Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1883 — AUTUMN BLOSSOMS. [ARTICLE]

AUTUMN BLOSSOMS.

How was it that I came to be an old bachelor? Not because of hating women, lam sure, for I liked them very much, and never could have spoken to ohe rudely or discourteously in my life. As nearly as I know it was in this wise: My father died, leaving a family of children, a nyife, an( l 811 old father and 'mother, of whom only myself was able to earn a shilling. He had never saved anything. So, after the first great grief, when we had calmed down, and were about to look matters quietly in the face, there was a wretched sort of prospect for us. I was only an accountant, and had a young fellow’s habit of wasting my small salary in a thousand different ways. I had been “paying attention,” too, to Elsie Hall, who, young and childish as she was, had a way of leading her admirers into extravagance. Of all the trials of that never to be forgotten time, I think the greatest was appearing niggardly in those baby blue eyes. I did not mind wearing plain suits, discarding kid gloves, and renouncing the opera; but not to lay those boquets, and books, and music, and dainty bits of jewelery,and multitudinous trifles at Elsie’s feet, was a very terrible ordeal. I passed through, and if ever a man had reason to be thankful I had, for the acquisitive little beauty jilted me in a month for Tom Tandem, who was rich and lavish of gifts, and who ran away from her after a marriage of ten months. I worked day and night, and managed to keep the wolf from the door. Sometimes I used to think how well it was for Elsie that she had not really loved me, for she could have had nothing but a dismal prospect of wearing out her youth in a dreary, hopeless engagement to one too poor to marry. That was until Tom ran off. Then I thought it would have been better for her to have shared our humble home and poor fare, and the love I could have given her, than to be deserted so. And I pitied her as if she had not proved herself heartless. But I never went near her, of course, and I never even’spoke of her to my mother. I grew no younger all this while, and every year seemed to add five to my looks. I had never been very handsome or very merry, and I soon became conscious of a peculiar middle-aged look, which settles down upon some people very early. Strangers, too, began to take me for the head of the family, and once, in a new neighborhood, the butcher alluded to “my wife.” I found out that he meant my mother, and only wondered that it was not dear old grannie. She was 80, grandfather 90, and they died one bright autumn day before prosperity came to us, died within an hour of each other, for grannie said: “I think I’ll just Me down a bit now, Lemual don’t need me. I’m very tired.” Then she kissed me and said: “You’ve been a good boy to your grandpa, Edward, you’ll have that to think of.” And when next we went to her she was dead, with her cheek upon her hand like a sleeping child.

So two were gone, and we were sadder than before. And then Jean, my eldest sister, married at 16 a physician, who carried her off to Hindoostan in her honeymoon. And we could none of us feel the wedding a happy thing. But prosperity did come at last. I had worked hard for it, and anything a man makes his sole object in this life he is very sure to attain. We were comfortable—easy. Ah, what • word that is after years of struggle! At last we were rich. But by that time I was five-and-forty—a large, dark, middleaged man, with a face that looked to myself in the glass as though it were perpetually intent on figures. The girls were married* pick had taken to the sea, and we saw him once a year or so; and Ashton was at home with mother and myself

—the only really handsome member of our family, and just two and twenty. And it was on his birthday, I remember, that the letter came to me from poor Hunter—that letter which began: “When these lines reach you, Ned Sanford, I shall have my six feet of earth—all I ever owned, or would had I lived to be a hundred.” We had been young together, though he was really older than I, and 'we had been close friends once; but a roving fit nod seized him and we had not met for years. I knew he had married a young Kentish girl, and knew no more, but now he told me that she was dead, and that his death would leave a daughter an orphan. “She is not quite penniless,” be wrote, “for her mother had a little income,which, poor as I was, I was never brute enough to meddle with, and it has descended to her. But I have been a rolling stone, gathered no moss all my life,and we have never stayed long enough in one place to make friends. Will you be her guardian? It is a dving man’s last request ” And then he wrote some words, com‘r»g from his heart, I know, which bein of myself I could not think that I de served them.

And the result of that letter, and of another from the lawyer who had Annie Hunter’s fortune in charge, was that one soft spring day found me on board a great steamer which lay at rest after her voyage in the protecting arms, of Liverpool, with two little hands in mine, and a pair of great, brown eyes lifted to my face, and a sweet voice choked with sobs saying something of “poor papa” and how iquch he had spoken of me, and the lovely voyage, and of the green graves left behind, and I, who had gone to meet a child and found a woman, looking at her and feeling towards her as I had looked upon nor felt to any other. Not Elsie to HalL It was not the boyish Love dream come again. Analyzing the emotion, I found only a great longing to protect and comfort her, to guard her from every pain and ill; and I said to myself: “This is as a father must feel to a daughter; I can be a parent to George Hunter’s child in very truth.”

And I took her to the old house and to my old mother. I thought only of those; somehow, I never forgot how she brightened the sombre rooms. How, as her sadness wore away, she sang to ns in the twilight! How strangely a something which made the return home, and the long hours of the evening, seem so much brighter than they had ever been before, stole into my life! I never went to sleep in church now; I kept awake to ■ look at Olive Hnnter—to listen to. the pure contralto,as she joined in the singing. Sometimes I caaght her eye—her great unfathomable brown eye—for she had a habit of looking at me. Was she wondering how a face could be so stern and grim? I used to ask myself. Ashton used to look at her also. He had been away when she first came to us, and when he returned she was a grand surprise to him. “Oh, how lovely she is!” he had said to me. “She is very pretty,” I replied. Ashton laughed. “May I never be an old bachelor if it brings me|to calling such a girl very “pretty,” he said, and I felt conscious that my cheek flushed, and I felt angry that he should have spoken of me thus though I had never cared before. They like each other very much—these two young things. They were together a great deal. A pretty picture they made in the Venetian window in the sunset. He is a fair-haired, blue-eyed Saxon looking youth, she so exquisitely dark and glowing. \ Every one liked her. Even my old clerk Stephen Hadley used to say her presence lit up the office more than a dozen lamps, the nearest approach to a poetical speech of which old Stephen was ever known to be guilty; and ! hever knew how much she was to me until one evening, when coming home earlier than usual, I saw in that Venetian window where Ashton and Olive had made so many pleasant pictures for me, one that I never forgot —that I never shall forget as long as I live.

She stood with her back to me. Ashton was kneeling at her feet. The sound of the opening door dissolved the picture; but I had seen it, and I stole away to hide the stab it had given me. I sat down in my own room, and hid my face in my hands, and would have been glad to hide it beneath my coffin lid. I knew now that I loved Olive Hunter; that I loved her not as an old man might love a child, but as a young man might love the woman who ought to be his wife —better than I had loved Elsie Hall; for it was not boyish passion, but earnest, heartfelt love. ' lin love? I arose and looked in the mirror, and my broad-shouldered reflection flashed before my gaze. The spring time of my life had come and gone, my summer had flown, and in the autumn I had dreamed of love, bud and blossom. I knelt beside my bed and prayed that'

I might not hate my brother—that I might not even envy him. His touch upon my door startled me. He came with something in his manner not usual to him, and sat down opposite me. For a ■few moments we were silent Then he said, speaking rapidly, and blushing like a girl: “Ned, old fellow, you—you saw me making a fool of myself just now I suppose?” “I saw you on your knees,” I said. “And thought me 8 silly fellow, eh? But you don’t know, Ned. You can’t understand—you’ve been so calm and cool all your life through, you know. She’s driving me mad. Ned, I do believe she likes me, but she won’t say yes. I’d give my right hand for her love. I must have it, and I think you can help me, Ned. From something she said, I believe she thinks you would disapprove; perhaps you are one of those old fellows who want every one to marry for money. Tell her you’re not, Ned dear old fellow; tell her yon have no objection, and I’ll never forget it, indeed I won’t" “Tell her I have no objection,” I repeated mechanically. “You know you are master here, and as much my father as if you really were one, instead of my brother,” said Ashton. “If I did not know how kindly you had always felt to us both I should not confide in you, for it’s a serious thing to be in love, Ned, and yon may thank heaven you know nothing of it" Know nothing of it! Ah, if he could have read my heart just then! “I’ll do what I can, Ashton,” I said at last. ‘Til try my best.” And he flung his arms about mein his own boyish fashion, and left me alonealone with my own thoughts. He had said truly; I had been like a father to him. I was old enough to be her’s, andjno one should know my silly dream. I would hide it while I lived. As I said once: “I’ve only the old folks and the children,” I said then, “I will only think of mother and Ashton. Let my own life be as nothing; I have lived for them—if needs be I will die for them,” But I would not see or speak to Olive that night, nor until the next day was quite done. Then, in the twilight I sat beside her and took her hand. “Olive” I said, “I think you know that Ashton loves you. lam sure that he has told you so. And you—can you not love him?” She drew her hand from mine, and said not one word. “I should rejoice in my brother’s happiness. I should think him happier in having your love than anything else could make him,” I said. “I told him I would tell you so.” , And then she spoke. “You wish me to marry Ashton?” Reproach was in the tone— reproach and sorrow. “If you can love him, Olive,” I said. She arose. She seemed to shrink from me, though in the dark I could not see her face. “I do not love him” she said. And we were still as death. Then suddenly Olive Hunter began to sob. •*You have been very kind to me. I love you all,” she said, ‘.but I can notstay here now. Please let ma go some where else. I must—l cannot live here.’ “Go from us, Olive?” I said. “Nay; we are no tyrants; and assured you do no love him, Ashton will—” “Hush!” she panted; “hush! Please let me go away! Please let me go away!” The moon was rising. Htt new born light fell on Olive’s face. Perhaps its whiteness made her look so pale. She leaned against the wall with her little hand upon her heart, her unfathomable eyes full of pain. How had I hurt her so? A new thought struck me. “Perhaps you love some one else, Olive?” And at this she turned her face from me and hid it in her hands. “Too much—too much. You might have spared me that,” she said. “Let me go away, I wish you had never brought me here.” And I arose and went to her. I bent over the woman I loved. I touched her with my hand; her soft hair brushed my cheek. “Olive,” I said, “If coming here has brought pain upon you, I wish I had not I would have died to make you happy.” And my voice trembled and my hand shook, and she turned her face toward me again and looked into my eyes. What she saw in mine I do not know—the truth, I think. In hers I read this: I was not old to her —not too old to be loved. I stole my arm about her; she did not untwine it I uttered her name, “Olive” huskily. Afterward I told her of my struggles with myself, not then. I said: “Olive, I love you but it cannot be that you care for me. I am old enough to be your father.” And again I saw in her eyes the happy truth, and took her to my heart But we kept our secret for awhile, for we both loved Ashton, and both knew that his wound was not too deep to find a balm; and within a year, when the boy brought home a bride, a pretty creature

whom he loved, and who loved himj claimed Olive. And she is mine now; and the autumn blossoms of my heart will only fade on earth to bloom again through all eternity n Paradise.