WAS HIS MARRIAGE A FAILURES?

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2719, 14 December 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

WAS HIS MARRIAGE A FAILURES?

♦ ■ ■ The first timo I met young Culbertson was on a lazy day Inst spring, in one of the card rooms of the Social Art Club in Philadelphia. I got a whiff of smoke from tlie he was puffing. The aroma was delightful, and tho impression that it made upon me was that Culbertson was a man of educated and somewhat extravagant tastes, though not of sufficient means always to gratify them. I became interested in him ; and my interest was repaid, not only by tho discovery that my first impression was o:orrcct, but that hiH was a most unique character. In due timo we became quite intimate, and the intimacy, while increasing my interest, at tho same timo filled me with a sincere regard for the young 1 fellow. Commercially, I found him to bo in a moderately prosperous business ; morally, I found him to ba a modern Joseph—staunch in hiß virtue, though beset on all bauds by temptation, before which a less sturdy charactor must have fallen prone. He was a puzzle to me, which at times I gavo up all hope of solving. Now gay, frivolous, light-hearted, ho would suddenly becomo sober, solemn, and morose, and the motamorphoais was nearly always without apparent reason. All efforts to draw from him the causo wore gently but firmly repulsed. On other occasions, he would leave me suddenly, and dart off almost without a word, to be gono sometimes two or three days. I remember an instance last summer, while we were spending a fortnight at Long Branch. YVe were seated together on the piazza of the West End. This morning was hot and stifling. Tho wind had been from off shore for several days, aDd the sun had shriveled the flowers in beds on the hotel lawns, and so baked the drives as to keop the watering carts incessantly busy laying tho dust. Suddenly Culberston looked up from his paper. "Egad!" he exclaimed, "it is the 10th of August, isn't it? I had almost forgotten." Then he disappeared into the house, and half an hour after I saw him jump into the coach that was about starting for the train bound New Yorkward. Two days after I picked up a copy of the World, and read in the news from Bar Harbour: "Mr John Lowrence Culbertson, of Philadelphia, is stopping at Roddick's." On August 14th he was back at tho Branch. " How did you enjoy your Bar Harbor excursion ?" I asked. He looked hurt by the question, but did not seem surprised. " It was on business, not pleasure, that I went!" ke answered, curtly, and he was gloomy for two days afterward. During the recent American opera season in Philadelphia, I met him in the lobby during the last, act of "Les Huguenots." "I am tired of it," said, " let us stroll up to tho Bellevue and have some terrapin and champagne." There was not a vacant place in the cafe, so we went into the ladies' supper room. We had not been seated long before an elderly gentleman, a distinguished looking man, with white beard and moustache, of military cut, followed by a young woman, whose beauty attracted me on the instant, came in, and took seats at a table just opposite us. The woman was quite fair, and her figure, which was well displayed by a costume of most admirable fit, was simply ravishing iu its plump roundness. When at length I turned my admiring gaze from her back to Culbertson, I found an unaccountable change had come over him. He was frowning ominously. His checks were flushed, and his teeth had left their mark in his lower lip. " I say, old man," I cxelaimed in surprise, " what's come over you ? You look as mad as a hatter." My friend made no reply for an iustant, but ilecked a crumb from the tablecloth with his napkin. Then he poured some wine into a glass, and drank it off thirstily. "Not now!" he answered at length, " not now ! Later I may tell you all." Several times I noted that he cast rapid glauees at the woman I had noticed, and I also observed that she occassioually looked furtively at him. " Can it be that they are acquainted P I asked myself, and after due consideration I put away such an idea, as to improbable to build upon. Culberston was uuu-maUy quiet throughout our i-tay at the Bellevue and not until he had lighted a cigar aud we were well out on the street, did he volunteer to re-

mark. " Did you see tho fair woman in the beaded opera cloak, with white feather trimming ?" he asked at length, taking long pulls at his cigar between every other word. " Yes," I replied, "I saw there was a person of that description in the room." " Do yon know who f-lie is ?" he asked again. I confessed that I did not. " She is my wife !" The words fell upon my hearing like a thunderbolt.. Up to that moment, well ns I know Cnlberlsou, I. never suspected that he was married, or had ever had a romance. " Was your wife, you mean f" 1 sag--Bested when I had recovered from tho atagirering blow he had dealt me. " Yon are divorced.'' "Divorced!" he said, somewhat fiercely. "No, sir; I am not divorced. I pray heaven I never shall be. It is not because that old man—devil that he is— has not worked h'U'd to accomplish it, but, he has failed, failed signally at every poni', and his daughter is still my wife." Asrain he was silent for a while. His feeliusrs had evidently irot the better of him for the moment, and be would not trust himself to go on. It was in quite a retired nook of the Social Art Club that he told me his story at last, when the evening was wearing apace, and when the noisy boys who frequent the place in tho wee sma' hours before dawn had departed. Ho had come to Philadelphia when eighteen years old, he said—he is now twenty-three—and had secured a place at a small salary in Campbell's paper warehouse. Mr Campbell had been a friend of his father's friend, and was very kind tm him. lie was a poor youth, and his weekly stipend beins; scarcely sufficient to pay his board and clothe liirn, Mr Campbell generously offered him a homo in his own stately west-end mansion. Mr Campbell's daughter, Clarice, wn just budding - into womanhood then, and young Culbortson would have been le*s than flesh and blood had he not fallen in lovo with hor. Ho did fall, he told mo — fell madly, passionately, absorbingly in love. Clarice filled his every thought, mado him unfit for business, and fired his pnssiou to a pitoh that was maddening. The usual result followed they were secretly married, and when Mr Campbell found it out, Culbertson was imiominously dismissed from the Campboll home, and deposed from his position iu the paper warehouse. Then," to use his own words, " I fell into luck. An old college chum turned up, who befriendod me. He iravo mo a lift, and I was soon iu a way to mako a respectable income, but old Campbell would not relent. 1 bad deceived him, he said, and under no circumstances should I have tho wife I had won. As for her, her paternal love was great—sho

arlored her father. She was his only child. Mrs Campbell had died years be. fore, and, much aB I pleaded with her, she would not leave him. Her father's Word was law, and what ho bade her do was with her second naturo. Then tho old man tried to secure a divorce for his daughter, but I got down to his methods, and I havo outwitted him. " What I tell you now will cxplniu, I imagine, many things which have puzzled you. In the first place, lie. thought to force me into making application for a separation. Clarice was very good for a while. She flirted with men of acknowlodgcd loose reputation, men whoso breath was pollution, whose company was equal to social ostracism. I watched her carefully. I found she took no pleasure in her folly. She was acting under orders ; and I knew she would go so far and uo further. I declined to seek i divorcc. Then 1 found that my footsteps were being dogged from that day to this, by paid detectives in hope that I should fall into the snares of fair women that have been laid for me. Thank God, I have avoided all such pitfalls.'' "But the desertiou plea," I suggested, "Burel\ that is open to them now." " No," he answered, "you are wrong. I have inada It a point to visit the Campbell's regularly. On the twelfth day of each month I call upon my wife, present my card, and beg an audieuce. I am invariably refused." "But she could surely secure a divorce ou the ground of non-support ?" I ventured again. " Even that loophole is closed to her, or rather, to him," Culbertson answered, as he knocked the ashes from his cigar. "Every month, with the regularity of clock-work, I send to my wife a cheque for §100, and it is just as regularly returned to me. My dear friend, I have made this matter a study, and the sharpest lawyers in Philadeldhia havo been unable to outwit me. By no possible technicality can these bonds bo broken. Campbell will die some day, and the moment his breath leave* his body, Clarice will send for me. That she has promised, and, contradictory as it may seem, in view of her present attitude, I am assured that it will be tha happiest moment of her life when she can write that one word ' Come !' " Is it for love or money that young Culbertson is playing ? That is the only puzzle that remains to me in this curious charater study.—Town Topics.