The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, June 23, 1901, Page 1

INDSuURED WL L. Fox HUNT‘K NS he Right ¥on. ward Hicks-Beach, C. L., Chancellor is driving a dusty a—ofly that he with woul him. no woman e lover of another. will inherit n gentle s death 15000 acres o a, wit and cots- 5 ¥ . e red deer that run througt k and forest nk s mouth sometimes waters for Gloucester chees: he s of mutton and ¥ s of venison t load the pater- . he subsists on - [ diet of pork and . Kes eld? N he is one of those i ver, and, like the o vs doing the queeres make men yawp. » bad to ride around on sink that back there in — good, green, healthy, — there is waiting for fortune? t we were all as lucky! h is 33 years old, & graduate arterhouse School, Surrey. a the English grmy and was a 2k 1odes’ irregular com- 4 did so much skirmish fight- Boers before the present war broke out. Is a man of talent and culture, and re Why? Simply to be at the world. ot have the girl that he loves, and if he cannot do that he will do the next best thing, which is to get as far away from her as possible. That is a way that lovers have. They are a trifle pouty and inclined to make things as hard for themselves as they know how if they cannot have all their own way. There is another reason perhaps for some of his slight eccentricities. Shortly after leaving school he was in- dulgicg in the national sport of fox hunt- ing, and while racing across the wold to head the hounds his horse fell, throwing him to the ground and injuring him so severely that it was years before he re- covered. His health never entirely recu- perated, and he still shows a mixture of the delicacy which continued ill health brings, yet overborne and negatjved by his naturally forceful character. It was after his return from South Africa, coming home a bronzed hero, that he met the young lady who was his fate (nameiess here forevermore), but his mother had otWer plans for him. Sir Michael Edward, his uncle, had mar- ried not the daughter of a hundred earls it is true but the daughter of three earls, and why should not he make a match which would more closely cement the wealthy Hicks-Beaches of Gloucester to England’s nobility? In-the family quarrel which ensued his father sided In with his. mother and Sir Michael of course having married well himself could not reverse his decision, and his wife was bound to uphold the merits of aristocratic wives for young men with futures, so it became a case of all against one. Life became a.burden and a misery. England, the estate, his family on one hand, on the other side of the balance a frail ~girl; not so wonderfully different from other girls would she appear to the rest of us, but'to him it was all the world and more. There is the wonderful power of love working at its strongest. Is it a disease? Almost would we believe that the cynic who said so was right, for it is a strangé malady of the mind that drives one so far frcm the path of reason and natural human tendency. The desire to become a recluse as far as concerned the life he had known led the lover to- studying accounts of far-away lands. In a riewspaper advertisement of a land company he saw a description of FremTiNG TEE BoERS Bakersfield which appealed to him, and there he went. Leis bis lands, left his family, left his lady love. Arriving at Bakersfield he be- came acquainted with the proprietor of an opera-house in course of construction. A fancy struck him that nothing could be more of a change and diversion than life around the stage. He asked for the posi- iiocn of watchman that he might always the place, and of all n lover a desertéd he lcneliest. A dead tree in a is a wild enough setting for the of Merlin and Vivien, but a stage scenery tree, stowed away in the wings, with the auditorium stretching away in the darkness dim and vast, is far more o owls hoot in the mimic forest, but as the rope hu in the winds that always will pervade a stage the tackle giv creaks and swishes that make the eyes bulge and the heart halt as do children’s when the ghost is about to appear in a thrilling story. Under the stage is a room which an- swers well for the hermit's cave, and here he can muse upon what has beem and wonder what is yet to be. Waiting, waiting for death to steal to Merrie Eng- land. Waiting for the wires to flash their message over mountain and under sea to tell him that a cold, stiff form has been laid in state in the family chapel and no longer bars his way to love and fortune. This glgomy room beneath the dusty boards is what he calls home—if it is per- missible for a wanderer to call any place such. His meals he takes where he hap- pens to fancy. At times he lends a hand with the scene ting, and chuckles to think that if the audience knew what and who he was they would have more eyes for him than for the well-filled pink tights that fiit and twinkle before the footlights. But the living, wakeful moments of even a mretropolitan theater are few enough and far enough between to allow much dust to settle, and the opera-house at Bakersfleld is a grand place for a man who would withdraw from the world and think. Love likes to live in the past, and s0 it is that some one has laughingly said of the poets that their féet wers turned backward, their toes pointing out behind them as thcugh they would stray back into times gone by, of which they write. Thus, t0o, the lover is never less alone than when alone, for then ke can in thought be all with her who fills his mind. And of the girl herself. Does she write? Does he write? Is she waiting for him all years when he is so far away? And the misanthrope will ask, is it all worth the while? The years of privation, of heart-hunger, that even wears the body ange these long thin and ages it before its time. Is the fever worth the having? Is it not better to be a fat, comfortable, well-fed some- body than a lovelorn, listless waiting ne- hot through again and again each the arrows of the blind areher, who never has the eourage to' kill his vie- tims, but plans his mercies as did the kind-hearted surgeon who amputated the patient’s limb an inch at a time. Is love worth while? is a_question that William Hicks-Beach must be better able to answer than most, for he is a man who can feel keenly and live without forget- ting. He has seen himself rapidly ag'ng; his mother has been laid in her grave un- seen by him. He has never heard words of forgiveness from her lips—never can. He is waiting for a father to die*a father who will be all the more to him when he is gone. He is dying himself. All his youth is dying away from him, leaving him a shell-mentally and physically a shell. And what for? For the difference between cne girl and another. A differ- ence that the scales wonld not tell. A difference that the Kkeenest anaiyst in chemical research could not observe. A difference that the camera, which holds the fleeting shadows, might show to be in favor of a thousand, ten thousand oth- ers, who would be glad to have this man of wealth and family. Yet for the difference between that one girl and ke others he will hold time, fam- ily and even the best part of himself well lost if she is won. And so would any of us.