WOMAN'S WORLD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 121, 13 November 1911, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD.

{Conducted by "Eileen.") ] THOSE WHO WAIT—AND WAIT. THE SECRET OF AX OLD MAID'S LO.NELLNESS. A quaint little story, strong.in that much-talked-of quality, "human interest," has had quite an unexpected and astonishing vogue. It was dropped, unsigned, into tlie letter-box of the International Magazine, with a note, also unsigned, containing instructions to destroy the manuscript, if not used, as the author would not return to claim it. The editor printed the story, and it has been reprinted by quite a number of dailies and weeklies

"1 am writing this in my room in the third Moor back of our house in an uptown side street. There is a mirror opposite the bed, a mirror with a fancy gilt frame that would look ugly, I suppose, to anyone who isnt' used to it. From the washroom comes a stale smell of bristle and hair. I've lived with that smell as far back as I can remember. THE THIRD FLOOR BACK. li l can see, from my window, about five back-yards, separated by dirty white fences. Beyond them are hunched the red-brick backs of four or five houses, all alike, all looking as if they ought to mean something but don't, somehow. There are seldom any people at the windows. Between the roofs and my window there is just enough sky for me to tell what kind of weather it is.

"All this is not very interesting. That is because it is part of my life. The life of an old maid is a life in which nothing interesting ever happens. It is the story of the third floor back of girls who aren't girls any longer, who sit at the upper windows of dark, oldfashioned, genteel houses, and wait, and wait, and feel themselves hemmed in ■ tighter and tighter by the stupid backs of the houses across the yards, until they never get out. And finally they forget ! to think at all. but just squat there ] stupidly, like the houses they stare at. ; j THE SADDEST TRAGEDY. '"Most people think that nothing is tragic that isn't grand and swaggering. But the saddest sort of tragedy is the tragedy of dreariness. Because it rots you away. I think I should not have minded going through trouble, like Camille. or Juliet, or Lady Bacbeth. I never felt sorry for them, or horrified at them, or anything like that—only envious. I wonder how they would have stood being old maids? •'People are quite sure I must be biting my nails off because I cannot get a husband. They never say it, of course. But they show'that they are thinking it —some by the way they pity me, and oyfchers by the way they grin at me. They feel I must miss a husband and baby horribly. I hate to be pitied. THE SMILE OF SUCCESS.

"But I hate being laughed at most.

That is why I always stay awake for hours after the family gatherings, thinking and thinking and getting more and more bitter. They smile at me in such a queer way. It is something like the way father smiles at the old tailor when he comes for father's suits. Father began down where the tailor 'began, but father made money, enough to buy this house, and to stop working, now that lie is old. .So he smiles that queer smile of his when the tailor comes. It is the •mile of success for failure. That is tho smile my sisters and nieces turn on me

"They think I am unhappy because f have failed to get a husband and children. That is not the reason. Really it isn't. I don't like children much. That sounds like a dreadful thing to say, I know. In all the novels and plays the one real virtue that they seem to think an old maid is fit for (outside of what they call her 'virtue'; but they don't really consider it a virtue at all) is to make a fuss over other people's children, and wish, in a low, light, soft, musical sort of way. that she had children of her own to make a fuss over. i ; "i'^USi I SHOULDN'T LIKE CHILDREN. "Well, T Wouldn't like children of my own—at least, not little babies. I don't like babies. Fin not nearly as sentimental as I'm supposed to be.' I'm not sentimental at all. I'm hard. I think—harder than most married women. And I'm 'growing harder and more crabbed every year. I can feel that. That is part of being an old maid. I am just past forty now. I used to think that was quite old.

"I used to think F wanted to get marvied. Rut I know now that. I don't want a husband, that it has never been a husband that I have wanted. Of course, when I am out with people who are smiling at me or pitying me, I sometimes think I really want one. Ideas are catching. I ENVY A HOME. "Then when I am visiting a friend and her husband comes home and things brighten up and get exciting and the two of them seem suddenly to have become very important and central, I sometimes get envious. Rut it isn't for her husband I enw her: it is for her home. M times like that I feel that I want a home, too. where 1 can be in the middle of thing-, instead of away off in a chilly corner.

"I used to waul- n husband wlipii I was u girl. Ami 1 had no doubt whatever that he would come sailing along •some daw ar.d take me away with him. 1 ii- il In tall; o'.iitc confidently about 'whi'ii I'm man!':..' I didn't have any particular idea- ai.oal what it would be like being married; I just 'knew it be like hcing married; I ju.it knew it would change everything and make ihing- bright and breezy and very much alive. THE AWAKEXTXO. 'li w;i- i!o| iin'i! a couple of years '. ■ i'->\ l •■•.••!.■■ ii;. lr> ili,» frnili. I bad known for some time that wrinkles Wi-;v forming at the side of my eyes, and that some of my hair was dropping out. and that men didn't look at me in 'be.i. r.-iiM -filing way any more, as ii I were a of wine! but 'looked past me most of the time, as if I were a perperfeetly good piece of furniture. Rut the idea (hat marriage didn't lit- somewhere < ahead of me-why, it hadn't occurred to me. f had mapped out the geography of my life for all when T was a young gi'l. On that map all the brightness lay ahead of me. Il hail never occurred to me ihat my geograjihy might be all wrong.

"ft camo over mp suddenly, early one spring morning. 1 remember there was a eat. pick-in',' its way along the backfence, and I was watching it sleepily. When it was out of sight, T turned around, without meaning to, and happened to see my fare in the mirror. I caught myself off niv guard, and saw my face, for the first time. It wasn't the wrinkles, or the grey in my hair (there arc only six!eon grev hairs). Tt «■;!• in-i Il'.e w-,y me (!..«],' lnin-; ' •-:■- I and sallow and old, somehow. YOT* AKK CKTTIXf; OLD.

"Pn-haps r wa-n't feeling well that morning. I don'l know. lint il \v:i = ritht its if -omrhody had shorted out—:>s if T hail .-honied ont at the ton of my voice. 'Von a're g'-HiiiL' old.' ft ciini' to me with a horrihle shock. T wasn't to have any real life at all. After all this

waiting, there wasn't to be any coming out into the middle of things. •'And my husband—the one that will never come —when I thought of him, 11 ■felt angry, rather than, su;d. I was as angry as I had heen onco as a young girl when a funny little man who had promised to take me to a dance forgot all about coming for me. I felt as ii I had heen cheated. GOING «OWN\ HILL.

'•I know my life will, become narrower and meaner as time goes on. I know my father will get a little crazier, and my mother a little fussier, and my sister a little ghastlier, and tliat my room will get .smaller and stuffier, and that 1 shall get gloomier, every.year. But I shall stay here for all that. And while I'm sitting here I'll know/ that outside—over there, somewhere—are life and work and men and women and the wind sweeping across the open country. •'People should not have hidden things from me. T thought that life would be a short uphill climb of preparation, and then I'd be on a broad, flat, sunny table-land, and have lots of time to look around and see tftings and do things, before the short,, sharp descent. But it hasn't been that way at all. I was | on what I thougM was the ascent when I suddenly I fount! myself going down-hill. That is all there has been to it. Oh, it's all wrong.

•'lt hasn't been fair. It hasn't been a bit fair." , PARKELL'S SISTER. STORY OF HER TRAGIC DEATH. \ London, September 29. One day last week a lady was accidentally drowned while bathing at Ilfrucambe. The name she had given at the boardinghouse was Oeri>a Palmer;: tatt tt was proved at the inquest that she was : Miss Catherine Anna Parnell, a sister of Charles Stewart Parnell, the famous Irish leader. ! The news of Miss Parnell's death was received in Ireland with profound regret. One of four sisters, Anna Parnell was held to he the ablest of the family, and j in appearance and temperament she was I extraordinarily like her brother Charles, j She was the directing force of the Ladies' Land League, which ultimately achieved the great victory that broke the back of what seemed to be an omnipotent Liberal Government conducted on coercionist lines, with good intentions i and disastrous results. How fearless she was is well illustrated by the follow- ) ing anecdote:— (. "One evening the late Lord Spencer, i the Lord-Lieutenant of the period, was : riding through Westmoreland-street, pro- I teeted by an escort of dragoons with drawn sabres. Suddenly, the little figure of a young woman—a schoolgirl apparently—was at the iiead of the Viceroy's horse. The steel-strong wrist of the woman held the plunging charger, and over the clamor and confusion could be heard the cold imperative question in the Parnell tone that was never foi'gottcn by anyone who once heard it: 'What do you mean by interfering with / my buliding of houses for evicted tenants :down in Limerick?'" It was concerning the Ladies' Land League that Charles Stewart Parnell complained in 1882 that it had taken the country out of his hands, and that it should be suppressed or he would leave public life. This league was never formally dissolved, but it died of inanition, for Parnell stopped the supplies. A few years before the death of her brother, Miss Anna Parnell is said to have lived under an assumed nanve in the neighborhood of Brockley, London, She was nearly always alone, and was noticeable for her sad and abstracted i air.

Her costume, too, with its short walking skirt and serviceable hoots, and. in wet weather, a long coat of Irish cloth, was in those days calculated to attract attention; but, despite a slight wildness in her manner, her grave dignity quelled impertinent looks or remarks. In a word, she was a remarkable figure.

The mystery which attached to her at that time was increased —for the few who knew her identity—by the fact that her brother came occasionally to stay with her. and always did so under the name which she had assumed.

The mystery was not lessened by the fact that their relations were generally supposed to be somewhat embittered.

Miss Parnel! was extremely fond of swimming, and those who knew her prowess maintain that she must have been seized with cramp.