PARTING OF THE VEIL.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 9, Issue 80, 7 October 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

PARTING OF THE VEIL.

CHAPTER ll. —Continued. “Perhaps the impression was correct, my son, but I do not like to have you cast your life lines at the call of a stranger.” “Now. mother, that was just the feeling that came to me—that I was a stranger to one-half the world.” The mother looked at him with an unusual tenderness—of course the sacrifice had to come some time. “Conrad, you are on the threshold of love.” “Yes, I believe I am. I am old enough, fortune is ours—and a fair name. I am J» lonely.” jf “With your mother?" said Mrs. North, ' with downcast eyes. “Yes, even with our queen.” And the son arose and pressed the face of his mother to his lips. Nor was he satisfied until he had kissed her over and over again. And the mother smoothed the light hair from his brow. The time was soon coming—she knew it was near. “I am satisfied, she gently said; “but I do not like to have my son dwell in thought upon a young woman whom he does not even know.” “Bless you, mother,” replied Conrad, with a ringing laugh which echoed clear to the garret, “I am not in love with this young lady—it was only a dream which her face put into my mind; it was only the story of a face. No, lam not in love so easily as that!” There was no smile on the mother’s face, but there was ft very broad one in her heart. She remembered a story of the past when she went star-gazing with a certain young Vander Nort—when Boston was quite a successful village. \ “Well, my son,” she said, “we will have to face the danger bravely, and face our neighbor’s daughters, too. There is Mrs. Scribner ’—she is well contented and ” “She’s too young—not 35 yet,” said the dutiful son. His ancestors had always married in the line of parental direction and

filial duty, but the vein of old Dutch humor wouid defy parental affection, and age as well. “There’s the lovely Widow Weber ” “Oh, mother, spare the widows.” “Look out, sir,” she said, cutting him short. “Mother,” said the son, going over to the window and plucking the leaves from one of her choicest plants, “I suppose every one has an ideal—my ideal has character.” “As for instance ” “I do not know. You smile!” “Yes, Conrad; I smile because you have seen a face—and that will be your standard of character until the moon changes.” And the mother laughed one of her happy little i* laughs—she loved her boy so. 1 “I suppose so—l will wait on the moon.” “Or on some gardenei'’s daughter.” And the little lady threw her arms around him and looked him in the face proudly. “I think she is a schoolma’am, mother. Good night; you will be asleep when I return.” He took himself away, and a half hour later passed the very spot where he had seen the face over which he had evidently been day-dreaming. Strange mortals we—all of us. And mother ? Well, she sought her bed at an early hour, said her prayer and slept. “ It was a whim ; the first of many, doubtless.” And when upon the trellis, clothed in green, came the birds in blue and gold with morning song, and the sun shot its yellow beauty through the leaves,' the mother rose, wondering why she had slept so well 1

CHAPTER 111. THE MAN WITH A REMARKABLE COUGH. OW, Pinnie, we are going to my little home. If you were a young woman instead of a great awkward boy, you could go to my room and see all my art- , ist work.” “Great big, and awkward?” said the slender youth, “ I "'‘thought I was not so large.” Miss Lamont laughed heartily as Pinnie • cast his eyes down upon his loose sleeves, and undertook to “modulate” his walk to the graceful movement of his companion. But her laugh was hushed to silence as she realized that the boy had never yet had occasion to penetrate the depths of a joke. “We will take a cab,” said neien. ‘ “If it is not too far, Miss Helen, I would like to walk.” “Oh yes, it is but a mile or two.” “I am sujje it would not be much to walk that,” mused the youth, looking at the thousand objects around him with an unconscious interest. The young girl smiled, and her eyes beamed as they rested upon the strange boy. She had never seen a person so simple-minded and innocent of the world. She thought to rouse him to something like gaiety by her merry manner and sprightly conversation. It was a failure. His sober eyes sought hers in silence, without question. His effort to conform his actions to her own was a trifle painful, but in the matter of merriment he made no attempts. He had seen it in others —the faculty may have been omitted in his nature. In this walk Pinnie told his story, little recking that its single chapter was to. prove of profound and tragic interest to Helen Lamont. All that he could tell was that his parents had been lost at sea while he was an infant, and that he was saved by being picked from the deck and tossed into a boat into the midst of sailors. He had heard that he was a year old at the time. Where his infant life had been passed he never knew. His earliest recollection was of a huge stone building, and of being taken through the streets therefrom by Leon Spanero. He had been told many times by Snanero, when angry, that he had taken

My —- —

ui.n from “an orphan hell when _ a brat.” Even his name was unknown to him. No one had ever told him why he was called Pinnie—he had no other name—unless it were Spanero; and Spnnerohad knocked him down once for using that title on an occasion where a second name seemed desirable. “And have you never worked anywhere else?” asked the girl, who had listened to the story with great interest. “No, because Spanero always told me about it. Sometimes he speaks to me kindly.” “Told you about what?” asked the young woman. “About how ‘cubs’ were worked to death as soon as possible to make way for new ones.” “And you believed this?” said Helen, looking into his face in profound wonder. “He knocked me down if he thought I did not believe what he told me.” “And have you never talked with the other painters during all these years?” asked the astonished girl. “I heard one of the men say once that Spanero told him that I was a little daft once and had never recovered. 1 asked Spanero what he meant by ‘daft’ afterward, and he flew at me with his knife. So I never asked again.” Helen looked at the boy for a moment and for an instant it occurred to her that possibly he was not of strong mind. But of all the toilers at the school, she had found this boy the most intelligent within a limited range, and she determined to know more of him. Then Pinnie recalled her to the topic, “Is it not true?” “What, Pinnie?” “That men kill boys by working them to death if they have no parents?” “No,” said the girl, indignantly. “Pinnie, did you really never have any one to love you?” “To what?” he asked with a curious look on his face.

“To love you—like you?” “Oh, yes,” he said sadly, “I think your pictures love. me. I stay by them after you go at night. ” The girl turned upon him in the street, and a pallor spread over her face—followed by deep crimson flushes, even to her snowy neck. What did this childish talk mean—what iniquity had there been here that this mystery of life should appear in the very heart of a city? “Pinnie!” “Yes, Miss Lament. ” But she did not continue. Wasit possible, after all, that the boy was of unsound mind? She changed the subject. And so they walked and talked until they reached the outskirts of the city. “Pinnie,” she said, “I am doing all the talking—do you never chat?” “No, I think not,” “But I know there is a deep thoughtin you somewhere?” He turned his eyes away, and slowly whispered, “There may have been once,- but I have lost it.” “No, Pinnie, it is not lost—it is laid aside for all these years, and we will find it.” “Miss Lament,” the boy replied with a heavy heart, “1 sometimes think so. '’Rather the feeling is pre sent when I do not think.” Helen had seen alike expression on his face —once when he looked upon a painting, of himself, which she had quickly put on canvas for amusement. The intellectuality had been painfully magnified, but from that picture Pinnie had caught an inspiration.

She said nothing to him. He dropped the hand that he had taken and continued, speaking slowly and carefully: “There are times when the dream life you have spoken of goes away—and a big door opens wide, and I see that I have lived in prison—and when I want to go out I—l—dare not.”

Still she uttered not a word. She was not sure of her footing in such depths. The dream of life of which she had spoken was made up of pleasant hopes playing hide-and-seek with the common facts of life. “Then I dare not —I ” He broke off, and began again. “I dare not step beyond—but I think, sometimes, very, very hard—of what, I hardly know.”

Still Helen kept silence—wise unto the moment. “I think of those who have seen and talked with the children, and the flowers, and the woods, which we paint. And I think that perhaps if I had seen the great sea, and the ships, and the life you and others talk of—then I might have thought—is that the sea, Miss Lament? Is it? That is the sea!”

He had lifted his eyes—and they rested upon the waters of the bay, in sight of which they had come by the turning of a corner. They stopped. He stood motionless and speechless, and with fixed stare and hands to his eyes, shut out the other world—and gazed upon the realm of waters—unconscious of her presence. Oh, sad awakening 1 In all the upheavals and overturnings of after life, when the electric impulse aroused fear, love or passion, Helen Lament never felt such a thrilling of profound sympathy, auger, surprise and mystery as at this discovery of human wrong. The facts revealed were still in the shadow—but her soul revolted against the outline—representing the dwarf age of this life. She stood by him fora moment and caught her breath. “ Pinnie, Pinnie, my poor boy, what does it mean ?” she cried. “It is the sea, the great sea!” Like the revelations of the lightning in the darkness was the sudden change from sadness to joy upon his face. “And why do you say this?” asked Helen, suppressing her own feelings. “Of course it Is the sea.” But within her breast there dawned a fuller conception of the awful crime against this waxen-faced youth. Pinnie turned his face and plodded on, bent over and thoughtful. He had gazed upon che ocean, and his soul was filled as with the realization of a dream. He was unconscious of the girl by his side. S*ie walked on, deeply mystified. At last he spoke to her without lifting his head: “And, Miss Lamont, this is the green grass —and this is the country of our paintings?” “No, Pinnie, this is not the country; see here are buildings!” “A few, so far apart,” he muttered, looking at the residences within the large suburban lots. “And there are flowers—-not painted, are they? I can smell them!” And ha leaned over a fence in transport to catch the rich perfume he had never known before! The time had come when Helen could bear the uncertainty no longer. She put her white hand on his arm and said earnestly: “I do not understand you, Pinnie. Do you mean that you have never seen the sea before?” “I have often heard of it. My life began on the sea—it was my birth-place, I suppose.” “And you have not seen it for a long time?” “I never remember to have seen it.” “How? And lived in this city for years.” “I have lived at the school,” Pinnie replied. “And you have not seen the flowers and the woods?” “Oh, yes, indeed; I see them every day —you know,” said ho, looking at her surprised. _

“Then why have you not seen the sea. “Oh,’ - ' he responded, with some hesitation, “You mean these, the living trees and flowers! I—l— have seen the—the painted flowers.” The tone and the look-out into the world before him —would have touched a stony heart pity. To the melting heart of the loveiy girl, herself battling for life in the open world, it was crushing. She wept. The shadows of evening were gathering about them, and no one was near. She had opened the door of a prison house, of the existence of which she was unconscious, and still to some extent unbelieving. The reality was beyond immediate relief. Oh, of man’s sad want—this was the most touching she had ever known or dreamed. It was the ..tarvation of a soul.

“Miss Lament,” he said, after her tears ’■ ore dried. “I think I know something of •hy you cry. But your life must be happy ■vith all these riches!”

“I have no riches, child,” she replied. “These are the riches of others,” pointing to the houses and gardens. “I have nothing but my hands and thoughts.” “Riches,” he muttered. “I have seen the woods and flowers and the sea —what are riches, Miss Helen, that others have and we do not? Where are they?” “I cannot tell you now, Pinnie. But all these things that you see are not ours.” “God does not give them away, I suppose,” said the young man with the simplicity of a little child. “Why, Pinnie, you must have read of these things,” exclaimed the girl suddenly. “No, I cannot read.” “You? You cannot read?” she asked in astonishment. “No ma’am,” Pinnie answered, hanging his head. “You never told me this. I would have taught you.” “I was going to tell you. Are we near your home, Miss Lament?” “Yes, Pinnie, it is close by.” “May I not rest here a little? This is a great ways. I did not know the miles were so long.” The boy sat down on the edge of the pavement, under the oak tree, which still remained of the primeval wood, within a few rods of the house whither they were going. He looked again upon the sea and the woods, over which darkness was slowly gathering. Then up rose the moon, in its full, silvery splendor. The glory of the scene swept over him with an incomprehensible power. He had seen its beauty oft before, set round with brick walls, but now, rising from the water with its sheeny banner trailing over the broad waters, was a picture for which there was no language within his powers. He was glorified, and spread his arms over the vista, as if the sublimity might in some degree escape him. Truly, the grandeur of the universe was poured into his soul, and all the infinite possibilities of a mysterious nature overwhelmed him. He sank down upon the walk, covered his face with his hands and wept, for what he knew not. In the presence of this new and wonderful revelation to the soul ..-.pf the youth, Miss Lament withdrew a distance—and witnessed that of which philosophy can furnish no counterpart —the overpowering sense of the majesty of God filling a soul for the first time!

But an end must come—and any descent from such bights of contemplation, on the part of either the enthralled youth or the silent witness, must be painful. She came to him, touched his arm, and said: “Come, it is night; wo must go.” He rose mechanically-—and walked by her side as an automaton. Ho looked neither to the right hand nor the left, but trudged on. They reached the gate. As he stood by to let her enter and lead the way, a long hollow cough startled him from reverie. Looking up he saw an aged, bent, thin, gray-haired man about to pass. With an unaccountable instinct, which is a part of our better nature, the old man lifted his eyes to nod a passing recognition—aud immediately brought his shambling feet to a dead halt. He riveted a cold, gray, cunning pair of stony eyes on the youth, but not a muscle moved on his pallid, yet ashen face. The youth returned the steely stare with the unflinching look of innocence, and ignorance, and wonder. What was the fascination in those livid features? A sickly faintness came over him—he swayed to one side, and would have fallen had not the old man with sudden energy grasped the youth with unnatural strength. Taking him by both shoulders he gasped, with a hoarse whisper: “I have you now!”

Helen, who had gone before to the door, shrieked at the sight of this sudden assault, and rushed to the gateway. But the old man had fled, and Pinuie lay upon the ground. As the apparition took wings in the gathering gloom, lie left as the only legacy of mystery the exclamation: “My God, it is not a ghost—not a vision!" and a hollow cough echoed back as he passed into the gloom. CHAPTER IV. WILKINS AND THE POET.

ILKINS was a philosopher, whose search for the “higher life” was continuous. He was a politician, whose mission it was to purify the uncleanly pool, and whose highest ideal of political reward was a foreign mission. He possessed that spirit of ceaseless activity which obliged him to be always busy. And had not modern philosophical investigation occupied his studious hours, he doubtless would have found solace in the quadrature of the circle, duplication of the cube, or some other mindwrecking theme. But in every channel of his nature there ran a current of old-fashion* ed goodness. He might .have been 40 years of age at the time this story makes his aquaintance, and the quiet run of his conversation was like the flow of a river broad and deep—and slow. Wilkins was in love. At a little cottage in the suburbs of Boston he was summoned to meet one of the sweetest and most charming little widows that the heart masculine ever warred against, and surrendered to. His summons was of a legal nature, and had nothing to do with the profound sentiments of dual unities.

The little lady was literary—one of those harmless ones, who can do a little in verse and still sigh for no worlds to conquer. She was so fortunate once as to have one of her compositions accepted by that critic;.! “allwool quarterly,” which not only published the bright seedling, but spoke well of it—just as if an editor would publish anything ha

wouldn’t think well of! Nice little, plump little, sweet little Mrs. Jennie Smith was not upset, however, by her success—that is, not completely. For did she not discover that the bald-headed raven who gathered in the scented note paper had prepared the meter in certain lines and modified the rhyme in others? (TO BE CONTINUED.)