San Antonio Daily Light. (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 10, No. 243, Ed. 1 Friday, November 14, 1890 Page: 7 of 8
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.Daily
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 14 1890.
RAILROAD TIME TABLE.
I. A G. N. RAILROAD.
DEPARTURES.
For St. Louis via Iron Moun-
tain or M. K. &. T gs:4sja. m
For St. Louis via Iron Moun-
tain route 3:50 p. m
For Laredo 11-10 a. m.
ARRIVALS.
From St. Louis Iron Mountain
and M. K. & T 10;55 a. m
From St. Louis Iron Mountain
and M. K. & T. routes 10:00 p. m
From Laredo 3:35 p. m
SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD.
THROUGH EXPRESS EAST.
Leave for New Orleans Houston
and Galveston...9:oop.m.and 9.25 a. m
ARRIVE FROM THE EAST.
Arrive from New Orleans Hous-
ton and Galveston 6:sQa.m. and 4:10 p.m
THROUGH WEST.
Leave for San Francisco El
Paso and Eaglo Pass 4:40:p. m
Arrive from San Francisco El
Paso and Eagle Pass 8:55 a. m
THE :s. A. & A. P. R. R. —MISSION
ROUTE.
DEPARTURES.
Leaves for Kerrvme daily ex-
cept at 5:00 p. m
Leaves for Galveston Houston
and Cuero daily
Cat 8:45 a. m
Leaves forCorpusChristl.Rock-
port and Beeville daily ex-
cept Sunday at 2:oo]p. m
□’arrivals.
From Kerrville daily except
Sunday at $9:45 a. m
From Corpus Christi. Rockport
and Beeville daily except
Sunday at 2:(0p. m
From Galveston Houston and
Cuero daily.
' aL. 7:lOTp. rr.
Knights of Pythias Endown-
ment Rank offers the best and safest in-
surance. For further particulars ask any
member of the order or T. B. Johnson at
the Light office
AN EXTRA BARGAIN.
Two and one-half acres (12 lots) near
Aransas Pass depot can be had at a bar-
gain if bought early. Will be in market
only a short time. Apply to Jno. T.
Hambleton & Co. No. 4 East Commerce
street.
TtieUnlversal Verdict or theZPeople
Who nave used Clarke’s Extract of Flax (Pa-
pUJon) Skin Cure award it the first and highest
place as a remedial agent In all cases of Skin
Diseases. Erysipelas Eczema Pimples un-
atghtiy blotches humiliating eruptions. Bolls
Carbuncles. Tetter etc. all yield to this won-
derful preparation at once. Price SI for a
large bottle at F. Kalteyer’s Drug Store.
Clarke's Flax Soap is good for the Skin.
Trv it. Price 25 cents 2-17 (1)
cWELL'SWHAIR BALSAM.
If gray gradually restores color
elegant tonic dressing 50c $lO. Drug-
gists or fl size prepaid by express
for $l. E. 8. Wells Jersey City ly
for:isale--a bargain.
’•Rock House tour large rooms and
kitchen hall thirty feet long servant’s
room bath room hot and cold water
pantry wood shea and wash house. Lot
70x150 feet centrally located. Nice
shrubbery in front yard. Price >5300;
one-half cash. Jno. T. Hambleton* Co.
? HF
— — ■'■wssa
tfORjSALE BY ‘F. KALTEYER &'SON. ly
<-«RANCHuSALOON I
Corner Dolorosa'and South JloreslStreets.
The’ Finest Gentlemen’s’Resort
in the citv. Headquarters for
the Finest Brands cf
Liquors. Wines & Cigars
Ciurteous and polite treatment a
all times. *4-I2tf
CALL AND SEE
VAL. LORRA
I The Merchant Tailor.
ke'has received the largest stock
I of Imported and Domestic
I Suitings ever brought
■ to San Antonio.
■ He will make you a
frIRST-CLASS FITTING SUIT
| At the Lowest Ruling Prices.
I Don’t forget to call at once on the
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■ —Dont die in the bouse "Rough on
■Lite.” Clears out rats mice flies
Kaches bed-bugs. 15c. (6) 9-ly™
I NOT PROVEN;
—o r —
ESTHER HILL’S SECRET.
BY GEORGIANA M. CRAIK.
"I am going away on Monday. Oh
wait till after Monday” she said be-
seechingly.
"Do you still want to go on Monday
then?” he asked her. “Does to-night
make no difference.”
“No no!” she hurriedly said.
“If the others knew you could not
go. Only let me do it and I will go
this moment and tell them.”
“Tell them— this?” she cried with
startled eyes.
“Yes—tell them” he said “that you
are going to be my wife.”
She gave him a’ strange wistful look
at this answer; then said sadly—-
“ You could not tell them that.” And
after a moment—“l shall never be your
wife.”
At this he began to make some im-
petuous reply to her; but after a few
words be suddenly arrested himself
and instead of saying more drew her si-
lently and passionately to his breast. It
was little wonder if as he held her so
he did not believe that she would never
marry him: he felt too strong to make
such a belief possible.
He was well enough satisfied when
she had left him with the result of his
evening’s work even though—as was
only natural—the thought of her secret
fretted and fevered him to-night to an
extent that it had never done before;
for though he would not have confessed
to any fear of it yet he wanted vehem-
ently to know it that he might get rid
of it once for all; he wanted to free
himself from the mystery of it and to
free her from its oppression. Now that
he had brought her so near to him he
could hardly endure to have this thing
standing between them even for a few
more hours. He wanted to know it and
make an end of it. It was like a thorn
in his flesh that galled him; but yet
chafed by it as he was. he was infinitely
happier than she was who when she had
left him felt like one who under sudden
temptation had stolen a great treasure
which she might indeed clasp for the
moment if she liked to her heart but
which she could speak of neither to
Gvd nor man and neither to God nor
man could turn for blessing or sym-
pathy.
For she had said to herself from the
first moment when she knew that it
had begun to be sweet to them to be to-
gether—"l will never let him marry
me” and with passionate sad reitera-
tion even in tne midst of all her im-
measurable love for him she said the
same thing now. She said—“He would
marry me perhaps even after be knew
all my story if I would let him do it;
but if he were to do it slowly day af-
ter day a sense of humiliation of what
he had done would creep upon him like
a dark shadow stealing over him; and
then when he had once begun to love
me less would not a time come at the
last—oh my God!” the poor thing cried
“surelv it would come—when even he
would begin to doubt and watch me.”
This was what she thought; and
though her fears might be delusive yet
as they rose before ner she only knew
that she had no strength to face them:
he might marry her and never cease to
love and trust her but against this
divine possibility what a weight upon
the other side was there not to set!
With hopeless unutterable pain after
she had left him she began to think
how she was to tell her story to him.
Ah was it not hard that she must tell
it?—hard that she could not die to-night
before she ever saw his face again? As
she lay presently awake in bed she be-
gan to feel as if to tell it to him with
her own lips would almost kill her. She
had half promised him that she would
do it. but she amid not do it she said;
she could write it to him but she could
not speak it to him.
She lay thinking—awake nearly all
the night; till dining those long hours
at last she made a plan of what she
would do—a wild sad plan over which
she wept the most heart-broken tears
of all her life.
CHAPTER XXII.
She was alone once more in the quiet
room at Mrs. Coulson’s. How strange
it seemed to her to be there again with
all the former things unchanged about
her —no mark made here by all the
revolution through which she had pass-
ed! What lonely hours had she spent
in this room brooding over the past—
that past seeming to her then the one
great reality and yie present—the life
going on around her—like a dream: and
mny all that old story had become
dream-like—she could no longer fix her
mind upon it—and the world had tilled
with a new thought and got glorified
for her—in spite of all her sorrow—with
the glory pf a great light.
It seemed to herself as she sat down
once more by her solitary fire as if she
was not the same but another woman
happier and richer even half heart-
broken as she was. For her life had
been so poor before so destitute of all
that can give warmth and color to hu-
man lives and now it had lost its pov-
erty and its coldness for evermore.
Whatever fresh pain it had gained it
had gained along with it the blessing
of this love. She said to herself—“l can
never suffer again as I used to suffer;
all sorrow has become ennobled now.”
Nay it almost seemed to her at present
as if she for herself could not suffer
any more at all; all the sharp anguish
of the future seemed to consist in the
thought that she must give Guy Dun-
stan pain that it was forbidden to her
not to be happy herself but to make
him happy. She could hardly pity her-
self nor feel regret for herself ner
think otherwise than that for her own
part she had gained a divine and im-
measurable gain. Except for his sake
she would have had no least hour of all
the past hours unspent: except for him
she would undo nothing and repent of
nothing she said.
“I think it would be glorv enough
and light enougn ror my wnoie lite"
she thought “only to live on. knowing
that I loved him;” and it seemed to her.
as she sat here thinking that merely to
be allowed to stay in this place quietly
and to see him now and then and to
feel that he loved her just so well as to
make it sweet to him sometimes to look
into her face and touch her hand and
speak to her.—it seemed to her that to
gain this would i>e to gain happiness
enough to make all other renunciation
cease to have in it even so much as a
touch of bitterness. Was it not this
indeed that she had hoped for and had
dreamed vain dreams of gaining?—this
—that she might close his lips for a lit-
tle while till what he felt for her now
should presently sink down into such a
quietly resigned affection that she
might still go on living here beside him.
making her heaven out of her silent
love. This for these few weeks had
been her foolish dream.
He had an engagement in Scotland
for some time past that was to take him
from home from the Wednesday of this
week until the Thursday or Friday of
the next. Before she had left his house
to-day she had said to him (making in
this request her first step toward car-
rying out that sorrowful plan of hers)—
“Will you let me write what I have
to say to you? I want to do that—not
to speak it. Will you let me write it
and give it to you when you go away?”
“I had hope that you would have told
it to me to-night” he had answered.
But after a little while he had yielded
to what she asked.
‘‘l want you to read it after you are
gone—not here” she said to him earn-
estly “that you may have that week
while you are away to think over it. If
you were here and could see me at
once you might say something on the
impulse of the moment—and 1 want to
save you from doing that. Do you un-
derstand me?” she asked him wistfully.
“Yes—l understand that you find it
very hard to put any faith in me.” he
answered half in earnest; but when the
tears had started to her eyes at this
he had promised her what she asked.
“You shall have your own way” he
said. “Y r ou shall do whatever will
satisfy you best. Write your account
and I will take it with me. So that you
end your mystery I won’t quarrel with
the way in which you do it.”
And then he had parted from her with
that promise and with an utter unsus-
piciousness that hail gone to her heart
like a stab. “For I iove him so and
yet I am going to deceive him” she
said to herself. “Oh is there no escape
for me—no other thing that I can do
but this?” And she burst into bitter
tears as she asked herself this question.
But yet she could not think of any way
of escape nor discover any other thing
that she could do.
They had all been full of tenderness
and kindness to her when she left them.
I do not say that there had not been
some natural moments of late when
Miss Dunstan had wished that she had
never seen the widow’s face and when
Helen had been jealous of her; but yet
even to the end these moments hail
been the exceptions to their general
feeling toward tier. To Helen indeed
affection for Esther had become for
some time past a half-unwilling en-
grossment.—a main involuntary occu-
pation of her slightly occupied days.
Esther had given a new interest to her
life; she had added too sensibly to its
few pleasures for her absence or pres-
sence to be a matter of indifference to
her; she had been so patient and gentle
to her that cold by nature as Helen
was more warmth had been kindled in
her heart by Esther than any one else
except Mr. Dunstan had kindled there
for a long time past. It was a selfish
enough affection probably but yet
from a girl like Helen it had been a
tribute that had been worth the gain-
ing. On the day before Mrs. Hill went
away she had done the unusual thing of
putting her arms about her neck and
had exclaimed—
“I cannot bear to have you go! lam
not good to you always—l know that;
but when you go away what am Ito
do?” And as she said this the tears
hail started to her eyes.
When she went away Gabrielle drove
home with Esther for they would not
let her return to her own house alone
—warm-hearted impulsive Gabrielle
whose foolish affectionate parting
speech some of them had laughed at
just as they were starting.
“I wish you had no other place than
this to go to!—I wish you had no other
house that would take you in!” was
what Gabrielle chose to say in her im-
pulsive way; and it was Helen who had
laughed at her; for Helen for her own
part kept her rare words of affection
ror private use and had always rather
an unkind contempt for the sort of na-
ture that could make public coin of
them. But Esther loved the foolish
lips that spoke so better than she loved
Helen’s and some one else too had look-
ed with approving eyes at the girl as
she had flushed up and made her little
speech.
Mr. Dunstan closed the carriage door
upon them with scarcely a word of fare-
well.
“I endure to let you go away now.
but you shall never go again!” he had
said a few minutes before arresting
Esther at the foot of the stairs as she
came down after putting on her bonnet
before she joined the others: and then
he had hardly spoken to her any more.
After all in any strict sense it had
scarcely been a leave-taking at all for
the old life was to be resumed again to-
morrow. She was still to come to them
every day as she had done before —
simply to return to the old way—to
change what had been for a little while
for what had been before that began.
And yet to her at least the change was
no little one when she found herself
once more sitting solitary by the fire-
side that had almost become unfamiliar
now.
She had to write her letter to him.
She was sitting idle for a little while at
present but for no moment of the last
two days had she ever forgotten that
she had to do this. The thought of it
bad been haunting her and making her
sick at heart even when she had sat—-
as she had been sitting at this hour last
night—by his side with her hand in
bis.
In her vain efforts to escape from this
hard necessity of telling her story to
him she had evea made one forlorn ao-
peai to mm. sue nao saia io mm—ue-
seechingly—with her eyes raised to his—-
" Could we not forget these two last
days and go on as if you had not spok-
en to me? Would it be so impossible?
If you could care for me only a little
less and be content —as I should be I
think ”
But he had interrupted her here with
an interruption that closed her lips
once for all.
“ You might be content with many a
thing us far as lam concerned”he had
answered “but 1 can be content with
one thing only and that one thing is to
have no part of you—body or soul-
separate from me. I must have that
or I give you up altogether. It may
suit yew to love me and live apart
from me but lam not fitted for that
arrangement. I must have you here—-
the life of my life—not a shadow of my
life only that I cannot grasp”
And then after that she had said no
more. But—“Oh my dearest you do
not know what you are doing!” she had
thought silently and bitterly again and
again to herself. “If you knew would
you not have more mercy on me than
this?”
She roused herself after a time and
forced herself to set about her task
and take the first step on the hard way
that she had resolved to follow. How
hard even this beginning was no words
could say. As she sat down at her desk
and placed paper before her and took
up her pen to begin to write the first
sentence of her letter the thought that
with her own bands she was forced to
do this cruel thing seemed as if it
would burst her heart. She could write
nothing for a little while; she sat over-
whelmed with the passionate sense of
her own sorrow—with the thought that
by her own act she had to take her own
life away.
She said presently to herself when she
had become calmer—“l will tell him the
bare facts and nothing more: 1 cannot
plead my own cause with him nor try
to tell him what I have suffered;” and
so she began to write at last in words
that should convey to him when he
should read them no comprehension of
the anguish with which they had been
written.
She wrote slowly with infinite pain
—more than once burning a full sheet
and writing it afresh; more than once
breaking down and falling into an out-
burst of passionate weeping. When her
candles were burning low in their sock-
ets and her fire had almost died out
her letter was still unfinished: and then
at last she said to herself—“l cannot
finish it to-night.” She had tried and
could not. He had told her that he
would come for it to-morrow insisting
on doing that he might be sure of see-
ing her alone; and she had wanted to
get it ready for him this evening but
she had to give the effort up at last.
Weary and worn out she went to bed;
and weary enough still she ended her
task next morning.
It bad been settled that she was to re-
turn to her original early hours and go
again to Helen as she Had done at the
beginning at twelve o’clock. This morn-
ing as she left the bouse. George Gil-
bert standing in the garden spoke to
her and she answered his greeting.
“How ill she looks!” he thought to him-
self startled as he saw her into a mo-
mentary painful pity for her (though
his heart had been hard enough toward
her during these last days); and at
Wrexham when she got there they all
said to her too—“ Why do you look so
ill?”
They took away her pallor.and brought
the color to her face by asking that.
“I sat up late and I did not sleep
well and my bead is aching a little* she
answered in excuse of herself and then
they petted her and scolded her.
“You never looked so ill all the time
you were with us” Gabrielle told her.
“You see what comes of having your
own way!”
“Tell me when you are going” Mr.
Dunstan said frankly to her at lunch-
eon in the hearing of the others “and
I’ll walk home with you.” And accord-
ingly when she bad said good-by to the
others be went with her.
They had walked that half mile to
Mrs. Coulson’s together more than once
before this; she said to herself now—“l
shall never walk like this with him
again.” But yet though she said this
she hardly believed it; it was too hard
to believe.
There was a little gleam of winter
sunset shining on them as they walked
with their faces to the west. The sun
was going down behind a network of
bare branches with a little break of
clear blue sky above all pallid and pure
and cold as winter skies are vet
beautiful with a peaceful light. She
said once —
“I think some trees when they are
bare in certain lights are so beautiful
that they are like things to dream of.”
And then they talked about the trees.
She wanted to talk of something that
did not touch her nearly to keep other
talk away.
When they were near the house he
said to her—“lt is a little past four
o'clock; I am going to make you keep
mo till six.”
And then at a faint objection that
she made he laughed and—-
“ You are afraid of Mrs. Coulson.” he
said; “but 1 am not afraid of Mrs. Coul-
son in the least. Suppose she suspects
—what then? The whole village is wel-
come to suspect—and to know too—as
far as I am concerned.”
And then after that she was silent.
She only said once to herself —“When I
give up everything else may I not take
this?”
“ You never were in my room before”
she said to him presently when they
had entered the house. "I am glad that
you have come that I may be able to
think of you in it. Look—take my one
arm-chair; I have sat in it so many
hours. My fire will be brighter soon.
I will make it burn very bright to wel-
come you.”
He took the chair for a little while
and she knelt before the fire and coax-
ed it into a blaze and fed and trimmed
it. while he watched her all the while
and once he said to her with a smile—-
“l like to sit here and see you doing
this. I am glad that you know how to
make a hearth bright.”
Presently too when her work was
done before she rose be took her hand
and held it on his knee and so kept her
talking to mm tm tne nre made tire
color come into her face. He had to
let her so then. He said to her —“You
are getting scorched. Come here—and
we will sit down together.” And then
they sat down upon her sofa hand in
hand.
How fast the two hours passed—those
last two hours of life to her! She said
to him pathetically after a little while —
“Don't let us talk about the future
for we can’t see forward into that but
talk to me abvut the past. I am very
selfish I know—but I want you to tell
me things I can remember.”
And then he laughed at her. but pres-
ently he did what she told him while
she sat by his side letting her hand
close round his hand. She was scarce-
ly happy—how could she have been
knowing all tiiat she did know?—but
yet when these hours were over she
thought they had been like hours of
heaven.
When it was almost time for him to
go and her heart was feeling near to
breaking (though he did not know that)
she rose up at his request and brought
her letter and gave it to him. She had
made it up into a sealed packet.
“You will not read it till you are
gone: you promise me that?” she said
with a look of eager wistfulness into
his face as she held it a moment back
from him.
“I will not if you still tell me not to
do it” be answered.
“I do tell you so” she And then
she gave it to him. “I have only cour-
age to give it to you at all” she said
quickly “because I know that when
you have read it you cannot come back
to sneak to me.”
“And does that comfort you?” he ask-
ed her a little dryly.
But she did not answer this; she could
not jest with him.
“You are to take this week to think
over it. Do you understand that?” she
said with a kind of feverish earnest-
ness. “You are neither to speak to me
again nor to write anything to me till
you come back.”
“Very well; only—if Ido that—what
then?” he said; and as he spoke betook
her two bands and looked full at her.
“If 1 come back to you at the week's
end and ask you again to marry me
will you say yes to me then?”
He did riot understand the look
(though he thought he did) that came
into her face as he asked her this nor
the emotion that made the color fade
out of it.
“You will not come back” she said
in a low voice;—“but if you do—ves I
will do anything you ask me then.”
And as she finished sneaking she burst
into tears; and though be took her in
his arms and caressed and blessed her
he could not comfort her again.
Before the end—after she had been
crying for a little very bitterly—she be-
came very quiet as people sometimes
do round death beds. She let him hold
her to his heart almost in silence for a
minute before be went away. He said
a few last passionate words to her.
“Only be true to me” he said "and
neither of us need be afraid. I take
vour life—your whole life—past and
future—into mine.” •
Then she lifted up her arms in silence
about his neck and kissed him with
her first kiss—which he might have
thought was a kiss of acceptance but
which she knew was meant to be the
last as well as the first a kiss not of ac-
ceptance but of renunciation.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Only seven o'clock after he had been
?;one so long! She heard the hour strik-
ng and it seemed to her as if time had
been standing still so long did it ap-
pear since his voice had ceased to apeak
to her and the closing door had shut
the light out from her life.
She had been sitting in one place ever
since sitting like some one in a dream
haunted only by one feverish thought—-
a thought that frightened her with its
horrible temptation—that made her go
on saying to herself again and again—-
“ Why should 1 do this cruel thing?
Why should I not take what God gives
me'ami stay and be happy with him?”
Yesterday—a couple of hours ago—it
had seemed to her that she knew why
she should not do this but now con-
science had become dull her mind bail
got bewildered: only her heart alone
was crying to her. and wildly pleading
her right to be glad like other women.
She had but to sit still and he would
come back to her she said; only to be
passive—to wait and do nothing and he
would come.
She had been sitting with her hands
clasped on her knees thinking like this
for an hour in a sort of stupor dead
for the moment—because she was half
stunned—to everything except the feel-
ing of overwhelming desire for the
thing that she was giving up—when she
was roused from her inaction in a hard
enough way.
Almost a week had passed by this
time since that night when George Gil-
bert bad made the discovery that Mr.
Dunstan cared for Esther and the week
to him had been a terribly troubled one
for. vou remember she had sealed bis
lips by the promise she had extracted
from him long ago that he would never
tell her story unless he warned her first
that he was about to tell it; so that he
had been helpless all these davs. unable
so long as she remained at Wrexham
to see her alone and tell her that
be refused to be bound by his promise
any longer—full of remorse and of self-
reproach for his own blindness and
growing day by day with all he saw
(for his eyes were opened now) only the
more bitterly certain that bis suspicions
were true and that the mini to serve
whom he would almost have given his
life had been led by his fault into an
affection from which nothing but evil
and misery could ever come. »He had
been suffering from the thought of this
all the past week; and now she had
come home and he knew that he must
force himself to go and speak to her
and tell her that fie would not keep her
secret any more.
He had felt last night—the first night
of her return—that he ought to go and
say this to her but (even though his
heart was hard against her for what
she had done had tilled him with indig-
nation so that he had felt ready since
he had known of it to believe almost
anv evil of her) he shrank with such in-
Contimed on third p>*.
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San Antonio Daily Light. (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 10, No. 243, Ed. 1 Friday, November 14, 1890, newspaper, November 14, 1890; San Antonio, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1681259/m1/7/: accessed June 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .