Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1886 — HE NOBLY FORGAVE HER. [ARTICLE]

HE NOBLY FORGAVE HER.

BY HELENA MOBBISON OATES. “You will not stay long, my darling?" “Long? Well, no—two months, perhaps. Why, Oliver, how foolish you are growing." _.Two voice,a; a man’s, eager, impassioned, tender, with a vein of troubled Badness trembling through its round, full cadences, and that other, a girlish one, light, joyous, and care-free, with only the least perceptible tinge of weariness and indifference to mar the rythmic beauty of its changeful music. ’ “How can I help it, my own? You have belonged to me so short a lime, and I feel, even yet, so uncertain of my treasure. ” Oliver Carleton, with his whole manly soul in his honest, blue eyes, drew near and looked down fondly on the slight, delicate girlish face and form at his side. A strong, sturdy specimen of manhood, with an open, straightforward, sunny countenance that inspired you at the first glance with unshaken confidence in him; a broad, white, intellectual forehead, about which the first white threads were beginning to gather—this was Oliver Carleton. Jessie Larimer withdrew from his gentle clasp the cold, slender white hand that bore his engagement ring, and wished in her heart of hearts that he were less intensely devoted to her; liking him. with womanish perversity, no better that his heartwhole, all-absorbing worship of her was so apparent. She answered gently enough, however, but with no semblance of interest in her reply. “You have my promise, Oliver; is not that enough? I shall keep my word.” “I know you will,"criedher lover, eagerly. I have unbounded faith in your unswerving honor, my own love; but lam very selfish” and oh! I love you so dearly. Tell me, sweet, what I have so often besought, that you love me a little. Jessie, darling, you do, you enn, though you never admit it.” Jessie Larimer for one moment whitened to a ghastly hue; she knew the words he craved would be as dark a falsehood as ever stained the lip of truth, but how could she tell this honorable gentleman—how wrong him so foully? For one moment her heart beat fast as she almost determined to tell him all; but a look into the pleading face, with the tempter reasoning, “He will honor you less,"and the golden opportunity slipped away. “I need not,” she thought; “he has implicit faith in me, and I will make him as happy as I can. ” “Oliver,” she said, with such reproach in her tone, and with dark, beseeching eyes fixed on his. As she stole an arm about his neck, that flushed like a woman’s at the unwonted caress and this semblance of tenderness from the girl he worshiped, he caught her to his heart, crying: “Forgive me. It is my great love that makes me so exacting.” With smiling lips Jessie submitted to his caress, his rapturous embrace, but with inward anguish and self-contempt, and a moment later, with Oliver Carleton’s tender farewell ringing in her earn, she was alonft,. '*Q'Tack',‘" sne cried, tempestuous tears raining down her cheeks, “why did ~I over know yOu? What a punishment is mine, that to forget a bad man 1 plighted my honorable word to a good one. The more I try to forget, the more keenly I remember.” Weak, but not wicked. Three years before a girl of 17, Jessie, despite the loud clamor of better judgment, reason, swayed by a mighty passion, gave hpr heart to handsome, dissipated Jack Van Cleve. His winning gentleness, his warm-hearted forgetfulness of self, made the wprld oblivious to his failings, and the girl who loved him was not so much to blame as the world who lost sight of the fact, as it looked into his handsome face, with its •‘diable rie" beauty, that be was dissolute, reckless, extravagant, daring, and that he "had squandered a handsome fortune, and his best years of life with equally lavish thoughtlessness. . Yes, Jessie loved him—half fearfully at first—later with her whole soul and heart, even though continuous war between her womanhood, her conscience, and her love waged strong and mighty within her frail body. And at last empowered with her purity and strength of soul, she rose with the memory of his countless orgies and released herself from the bondage that held her fast.

With a heart sore past all help she listened to Oliver Carleton, one whom the world delighted to honor for his upright manliness and untarnished character, his integrity, his nobility, and, listening, was tempted to the shelter of his honest love, hoping wildly, desperately, and, alas;, vainly, to gain forgetfulness. No one knew, not even her parents, that Oliver trusted her. Belhaven was Jack's home. She was going there to-morrow for a visit to her cousin Amy. but she would be very reserved and distant should she chance to encounter him. and it is odfl indeed, she told herself, with curling lips of scorn, if lam not strong enough to meet an old lover. I will show him it is over, for go I will. * “You will go, Oliver? And you will return «Aen?"„ “t will return,” came Oliver Carleton's full, mainly tones, broken with emotion, •whenever I hold the corpse of my dead love in my arms; till then—never/ 1 With a face ashen in its pallor, and hand palsy-shaken with grief, he left the house, from the windows of which his sister’s tear- ■ ful eyes watched him sorrowing. He was’ going to reply to the telegram that said: ~ Come! Richard Van Cleve aad Jessie Larimer were drowned in Crystal Lake last evening. Bodies not recovered. The scene his eyes met was never forgotten. Men who had labored all night, had dragged the dark lake since dawn. It played silent, speechless about their feet —they were about to abandon the search.

• They were drawn into a sink hole," said Jibe first, despairingly. “We never can find them," and he laid down his grappling hook and turned over the up-tnrned boat and the one oar that bad drifted in. “He tried to save her," said a second, as he indicated Dick's dripping hat and coat, which, with a tiny slipper, they had rescued. Mechanically, Oliver picked up the coat; from it fell a {racket of damp, water-soaked letters. Quietly he looked at them; then with a sudden nervous start and a glance about to be sure he was not observed, he hastily secreted them, and none even knew in all the weary after years that be indeed brought to his home the corpse of his dead love. Too well he knew the graceful, familiar superscription in l Jessie's running,egirlish hand; he recognized'it at a glnnce. “Surely, I am pardonable." he plead, silently, “for anything my Jessie's hands have touched-is sacred.” Nor did he offer the letters she had written even to another man, to those who searched for and mourned the drowned girl, not even to Dick's mol her, who wit in a stony apathy of grief in the home of Amy Markley. • • • * •' * • “My wife! my own darling! I told you no other man should have my treasure, that nothing could tpke you from me. Ah, my love of loves, you make me so hoppy. They will tie ver find us.” Dick Van Cleve, his arm about Jessie’s slender waist, her bead upon his breast - whispered in a hnppy, tumultuous fashion, these characteristic words as the train went speeding its westward way. She shivered and drew nearer to him in the uncertain light, her upbraiding conscience warring incessantly, her better judgment over and over telling her of the repentance that must be hers, the atonement in future, when youth had waned and this fancied love had proved apples of Sodom to her eager, trustful lips. Once in Bethaven, all defenses were swept aside. Go where she would, she nt>ver eluded Dick. He haunted her, ghost-like. Did she walk, drive, or sail, be was there. Did she remain at home he called; he would not be exorcised; he would not be turned aside by ieiest discourtesy. As well stop the mountain glacier in its onward flight, or stay the sweeping tornado. He wanted Jessie — nothing had ever been refused him; he would have her, and overcome by his passionate clamor, she yielded to his plea, “I cannot live without you—come.” And now in the silent night, under cover of its datkness, she was speeding away with him, his wife, where no one would ever find them, and before her was ever the vision of that empty, upturned boat and the wretched, agonized faces that would mourn them as dead. The very stars seemed to shine into her guilty soul, though Dick laughed her scruples of honor to scorn and said they were fine schemers, and she clung almost vehemently to her only friend, pleading inwardly: “I was so miserable, and I love him so much. will forget.” Forget! Seven years have added lines about Oliver Carleton's patient mouth, his broad shoulders stoop slightly, his eyes never smile, but no voice, however weak, ever passes him unheard, no heart goes away without comfort that appeals to him. He sits reading the unnumbered' replies to his advertisement for an amanuensis, and over the last as he wearily pushes them aside, with a look of perplexity, he lingers unaccountably. “I will go,” he says at last, and rising, dons his coat. “I will not wait a day—the lady may be suffering,” for brief as the few commonplace sentences are there is an unconscious t leading for employment, that melts and unnerves him. Into a bare, bleak room, whose fireless discomfort brings a shudder even to his strong frame, he is shown, and A moment later he is courteously bowing before a lady, who, despite her shabby mourning, is unquestionably a lady. Her dark eyes and midnight hair are in death-like contrast to the marble pallor of her thin cheeks and intellectual brow. Where has he seen that face! Attentively he watches her as she for a moment essays to steady her trembling hands, awaiting her name, trying like a prisoner struggling with his bonds to remember; then without a word of warning she sways, is falling, the feeble head lies on his arm, and, looking into the still features, like a flash comes the recollection.

“Jessie, my Jessie,” he cries in an agony of love and pain, and forgetting the woes and wrongs of years, he chafes her cold hands, he beseeches her with "aFKe xmpTdringly'KnSE over her, to speak to him. “Oliver," she gasps, finally, as she raises her head, “dqn’t break my heart with your kindness—d am in no degree worthy. I Wronged you past pardon, but, O, I wish you could forgive me, for I, too, have suffered, and I have not long to live. I have been wronged, deceived, slighted, disappointed, on every hand. Every hope, has crumbled to dust. lam so sorry, I never deserved you, and I did not love you then.” “But now?” Oliver is grave,,but his whole heart lies on his lips. He looks tenderly down into the tearful eyes, he takesone fragile, transparent hand in his own firmly, encouragingly, and waits. •' - • A’oh-?” With a voice almost unintelligible with sobs, Jessie cried out. “<?<r yoa mean to say—after all I—Oliver, O, Oliver, I am unworthy—” “Jessie”—an arm raises her trembling form, “let me be the judge of your worlhi- 4 ness. I mean to say yon are the only woman in this world I ever wanted—that I forgave you years ago. I knew you were more sinned against than sinning. You have not answered me yet. darling; don’t cry so,” as sne bursts into passionate tears clinging to his breast, “but tell me, what I have longed to hear.” With a clasp, so firm, so tender that Jessie’s frightened, fluttering heart grows quiet, in a still and restful calm, he holds her as he had never dared hope again, and whispers to the waiting lips so near his own : . . ~ - . ■ ■ ■ . ' - ' - . “And Jacob served seven - years—for Rachel, and it seemed to him but a few days, for the love he had for her.”— Chicago Ledger.