The Cheyenne Daily Leader

One of the Unwritten.
"Minimum" in Inter Ocean.

"Bessie is a pretty little thing," said Mr. Searle, standing in the bay-window of his wife's sitting-room, and looking down at the bright-clad figure flitting by on the street below.

Mrs. Searle put down her sewing, and came over to stand by her husband. She saw his gay smile and nod and the answering bow of Miss Latting. She bowed, too, but the smile faded from Bessie's eyes, though she responded politely enough; as she slackened her pace before turning the corner.

Mr. Searle turned and took up his hat, not looking at his wife.

"Do you want to walk down town with Bessie, Harry! I fear you won't overtake her! She always walks so fast going down to business in the morning. Hal, Harry, dear!" A tall boy of 10 years came in from the next room: "Yes, mamma."

Run quick, dear, and overtake Miss Latting. Tell her papa is coming."

"All right," and the lad dashed out the hall door.

Mr. Searle folded his newspaper into a very awkward little bunch, and walked into his bed-room, where he began walking about indecision.

Mrs. Searle came to the door. "Have you lost anything, Harry?" she asked.

"Where is my hat-brush?" asked Mr. Searle with sudden inspiration.

"There." Mrs. Searle pointed it out hanging in its usual pink satin and muslin pocket.

Mr. Searle felt himself obliged to take it down and brush his hat for two seconds.

Mrs. Searle returned to her sewing. Her husband paused for a moment in the doorway, following her to admire her with a sort of artistic pleasure in the gentle face, the dark hair, the bright morning gown, and the graceful womanly figure in the low chair, her lap full of children's mending.

"You are a dear, Sue," he said, bending over her to kiss her.

"What would you like for dinner?" asked Mrs. Searle, not returning the caress.

"Whatever you like; good-by."

Mr. Searle hurried down the steps and joined Miss Latting with a little feeling of grievance in his heart. Sue was so unresponsive, so practical.

"Isn't it a heavenly morning?" said Bessie. "I feel as if I were walking on air. It is a day for roses and air-castles."

"I'm going to get mamma some roses with my dollar," said Master Hal. "It is her birthday, you know. Can't I walk on down town with you and get them now, papa?"

"It is too near school time, my boy. Come down to the office after school and I'll go around to the office with you. Bring Puss."

"All right. Good-by."

"Good-by."

Mr. Searle and Miss Latting turned into Michigan avenue and walked townward under the shady trees.

"How beautiful the lake is this morning," said Mr. Searle.

"Isn't it?" cried the young girl. "I wish I could float away on it forever."

Little Hal ran into his mother's sitting-room to find his spelling-book. But she was not there. Her work-basket was overturned on the floor and two of the spools were tangling merrily under the kitten's paws. He tried her bed-room door, but it was locked.

Tontine came down stairs at the moment with Puss and the baby, chattering volubly in French to her charges. For one of those unexplainable reasons of childhood Hal grew suddenly wroth:

"I wish you would stop that lingo," he cried. "Stop it, I say," stamping his foot.

"I will not," cried Tontine, with inflammable temper. "Be still, you naughty little child."

Mrs. Searle opened her door

"Hal," she said soberly.

"Mamma," cried the young heir, "send Tontine away and get a new nurse. Puss ought to have a governess anyway. She is nearly nine."

Mrs. Searle stood perfectly quiet for a moment, and even the baby looking at her saw a strange expression in her face. He put up his little arms and began cooing coaxingly.

She took him holding him closely to her breast, and kissing him repeatedly before she spoke.

"Go to school at once, Hal," she said. "Never speak so again. Tontine, you may take Puss out for an hour. Good-by, dears. Be good children." Then she went into her bed-room and closed the door.

"Mamma didn't kiss me," said Puss, walking with Hal.

"Well, I didn't deserve it, and she wouldn't give you one before me," responded her brother, with philosophical insight.

Baby Searle could have told a strange story of the next hour in his mother's chamber had he been gifted with memory and language beyond his months. He could have told of a sobbing woman pacing the floor in a pale-faced misery, of a passion of angry tears and a strong, calm-rising of resolve and that marvelous devotion of women, that love which "hopes and endures and is patient."

"You can't make me stop loving you, my husband," she said, looking at herself, woman fashion, in her mirror. "I must love you even if you are cruel and thoughtless. Why, Bessie Latting! I wish I had left her in that wretched sewing work. To think that I should have begged Harry to give her writing in his office. No, I don't wish it. It was right to help her, and the poor child means nothing. Harry admires her and encourages her to talk. How can he, how can he! O, she is young and pretty, and I—am I growing old! Yes, there is a gray hair. Nonsense, Harry loves me for more than my good looks. Yes, dear heart, you do," taking up his picture from her dressing-case and bending over it with all the fond intentness of a betrothed maiden. "Yes, you do, you do, and this fancy of yours isn't the real you. You, the best, truest you is mine, my husband. mine. We haven't been happy together all these years for nothing, and I'll not let go of the heart you gave me. It is mine, isn't it, you blessed baby!"

She took her little one in her arms again and began walking back and forth with swift resolute steps forming her plans. Tontine must go away. Her mother's heart turning with grief to Hal's anger gave her this key of relief. Tontine then must go away, and Puss must have a governess as Hal had said. They must plan their long lake journey as early as possible, and the new governess must go with them everywhere.

"I will take care of Hal and baby myself, but Puss is in urgent need of a governess. Darling little Puss! She is the apple of papa's eye, and he will try to make himself believe that all is for the girl's good that he suggests Miss Latting. Bessie is clever enough. She can teach Puss all she need to learn in a summer tour, then unless my plan fails—"

Her heart stilled momentarily at the thought, and a hard feeling in her throat made the tears rush to her eyes, "my plan cannot fail, for I love my husband." She repeated the words aloud slowly twice, "God is good and God is Love," she added in a sort of consecration.

"He will see her constantly and he will find out where he is drifting."

II.

When Mr. Searle came from business at lunch time he found his wife very talkative and attractive, very grateful for the flowers and the fan he brought her in memory of her birthday. She had quite forgotten the day until Hal had spoken of it.

"I want something, Harry," she confessed, when he made a little remark admiring her vivacity.

"Well, madame, you shall have it, to one-half of my kingdom. What is it—a parasol with gold handles or a new phaeton cushion?"

I want to go traveling next week instead of next month. Can't we hurry our summer trip a little?"

"Hal's school isn't out," objected Mr. Searle, with a distinct vision before his mind's eye of Bessie Latting, fair and coquettish and dainty as she had waved him au revoir at the office.

"I know, but a week more or less will make little difference. Besides he might study a little with the governess I want for Puss. Puss really needs the lake journey, Harry. Sometimes she looks pale."

"Does she? Why Sue, when? I thought she was very well"

"So she is," admitted Mrs. Searle.

"Besides, we can't afford a governess," added the head of the house. "Traveling on the lake is dear, and hotel bills in Canada are not small. We shall have to pay for the nurse."

"I have given Tontine notice," said Mrs. Searle, with outward serenity. "I prefer looking after baby myself in the warm weather, and we may be able to find some nice, lady-like girl who would be companionable for us, and able to care for Puss."

"Bessie might go," said Mr. Searle.

There was a second's silence. Mrs. Searle carefully sugared her strawberries, then passed the bowl to her husband. He looked at her steadily as she answered.

"That is a very good plan, a very good one."

Mr. Searle laughed a little. "I believe you are rather fond of Bessie, Sue," said he.

"I have always been Bessie's friend, dear," she said, simply.

Some way Mr. Searle began talking about other matters, and the traveling was not discussed again until evening.

"I spoke to Bessie about it this afternoon. Sue," said Searle. "She will come to see you in the morning."

Miss Latting was truly very largely unconscious of herself while talking with her friends of the proposed journey. But thinking it all over in the seclusion of her little rooms in Mrs. Finnigan's Sixteenth street boarding-house, her silly little blonde head took unto itself divers vain and foolish notions. They were not very well formulated notions, nor were they of a positively wrong class, but they were imbued with a transcendental novel she had lately been reading, wherein affinities played leading parts, and lawful affection was somewhat snubbed as antiquated and countrified.

To do her justice, in the days that followed Bessie Latting felt no more than the mere sensuous charm of the water and sky and lake breezes, and the dark eyes that looked sometimes into her own.

The Searles were always together, and none of their fellow passengers dreamed of the stakes of happiness and peace for which the wife was playing.

Searle was attentive to Bessie, walking with her and talking with her often, and once while they were all staying at a little village upon the St. Lawrence somewhere, he took her out rowing for a half day. But Puss went with them, and Sue, tired with a weary day's struggle for faith and courage, saw with secret pleasure that Bessie came home petulant and fatigued, declaring that rowing was not at all nice. The days slipped away quietly and Sue was beginning to long for the end of it all. One night in Quebec her husband came to her where she was sitting alone on a little balcony of their hotel. "Sue, dear," said he, "I am homesick. Let us go home." He sat down beside her and took her hand. She put her other over his. "You have a fever, Harry," she said. "I thought there was no malaria here." She stood up and put her cool hand on his forehead.

"Don't think so," said he. "It is warm and I have been walking."

"Have Bessie and Puss gone to their room?"

"Yes."

"Come in, Harry, please, and let me bathe your head."

"Nonsense, Sue! No, thank you. I mean." He rose and drew her hand through his arm. "You come in," he commanded, "and pack your trunk. We are going home by train to-morrow. I am tired of all this."

Sue went to her room without a word and made ready for the morrow's journey. There was a soft, sweet look in her blue eyes as she kissed her sleeping children before she went to rest.

III.

"I am glad to be at home, home, home," murmured the delirious man, turning his large, bright eyes upon the little blonde woman in an apron who crept with a frightened face to give him his medicine, "but this isn't home. Where is Sue!"

"Mrs. Searle is lying down," whispered Bessie.

"Resting! Well, well. Home, home, home. Your hand is very small and soft, Bessie. Are you happy! Go away, go away. Sue, Sue!"

Mrs. Searle came quickly through the doorway across the darkened room, and knelt down beside the low bed, lifting her husband's head, quieting him with her gentle touch, and kissing the fevered brow.

He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them his gaze rested upon Bessie. He clasped his wife's hand firmly, looking at the young girl with a singular pitying and sorrowful expression. "Go away, child," he said, turning his head toward Sue. He fell asleep shortly, and Sue knelt there beside him alone far into the midsummer night. At last he opened his eyes.

"Sue," he said softly. She saw that he knew her.

"Yes, Harry, dear," she whispered.

"Are we at home?'

"Yes."

"Will you forgive me?"

She looked into his eyes without a word He put his thin hand up against her thin face. "I believe my wife has fallen in love with me," smiling faintly

"Stop talking, Harry. Take your medicine."

But she could not help asking just for a sound of the sweet assurance his eyes were giving her. "What about my husband"

"He is a madly infatuated fellow, Sue, and it's hopeless for him. He is just beginning to understand his wife."