A SHABBY NOTE-BOOK'S CONTENTS.

Evening Star, Issue 8553, 27 June 1891, Page 2 (Supplement)

A SHABBY NOTE-BOOK'S CONTENTS.

AT A CONCERT. IBy Tk Wahine ] No.l. " Nellie, there's a ticket for the concert to-night, but you'll have to hurry up if you're goingJ* "What? One of the popular oonoerts? Oh, Jack, how good of you; but it's only a single tloket," " Well, surely you oan can go alone; lots of ladies do; take the tram down. You know I hate classical music." " Take a tram, did you say, Jaok ? That is reckless extravagance. Could you not come too ? It would be like old times." "Oldtimes," he echoed bitterly. "The less said about old times the better. "Sou are going ?" " Yes, dear, thank you, It will be lovely to hear some good musio once more." The scene was the shabby little dining room of a semi-attached house in Dunedin north. The speakers, a man and woman past their first youth, and with an indefinable something about them which assured you their's was not an everyday past. The man was tall and fair, with a fine figure, which even his sloven'y dress could not conceal. One thing, howevei, detraoted from his appearance: the discontented expression of his features, and the furtive, yet defiant manner which marked him as a man at war with society, and conscious of retrogression in himself. The woman had been unusually pretty—the kind of beauty in which delicate coloring enhanced delicate features, and exquisite womanliness of manner and tone had been the predominant charm, The features were sharp now, and the lovely complexion faded. The eyes spoke only of sorrow and patience, and over the whole face was the unmistakeable lock of a creature conscious of being on sufferance only with the world. Not a happy home this, you conclude. Ab, my friend, how many homes are happy when you know all? The thing is not to know, then you can judge according to the pretty programme prepared for you; it is much easier, Bat to return to these two and their home. It is not easy to be bright, genial, and good-tempered when you are goiDg down hill, and the only side of the world that once was so gay is the seamy side. Adversity has many uses. It embitters more natures than it sweetens. In the case of this man and woman iti results had been as opposite as well could be. Him it had rendered bitter, defiant, and morose; to her it had given patience, sweetness, and nobleness,

Now as she busied herself in preparing the simple tea, her sad eyes turned from Jack in his low chair by the fire to the two little children playing in an old-fashioned, sedate manner in the window. Such pretty little creatures—a boy and a girl. The very essence of her life, they wore; the barrier between her and hopelessness; the angels who stood with flaming sword of lotre between her and a fate that forever pursued her.

The sordid details of life pressed sorely upon these poor folks, who had been used to euch better things. They feasted in anticipation off the savory smell of the ham and eggs frying for their tea. They knew by the too audible sounds from the kitchen every stage of the preparations, And when the meal was made, and the noisy little servant had cleared the table, the slushing of water and clatter of dishes informed them that the " washing up " was in full progress. To-night Nell was too full of the pleasurable excitement of going out to pay much heed to other things. She dreaded being late, and missing one note of the music she so loved. Her fingers flew as she plaited her little girl's long chestnut hair. She smiled softly when her little son, watching her, said : " What a pretty mother you are to-night, mammy dear !" She was in such haste to go that she could scarcely control her impatience while Bhe heard their prayers, or keep the vexation from her voice when the children called her back from the door to ask their nightly question : "Is my angel happy to-night, mother? Is yours too, mother ?" " Yes, yes, darling, I hope so," Bhe answered, and kissed them once more. It was a sweet faith she had taught them : that of each human soul being in the special caro of an angel—an angel whose happiness depended on the purity of the soul's daily endeavors—it had grown to be her own moment of retrospection for the day, when those childish voices demanded their answer.

To-night, however, she was excited, Her thoughts, as the ran downstairs, went back to those old days when, night after night, she had enjoyed herself—as a mero matter of course—when, the selfish wife of a selfish man, she had consulted her oxon social and intellectual pleasures—not lived as now she did, simply in and for others, a life of sacrifice and s^lf-abnegation. She was ready. Ah, well, it did not matter how shabby she was; no one knew her.

Softly she stole into the dining room, expecting to find Jack aßleep as usual. From sad habit her quick glance sought the sideboard and the little table beside him ; her heart beat fast with pleasure ; there was neither bottle or glass to be seen, and Jack was wide awake reading. Same of her loat beauty seemed to flash back into her face as she stooped to kiss him. ««Poor Nelly. Dear little Nelly. I hope —I mean I wish—l could go with you. Hurry, hurry, or you will be too late." She caught the tram, crowded already to excesß, and as she, with the dozen or so others waiting at the Albany street crossing, crushed their way in, she heard the indigrant protests of the conductor: " Yes, it's all jolly fine for you ; you don't care, as long as you get to your blamed concert, what trouble I get into. I suppose I'll be hauled up for this. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves." To which the generous public smiled broadly at the man's simplicity. Care? Why, of course they didn't care. There are only two methods of life known to the British public—to kick, or to be kicked.

Nellie was late, but she had no difficulty in finding a seat. The people of Dunedin are distinctly a practical and commercial people ; they leave musio and the fine arts to other centres, where the people " have time to bother about these things." It is not fashionable to be musical, and so, when there is high-class music to be heard, you may go in peace ; you will not be crushed; the smart "eassiety" people won't be there. But if there is a variety entertainment for some charitable object, and "sasaiety " people have "kindly consented" to posture, to play, to sing, or to try and aot—all "indifferently well "—then go early, for the show will be rushed. For the sake of admiriog one's own friends, and enjoying the conviction that the "other man's friends " made fools of themselves, added to the consciousness that you have had a good shilling's worth, and been noticed by "everyone who is anyone" as a supporter of charity, I trust we should walk cheerfully through even worse things than these. Let us return to Nellie. As the opening notes of the first item sounded a party of ladies took seats in the gallery next to her, but one row behind. They all seemed thoroughly fond of music, but in a fastidiouß, critical fashion. One had a very clear voice, and no matter in how low a tone she spoke Nelly could hear eaoh word of her dainty criticisms on everything and everybody within Bight or sound. Absorbed in the music, Nellie took no notice of the occupants of the thinly-filled two shilling seats below. She follpwedin quiet intensity the passage of the air which now sounded from one instrument and then from another; which now beat upon the ear with haste, and fury and passion, and again dropped far apart, like pearls upon a slender string, till it was lost. Then came a song, in which a plump and substantial young lady warbled of " my—er—heart" and "my —er—love" with the usual surroundings of moonlight and nightingale. The lady behind Nellie was very sarcastic. She looked through delicate gold-rimmed pincenez at the songstress, and yawned with charming impertinence. "I remember once liking that sort of thing myself," Nelly heard her say. M That was long ago, when I was young enough to thoroughly enjoy being melancholy. It is one of the pleasures of youth to play at being sad—a delightful luxury which the real sorrows of life deprive us of very early." Ah, now, what was this? <Ballade

in ' Well, never mind 1 A wild, weird piece of muslo, abounding in strange passages, whioh apparently went to the soul of the pianist himself—so lingeringly, so pathetioally his long white fingers compelled the melody from the instrument. It waß too sad. Tears rose in Nelly's eyes; the delicate pleasure was a pain. She was thankful when, leaning low over the keyboard, the pianist surrendered himself to a frenzy of instrumentation, during whioh he chased the fugitive air from one end to the othsr of the piano, and finally taking it, as it were, in both hands, dashed its melodious brains out upon the ivory keys amid the crash and hurricane which preoeded silenoe and extinction. Round after round of vociferous applause compelled the musician to return, and as an encore he gave ' Chopin's funeral march.'

Poor Nellie—Bhe had come to be gay and forget that for her the world held little but sorrow—it was too bad. She threw herself back with a little petulant gesture and fixed her attention upon the pit below. As her gaze roamed idly over the uninteresting backs of bonnets and tops of bald heads, something arrested her attention, and in a second riveted every faculty. Carefully, slowly, bending every nerve to the task, though the blood seemed all flowing back in one sickening stream upon her heart, she looked, and looked again. Ah, those horrible notes of that funeral march ! Beat, beat ! the drums were beating over the grave of hope itself. Here, below her, sat her husband with a fair woman, whose redly burnished hair shone in contrast with the dark furs and velvets of her costume. For a few moments she bad no power of collecting her thoughts —everything was a chaos, From a long distance came the sad sounds of that funeral march thin, faint, and unreal. The agony of thought, the intensity and variety of emotion which flooded her being at that sight, nullified itself, and left her dumb, inert, and numbed. Numb, that is to say, in regard to the actual cause of emotion and to the emotion itself, but curiously alive to every little detail of what was passing around her, She heard the composed and delicate criticisms of the ladies sitting behind her; heard the one with the low clear voica turning everything and everybody in the audience into ridicule in the gentlest, most dainty fashion, quite unconsciously assuming that every item, animate or inanimate, was there solely for her amusement, "all for the sum of one shilling." Tne first shock being over, and Nellie's thoughts slowly disentangling themselves and taking definite shape, showed her such a hideous future that her overwrought senses gave way, and she drooped Bilently over in a dead faint on the shoulder of an angular female sitting next to her. This good person's disgust at such a vulgar episode in an evening dedicated to Art was comical. She stiffened her angular shoulders in indignant protest, and, with a Budden jerk, opened a bottle of strong smelling salts in Nellie's face.

When, with a long sigh, she opened her eyes, the angry face of her supporter, and the curious gaze of those around who had noticed her condition, spurred Nellie to a supreme effort. She staggered to her feat, and groped her way between the seats. A nervous, middle-aged gentleman rose to assist her, but as she reached the head of the narrow stairs her effort failed, and she sank down in a ghaßtiy heap on the floor. The perspiratiou broke out in beads on the nervous man'a face. Here was a horrible position ! At last water was procured, and he, with the assistance of others, got the unfortunate woman downsfcaira.

" Poor thing ! " commented the critical lady. "Wonder what's the matter with her ? Really thia is an extravagant shilling's worth. All this excitement thrown in gratis ! What a fool tho husband looked ! Seemed afraid to touch her—just as if she was aa explosive, Fancy how he'll grumble and ' DBg' at the poor thing when he gets her home."

Meantime, the nervous man, having taken Nellie to George street and left her to catch the next tram, returned to his evening's amusement with a conscience void of evil. As he took his place once more, he saw a lovely pair of eyes behind a delicate pince- '■ net watching him, and heard a low, clear I *, oice say : " Look at that wretched man j back again to his own pleasure. I suppose: he has bundled the poor woman home in the tram." " Great heaven 3 !" Baid the man to himself ; " that's all I get for being kind. People think it was my wife. What if Julia hears of it." Julia was his jealous wife at home, and the visions evoked by her name j were not all rose-tiuted,

And Nellie ? It was a long walk home, and she walked weakly and slowly. The thoughts she had to think could be borne better out of doors than in the stifling constraint of her narrow home. The future she could not yet think of—she shrank back into the past, " Whether she looked forward or backward her soul must be seared for ever with pain and regret. Back in the old days she saw the life she had led as the spoiled and capriciously petted or bullied wife of a man who, despite every advantage of birth, iatelleot, and position, was in his life, thoughts, and tastes a scoundrel. A selfish, cynical, sensual scoundrel, clever enough to hide all the lower part of his nature behind the glitter of his social charm and intellectual brilliancy. She remembered how one by one he had deprived her of every innocent illusion, and destroyed the purity which had kept her from the "knowledge of evil." She had amusements and society to h6r heart's content. But when she looked into the eyes of her little children, and remembered what manner of man their father was, she would set them down without kiss or touch and run downstairs.

Then cime Jack —young, handsome, goodnatured, not very clever perhaps, but a good fellow, full of simple kindness and sunshine, He brought with him a pleasant, carelesß reputation for being "such a ladies' man" ; so full of general devotion to the sex that no one saw harm in his attentions or flirtations, even when they singled out some married woman, for it was "only Jack." Even the most uncharitable knew and acknowledged that there was no taint of dishonor in tho sweet attentions which he paid so sweetly. He was welcome everywhere. He rode, and danced, and smoked, and drank within reasonable limits, and always managed somehow to keep within his income as a bank clerk. Whatever he did, people smiled, and said " Well, really you know, one can never be cross with Jack."

It is the friends of popular men who ruin them, The friends whose manly caution, or tender womanly remonstrance given iu time, might rouse the drifting soul ere it was too late; these are the very people whose selfish dread of unpleasantness and lack of moral courage are responsible for the ruin of half the good fellows who "go to the devil." So the friends of Nellie and Jack stood quietly by without ever a word of warning ; for it was " only Jack," and they did not choo3e to remember that even to volatile, light-hearted Jack the dark hour of temptation might come. So no one "noticed his nonsense," and Nellie's husband smiled sardonically to himself, for he was tired of playing benedict—and went away on a lengthened absence. It was nobody's business until the crash came, and then it suddenly became the only thing worth talking about. Her husband stood before outraged society in the character of an injured man, claiming the sympathy of the world—and he got it. Of all the jolly orew of friends who had lunched and supped with her, the pretty girla who had kissed her and raved over her as "such a darling little soul," and •' such a jolly chaperone," only one girl and one woman stood by her. Why 1 yon say. Well, she was a fool; that waa why. When her husband oame home and intended to pass over the breeze of gossip with a severe warning only, why did she not hold her tongue and take up her life again in silence ? Many another woman had done it before, and if her after life was a long remorse and her daily bread the bread of bitterness, what did that matter to society? There was no soandal, and none of that uncomfortable and vulgar disturbance produced by a divorce. But Nellie had been a fool, beoause she hated her husband and had been faithless to him, She and the man she loved, strong in their devotion, defied all the world and olung to one another. So with only two friends to support her, Nellie got through the awful time that intervened before she was free,

and Jack made all the reparation he could. They went away; Jack had lost his billet. The moral standard among bank olerks is a high one; the British publio demands it. That one should try to redeem a sin is nothing; that the sin has been committed is everything. All the world turned its baok on them. Jaok's men friends, though they pitied him, felt that they owed it to their own virtue to show him the cold shoulder—not one of them oouid afford to know a failure. It was a terrible time, the months in which the whole meaning of the step they had taken waß borne in upon them. . The slow bitterneßß of realising that for them . there was nothing but sooial banishment; \ that they were sooial pariahs; fools who had not only sinned but been " found out" —which latter was absolutely unpardonable. Dunedin is but a reflex of larger societies and older oities, but with the additional neoßßsity for ostentatious condemnation of sins against sooiety, implied by the smallness of its population. These unfortunates oould not lose themselves here; oould not start a fresh life with new friends, in whose ignorance of their past they might regain their own self-respeot. There was but one hope left to them—to live it down. It is only those who have tried to " live down" their past who know how almost impossible it is. Society ostracises its erring members, condemns them by its unwritten law to social death, consigns them to oblivion, and even then is unsated in its righteous thirst for vengeance; for if it be months or years, nay, half a lifetime, afterwards that the name of the offending one is mentioned, out comes that old story, every detail fresh and fragrant, to damn once more the fool who was " found out." You and I, dear sir and madam, join our neighbors; we owe it to ourselves. What simpler method of demonstrating our own virtue ? We all know that there is rcom in society—aye, the very best society all over the world—for sinners who are rich enough and ehallow enough to ruffle it bravely, and by the variety of their sins reduce them to a mere peooadillo; but there is no room in even second-rate society for sinners who confess and repent. All these trite and true aspects of life, as I said before, were borne in upon Jack and Nellie in the oourse of weary months. Hope was lost in bitterness and rebellion against fate in regret; while, as time passed on, all emotions merged in her case into patience, and in his to cynical indifference.

Thought tiavels apace on the high road of memory. All these details and many more bad pained her long before she reached the shadow of Knox Church, She was physically weary now, and leant heavily against the iron railings. Something in the quietude, the solemnity of the massive ivy-clad walls, influenced her. The clear shining of the stars seemed nearer here. She entered the enclosure, and, crouching down on the steps in the shadow, leant wearily against the stone niche by the wall. She never thought of what she should do; there was nothing that she could do but go hometohim,aadtoherohildren. Herthoughts sank back into the past. And yet as she thought Bho watched with feverish intentness the thin stream of passers by, herself unseen, 1 rouble had taught her many things. It had changed her, ennobled and purified her. It is only through the fires of sin and repentance that some of us come home—no other road can bring us but that thorny, cruel path that rend 3 our garments and bruises our feet, So it had been with her. To-night, even to-night, when not one ray of hope lit up her soul, she tried to pray. To pray for herself and for Jack, For Jack the uses of adversity had not been sweet, For many months now there had been a new dread and a new shame in Nellie's life. Jack bad fallen into the habit of drinking, Drink gave him a fictitious courage to bear his misfortunes; it shed a transient glow of hope over the sombre future; it dulled thought; it deadened alike the aordidness of the present and tho folly of the past. Society had condemned him, and would have none of him. Then what had he to live up to ?—for religion was to him as much or as little as it is to most men. He could sink, sink, sink, and there was no one to know or to care,

It had grown to be Nellie's one idea—the dread of her waking hours, the nightmare of her sleep—would he be sober when lie came in, or would hia eyes shift weakly from hers, and the dull red flush on his thin face tell her plainer than words that he had been drinking ? Poor Jack ! L?ft in pleasant conventional grooves, he would have been a right good fellow to the end of hia days, but the irony of fate hed forced him into a position which hia superficial, volatile nature was utterly incapable of sustaining, and the result was shipwreck. Now, Nellie, as she thought of him, felt her indignation and resentment dying under a load of shame as the leapt to the conclusion that Jack had been drinking more heavily than usual, and did not really know what he was doing. Ah ! what was this ? Slowly pacing along, talking in low tones, she saw her husband and the woman. FuTy gave her strength. She rose and rushed after them, but the sombre shadows of the church hid them before she could escape from the enclosure. She hurried madly on, and, as the figure 3 emerged into the glow cast by a doctor's crimson fanlight, she laid her hand upon his arm, uttering a sound that was between a sob and a groan—the horrid inarticulate cry of a tortured animal. The look of his face, the eyes that met her agonised gaza with frank directness, the utter absence of guilt or shame in his whole expression, stunned her. She was strung up to a tragedy, and lo! here was the same everyday, commonplace Jack, but with a new look of innocent content.

" jack ! Jack !" The sound came so pitifully through her white lips. It was all she could say. All the horrors of imagination had suddenly slipped away at the sight of his face with its honest frankne*.

" Dora, hore is Nelly. She must be ill, 1 think." Yes, that was Jack's voice; and the strange scent of the lady's redly gleaming hair, her furs, and her velvet, made a faint perfume around her, while the soft lips kissed her face, and the tall figure drew her, in her old shabby clothes, into its protecting care.

"Jack, get a cab, quick ! while I stay with her."

But Nelly remembered no moro until she found herself being helped out of the cab at her own home.

This tall aad gracious lady was Jack's sister—his own twin Bister, widowed Borne two years before—who, after much hard search, found the social out oasts at length. Jack had changed his mind, moved by his wife's wistful face, and followed her to the concert. A3 he stood at the ticket office a lady touched his arm. You know the rest. They looked in vain for Nellie—an intervening pillar concealed her from where they sat. All this and much more Nellie knew before she slept that night. Poor Nellie! Weary and patient; who had proved the truth of "cleansing fires"; who in all her toil and anxieties had never given way, could not stand happiness. She sank under it; the overtaxed nervous BVBtem gave way completely. Jaok's sister surrounded her with all that love, made resistless by the command of unlimited money, oould suggest; but her illness was long and tedious. They have gone now—gone to begin a fresh life in a fresh place, where, in the confidence of their fellow-men, they may regain the self-respect whioh alone can reinstate them. Jack's sister wishes nothing better than to be their worldly providence. She is a woman of brains as well as of means, and intends that Jack shall work—for in work will be his salvation. With her influence and firmness to animate him, and the gratitude and effection whioh is so strong a feature in his oharaoter to work upon, she hopes much for him. The episode of a concert was but the sad prelude to brighten things, yet Nellie feels that she never desires to hear again Grieg's lovely ' Ballade in G' or Chopin's ' Funeral March.' ______________ A ewe belonging to Mr P. Woodman, of Grange Court, lately gave birth to a couple of lambs. One was dead, and the other had eight legs, two tails, one head, and two tongues, all of which are fully developed and perfect. He: " Shall we take the elevated cars or tfee underground, dear ?" Sb,e (lovingly and oonfidingly); "The tunnel, love,"