything. “You can go down and do the hanging, if you want to,” he said, but Sherwin didn’t want to go. His inborn refinement revolted against such a scene. So Hetherly sent a young fellow from the office to get the notes and kept Sherwin to write it up. The whole office was waiting. Out In the composing-room the printers were having lunch. One was working leisurely on the last little “take.” Hetherly and Sherwin smoked and talked of old times—of college days and the days of the early gold excitement in the hills, when they had worked together on the paper. Hetherly talked freely of his business and financial affairs for the last ten years. He had worked for awhile on a paper in Chicago, then in New York, but he had not been very successful, either from a business or a professional standpoint. He talked rapidly and then pTIW Sherwin with questions. But Sherwin was reticent. “And you never married?” Hetherly asked, and Sherwin shook his head. “Why didn’t you?” Sherwin laughed. “Wouldn’t any woman have me,” he said. His lips framed themselves for a question, but the door opened and some one came in with a want “ad” and interrupted him. When the man went out Hetherly rung up the elephone savagely and asked if there was no word from Scoop yet, and when they told him “No” he sat down, anathematizing the world in general and Scoop in particular. Once again Sherwin tried to put his question and was interrupted by the foreman with some proofs. They read them silently and when the last one was hung on the hook Sherwin knocked the ashes out of his pipe and asked in the most mat-ter-of-Tact way: “And Mrs. Hetherly? How is she?” The telephone bell rung sharply and Hetherly sprung up to answer it. “Come here, Sherwin,” he said; “it’s the hanging.” He turned the receiver over to Sherwin and walked out into the composing-room. An hour later, when the pressman, alone in the office, was turning out the morning papers containing the twocolumn account of the hanging of RedFisted Jim, the murderer, written in Sherwin’s easy, flowing, descriptive style, Sherwin was walking down street with an old friend. It was his first night in town. They spoke of Hetherly and Sherwin asked his question again in a different form: “Is Mrs. Hetherly here?” The other fellow started. “Haven’t you heard? She ran off with another fellow nearly three years ago. Hetherly’s here for a divorce.” The music scale was invented in 1622.

“READ THE MAGAZINES.”