KinSource - Tale of the Week - Yes, This Is Love

KinSource

Minnesota Tales

The St. Paul Daily Globe, August 6, 1890, p. 2

YES, THIS IS LOVE.

Dashing Mrs. Adelaide Mayne Has Disappeared From the City,

And With Her Has Gone Henry Friedland, an Alleged Albion.

It Is Believed They Have Quietly Levanted Off to Chicago.

A Story That Perhaps It Was Her Body Seen in the River.

Mount Airy mourns. No cyclonic disturbance has devastated the hilltop; there is no crape on any of the doors in the vicinity of L'Orient street, yet Mount Airy weeps. Mme. Adelaide Mayne, beautiful, highly educated, accomplished, a widow, has disappeared from the locality with a suddenness surprising in a lady of her sedate disposition, and appalling to her mother, Mrs. Kavanaugh, with whom she resided. Left as a legacy to the care of the elderly lady is a bright little boy five years old, and Mrs. Mayne's entire wardrobe. The many accomplishments and charmingly even disposition of the young widow made her extremely popular with a wide circle of acquaintances. She sang divinely, smiled bewitchingly, had read all the poets and was never as a loss no matter what the topic of conversation for brilliant retort or repartee. Moreover, she was the essence of culture and propriety, and seemed thoroughly devoted to the child who now asks plaintively at intervals all through the day and night, "Where is mamma? Oh, where did my mamma go to." Little wonder, then, that the neighbors idolized the charming widow, or that Henry Friedland - a youth boasting of his Anglican birth, despite his Hebraic cast of feature and the suspicion of an accent not English in his speech - little wonder that he fell a-wooing after a brief acquaintance with the belle of Mount Airy, and laid a visionary English fortune and his salary of fifty dollars a month at her dainty feet. Young Friedland was until recently employed by Habighorst & Co., East Seventh street. He was window trimmer for the firm. He first met Mrs. Mayne five months ago, when he became a boarder at the Kavanaugh residence. The story goes that his offers of marriage and promises of life-long devotion had been steadily ignored by the object of his adoration. At all events, a week ago Friedland left his employment and prevailed on Mrs. Mayne to go with him for a ride to Lake Gervais, and there endeth the first lesson.

The residents on the mountain top now speculate, gossip and wonder. The little birds twitter noisily about the window from which the widow was wont to drop dainty morsels for their enjoyment. The window is closed, the blind is down, and no one seems now to care what the dickey birds say. Since that lovely afternoon on which the widow and her escort went on a trip to the scene of the Gervais cyclone neither of them has been seen or heard of. "Murder and suicide," says somebody. "Bloody tragedy in the copse at Gervais; red-handed murderer escaping to his native country, with a slouch hat pulled down over his eyes and a dagger in his clenched fist," and a hundred other conjectures as thrilling are to be heard in connection with the joint disappearance. The fact that the body of a woman floated down the river a day or two ago and was not recovered, adds to the fears of the highly imaginative and impressionable. A more probable picture, however, is presented in the thought of a quiet little wedding at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Wurtheimer on Walther street, Chicago. With these people Friedland was in constant communication. "Do you think Friedland has done anything desperate," was asked of one of his friends yesterday.

"Oh no," was the reply, "nothing more desperate than engaging in a well conducted elopement. Night train to Chicago, marriage in the morning, tour up the lake, return in a couple of weeks, bless you my children, and there you are. However," he added, "I don't know anything about it. The general opinion is that there has been no tragedy, but simply a first-class elopement.

Meanwhile there is loneliness in the big house on Mount Airy near L'Orient, the mother weeps for her missing daughter, and the baby cries dolefully "Mamma, where is my mamma."