NO CERTIFICATE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue III, 15 January 1898, Page 71

NO CERTIFICATE.

BY MRS M. L. RAYNE. The clock striking 9 sounded like a knell to the two old people sitting in their dull, hopeless misery, one on each side of the table, like strangers, the first time in forty years. It was not death, this uninvited guest, that had obtruded its unwelcome presence, but something worse — disgrace, and its baleful shadow obscured the light of heaven. And the- night without was as drear as their hearts within. The woman took a flat tin candlestick from the table and lighted the bit of candle it held. ‘You’ll be coming up soon, David ?’ she asked, wistfully. TH rest on the settle here to-night,’ he said, sternly. ‘David, you’ll not be the one to separate us that have been joined together a lifetime ? I couldn’t bear that, man, I really couldn’t.’ ‘Wait a bit, Rachel. Maybe tomorrow it will seem clearer, but tonight I mus’ think, and try for wisdom to see God’s hand in this.’ ‘You’ll wind the clock, David, anil put Malty outside ?’ She was making a brave fight for strength, and it is on the plain and homely duties of life that we find the firmest footing. Rachel knew this, and solaced her breaking heart with trifles. ‘And if you have a poor turn in the night you’ll call me ?’ she said. ‘Yes, mother.’ She turned away with a sigh that rent David’s heart, but waited with her hand on the stair door. ‘There’s a shroud in the candle tonight,’ she said as she pointed to the fluttering wick. ‘I wish there was —I wish to heaven there was, and ’twere for me,’ said the man, bowing his head until the wisps of soft grey hair fell over his troubled faee. ‘Good-night, David.’ The pitiful note of supplication in her voice did not fall unheeded on his ear. ‘Why, Raehel, I most forgot—goodnight, mother.’ ‘He called me mother !’ said Rachel to herself, when she had reached her room, and, setting down the candle on the little stand, she sank on her knees by her bed. ‘God have mercy,’ she prayed, ‘and lay not this sin at our doors.’ Then she lay down, removing only her shoes, as if to be ready for any emergency, but she did not, could not sleep. The pillow next to her was empty—for the first time. She closed her eyes and listened to an occasional movement below — a groan—words of supplication—cries for deliverance from the awful thraldom of this grief. She could not see the tender, plaintive lines of that dear old face softening into tears or hardening into the rigid lines of duty. She slipped from the bed and felt her way down the familiar stairs. ‘Husband,’ she called ; ‘are yon sleeping ?’ ‘No, mother.’ Again the most beautiful word in the English language smote her ear like a blow. ‘David, haven’t all the blessed years that are gone meant something ? Isn’t our love worth more than a bit of white paper ?’ ‘Hush, woman ! Tempt me not to break the laws of God and man knowingly ; it is enough to know that we have sinned through ignorance. Oh, God !’—he lifted his voice in inspired supplication like the prophets of old—‘if Thou canst forgive, it is not for man to blame !’ Rachel took advantage of this moment of apparent softening, and kneeling by him laid her hand on his shou Ider. ‘David, let me stay with you ?’ ‘Go buck to your room. Rachel ; we must each bear this cross alone.’ ‘May I kiss you, dear ?’ ‘No, no, woman ! Who knows that it might not be a sin ? Until we can see our way clear out of this dark shadow, we must live apart as strangers.’

'There is a way, David, to set it right.’

‘And to confess our sin to the world !* "That is your pride, David.’ ‘Just so. woman. My pride is a life of integrity, and it's had a sore fall. I had much to lose.* ‘While 1 have only you. (Sod help me ! I have forgot the Creator more than the creature. My punishment has come.’ He heard the crying as she went away in the darkness, but said no word to comfort or recall her. She could not know that his grief was equal to hers. Hut it had that granite fibre which gives a man courage to die at the stake for his principles, and inspires a dogged resolution to suffer found often in weak natures, and sometimes called obstinacy in the minor events of life. It was the first call to martyrdom that David had heard, and it excluded all other voices. But Rachel—she could never be sure that she had fallen asleep and dreamed it—thought that her husband came and bent over her, that a tear fell on her forehead, and that he patted her grey hair with a loving touch. The next morning repeated the anguish of the preceding day and night. Suddenly Rachel asked : ‘Have you thought of the children, David —-what it means to them ?’ ‘Aye, woman, and a sore thought it has been. Whether or no to tell them of their parents’ sin, beset me like a machination of the evil one. But I put it away. God gave me strength for that. And this day I will consider in what way to acquaint them with their misfortune.’ Another blow for the loving heart of Rachel. Her boy, living with his little family far distant, had his mother’s sensitive nature ; the trouble might kill him. The girl, Drusilla, was like her father; martyrdom would be a crown. In her stern renunciation she might never see either of them again. As the day wore on there was much to be done. God’s broken law must be patched up by one of His commissioners—the minister could help them out of their present difficulty, but for the past not all the tears of all the angels could make that whole and clean again. These two, who for forty years had believed themselves man and wife—whom no man had put asunder—were to be married again. It all came about through a lawyer’s letter disputing their title jointly held to property owned in a distant state, and requesting them to forward a copy of their mariage certificate and prove the validity of their claim. Once in a hundred years such a case happens, but that it should have come to those God-fearing, law-abiding, inoffensive people, who were as simple and innocent as children, seemed unaccountable. David took the matter to heart as a personal sin. Their minister was accustomed to all sorts of sinners, but that any two people as simple and guileless as these two babes in the wood had gone through life as law breakers puzzled him greatly. He would have laughed, but the awful earnestness of this domestic tragedy struck him with tragic force. When he saw Raehel in her bridal finery of forty years ago, the little old man in the coat that had been laid away for his burial, both trembling with an excess of emotion, he felt impelled to save them from themselves. ‘We are in a heap of trouble, sir,’ David began, simply, and without any circumlocution he told the story, which Rachel accentuated with her tears. They had never missed the certificate ; it had not been given to them by the minister who had married them in the old home, back East, and the lawyer's letter first acquainted them with the omission. ‘We can see now that it should never have happened, but we didn't see it till the lawyer man wrote again and told us we were not married until we could prove it by witnesses or certificate !* and David wiped his flushed face with his wedding handkerchief. A small folded paper fell from its folds, which the minister picked up mechanically and passed to Rachel. It was yellow and creased, but when she unfolded it she gave a great cry. ‘Husband ! it's the certificate ! You had it all the time and never knew it ! Thank God !’ ‘I thought it was a receipt for the

fee 1 gave him—honest I did, wife, and ain't ever looked at it since that day. It’s the hand of providence that's give it baek. And we're married and have been all those years ? That’s the blessedest piece of paper I’ve seen in my life, and there ain’t enough money in these United States to buy it.’ ‘We'll frame it and hang it where we can see it every day,’ suggested Rachel. ‘Hooray !’ cried the little old bridegroom, out of whose face all lines had escaped except those of love and tenderness. ‘I must kiss the bride !* And as the minister turned his back on the scene he pondered long on the text : The meek shall inherit the earth.’ —‘Detroit Free Press.’