THE TWO BRIDES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2366, 5 December 1908, Page 9 (Supplement)

THE TWO BRIDES.

(By Harry Stillwell Edwards.)

The youngest, knowing .instinctively that his mother’s thought was not with him, rebelled long and manfully, but the monotony of her swaying 'knee-conquered at last. Wearily she placed him in his crib, and passing to the adjoining room, stood by the side of her first-born. Tlie girl lay with one hand under her cheek, the long lashes in perfect relief against the ivory whiteness of the skin, the immature bosom rising and falling in the unbroken rhythm of a child’s slumber. Long the mother waited above the sleeper, her own eyes closed. Once her frail figure, beginning to stoop with the cares of widowhood and motherhood, swayed slightly, and a faint cry was smothered on her lips. Once she turned her wet face toward the other sleepers and the poor furnishings of their room. Then she kneeled in sudden abandon, shaking in silent agony, lier face in the bedding.

• The sleeper stirred, and breathed •a single word: ‘‘Mother? ’ And again, after silence “Mother.-” Her hand Tested lightly on the woman’s bowed head, and then a slender white arm encircled it. “Don’t cry, mother!” It was her little formula, since she had become orphan and comforter. No other word: and presently the rhythm of the thin, bosom and deeper breathing.

The mother's lips, releasing her pent-up emotion in a hushed sigh, touched lightly the sleeper’s' forehead, and she arose. Whatever the crisis, the tragedy, she had faced them and

was resigned

There were both crisis and tragedy. A friend of many years, a strong man, a leader in a growing town, had come, an honorable suitor, and asked permission to woo the girl. And would she, the mother, aid him as only mothers can? He was thirty-five. And down the vista of the girl’s sixteen years were the faces of seven brothers and sisters on the threshold of life.

The kiss on the -moist white brow of the sleeper was the tragedy. And so it came to paes that a child bride, wide-eyed, her cheeks flushed with the excitement of her first day of travel, the world about her a dream world full of strange scenes and strange people, alighted from a train in Atlanta. The grave, kind man who guided her out to a carriage, and a ride through the busy city between schedules, smiled over the eager enthusiasm of the little woman as he explained and pointed out places of iirtorest. He, too, was young, on this splendid day of his new life, for the fountain of youth is youth, itself and his spirit was bathing in hers. People who gazed on the couple, though, saw only the starry eyes of the girl and the flush on her ivory cheeks. And seeing, they smiled frankly into her face and looked back when they had

passed. He was a good husband, this grave, courteous gentleman. He understood womanhood, .and 1 something of girlhood. And he knew that there was a. heart to be won or lost before their faces turned homeward.

“Listen/’ he said. “Here is. the best of the shopping streets. Wo will get out and walk its length and look into all the windows. Anything you select I shall buy lor your wedding present;—the present that nobody will know about but you and me. Come, we will go up one side and return by the other. Then you shall take me te where you have chosen!” *lt was like a fairy story. It was wishing and hawing it come true. The girl caught her breath and looked up to him with a, new thought. She ■trembled/ too, with excitement. So they journeyed along in the splendour of beautiful things, the man half smiling and watching the radienb face by his side. The furs! Surely no woman could resist those! He frowned a little when he saw a six-hundrcd-dollar tag on a sealskin. And the glittering diamonds and rubies and pale pure pearls! But the girl did not linger in Hie presence of these. Laces, lingerie, and fancies and follies, the faience ,the beauties of the artistic mind and touch, marvellous creations of the milliner!— none, of these attracted. Her eyes travelled over them lightly, perhaps lovingly, but they did not win. And so the two seekers returned. “Have you found it?”

The girl’s face looked up to the man’s. A strange new light was shinning in the brown eyes —a wan, sweet 6mile curved downward the rosebud mouth. He thrilled with a sudden (happiness land a new sense of nearness. She did not trust herself to speak. She only nodQed her head importantly. “Then lead mo to the treasure,” he said, gayly. Taking his hand, she led him the way. Presently she was drawing him eagerly. They came to 'a window where many children wore clustered, and she pointed to a great wax doll dressed, as a bride and standing beneath a paper marriage-bell. ( “All ray life/’ she whispered, 1

have dreamed of having a wax doll. 1 hare never had any but rag dolls. I wanted one to save till I was old. Could I—” She hesitated over the enormity of the request. The man turned! away quickly. A moment more aiid he might have lilted hoi from the walk and strained her to his heart; If ho had never loved her before he loved her then ; and for all eternity. Could she have it- that doll! Could she! He pushed ins way almost roughly through the throng. "When ho came back the bride bad vanished from under the paper bell and there was a great bundle under his arms. “You are so good!” Her hand rested with an odd caressing touch on his arm —her first —as she said it. and the two. starry eyes shone up to his.

Comrades, and sharing a secret! The day w:is saved.

The noon train rushed northwards through the Georgian highlands and down the long grade into Carolina. The. Pullman was full of puled tourists, to wliom the summer of youth had come back to linger a while. All eyes rested on the radient girl facing a doll bride that was propped on tno opposite seat. She herself was oblivious to all human surroundings. It was not- likely that she saw even the blue mountains under the stretching sun stretching northwards; nor, later, the radient mists between their peaks. For she was iii the most gorgeous, doll-house the hand of man had ever fashioned, and I “playing doll” with a fairy queen in veil and gown. She was really “playing doll” for the first time in her life, and nothing else counted. She did not miss her grave husband, or wonder at the length of his slay in the smoker. She frankly forgot him and was just ten years old. She did not know that lie had come once and turned back almost in a panic when ho beheld the doll bride in alii her finery looking UP into the smiling. face of the girl bride. Nor that- afterwards be bad glanced in from time to time. ° But at last, when the shadows of the mountains reached across the land and fell upon the flying cars, ho came to find that the doll bride, her eyes closed in slumber, a light wrap flung co keep off the draughts, was reclining in the seat. Opposite, her cheek cushioned in. a pillow, was the other bride sleeping just as peacefully. A woman in black, lier veil thrust aside, was standing over the latter. She bent and laid her lips lightly on the cool, moist brow. Her own eyes were starry when elie saw the man s sympathetic face by lier aide. “I could not resist,” she said, gently. “Your daughter reminds me so of. _l_of—a girl I lost twenty years ago.” “'All, madam, to have lost such a daughter—” “Not- my- daughter. It was—myaelf ! I became, at sixteen, the bride, of a man old enough to have been my -father.” She bent again <and kissed the sleeper. Bight as was the caress, it stirred a memory. “Don’t cry, mother!” The whisper was barely audible. The man and woman stood silent moment. As she passed on she laid her hand light-, ly an the doll’s curls and smiled back at him. “Take care of the bride!”

Ha smiled in return. To (himself he said, " v “Cod helping, I will take care of her.”