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[Illustration: "SHE FELT MY PRESENCE AND LOOKED UP QUICKLY."]
The Works of E. P. Roe
_VOLUME FOURTEEN_
A DAY OF FATE
_ILLUSTRATED_
1880
PREFACE
"Some shallow story of deep love."
--Shakespeare
CONTENTS
_BOOK FIRST_
CHAPTER I
AIMLESS STEPS
CHAPTER II
A JUNE DAY DREAM
CHAPTER III
A SHINING TIDE
CHAPTER IV
REALITY
CHAPTER V
MUTUAL DISCOVERIES
CHAPTER VI
A QUAKER TEA
CHAPTER VII
A FRIEND
CHAPTER VIII
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES
CHAPTER IX
"OLD PLOD"
CHAPTER X
A BIT OF EDEN
CHAPTER XI
"MOVED"
CHAPTER XII
ONE OF NATURE'S TRAGEDIES
CHAPTER XIII
THE LIGHTNING AND A SUBTLER FLAME
CHAPTER XIV
KINDLING A SPARK OF LIFE
CHAPTER XV
MY FATE
_BOOK SECOND_
CHAPTER I
THE DAY AFTER
CHAPTER II
"IT WAS INEVITABLE"
CHAPTER III
RETURNING CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER IV
IN THE DARK
CHAPTER V
A FLASH OF MEMORY
CHAPTER VI
WEAKNESS
CHAPTER VII
OLD PLOD IDEALIZED
CHAPTER VIII
AN IMPULSE
CHAPTER IX
A WRETCHED FAILURE
CHAPTER X
IN THE DEPTHS
CHAPTER XI
POOR ACTING
CHAPTER XII
THE HOPE OP A HIDDEN TREASURE
CHAPTER XIII
THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE AGAIN
CHAPTER XIV
LOVE TEACHING ETHICS
CHAPTER XV
DON'T THINK OF ME
CHAPTER XVI
"RICHARD"
CHAPTER XVII
MY WORST BLUNDER
CHAPTER XVIII
MRS. YOCOMB'S LETTERS
CHAPTER XIX
ADAH
CHAPTER XX
THANKSGIVING DAY
CHAPTER XXI
RIPPLES ON DEEP WATER
_BOOK FIRST_
CHAPTER I
AIMLESS STEPS
"Another month's work will knock Morton into 'pi,'" was a remark that
caught my ear as I fumed from the composing-room back to my private
office. I had just irately blamed a printer for a blunder of my own,
and the words I overheard reminded me of the unpleasant truth that I
had recently made a great many senseless blunders, over which I chafed
in merciless self-condemnation. For weeks and months my mind had been
tense under the strain of increasing work and responsibility. It was my
nature to become absorbed in my tasks, and, as night editor of a
prominent city journal, I found a limitless field for labor. It was
true I could have jogged along under the heavy burden with
comparatively little wear and loss, but, impelled by both temperament
and ambition, I was trying to maintain a racer's speed. From casual
employment as a reporter I had worked my way up to my present position,
and the tireless activity and alertness required to win and hold such a
place was seemingly degenerating into a nervous restlessness which
permitted no repose of mind or rest of body. I worked when other men
slept, but, instead of availing myself of the right to sleep when the
world was awake, I yielded to an increasing tendency to wakefulness,
and read that I might be informed on the endless variety of subjects
occupying public attention. The globe was becoming a vast
hunting-ground, around which my thoughts ranged almost unceasingly that
I might capture something new, striking, or original for the benefit of
our paper. Each day the quest had grown more eager, and as the hour for
going to press approached I would even become feverish in my intense
desire to send the paper out with a breezy, newsy aspect, and would be
elated if, at the last moment, material was flashed in that would
warrant startling head-lines, and correspondingly depressed if the
weary old world had a few hours of quiet and peace. To make the paper
"go," every faculty I possessed was in the harness.
The aside I had just overheard suggested, at least, one very probable
result. In printer's jargon, I would soon be in "pi."
The remark, combined with my stupid blunder, for which I had blamed an
innocent man, caused me to pull up and ask myself whither I was
hurrying so breathlessly. Saying to my assistant that I did not wish to
be disturbed for a half hour, unless it was essential, I went to my
little inner room. I wished to take a mental inventory of myself, and
see how much was left. Hitherto I had been on the keen run--a condition
not favorable to introspection.
Neither my temperament nor the school in which I had been trained
inclined me to slow, deliberate processes of reasoning. I looked my own
case over as I might that of some brother-editors whose journals were
draining them of life, and whose obituaries I shall probably write if I
survive them. Reason and Conscience, now that I gave them a chance,
began to take me to task severely.
"You are a blundering fool," said Reason, "and the man in the
composing-room is right. You are chafing over petty blunders while
ignoring the fact that your whole present life is a blunder, and the
adequate reason why your faculties are becoming untrustworthy. Each day
you grow more nervously anxious to have everything correct, giving your
mind to endless details, and your powers are beginning to snap like the
overstrained strings of a violin. At this rate you will soon spend
yourself and all there is of you."
Then Conscience, like an irate judge on the bench, arraigned me. "You
are a heathen, and your paper is your car of Juggernaut. You are
ceasing to be a man and becoming merely an editor--no, not even an
editor--a newsmonger, one of the world's gossips. You are an Athenian
only as you wish to hear and tell some new thing. Long ears are
becoming the appropriate symbols of your being. You are too hurried,
too eager for temporary success, too taken up with details, to form
calm, philosophical opinions of the great events of your time, and thus
be able to shape men's opinions. You commenced as a reporter, and are a
reporter still. You pride yourself that you are not narrow, unconscious
of the truth that you are spreading yourself thinly over the mere
surface of affairs. You have little comprehension of the deeper forces
and motives of humanity."
It is true that I might have pleaded in extenuation of these rather
severe judgments that I was somewhat alone in the world, living in
bachelor apartments, without the redeeming influences of home and
family life. There were none whose love gave them the right or the
motive to lay a restraining hand upon me, and my associates in labor
were more inclined to applaud my zeal than to curb it. Thus it had been
left to the casual remark of a nameless printer and an instance of my
own failing powers to break the spell that ambition and habit were
weaving.
Before the half hour elapsed I felt weak and ill. The moment I relaxed
the tension and will-power which I had maintained so long, strong
reaction set in. Apparently I had about reached the limits of
endurance. I felt as if I were growing old and feeble by minutes as one
might by years. Taking my hat and coat I passed out, remarking to my
assistant that he must do the best he could--that I was ill and would
not return. If the Journal had never appeared again I could not then
have written a line to save it, or read another proof.
Saturday morning found me feverish, unrefreshed, and more painfully
conscious than ever that I was becoming little better than the presses
on which the paper was printed. Depression inevitably follows weariness
and exhaustion, and one could scarcely take a more gloomy view of
himself than I did.
"I will escape from this city as if it were Sodom," I muttered, "and a
June day in the country will reveal whether I have a soul for anything
beyond the wrangle of politics and the world's gossip."
In my despondency I was inclined to be reckless, and after merely
writing a brief note to my editorial chief, saying that I had broken
down and was going to the country, I started almost at random. After a
few hours' riding I wearied of the cars, and left them at a small
village whose name I did not care to inquire. The mountains and scenery
pleased me, although the day was overcast like my mind and fortunes.
Having found a quiet inn and gone through the form of a dinner, I sat
down on the porch in dreary apathy.
The afternoon aspect of the village street seemed as dull and devoid of
interest as my own life at that hour, and in fancy I saw myself, a
broken-down man, lounging away days that would be like eternities,
going through my little round like a bit of driftwood, slowly circling
in an eddy of the world's great current. With lack-lustre eyes I
"looked up to the hills," but no "help" came from them. The air was
close, the sky leaden; even the birds would not sing. Why had I come to
the country? It had no voices for me, and I resolved to return to the
city. But while I waited my eyes grew heavy with the blessed power to
sleep--a boon, for which I then felt that I would travel to the Ultima
Thule. Leaving orders that I should not be disturbed, I went to my
room, and Nature took the tired man, as if he were a weary child, into
her arms.
At last I imagined that I was at the Academy of Music, and that the
orchestra were tuning their instruments for the overture. A louder
strain than usual caused me to start up, and I saw through the open
window a robin on a maple bough, with its tuneful throat swelled to the
utmost. This was the leader of my orchestra, and the whole country was
alive with musicians, each one giving out his own notes without any
regard for the others, but apparently the score had been written for
them all, since the innumerable strains made one divine harmony. From
the full-orbed song from the maple by my window, down to the faintest
chirp and twitter, there was no discord; while from the fields beyond
the village the whistle of the meadow-larks was so mellowed and
softened by distance as to incline one to wonder whether their notes
were real or mere ideals of sound.
For a long time I was serenely content to listen to the myriad-voiced
chords without thinking of the past or future. At last I found myself
idly querying whether Nature did not so blend all out-of-door sounds as
to make them agreeable, when suddenly a catbird broke the spell of
harmony by its flat, discordant note. Instead of my wonted irritation
at anything that jarred upon my nerves, I laughed as I sprang up,
saying,
"That cry reminds me that I am in the body and in the same old world.
That bird is near akin to the croaking printer."
But my cynicism was now more assumed than real, and I began to wonder
at myself. The change of air and scene had seemingly broken a malign
influence, and sleep--that for weeks had almost forsaken me--had
yielded its deep refreshment for fifteen hours. Besides, I had not
sinned against my life so many years as to have destroyed the
elasticity of early manhood. When I had lain down to rest I had felt
myself to be a weary, broken, aged man. Had I, in my dreams, discovered
the Fountain of Youth, and unconsciously bathed in it? In my rebound
toward health of mind and body I seemed to have realized what the old
Spaniard vainly hoped for.
I dressed in haste, eager to be out in the early June sunshine. There
had been a shower in the night, and the air had a fine exhilarating
quality, in contrast with the close sultriness of the previous
afternoon.
Instead of nibbling at breakfast while I devoured the morning dailies,
I ate a substantial meal, and only thought of papers to bless their
absence, and then walked down the village street with the quick glad
tread of one whose hope and zest in life have been renewed. Fragrant
June roses were opening on every side, and it appeared to me that all
the sin of man could not make the world offensive to heaven that
morning.
I wished that some of the villagers whom I met were more in accord with
Nature's mood; but in view of my own shortcomings, and still more
because of my fine physical condition, I was disposed toward a large
charity. And yet I could not help wondering how some that I saw could
walk among their roses and still look so glum and matter-of-fact. I
felt as if I could kiss every velvet petal.
"You were unjust," I charged back on Conscience; "this morning proves
that I am not an ingrained newsmonger. There is still man enough left
within me to revive at Nature's touch;" and I exultantly quickened my
steps, until I had left the village miles away.
Before the morning was half gone I learned how much of my old vigor had
ebbed, for I was growing weary early in the day. Therefore I paused
before a small gray building, old and weather-stained, that seemed
neither a barn, nor a dwelling, nor a school-house. A man was in the
act of unlocking the door, and his garb suggested that it might be a
Friends' meeting-house. Yielding to an idle curiosity I mounted a stone
wall at a point where I was shaded and partially screened by a tree,
and watched and waited, beguiling the time with a branch of sweetbriar
that hung over my resting-place.
Soon strong open wagons and rockaways began to appear drawn by sleek,
plump horses that often, seemingly, were gayer than their drivers.
Still there was nothing sour in the aspect or austere in the garb of
the people. Their quiet appearance took my fancy amazingly, and the
peach-like bloom on the cheeks of even well-advanced matrons suggested
a serene and quiet life.
"These are the people of all others with whom I would like to worship
to-day," I thought; "and I hope that that rotund old lady, whose face
beams under the shadow of her deep bonnet like a harvest moon through a
fleecy cloud, will feel moved to speak." I plucked a few buds from the
sweet-briar bush, fastened them in my button-hole, and promptly
followed the old lady into the meeting-house. Having found a vacant pew
I sat down, and looked around with serene content. But I soon observed
that something was amiss, for the men folk looked at each other and
then at me. At last an elderly and substantial Friend, with a face so
flushed and round as to suggest a Baldwin apple, arose and creaked with
painful distinctness to where I was innocently infringing on one of
their customs.
"If thee will follow me, friend," he said, "I'll give thee a seat with
the men folks. Thee's welcome, and thee'll feel more at home to follow
our ways."
His cordial grasp of my hand would have disarmed suspicion itself, and
I followed him meekly. In my embarrassment and desire to show that I
had no wish to appear forward, I persisted in taking a side seat next
to the wall, and quite near the door; for my guide, in order to show
his goodwill and to atone for what might seem rudeness, was bent on
marshalling me almost up to the high seats that faced the congregation,
where sat my rubicund old Friend lady, whose aspect betokened that she
had just the Gospel message I needed.
I at once noted that these staid and decorous people looked straight
before them in an attitude of quiet expectancy. A few little children
turned on me their round, curious eyes, but no one else stared at the
blundering stranger, whose modish coat, with a sprig of wild roses in
its buttonhole, made him rather a conspicuous contrast to the other men
folk, and I thought--
"Here certainly is an example of good-breeding which could scarcely be
found among other Christians. If one of these Friends should appear in
the most fashionable church on the Avenue, he would be well stared at,
but here even the children are receiving admonitory nudges not to look
at me."
I soon felt that it was not the thing to be the only one who was
irreverently looking around, and my good-fortune soon supplied ample
motive for looking steadily in one direction. The reader may justly
think that I should have composed my mind to meditation on my many
sins, but I might as well have tried to gather in my hands the reins of
all the wild horses of Arabia as to curb and manage my errant thoughts.
My only chance was for some one or something to catch and hold them for
me. If that old Friend lady would preach I was sure she would do me
good. As it was, her face was an antidote to the influences of the
world in which I dwelt, but I soon began to dream that I had found a
still better remedy, for, at a fortunate angle from my position, there
sat a young Quakeress whose side face arrested my attention and held
it. By leaning a little against the wall as well as the back of my
bench, I also, well content, could look straight before me like the
others.
The fair profile was but slightly hidden by a hat that had a
perceptible leaning toward the world in its character, but the brow was
only made to seem a little lower, and her eyes deepened in their blue
by its shadow. My sweet-briar blossoms were not more delicate in their
pink shadings than was the bloom on her rounded cheek, and the white,
firm chin denoted an absence of weakness and frivolity. The upper lip,
from where I sat, seemed one half of Cupid's bow. I could but barely
catch a glimpse of a ripple of hair that, perhaps, had not been
smoothed with sufficient pains, and thus seemed in league with the
slightly worldly bonnet. In brief, to my kindled fancy, her youth and
loveliness appeared the exquisite human embodiment of the June morning,
with its alternations of sunshine and shadow, its roses and their
fragrance, of its abounding yet untarnished and beautiful life.
No one in the meeting seemed moved save myself, but I felt as if I
could become a poet, a painter, and even a lover, under the inspiration
of that perfect profile.
CHAPTER II
A JUNE DAY-DREAM
Moment after moment passed, but we all sat silent and motionless.
Through the open windows came a low, sweet monotone of the wind from
the shadowing maples, sometimes swelling into a great depth of sound,
and again dying to a whisper, and the effect seemed finer than that of
the most skilfully touched organ. Occasionally an irascible humble-bee
would dart in, and, after a moment of motionless poise, would dart out
again, as if in angry disdain of the quiet people. In its irate hum and
sudden dartings I saw my own irritable fuming and nervous activity, and
I blessed the Friends and their silent meeting. I blessed the fair June
face, that was as far removed from the seething turmoil of my world as
the rosebuds under her home-windows.
Surely I had drifted out of the storm into the very haven of rest and
peace, and yet one might justly dread lest the beauty which bound my
eyes every moment in a stronger fascination should evoke an unrest from
which there might be no haven. Young men, however, rarely shrink from
such perils, and I was no more prudent than my fellows. Indeed, I was
inclining toward the fancy that this June day was the day of destiny
with me; and if such a creature were the remedy for my misshapen life
it would be bliss to take it.
In our sweet silence, broken only by the voice of the wind, the twitter
of birds beguiling perhaps with pretty nonsense the hours that would
otherwise seem long to their brooding mates on the nests, and the hum
of insects, my fancy began to create a future for the fair stranger--a
future, rest assured, that did not leave the dreamer a calm and
disinterested observer.
"This day," I said mentally, "proves that there is a kindly and
superintending Providence, and men are often led, like children in the
dark, to just the thing they want. The wisdom of Solomon could not have
led me to a place more suited to my taste and need than have my blind,
aimless steps; and before me are possibilities which suggest the vista
through which Eve was led to Adam."
My constant contact with men who were keen, self-seeking, and often
unscrupulous, inclined me toward cynicism and suspicion. My editorial
life made me an Arab in a sense, for if there were occasion, my hand
might be against any man, if not every man. I certainly received many
merciless blows, and I was learning to return them with increasing
zest. My column in the paper was often a tilting-ground, and whether or
no I inflicted wounds that amounted to much, I received some that long
rankled. A home such as yonder woman might make would be a better
solace than newspaper files. Such lips as these might easily draw the
poison from any wound the world could make. Wintry firelight would be
more genial than even June sunlight, if her eyes would reflect in into
mine. With such companionship, all the Gradgrinds in existence would
prose in vain; life would never lose its ideality, nor the world become
a mere combination of things. Her woman's fancy would embroider my
man's reason and make it beautiful, while not taking from its strength.
Idiot that I was, in imagining that I alone could achieve success!
Inevitably I could make but a half success, since the finer feminine
element would be wanting. Do I wish men only to read our paper? Am I a
Turk, holding the doctrine that women have no souls, no minds? The
shade of my mother forbid! Then how was I, a man, to interpret the
world to women? Truly, I had been an owl of the night, and blind to the
honest light of truth when I yielded to the counsel of ambition, that I
had no time for courtship and marriage. In my stupid haste I would try
to grope my way through subjects beyond a man's ken, rather than seek
some such guide as yonder maiden, whose intuitions would be unerring
when the light of reason failed. In theory, I held the doctrine that
there was sex in mind as truly as in the material form. Now I was
inclined to act as if my doctrine were true, and to seek to double my
power by winning the supplemental strength and grace of a woman's soul.
Indeed, my day-dream was becoming exceedingly thrifty in its character,
and I assured ambition that the companionship of such a woman as yonder
maiden must be might become the very corner-stone of success.
Time passed, and still no one was "moved." Was my presence the cause of
the spiritual paralysis? I think not, for I was becoming conscious of
reverent feeling and deeper motives. If the fair face was my Gospel
message, it was already leading me beyond the thoughts of success and
ambition, of mental power and artistic grace. Her womanly beauty began
to awaken my moral nature, and her pure face, that looked as free from
guile as any daisy with its eye turned to the sun, led me to ask, "What
right have you to approach such a creature? Think of her needs, of her
being first, and not your own. Would you drag her into the turmoil of
your world because she would be a solace? Would you disturb the
maidenly serenity of that brow with knowledge of evil and misery, the
nightly record of which you have collated so long that you are callous?
You, whose business it is to look behind the scenes of life, will you
disenchant her also? It is your duty to unmask hypocrisy, and to drag
hidden evil to light, but will you teach her to suspect and distrust?
Should you not yourself become a better, truer, purer man before you
look into the clear depths of her blue eyes? Beware, lest thoughtlessly
or selfishly you sully their limpid truth."
"If she could be God's evangel to me, I might indeed be a better man,"
I murmured.
"That is ever the way," suggested Conscience; "there is always an 'if'
in the path of duty; and you make your change for the better depend on
the remote possibility that yonder maiden will ever look on you as
other than a casual stranger that caused a slight disturbance in the
wonted placidity of their meeting hour."
"Hush," I answered Conscience, imperiously; "since the old Friend lady
will not preach, I shall endure none of your homilies. I yield myself
to the influences of this day, and during this hour no curb shall be
put on fancy. In my soul I know that I would be a better man if she is
what she seems, and could be to me all that I have dreamed; and were I
tenfold worse than I am, she would be the better for making me better.
Did not Divine purity come the closest to sinful humanity? I shall
approach this maiden in fancy, and may seek her in reality, but it
shall be with a respect so sincere and an homage so true as to rob my
thoughts and quest of bold irreverence or of mere selfishness. Suppose
I am seeking my own good, my own salvation it may be, I am not seeking
to wrong her. Are not heaven's best gifts best won by giving all for
them? I would lay my manhood at her feet. I do not expect to earn her
or buy her, giving a quid pro quo. A woman's love is like the grace of
heaven--a royal gift; and the spirit of the suitor is more regarded
than his desert. Moreover, I do not propose to soil her life with the
evil world that I must daily brush against, but through her influence
to do a little toward purifying that world. Since this is but a dream,
I shall dream it out to suit me.
"That stalwart and elderly Friend who led me to this choice point of
observation is her father. The plump and motherly matron on the high
seat, whose face alone is a remedy for care and worry, is her mother.
They will invite me home with them when meeting is over. Already I see
the tree-embowered farmhouse, with its low, wide veranda, and
old-fashioned roses climbing the lattice-work. In such a fragrant nook,
or perhaps in the orchard back of the house, I shall explore the
wonderland of this maiden's mind and heart. Beyond the innate reserve
of an unsophisticated womanly nature there will be little reticence,
and her thoughts will flow with the clearness and unpremeditation of
the brook that I crossed on my way here. What a change they will be
from the world's blotted page that I have read too exclusively of late!
"Perhaps it will appear to her that I have become smirched by these
pages, and that my character has the aspect of a printer at the close
of his day's tasks.
"This source of fear, however, is also a source of hope. If she has the
quickness of intuition to discover that I know the world too well, she
will also discern the truth that I would gladly escape from that which
might eventually destroy my better nature, and that hers could be the
hand which might rescue my manhood. To the degree that she is a genuine
woman there will be fascination in the power of making a man more manly
and worthy of respect. Especially will this be true if I have the
supreme good-fortune not to offend her woman's fancy, and to excite her
sympathy; without awakening contempt.
"But I imagine I am giving her credit for more maturity of thought and
discernment than her years permit. She must be young, and her
experiences would give her no means of understanding my life. She will
look at me with the frank, unsuspecting gaze of a child. She will
exercise toward me that blessed phase of charity which thinketh no evil
because ignorant of evil.
"Moreover, while I am familiar with the sin of the world, and have
contributed my share toward it, I am not in love with it; and I can
well believe that such a love as she might inspire would cause me to
detest it. If for her sake and other good motives, I should resolutely
and voluntarily; turn my back on evil, would I not have the right to
walk at the side of one who, by the goodhap of her life, knows no evil?
At any rate, I am not sufficiently magnanimous to forego the
opportunity should it occur. Therefore, among the lengthening shadows
of this June day I shall woo with my utmost skill one who may be able
to banish the deeper shadows that are gathering around my life; and if
I fail I shall carry the truth of her spring-time beauty and girlish
innocence back to the city, and their memory will daily warn me to
beware lest I lose the power to love and appreciate that which is her
pre-eminent charm.
"But enough of that phase of the question. There need be no failure in
my dream, however probable failure may be in reality. Let me imagine
that in her lovely face I may detect the slight curiosity inspired by a
stranger passing into interest. She will be shy and reserved at first;
but as the delicious sense of being understood and admired gains
mastery, her thoughts will gradually reveal her heart like the opening
petals of a rose, and I can reverently gaze upon the rich treasures of
which she is the unconscious possessor, and which I may win without
impoverishing her.
"Her ready laugh, clear and mellow as the robin's song that woke me
this morning, will be the index of an unfailing spring of
mirthfulness--of that breezy, piquant, laughing philosophy which gives
to some women an indescribable charm, enabling them to render gloom and
despondency rare inmates of the home over which they preside. When I
recall what dark depths of perplexity and trouble my mother often hid
with her light laugh, I remember that I have never yet had a chance
even to approach her in heroism. In my dream, at least, I can give to
my wife my mother's laugh and courage; and surely Nature, who has
endowed yonder maiden with so much beauty, has also bestowed every
suitable accompaniment. Wherefore I shall discover in her eyes
treasures of sunshine that shall light my home on stormy days and
winter nights.
"As I vary our theme of talk from bright to sad experiences, I shall
catch a glimpse of that without which the world would become a
desert--woman's sympathy. Possibly I may venture to suggest my own need,
and emphasize it by a reference to Holy Writ. That would be appropriate
in a Sunday wooing. Surely she would admit that if Adam could not endure
being alone in Eden, a like fate would be far more deserving of pity in
such a wilderness as New York.
"Then, as a sequel to her sympathy, I may witness the awakening of that
noble characteristic of woman--self-sacrifice--the generous impulse to
give happiness, even though at cost to self.
"As the winged hours pass, and our glances, our words, our intuitions,
and the subtle laws of magnetism that are so powerful, and yet so
utterly beyond the ken of reason, reveal us to each other, I detect in
the depths of her blue eyes a light which vanishes when I seek it, but
returns again--a principle which she does not even recognize, much less
understand, and yet which she already unconsciously obeys. Her looks
are less frank and open, her manner grows deliciously shy, she
hesitates and chooses her words, but is not so happy in their choice as
when she spoke without premeditation. Instead of the wonted bloom on
her cheek her color comes and goes. Oh, most exquisite phase of human
power! I control the fountain of her life; and by an act, a word, a
glance even, can cause the crimson tide to rise even to her brow, and
then to ebb, leaving her sad and pale. Joy! joy! I have won that out of
which can be created the best thing of earth, and the type of heaven--a
home!"
At this supreme moment in my day-dream, an elderly Friend on the high
seat gave his hand to another white-haired man who had, for the last
hour, leaned his chin on his stout cane, and meditated under the shadow
of his broad-brimmed hat, and our silent meeting was over. The
possessor of the exquisite profile who had led me through a flight of
romance such as I had never known before, turned and looked directly at
me.
The breaking of my dream had been too sudden, and I had been caught too
high up to alight again on the solid ground of reality with ease and
grace. The night-editor blushed like a school-girl under her glance, at
which she seemed naturally surprised. She, of course, could imagine no
reason why her brief look of curiosity should cause me confusion and
bring a guilty crimson to my face. I took it as a good omen, however,
and said mentally, as I passed out with the others,
"My thoughts have already established a subtle influence over her,
drawing her eyes and the first delicate tendril of interest toward one
to whom she may cling for life."
CHAPTER III
THE SHINING TIDE
As I was strenuously seeking to gain possession of my wits, so that I
could avail myself of any opportunity that offered, or could be made by
adroit, prompt action, the stalwart and elderly Friend, who had seemed
thus far one of the ministers of my impending fate, again took my hand
and said:
"I hope thee'll forgive me for asking thee to conform to our ways, and
not think any rudeness was meant."
"The grasp of your hand at once taught me that you were friendly as
well as a Friend," I replied.
"We should not belie our name, truly. I fear thee did not enjoy our
silent meeting?"
"You are mistaken, sir. It was just the meeting which, as a weary man,
I needed."
"I hope thee wasn't asleep?" he said, with a humorous twinkle in his
honest blue eyes.
"You are quite mistaken again," I answered, smiling; but I should have
been in a dilemma had he asked me if I had been dreaming.
"Thee's a stranger in these parts," he continued, in a manner that
suggested kindness rather than curiosity.
"Possibly this is the day of my fate," I thought, "and this man the
father of my ideal woman." And I decided to angle with my utmost skill
for an invitation.
"You are correct," I replied, "and I much regret that I have wandered
so far from my hotel, for I am not strong."
"Well, thee may have good cause to be sorry, though we do our best; but
if thee's willing to put up with homely fare and homely people, thee's
welcome to come home with us."
Seeing eager acquiescence in my face, he continued, without giving me
time to reply, "Here, mother, thee always provides enough for one more.
We'll have a stranger within our gates to-day, perhaps."
To my joy the Friend lady, with a face like a benediction, turned at
his words. At the same moment a large, three-seated rockaway, with a
ruddy boy as driver, drew up against the adjacent horse-block, while
the fair unknown, who had stood among a bevy of young Quakeresses like
a tall lily among lesser flowers, came toward us holding a little girl
by the hand. The family group was drawing together according to my
prophetic fancy, and my heart beat thick and fast. Truly this was the
day of fate!
"Homely people" indeed! and what cared I for "fare" in the very hour of
destiny!
"Mother," he said, with his humorous twinkle, "I'm bent on making
amends to this stranger who seemed to have a drawing toward thy side of
the house. Thee didn't give him any spiritual fare in the
meeting-house, but I think thee'll do better by him at the farmhouse.
When I tell thee that he is not well and a long way from home, thee'll
give him a welcome."
"Indeed," said the old lady, taking my hand in her soft, plump palm,
while her face fairly beamed with kindness; "it would be poor faith
that did not teach us our duty toward the stranger; and, if I mistake
not, thee'll change our duty into a pleasure."
"Do not hope to entertain an angel," I said.
"That's well," the old gentleman put in; "our dinner will be rather too
plain and substantial for angels' fare. I think thee'll be the better
for it though."
"I am the better already for your most unexpected kindness, which I now
gratefully accept as a stranger. I hope, however, that I may be able to
win a more definite and personal regard;" and I handed the old
gentleman my card.
"Richard Morton is thy name, then. I'll place thee beside Ruth Yocomb,
my wife. Come, mother, we're keeping Friend Jones's team from the
block. My name is Thomas Yocomb. No, no, take the back seat by my wife.
She may preach to thee a little going home. Drive on, Reuben," he
added, as he and his two daughters stepped quickly in, "and give Friend
Jones a chance. This is Adah Yocomb, my daughter, and this is little
Zillah. Mother thought that since the two names went together in
Scripture they ought to go together out of it, and I am the last man in
the world to go against the Scripture. That's Reuben Yocomb driving.
Now thee knows all the family, and I hope thee don't feel as much of a
stranger as thee did;" and the hearty old man turned and beamed on me
with a goodwill that I felt to be as warm and genuine as the June
sunshine.
"To be frank," I exclaimed, "I am at a loss to understand your
kindness. In the city we are suspicious of strangers and stand aloof
from them; but you treat me as if I had brought a cordial letter of
introduction from one you esteemed highly."
"So thee has, so thee has; only the letter came before thee did. 'Be
not forgetful to entertain strangers'--that's the way it reads, doesn't
it, mother?"
"Moreover, Richard Morton," his wife added, "thee has voluntarily come
among us, and sat down with us for a quiet hour. Little claim to the
faith of Abraham could we have should we let thee wander off to get thy
dinner with the birds in the woods, for the village is miles away."
"Mother'll make amends to thee for the silent meeting," said Mr.
Yocomb, looking around with an impressive nod.
"I trust she will," I replied. "I wanted to hear her preach. It was her
kindly face that led to my blunder, for it so attracted me from my
perch of observation on the wall that I acted on my impulse and
followed her into the meeting-house, feeling in advance that I had
found a friend."
"Well, I guess thee has, one of the old school," laughed her husband.
The daughter, Adah, turned and looked at me, while she smiled
approvingly. Oh, blessed day of destiny! When did dream and reality so
keep pace before? Was I not dreaming still, and imagining everything to
suit my own fancy? When would the perverse world begin to assert itself?
Sitting just before me, on the next seat, so that I could often see the
same perfect profile, was the maiden that I had already wooed and won
in fancy. Though she was so near and in the full sunlight, I could
detect no cloudiness in her exquisite complexion, nor discover a fault
in her rounded form. The slope of her shoulders was grace itself. She
did not lean back weakly or languidly, but sat erect, with a quiet,
easy poise of vigor and health. Her smile was frank and friendly, and
yet not as enchanting as I expected. It was an affair of facial muscles
rather than the lighting up of the entire visage. Nor did her full
face--now that my confusion had passed away and I was capable of close
observation--give the same vivid impression of beauty made by her
profile. It was pretty, very pretty, but for some reasons
disappointing. Then I smiled at my half-conscious criticism, and
thought, "You have imagined a creature of unearthly perfection, and
expect your impossible ideal to be realized. Were she all that you have
dreamed, she would be much too fine for an ordinary mortal like
yourself. In her rich, unperverted womanly nature you will find the
beauty that will outlast that of form and feature."
"I fear thee found our silent meeting long and tedious," said Mrs.
Yocomb, deprecatingly.
"I assure you I did not," I replied, "though I hoped you would have a
message for us."
"It was not given to me," she said meekly. Then she added, "Those not
used to our ways are troubled, perhaps, with wandering thoughts during
these silent hours."
"I was not to-day," I replied with bowed head; "I found a subject that
held mine."
"I'm glad," she said, her face kindling with pleasure. "May I ask the
nature of the truth that held thy meditations?"
"Perhaps I will tell you some time," I answered hesitatingly; then
added reverently, "It was of a very sacred nature."
"Thee's right," she said, gravely. "Far be it from me to wish to look
curiously upon thy soul's communion."
For a moment I felt guilty that I should have so misled her, but
reassured myself with the thought, "That which I dwelt upon was as
sacred to me as my mother's memory."
I changed the subject, and sought by every means in my power to lead
her to talk, for thus, I thought, I shall learn the full source of
womanly life from which the peerless daughter has drawn her nature.
The kind old lady needed but little incentive. Her thoughts flowed
freely in a quaint, sweet vernacular that savored of the meeting-house.
I was both interested and charmed, and as we rode at a quiet jog
through the June sunlight felt that I was in the hands of a kindly fate
that, in accordance with the old fairy tales, was bent on giving one
poor mortal all he desired.
At last, on a hillside sloping to the south, I saw the farmhouse of my
dream. Two tall honey locusts stood like faithful guardians on each
side of the porch. An elm drooped over the farther end of the piazza.
In the dooryard the foliage of two great silver poplar or aspen trees
fluttered perpetually with its light sheen. A maple towered high behind
the house, and a brook that ran not far away was shadowed by a weeping
willow. Other trees were grouped here and there as if Nature had
planted them, and up one a wild grape-vine clambered, its unobtrusive
blossoms filling the air with a fragrance more delicious even than that
of the old-fashioned roses which abounded everywhere.
"Was there ever a sweeter nook?" I thought as I stepped out on the wide
horse-block and gave my hand to one who seemed the beautiful
culmination of the scene.
Miss Adah needed but little assistance to alight, but she took my hand
in hers, which she had ungloved as she approached her home. It was her
mother's soft, plump hand, but unmarked, as yet, by years of toil. I
forgot we were such entire strangers, and under the impulse of my fancy
clasped it a trifle warmly, at which she gave me a look of slight
surprise, thus suggesting that there was no occasion for the act.
"You are mistaken," I mentally responded; "there is more occasion than
you imagine; more than I may dare to tell you for a long time to come."
A lady who had been sitting on the piazza disappeared within the house,
and Adah followed her.
"Now, mother," said Mr. Yocomb, "since thee did so little for friend
Morton's spiritual man, see what thee can do for the temporal. I'll
take the high seat this time, and can tell thee beforehand that
there'll be no silent meeting."
"Father may seem to thee a little irreverent, but he doesn't mean to
be. It's his way," said his wife, with a smile. "If thee'll come with
me I'll show thee to a room where thee can rest and prepare for dinner."
I followed her through a wide hall to a stairway that changed its mind
when half-way up and turned in an opposite direction. "It suggests the
freedom and unconventionality of this home," I thought, yielding to my
mood to idealize everything.
"This is thy room so long as thee'll be pleased to stay with us," she
said, with a genial smile, and her ample form vanished from the doorway.
I was glad to be alone. The shining tide of events was bearing me
almost too swiftly. "Can this be even the beginning of true love, since
it runs so smoothly?" I queried. And yet it had all come about so
simply and naturally, and for everything there was such adequate cause
and rational explanation, that I assured myself that I had reason for
self-congratulation rather than wonder.
Having seen such a maiden, it would be strange indeed if I had not been
struck by her beauty. With an hour on my hands, and thoughts that
called no one master, it would have been stranger still if I had not
been beguiled into a dream which, in my need, promised so much that I
was now bent on its fulfilment. Kind Mr. and Mrs. Yocomb had but
carried out the teachings of their faith, and thus I was within the
home of one who, developing under the influences of such a mother and
such surroundings, would have the power beyond most other women of
creating another home. I naturally thought that here, in this lovely
and sheltered spot, and under just the conditions that existed, might
be perfected the simple, natural flower of womanhood that the
necessities of my life and character required.
I was too eager to prove my theories, and too strongly under the
presentiment that my hour of destiny had come, to rest, and so gladly
welcomed the tinkle of the dinner-bell.
The apparent mistress of my fate had not diminished her unconscious
power by exchanging her Sunday-morning costume for a light muslin, that
revealed more of her white throat than the strict canons of her sect
would warrant perhaps, but none too much for maidenly modesty and
artistic effect. Indeed, the gown harmonized with her somewhat worldly
hat. I regarded these tendencies as good omens, however, felicitating
myself with the thought that while her Quaker antecedents would always
give to her manner and garb a beautiful simplicity, they would not
trammel her taste with arbitrary custom. Though now more clearly
satisfied that the beauty of her full face by no means equalled that of
her profile, I was still far more than content with a perfection of
features that sustained a rigorous scrutiny.
"Richard Morton," said Mrs. Yocomb, "let me make thee acquainted with
Emily Warren."
I turned and bowed to a young woman, who seemed very colorless and
unattractive to my brief glance, compared with the radiant creature
opposite me. It would appear that I made no very marked impression on
her either, for she chatted with little Zillah, who sat beyond her, and
with Reuben across the table, making no effort to secure my attention.
If Mrs. Yocomb's powers as a spiritual provider were indicated by the
table she had spread for us, the old meetinghouse should be crowded
every Sunday, on the bare possibility that she might speak. From the
huge plate of roast-beef before her husband to the dainty dish of wild
strawberries on the sideboard, all was appetizing, and although it was
the day of my destiny, I found myself making a hearty meal. My
beautiful vis-a-vis evidently had no thoughts of destiny, and proved
that the rich blood which mantled her cheeks had an abundant and
healthful source. I liked that too. "There is no sentimental nonsense
about her," I thought, "and her views of life will never be dyspeptic."
I longed to hear her talk, and yet was pleased that she was not
garrulous. Her father evidently thought that this was his hour and
opportunity, and he seasoned the ample repast with not a little homely
wit and humor, in which his wife would sometimes join, and again curb
and deprecate.
I began to grow disappointed that the daughter did not manifest some of
her mother's quaint and genial good sense, or some sparkle and piquancy
that would correspond to her father's humor: but the few remarks she
made had reference chiefly to the people at the meeting, and verged
toward small gossip.
I broached several subjects which I thought might interest her, but
could obtain little other response than "Yes," with a faint rising
inflection. After one of these unsuccessful attempts I detected a
slight, peculiar smile on Miss Warren's face. It was a mischievous
light in her dark eyes more than anything else. As she met my puzzled
look it vanished instantly, and she turned away. Everything in my
training and calling stimulated alertness, and I knew that smile was at
my expense. Why was she laughing at me? Had she, by an intuition,
divined my attitude of mind? A plague on woman's intuitions! What man
is safe a moment?
But this could scarcely be, for the one toward whom my thoughts had
flown for the last three hours, and on whom I had bent glances that did
her royal homage, was serenely unconscious of my interest, or else
supremely indifferent to it. She did not seem unfriendly, and I
imagined that she harbored some curiosity in regard to me. My dress,
manner, and some slight personal allusions secured far more attention
than any abstract topic I could introduce. Her lips, however, were so
exquisitely chiselled that they made, for the time, any utterance
agreeable, and suggested that only tasteful thoughts and words could
come from them.
"Now, mother," said Mr. Yocomb, leaning back in his chair after
finishing a generous cup of coffee, "I feel inclined to be a good
Christian man. I have a broad charity for about every one except
editors and politicians. I am a man of peace, and there can be no peace
while these disturbers of the body politic thrive by setting people by
the ears. I don't disparage the fare, mother, that thee gives us at the
meetinghouse, that is, when thee does give us any, but I do take my
affirmation that thee has prepared a gospel feast for us since we came
home that has refreshed my inner man. As long as I am in the body,
roast-beef and like creature comforts are a means of grace to me. I am
now in a contented frame of mind, and am quite disposed to be amiable.
Emily Warren, I can even tolerate thy music--nay, let me speak the
truth, I'd much like to hear some after my nap. Thee needn't shake thy
head at me, mother, I've caught thee listening, and if thee brings me
up before the meeting, I'll tell on thee. Does thee realize, Emily
Warren, that thee is leading us out of the straight and narrow way?"
"I would be glad to lead you out of a narrow way," she replied, in a
tone so quiet and yet so rich that I was inclined to believe I had not
yet seen Miss Warren. Perhaps she saw that I was becoming conscious of
her existence, for I again detected the old mirthful light in her eyes.
Was I or Mr. Yocomb's remark the cause?
Who was Emily Warren anyway, and why must she be at the farmhouse at a
time when I so earnestly wished "the coast clear?" The perverse world
at last was asserting its true self, and there was promise of a
disturbance in my shining tide. Moreover, I was provoked that the one
remark of this Emily Warren had point to it, while my perfect flower of
womanhood had revealed nothing definitely save a good appetite, and
that she had no premonitions that this was the day of her destiny.
CHAPTER IV
REALITY
"Father," said my fair ideal abruptly, as if a bright idea had just
struck her, "did thee notice that Friend Jones's rockaway had been
painted and all fixed up? I guess he rather liked our keeping him there
before all the meeting."
"Mother, I hope thee'll be moved to preach about the charity that
thinketh no evil," said her father gravely.
The young girl tossed her head slightly as she asserted, "Araminta
Jones liked it anyway. Any one could see that."
"And any one need not have seen it also," her mother said, with a
pained look. Then she added, in a low aside, as we rose from the table,
"Thee certainly need not have spoken about thy friend's folly."
The daughter apparently gave little heed to her mother's rebuke, and a
trivial remark a moment later proved that she was thinking of something
else.
"Adah, thee can entertain Richard Morton for a time, while mother
attends to the things," said her father.
The alacrity with which she complied was flattering at least, and she
led me out on the piazza, that corresponded with my day-dream.
"Zillah," called Mrs. Tocomb to her little girl, "do not bother Emily
Warren. She may wish to be alone. Stay with Adah till I am through."
"Oh, mother, please, let me go with Emily Warren. I never have a good
time with Adah."
"There, mother, let her have her own way," said Adah, pettishly. "Emily
Warren, thee shouldn't pet her so if thee doesn't want to be bothered
by her."
"She does not bother me at all," said Miss Warren quietly. "I like her."
The little girl that had been ready to cry turned to her friend a
radiant face that was eloquent with the undisguised affection of
childhood.
"Zillah evidently likes you, Miss Warren," I said, "and you have given
the reason. You like her."
"Not always a sufficient reason for liking another," she answered.
"But a very good one," I urged.
"There are many better ones."
"What has reason to do with liking, anyway?" I asked.
The mirthfulness I had noted before glimmered in her eyes for a moment,
but she answered demurely, "I have seen instances that gave much point
to your question, but I cannot answer it," and with a slight bow and
smile she took her hat from Zillah and went down the path with an easy,
natural carriage, that nevertheless suggested the city and its
pavements rather than the country.
"What were you two talking about?" asked Adah, with a trace of vexed
perplexity on her brow, for I imagined that my glance followed Miss
Warren with some admiration and interest.
"You must have heard all we said."
"Where was the point of it?"
"What I said hadn't any point, so do not blame yourself for not seeing
it. Don't you like little Zillah? She seems a nice, quiet child."
"Certainly I like her--she's my sister; but I detest children."
"I can't think that you were detested when you were a child."
"I don't remember: I might have been," she replied, with a slight shrug.
"Do you think that, as a child, you would enjoy being detested?"
"Mother says it often isn't good for us to have what we enjoy."
"Undoubtedly your mother is right."
"Well, I don't see things in that way. If I like a thing I want it, and
if I don't like it I don't want it, and won't have it if I can help
myself."
"Your views are not unusual," I replied, turning away to hide my
contracting brow. "I know of others who cherish like sentiments."
"Well, I'm glad to meet with one who thinks as I do," she said
complacently, and plucking a half-blown rose that hung near her, she
turned its petals sharply down as if they were plaits of a hem that she
was about to stitch.
"Here is the first harmonic chord in the sweet congeniality of which I
dreamed," I inwardly groaned; but I continued, "How is it that you like
Zillah as your sister, and not as a little girl?"
"Oh, everybody likes their brothers and sisters after a fashion, but
one doesn't care to be bothered with them when they are little.
Besides, children rumple and spoil my dress," and she looked down at
herself approvingly.
"Now, there's Emily Warren," continued my "embodiment of June." "Mother
is beginning to hold her up to me as an example. Emily Warren is half
the time doing things that she doesn't like, and I think she's very
foolish. She is telling Zillah a story over there under that tree. I
don't think one feels like telling stories right after dinner."
"Yes, but see how much Zillah enjoys the story."
"Oh, of course she enjoys it. Why shouldn't she, if it's a good one?"
"Is it not possible that Miss Warren finds a pleasure in giving
pleasure?"
"Well, if she does, that is her way of having a good time."
"Don't you think it's a sweet, womanly way?"
"Ha, ha, ha! Are you already smitten with Emily Warren's sweet, womanly
ways?"
I confess that I both blushed and frowned with annoyance and
disappointment, but I answered lightly, "If I were, would I be one
among many victims?"
"I'm sure I don't know," she replied, with her slight characteristic
shrug, which also intimated that she didn't care.
"Miss Warren, I suppose, is a relative who is visiting you?"
"Oh, no, she is only a music teacher who is boarding with us. Mother
usually takes two or three boarders through the summer months, that is
if they are willing to put up with our ways."
"I suppose it's correct to quote Scripture on Sunday afternoon. I'm
sure your mother's ways are those of pleasantness and peace. Do you
think she would take me as a boarder?"
"I fear she'll think you would want too much city style."
"That is just what I wish to escape from."
"I think city style is splendid."
"Why?"
"Oh, the city is gay and full of life and people. I once took walks
down Fifth Avenue when making a visit in town, and I would be perfectly
happy if I could do so every day."
"Perfectly happy? I wish I knew of something that would make me
perfectly happy. Pardon me, I am only a business man, and can't be
expected to understand young ladies very well. I don't understand why
walking down Fifth Avenue daily would make you happy."
"Of course not. A man can't understand a girl's feelings in such
matters."
"There is nothing in New York so beautiful as this June day in the
country."
"Yes, it's a nice day: but father says we need more rain dreadfully."
"You have spoiled your rose."
"There are plenty more."
"Don't you like roses?"
"Certainly. Who does not like roses?"
"Let me give you another. See, here is one that has the hue of your
cheeks."
"I suppose a city pallor like Emily Warren's is more to your taste."
"I am wholly out of humor with the city, and I do not like that which
is colorless and insipid. I think the rose I have just given you very
beautiful."
"Thanks for your roundabout compliment," and she looked pleased.
"I suppose your quiet life gives you much time for reading?"
"I can't say that I enjoy father and mother's books."
"I doubt whether I would myself, but you have your own choice?"
"I read a story now and then; but time slips away; and I don't do much
reading. We country girls make our own clothes, and you have no idea
how much time it takes."
"Will you forgive me if I say that I think you make yours very
prettily?"
Again she looked decidedly pleased; and, as if to reward me, she
fastened the rose on her bosom. "If she would only keep still," I
thought, "and I could simply look at her as at a draped statue, I could
endure another half-hour; but every word she speaks is like the note of
that catbird which broke the spell of harmony this morning. I have not
yet seen a trace of ideality in her mind. Not a lovable trait have I
discovered beyond her remarkable beauty, which mocks one with its
broken promise. What is the controlling yet perverse principle of her
life which makes her seem an alien in her own home? I am glad she does
not use the plain language to me, since by nature she is not a Friend."
Miss Yocomb interrupted my thoughts by saying:
"I thought my dress would be much too simple and country-like for your
taste. I can see myself that Emily Warren's dress has more style."
Resolving to explore a little, I said:
"I know a great many men in town."
"Indeed!" she queried, with kindling interest.
"Yes, and some of them are fine artists; and the majority have
cultivated their tastes in various ways, both at home and abroad: but I
do not think many of them have any respect for what you mean by
'style.' Shop-boys, clerks, and Fifth Avenue exquisites give their
minds to the arbitrary mode of the hour; but the men in the city who
amount to anything rarely know whether a lady's gown is of the latest
cut. They do know, however, whether it is becoming and lady-like. The
solid men of the city have a keen eye for beauty, and spend hundreds of
thousands of dollars to enjoy its various phases. But half of the time
they are anathematizing mere style. I have seen fashion transform a
pretty girl into as near an approach to a kangaroo as nature permitted.
Now, I shall be so bold as to say that I think your costume this
afternoon has far better qualities than mere style. It is becoming, and
in keeping with the day and season, and I don't care a fig whether it
is the style or not."
My "perfect flower of womanhood" grew radiant, and her lips parted in a
smile of ineffable content. In bitter disappointment I saw that my
artifice had succeeded, and that I had touched the key-note of her
being. To my horror, she reminded me of a pleased, purring kitten that
had been stroked in the right direction.
"Your judgment is hasty and harsh," I charged myself, in half-angry
accusation, loth to believe the truth. "You do not know yet that a
compliment to her dress is the most acceptable one that she can
receive. She probably takes it as a tribute to her good taste, which is
one of woman's chief prerogatives."
I resolved to explore farther, and continued:
"A lady's dress is like the binding of a book--it ought to be
suggestive of her character. Indeed, she can make it a tasteful
expression of herself. Our eye is often attracted or repelled by a
book's binding. When it has been made with a fine taste, so that it
harmonizes with the subject under consideration, we are justly pleased;
but neither you nor I believe in the people who value books for the
sake of their covers only. Beauty and richness of thought, treasures of
varied truth, sparkling wit, droll humor, or downright earnestness are
the qualities in books that hold our esteem. A book must have a soul
and life of its own as truly as you or I; and the costliest materials,
the wealth of a kingdom, cannot make a true book any more than a
perfect costume and the most exquisite combination of flesh and blood
can make a true woman." (I wondered if she were listening to me; for
her face was taking on an absent look. Conscious that my homily was
growing rather long, I concluded.) "The book that reveals something
new, or puts old truths in new and interesting lights--the book that
makes us wiser, that cheers, encourages, comforts, amuses, and makes a
man forget his stupid, miserable self, is the book we tie to. And so a
man might well wish himself knotted to a woman who could do as much for
him, and he would naturally be pleased to have her outward garb
correspond with her spiritual beauty and worth."
My fair ideal had also reached a momentous conclusion, for she said,
with the emphasis of a final decision:
"I won't cut that dress after Emily Warren's pattern. I'll cut it to
suit myself."
I had been falling from a seventh heaven of hope for some time, but at
this moment I struck reality with a thump that almost made me sick and
giddy. The expression of my face reminded her of the irrelevancy of her
remark, and she blushed slightly, but laughed it off, saying:
"Pardon me, that I followed my own thoughts for a moment rather than
yours. These matters, no doubt, seem mere trifles to you gentlemen, but
they are weighty questions to us girls who have to make a little go a
great way. Won't you, please, repeat what you said about that lady who
wrote a book for the sake of its binding? I think it's a pretty idea."
I was so incensed that I answered as I should not have done. "She was
remarkably successful. Every one looked at the binding, but were soon
satisfied to look no farther."
I was both glad and vexed that she did not catch my meaning, for she
said, with a smile:
"It would make a pretty ornament."
"It would not be to my taste," I replied briefly. "The beautiful
binding would hold out the promise of a good book, which, not being
fulfilled, would be tantalizing."
"Do you know the lady well?"
"Yes, I fear I do."
"How strangely you look at me!"
"Excuse me," I said, starting. "I fear I followed your example and was
thinking of something else."
But I let what I was thinking about slip out.
"It was indeed a revelation. My thoughts will not interest you, I fear.
The experience of a man who saw a mirage in the desert came into my
mind."
"I don't see what put that into your head."
"Nor do I, now. The world appears to me entirely matter-of-fact."
"I'm glad to hear you say that. Mother is always talking to me about
spiritual meanings and all that. Now I agree with you. Things are just
what they are. Some we like, and some we don't like. What more is there
to say about them? I think people are very foolish if they bother
themselves over things or people they don't like. I hope mother will
take you to board, for I would like to have some one in the house who
looks at things as I do."
"Thanks. Woman's intuition is indeed unerring."
"I declare, there comes Silas Jones with his new top-buggy. You won't
mind his making one of our party, will you?"
"I think I will go to my room and rest awhile, and thus I shall not be
that chief of this world's evils--the odious third party." And I rose
decisively.
"I'd rather you wouldn't go," she said. "I don't care specially for
him, and he does not talk half so nicely as you do. You needn't go on
his account. Indeed, I like to have half a dozen gentlemen around me."
"You are delightfully frank."
"Yes, I usually say what I think."
"And do as you please," I added.
"Certainly. Why shouldn't I when I can? Don't you?"
"But I came from the wicked city." "So does Emily Warren."
"Is she wicked?"
"I don't know; she keeps it to herself if she is; and, by the way, she
is very quiet, I can never get her to talk much about herself. She
appears so good that mother is beginning to quote her as an example,
and that, you know, always makes one detest a person. I think there is
some mystery about her. I'm sorry you will go, for I've lots of
questions I'd like to ask you now we are acquainted."
"Pardon me; I'm not strong, and must have a rest. Silas Jones will
answer just as well."
"Not quite," she said softly, with a smile designed to be bewitching.
As I passed up the hall I heard her say, "Silas Jones, I'm pleased to
see thee."
I threw myself on the lounge in my room in angry disgust.
"O Nature!" I exclaimed, "what excuse have you for such perverseness?
By every law of probability--by the ordinary sequence of cause and
effect--this girl should have been what I fancied her to be. This,
then, forsooth, is the day of my fate! It would be the day of doom did
some malicious power chain me to this brainless, soulless, heartless
creature. What possessed Nature to make such a blunder, to begin so
fairly and yet reach such a lame and impotent conclusion? To the eye
the girl is the fair and proper outcome of this home and beautiful
country life. In reality she is a flat contradiction to it all,
reversing in her own character the native traits and acquired graces of
her father and mother.
"As if controlled and carried forward by a hidden and malign power, she
goes steadily against her surrounding influences that, like the winds
of heaven, might have wafted her toward all that is good and true. Is
not sweet, quaint Mrs. Yocomb her mother? Is not the genial, hearty old
gentleman her father? Has she not developed among scenes that should
ennoble her nature, and enrich her mind with ideality? There is
Oriental simplicity and largeness in her parents' faith. Abraham
sitting at the door of his tent, could scarcely have done better. Hers
is the simplicity of silliness, which reveals what a woman of sense,
though no better than herself, would not speak of. It is exasperating
to think that her eyes and fingers are endowed with a sense of harmony
and beauty, so that she can cut a gown and adorn her lovely person to
perfection, and yet be so idiotic as to make a spectacle of herself in
her real womanhood. As far as I can make out, Nature is more to blame
than the girl. There is not a bat blinking in the sunlight more blind
than she to every natural beauty of this June day; and yet her eyes are
microscopic, and she sees a host of little things not worth seeing. A
true womanly moral nature seems never to have been infused into her
being. She detests children, her little sister shrinks from her; she
speaks and surmises evil of the absent; to strut down Fifth Avenue in
finery, to which she has given her whole soul, is her ideal of
happiness--there, stop! She is the daughter of my kind host and
hostess. The mystery of this world's evil is sadly exemplified in her
defective character, from which sweet, true womanliness was left out. I
should pity her, and treat her as if she were deformed. Poor Mrs.
Yocomb! Even mother-love cannot blind her to the truth that her fair
daughter is a misshapen creature." After a little, I added wearily, "I
wish I had never seen her; I am the worse for this day's mirage," and I
closed my eyes in dull apathy.
CHAPTER V
MUTUAL DISCOVERIES
I must have slept for an hour or more, for when I awoke I saw through
the window-lattice that the sun was declining in the west. Sleep had
again proved better than all philosophy or medicine, for it had
refreshed me and given something of the morning's elasticity.
I naturally indulged in a brief retrospect, conscious that while
nothing had happened, since the croaking printer's remark, that I would
care to print in the paper, experiences had occurred that touched me
closer than would the news that all the Malays of Asia were running
amuck. I felt as if thrown back on to my old life and work in precisely
their old form. My expedition into the country and romance had been
disappointing. It is true I had found rest and sleep, and for these I
was grateful, and with these stanch allies I can go on with my work,
which I now believe is the best thing the world has for me. I shall go
back to it to-morrow, well content, after this day's experience, to
make it my mistress. The bare possibility of being yoked to such a
woman as in fancy I have wooed and won to-day makes me shiver with
inexpressible dread. Her obtuseness, combined with her microscopic
surveillance, would drive me to the nearest madhouse I could find. The
whole business of love-making and marriage involves too much risk to a
man who, like myself, must use his wits as a sword to carve his
fortunes. I've fought my way up alone so far, and may as well remain a
free lance. The wealthy, and those who are content to plod, can go
through life with a woman hanging on their arm. Rich I shall never be,
and I'll die before I'll plod. My place is in the midst of the world's
arena, where the forces that shall make the future are contending, and
I propose to be an appreciable part of those forces. I shall go back
the wiser and stronger for this day's folly, and infinitely better for
its rest, and I marched down the moody stairway, feeling that I was not
yet a crushed and broken man, and cherishing also a secret complacency
that I had at last outgrown my leanings toward sentimentality.
As I approached the door of the wide, low-browed parlor, I saw Miss
Warren reading a paper; a second later and my heart gave a bound: it
was the journal of which I was the night editor, and I greeted its
familiar aspect as the face of an old friend in a foreign land. It was
undoubtedly the number that had gone to press the night I had broken
down, and I almost hoped to see some marks of the catastrophe in its
columns. How could I beguile the coveted sheet from Miss Warren's hands
and steal away to a half-hour's seclusion?
"What! Miss Warren," I exclaimed, "reading a newspaper on Sunday?"
She looked at me a moment before replying, and then asked:
"Do you believe in a Providence?"
Thrown off my guard by the unexpected question, I answered:
"Assuredly; I am not quite ready to admit that I am a fool, even after
all that has happened."
There was laughter in her eyes at once, but she asked innocently:
"What has happened?"
I suppose my color rose a little, but I replied carelessly, "I have
made some heavy blunders of late. You are adroit in stealing away from
a weak position under a fire of questions, but your stratagem shall not
succeed," I continued severely. "How can you explain the fact, too
patent to be concealed, that here in good Mrs. Yocomb's house, and on a
Sunday afternoon, you are reading a secular newspaper?"
"You have explained my conduct yourself," she said, assuming a fine
surprise.
"I?"
"You, and most satisfactorily. You said you believed in a Providence. I
have merely been reading what he has done, or what he has permitted,
within the last twenty-four hours."
I looked around for a chair, and sat down "struck all of a heap," as
the rural vernacular has it.
"Is that your definition of news?" I ventured at last.
"I'm not a dictionary. That's the definition of what I've been reading
this afternoon."
"Miss Warren, you may score one against me."
The mischievous light was in her eyes, but she said suavely:
"Oh, no, you shall have another chance. I shall begin by showing mercy,
for I may need it, and I see that you can be severe."
"Well, please, let me take breath and rally my shattered wits before I
make another advance. I understand you, then, that you regard
newspapers as good Sunday reading?"
"You prove your ability, Mr. Morton, by drawing a vast conclusion from
a small and ill-defined premise. I don't recall making any such
statement."
"Pardon me, you are at disadvantage now. I ask for no better premise
than your own action; for you are one, I think, who would do only what
you thought right."
"A palpable hit. I'm glad I showed you mercy. Still it does not follow
that because I read a newspaper, all newspapers are good Sunday
reading. Indeed, there is much in this paper that is not good reading
for Monday or any other day."
"Ah!" I exclaimed, looking grave, "then why do you read it?"
"I have not. A newspaper is like the world of which it is a brief
record--full of good and evil. In either case, if one does not like the
evil, it can be left alone."
"Which do you think predominates in that paper?"
"Oh, the good, in the main. There is an abundance of evil, too, but it
is rather in the frank and undisguised record of the evil in the world.
It does not seem to have got into the paper's blood and poisoned its
whole life. It is easily skipped if one is so inclined. There are some
journals in which the evil cannot be skipped. From the leading
editorial to the obscurest advertisement, one stumbles on it
everywhere. They are like certain regions in the South, in which there
is no escape from the snakes and malaria. Now there are low places in
this paper, but there is high ground also, where the air is good and
wholesome, and where the outlook on the world is wide. That is the
reason I take it."
"I was not aware that many young ladies looked, in journals of this
character, beyond the record of deaths and marriages."
"We studied ancient history. Is it odd that we should have a faint
desire to know what Americans are doing, as well as what the
Babylonians did?"
"Oh, I do not decry your course as irrational. It seems
rather--rather--"
"Rather too rational for a young lady."
"I did not say that; but here is my excuse," and I took from a table
near a periodical entitled "The Young Lady's Own Weekly," addressed to
Miss Adah Yocomb.
"Have not young men their own weeklies also--which of the two classes
is the more weakly?"
"Ahem! I decline to pursue this phase of the subject any further. To
return to our premise, this journal," and I laid my hand on the old
paper caressingly. "It so happens that I read it also, and thus learn
that we have had many thoughts in common; though, no doubt, we would
differ on some of the questions discussed in it. What do you think of
its politics?"
"I think they are often very bad."
"That's delightfully frank," I said, sitting back in my chair a little
stiffly. "I think they are very good--at any rate they are mine."
"Perhaps that is the reason they are so good?"
"Now, pardon me if I, too, am a trifle plain. Do you consider yourself
as competent to form an opinion concerning politics as gray-headed
students of affairs?"
"Oh, certainly not; but do I understand that you accept,
unquestioningly, the politics of the paper you read?"
"Far from it: rather that the politics of this paper commend themselves
to my judgment."
"And you think 'judgment' an article not among a young woman's
possessions?"
"Miss Warren, you may think what you please of the politics of this
paper. But how comes it that you think about them at all? I'm sure that
they interest but comparatively few young ladies."
Her face suddenly became very grave and sad, and a moment later she
turned away her eyes that were full of tears. "I wish you hadn't asked
that question; but I will explain my seeming weakness," she said, in a
low, faltering voice. "I lost my only brother in the war--I was
scarcely more than a child; but I can see him now--my very ideal of
brave, loyal manhood. Should I not love the country for which he died?"
Politics! a word that men so often utter with contempt, has been
hallowed to me since that moment.
She looked away for a moment, swiftly pressed her handkerchief to her
eyes, then turning toward me said, with a smile, and in her former
tones:
"Forgive me! I've been a bit lonely and blue this afternoon, for the
day has reminded me of the past. I won't be weak and womanish any more.
I think some political questions interest a great many women deeply. It
must be so. We don't dote on scrambling politicians; but a man as a
true statesman makes a grand figure."
I was not thinking of statecraft or the craftsmen.
"By Jove!" I exclaimed mentally, "this girl is more beautiful than my
'perfect flower of womanhood.' Night-owl that I am, I am just gaining
the power to see her clearly as the sun declines."
I know my face was full of honest sympathy as I said, gently and
reverently:
"Tell me more of your brother. The thoughts of such men make me better."
She shot a quick, grateful glance, looked down, trembled, shook her
head as she faltered:
"I cannot--please don't; speak of something far removed."
The feeling was so deep, and yet so strongly curbed, that its
repression affected me more deeply than could its manifestation. Her
sorrow became a veiled and sacred mystery of which I could never be
wholly unconscious again; and I felt that however strong and brilliant
she might prove in our subsequent talk, I should ever see, back of all,
the tender-hearted, sensitive woman.
"Please forgive me. I was cruelly thoughtless," I said, in a voice that
trembled slightly. Then, catching up the paper, I continued, with
attempted lightness, "We have found this journal, that we mutually
read, a fruitful theme. What do you think of its literary reviews?"
Mirth and tears struggled for the mastery in her eyes; but she
answered, with a voice that had regained its clear, bell-like tone:
"In some I have seen indisputable proof of impartiality and freedom
from prejudice."
"In what did that proof consist?"
"In the evident fact that the reviewer had not read the book."
"You are severe," I said, coloring slightly.
She looked at me with a little surprise, but continued:
"That does not happen very often. It is clear that there are several
contributors to this department, and I have come to look for the
opinions of one of them with much interest. I am sure of a careful and
appreciative estimate of a book from his point of view. His one fault
appears to be that he sees everything from one perspective, and does
not realize that the same thing may strike other intelligent people
very differently. But he's a fixed and certain quantity, and a good
point to measure from. I like him because he is so sincere. He sits
down to a book as a true scientist does to a phase of nature, to really
learn what there is in it, and not merely to display a little learning,
sarcasm, or smartness. I always feel sure that I know something about a
book after reading one of his reviews, and also whether I could afford
to spend a part of my limited time in reading it."
"I have singled out the same reviewer, and think your estimate correct.
On another occasion, when we have more time, I am going to ask how you
like the musical critic's opinions; for on that subject you would be at
home."
"What makes you think so?"
"Miss Yocomb told me that you taught music in the city, and music is
about the only form of recreation for which I have taken time in my
busy life. There are many things concerning the musical tendencies of
the day that I would like to ask you about. But I hear the clatter of
the supper dishes. What do you think of the editorial page, and its
moral tendencies? That is a good Sunday theme."
"There is evidence of much ability, but there is a lack of earnestness
and definite purpose. The paper is newsy and bright, and, in the main,
wholesome. It reflects public opinion fairly and honestly, but does
little to shape it. It is often spicily controversial, sometimes
tiresomely so. I do a good deal of skipping in that line. I wish its
quarrels resulted more from efforts to right some wrong; and there is
so much evil in our city, both in high and low places, that ought to be
fought to the death. The editor has exceptional opportunities, and
might be the knight-errant of our age. If in earnest, and on the right
side, he can forge a weapon out of public opinion that few evils could
resist. And he is in just the position to discover these dragons and
drive them from their hiding-places. If, for instance, the clever
paragraphist in this column, whose province, it seems, is to comment at
the last moment on the events of the day, were as desirous of saying
true, strong, earnest words, as bright and prophetic ones, in which the
news of the morrow is also outlined-why, Mr. Morton, what is the
matter?"
"Are you a witch?"
She looked at me a moment, blushed deeply, and asked hesitatingly:
"Are-are you the paragraphist?"
"Yes," I said, with a burst of laughter, "as truly as yours is the only
witchcraft in which I believe-that of brains." Then putting my finger
on my lips, I added, _sotto voce_: "Don't betray me. Mr. Yocomb would
set all his dogs on me if he knew I were an editor, and I don't wish to
go yet."
"What have I been saying!" she exclaimed, with an appalled look.
"Lots of clever things. I never got so many good hints in the same time
before."
"It wasn't fair in you, to lead me on in the dark."
"Oh, there wasn't any 'dark,' I assure you. Your words were
coruscations. Never was the old journal so lighted up before."
There were both perplexity and annoyance in her face as she looked
dubiously at me. Instantly becoming grave, I stepped to her side and
took her hand, as I said, with the strongest emphasis:
"Miss Warren, I thank you. I have caught a glimpse of my work and
calling through the eyes of a true, refined, and, permit me to add, a
gifted woman. I think I shall be the better for it, but will make no
professions. If I'm capable of improvement this column will show it."
Her hand trembled in mine as she looked away and said:
"You are capable of sympathy."
Then she went hastily to the piano.
Before she could play beyond a bar or two, little Zillah bounded in,
exclaiming:
"Emily Warren, mother asks if thee and Richard Morton will come out to
tea?"
"I may be in error, but is not a piano one of the worldly vanities?" I
asked, as she turned to comply. "I did not expect to see one here."
"Mrs. Yocomb kindly took this in with me. I could scarcely live without
one, so you see I carry the shop with me everywhere, and am so linked
to my business that I can never be above it."
"I hope not, but you carry the business up with you. The shop may be,
and ought to be, thoroughly respectable. It is the narrow, mercenary
spirit of the shop that is detestable. If you had that, you would leave
your piano in New York, since here it would have no money value."
"You take a nice view of it."
"Is it not the true view?"
In mock surprise she answered:
"Mr. Morton, I'm from New York. Did you ever meet a lady from that city
who was not all that the poets claimed for womanhood?"
CHAPTER VI
A QUAKER TEA
"Richard Morton," said Mrs. Yocomb genially, "thee seems listening very
intently to something Emily Warren is saying, so thee may take that
seat beside her."
"Richard Morton," said Mr. Yocomb from the head of the table, "has thee
made the acquaintance of Emily Warren?"
"No, sir, but I am making it."
"So am I, and she has been here a week."
"I should esteem that one of the highest of compliments," I said; then
turning to her, I added, in an aside, "You found me out in half an
hour."
"Am I such a sphinx?" she asked Mr. Yocomb with a smile; while to me
she said, in a low tone: "You are mistaken. You have had something to
say to me almost daily for a year or more."
"I am not acquainted with the article, and so can't give an opinion,"
Mr. Yocomb replied, with a humorous twinkle in his eye. "If the
resemblance is close, so much the better for the sphinxes."
"Now, father, thee isn't a young man that thee should be complimenting
the girls," his wife remarked.
"I've persuaded Silas Jones to stay," said Adah, entering.
"Silas Jones, I hope thee and thy parents are well," Mrs. Yocomb
answered, with a courtesy somewhat constrained. "Will thee take that
seat by Adah? Let me make thee acquainted with Richard Morton and Emily
Warren."
We bowed, but I turned instantly to Miss Warren and said.
"Do you note how delightfully Mrs. Yocomb unites our names? I take it
as an omen that we may become friends in spite of my shortcomings. You
should have been named first in the order of merit."
"Mrs. Yocomb rarely makes mistakes," she replied.
"That confirms my omen."
"Omens are often ominous."
"I'm prepared for the best."
"Hush!" and she bowed her head in the grace customary before meals in
this house.
I had noted that Mr. Yocomb's bow to Mr. Jones was slightly formal
also. Remembering the hospitable traits of my host and hostess, I
concluded that the young man was not exactly to their taste. Indeed, a
certain jauntiness in dress that verged toward flashiness would not
naturally predispose them in his favor. But Adah, although disclaiming
any special interest in him, seemed pleased with his attentions. She
was not so absorbed, however, but that she had an eye for me, and
expected my homage also. She apparently felt that she had made a very
favorable impression on me, and that we were congenial spirits. During
the half hour that followed I felt rather than saw that this fact
amused Miss Warren exceedingly.
For a few moments we sat in silence, but I fear my grace was as
graceless as my morning worship had been. Miss Warren's manner was
reverent. Were her thoughts also wandering? and whither? She certainly
held mine, and by a constraint that was not unwelcome.
When she lifted her expressive eyes I concluded that she had done
better than merely comply with a religious custom.
"The spirit of this home has infected you," I said.
"It might be well for you also to catch the infection."
"I know it would be well for me, and wish to expose myself to it to the
utmost. You are the only obstacle I fear."
"I?"
"Yes. I will explain after supper."
"To explain that you have good cause to ask for time,"
"Richard Morton, does thee like much sugar in thy tea?" Mrs. Yocomb
asked.
"No-yes, none at all, if you please."
My hostess looked at me a little blankly, and Adah and Silas Jones
giggled.
"A glass of milk will help us both out of our dilemma," I said, with a
laugh.
"An editor should be able to think of two things at once," Miss Warren
remarked, in a low aside.
"That depends on the subject of his thoughts. But don't breathe that
word here, or I'm undone."
"Richard Morton," said Mr. Yocomb, "I hope thee feels the better for
mother's ministrations since we came home. Will thee pass thy plate for
some more of the same kind?"
"Mrs. Yocomb has done me good ever since I followed her into the
meeting-house," I replied. "I am indeed the better for her dinner, and
I ought to be. I feared you would all be aghast at the havoc I made.
But it is your kindness and hospitality that have done me the most
good, I would not have believed yesterday afternoon that my fortunes
could have taken so favorable a turn."
"Why, what was the matter with you then?" asked Adah, with wide-eyed
curiosity; and little Zillah looked at me with a pitying and puzzled
glance.
"A common complaint in the city. I was committing suicide, and
yesterday became conscious of the fact."
"Mr. Morton must have hit on an agreeable method of suicide, since he
could commit it unconsciously," Miss Warren remarked mischievously. "I
read in Emily Warren's newspaper this afternoon," said Silas Jones,
with awkward malice, "of a young fellow who got a girl to marry him by
pretending to commit suicide. He didn't hurt himself much though."
The incident amused Adah exceedingly, and I saw that Miss Warren's eyes
were full of laughter. Assuming a shocked expression, I said:
"I am surprised that Miss Warren takes a paper so full of insidious
evil." Then, with the deepest gravity, I remarked to Silas Jones, "I
have recently been informed, sir, on good authority, that each one
instinctively finds and reads in a newspaper that which he likes or
needs. I sincerely hope, my dear sir, that the example you have quoted
will not lead you to adopt a like method."
Adah laughed openly to her suitor's confusion, and the mouths of the
others were twitching. With the complexion of the rose at his
button-hole Mr. Jones said, a trifle vindictively:
"I thought the paragraph might refer to you, sir, you seem so slightly
hurt."
"I don't like to contradict you, but I cannot be this ingenious youth
whose matrimonial enterprise so deeply interests you, since I am not
married, and I was hurt severely."
"Thee had been overworking," said Mrs. Yocomb kindly.
"Working foolishly rather. I thought I had broken down, but sleep and
your kindness have so revived me that I scarcely know myself. Are you
accustomed to take in tramps from New York?"
"That depends somewhat upon the tramps. I think the right leadings are
given us."
"If good leadings constitute a Friend, I am one to-day, for I have been
led to your home." "Now I'm moved to preach a little," said Mr. Yocomb.
"Richard Morton, does thee realize the sin and folly of overwork? If
thee works for thyself it is folly. If thee toils for the good of the
world, and art able to do the world any good, it is sin; if there are
loved ones dependent on thee, thee may do them a wrong for which there
is no remedy. Thee looks to me like a man who has been over-doing."
"Unfortunately there is no one dependent on me, and I fear I have not
had the world's welfare very greatly at heart. I have learned that I
was becoming my own worst enemy, and so must plead guilty of folly."
"Well, thee doesn't look as if thee had sinned away thy day of grace
yet. If thee'll take roast-beef and common-sense as thy medicine,
thee'll see my years and vigor."
"Richard Morton," said his wife, with a gentle gravity, "never let any
one make thee believe that thee has sinned away thy day of grace."
"Mother, thee's very weak on the 'terrors of the law.' Thee's always
for coaxing the transgressors out of the broad road. Thee's
latitudinarian; now!"
"And thee's a little queer, father."
"Emily Warren, am I queer?"
"You are very sound and sensible in your advice to Mr. Morton," she
replied. "One may very easily sin against life and health beyond the
point of remedy. I should judge from Mr. Morton's words that he is in
danger."
"Now, mother, thee sees that Emily Warren believes in the terrors of
the law."
"Thee wouldn't be a very good one at enforcing them, Emily," said Mrs.
Yocomb, nodding her head smilingly toward her favorite.
"The trouble is," said Miss Warren a little sadly, "that some laws
enforce themselves. I know of so many worn-out people in New York, both
men and women, that I wish that Mr. Yocomb's words were printed at the
head of ail our leading newspapers."
"Yes," said Mr. Yocomb, "if editors and newspaper writers were only as
eager to quiet the people as they are to keep up the hubbub of the
world, they might make their calling a useful one. It almost takes away
my breath to read some of our great journals."
"Do you not think laziness the one pre-eminent vice of the world?"
tasked.
"Not of native-born Americans. I think restlessness, nervous activity,
is the vice of our age. I am out of the whirl, and can see it all the
more clearly. Thee admits that thy city life was killing thee--I know
it would kill me in a month."
"I would like to have a chance to be killed by it," said Adah, with a
sigh.
"Thy absence would be fatal to some in the country," I heard Silas
Jones remark, and with a look designed to be very reproachful.
"Don't tell me that. Melissa Bunting would soon console thee."
"Thee stands city life quite well, Emily," said Mrs. Yocomb.
"Yes, better than I once did. I am learning how to live there and still
enjoy a little of your quiet; but were it not for my long summers in
the country I fear it would go hard with me also."
"You have suggested my remedy," I said. "My business does not permit
much chance for rest, unless it is taken resolutely; and, like many
other sinners, I have great reforms in contemplation."
"It must be a dreadful business that came so near killing you," Adah
remarked, looking at me curiously. "What can it be?"
Mrs. Yocomb glanced at her daughter reprovingly, but Miss Warren's eyes
were dancing, and I saw she was enjoying my rather blank look immensely.
T decided, however, that honesty and audacity would be my best allies,
and at the same time I hoped to punish Adah a little through her
curiosity.
"I must admit that it is a dreadful business. Deeds of darkness occupy
much of my time; and when good, honest men, like your father, are
asleep, my brain, and hand are busiest. Now you see what a suspicious
character your father and mother have harbored in their unquestioning
hospitality."
The young lady looked at me with a thoroughly perplexed and half
alarmed expression.
"My gracious!" she exclaimed. "What do you do?"
"You do not look as if 'inclined to mercy,'" I replied. "Mr. Yocomb and
Miss Warren believe in the terrors of the law, so I have decided to
make a full confession to Mrs. Yocomb after supper. I think that I am
one of the 'transgressors' that she could 'coax.'"
After a momentary and puzzled glance at my laughing critic, Mrs. Yocomb
said:
"Emily Warren knows thy secret."
"So you have told Emily Warren, but will not tell us," Adah complained,
in a piqued tone and manner.
"Indeed, you are mistaken. Miss Warren found me out by intuition. I am
learning that there is no occasion to tell her things: she sees them."
Mr. Yocomb's face wore a decidedly puzzled look, and contained also the
suggestion of an apt guess.
"Well," he said, "thee has shown the shrewdness of an editor, and a
Yankee one at that."
Miss Warren now laughed outright.
"Thee thinks," he continued, "that if thee gets mother on thy side
thee's safe. I guess I'll adopt a common editorial policy, and sit
safely on the fence till I hear what mother says to thy confession."
"Are you laughing at me?" I asked Miss Warren, with an injured air.
"To think that one of your calling should have got into such a
dilemma!" she said, in a low tone. "It's delicious!"
"My cheeks may become bronzed, but never brazen, Miss Warren. My
guilelessness should touch your sympathies."
"Well," said Adah, with rather a spiteful look at Miss Warren, "I'm
glad I've not got a prying disposition. I talked with you half the
afternoon and did not find you out."
Even Mrs. Yocomb laughed at this.
"Now, Miss Warren," I said, turning to her with a triumphant look, "I
hope you feel properly quenched."
"Is there any record of your crime, or misfortune, or whatever it may
be, in Miss Warren's newspaper?" asked Silas Jones, with a slight sneer.
"Yes, sir, of both, if the truth must be told," I replied. "That is the
way she found me out."
This unexpected admission increased the perplexity all around, and also
added to Miss Warren's merriment.
"Where is the paper?" said Adah, quickly.
At this peculiar proof of his daughter's indifference Mr. Yocomb fairly
exploded with laughter. He seemingly shared his wife's confidence in
Miss Warren to that degree that the young lady's knowledge of my
business, combined with her manner, was a guarantee against anything
seriously wrong. Moreover, the young girl's laugh was singularly
contagious. Its spontaneity and heartiness were irresistible, and I
feared that her singing would not be half so musical.
"Richard Morton," said Mrs. Yocomb, rising, "if thee wishes to free thy
mind, or conscience, or heart, I will now give thee an opportunity."
"My fate is in your hands. If you send me back to my old life and work
I will go at once."
"Ah!" exclaimed Miss Warren, in mock gravity, "now there is a touch of
tragedy in your words. Must we all hold our breaths till you return,
absolved or condemned?"
"And were I condemned would you breathe freely?"
"Yes, indeed I would, if Mrs. Yocomb condemned you. But after my sense
of justice was satisfied I might be moved to pity."
"And you think I may become a pitiable object?"
"You would be, indeed, if Mrs. Yocomb condemned you."
"Lead on," I exclaimed, with a gesture of mock tragedy; "this is the
hour of destiny."
CHAPTER VII
A FRIEND
"Richard Morton," said Mrs. Yocomb, as she sat down encouragingly near
me in the low-studded parlor, "thee does not look into my eyes as if
thee had a great burden on thy conscience."
"I have a great fear in my heart," I said.
"The two should go together," she remarked a little gravely; "and
strength will be given thee to cast away both."
The spirit of jesting left me at once, and I know that I looked into
her kind motherly face very wistfully and appealingly. After a moment I
asked:
"Mrs. Yocomb, did you ever treat an utter stranger so kindly before?"
"I think so," she said, with a smile. "Emily Warren came to us an
entire stranger and we already love her very much."
"I can understand that. Miss Warren is a genuine woman--one after your
own heart. I was not long in finding that out. But I am a man of the
world, and you must have noted the fact from the first."
"Richard Morton, supposing thee is a sinner above all others in
Galilee, where do I find a warrant for the 'I am better than thou'
spirit?"
She said these words so gently and sincerely that they touched my very
soul, and I exclaimed:
"If evil had been my choice a thousand years, you might me from it."
She shook her head gravely as she said:
"Thee doesn't understand. Weak is the arm of flesh."
"But kindness and charity are omnipotent."
"Yes, if thee turns to Omnipotence for them. But far be it from me to
judge thee, Richard Morton. Because thee does not walk just where I am
walking is no proof that thou art not a pilgrim."
"I must tell you in all sincerity that I am not. My brain, heart, and
soul have been absorbed by the world, and not by its best things
either. Fifteen years ago, when scarcely more than a child, I was left
alone in it. I have feared it inexpressibly, and with good reason. I
have fought it, and have often been worsted. At times I have hated it;
but as I began to succeed I learned to love it, and to serve it with an
ambition that gave me so little respite that yesterday I thought that I
was a broken and worn-out man. If ever the world had a slave, I am one;
but there have been times during this June day when I earnestly wished
that I might break my chains; and your serene, kindly face, that is in
such blessed contrast to its shrewd, exacting, and merciless spirit,
gave hope from the first."
"So thee has been alone in the world since thee was a little boy," she
said, in a tone that seemed the echo of my dead mother's voice.
"Since I was twelve years of age," I replied, after a moment, and
looking away. I could not meet her kind eyes as I added: "My mother's
memory has been the one good, sacred influence of my life; but I have
not been so true to it as I ought to have been--nothing like so true."
"Has thee no near friends or relatives?"
"I have acquaintances by the hundred, but there is no one to whom I
could speak as I have to you, whom I have known but a few hours. A man
has intuitions sometimes as well as a woman."
"How strange it all is!" said Mrs. Yocomb, with a sigh, and looking
absently out of the window to where the sun glowed not far above the
horizon. Its level rays lighted up her face, making it so beautiful and
noble that I felt assured that I had come to the right one for light
and guidance. "Every heart seems to have its burden when the whole
truth is known," she added, meditatively. "I wonder if any are exempt.
Thee seemed indeed a man of the world when jesting at the table, but
now I see thy true self Thee is right, Richard Morton; thee can speak
to me as to thy friend."
"I fear your surmise is true, Mrs. Yocomb; for in two instances to-day
have I caught glimpses of burdens heavier than mine." She looked at me
hastily, and her face grew pale. I relieved her by quietly continuing:
"Whether you have a burden on your heart or not, one thing I know to be
true--the burdened in heart or conscience would instinctively turn to
you. I am conscious that it is this vital difference between your
spirit and that of the world which leads me to speak as I do. Except as
we master and hold our own in the world, it informs us that we are of
little account--one of millions; and our burdens and sorrows are
treated as sickly sentimentalities. There is no isolation more perfect
than that of a man of the world among people of his own kind, with whom
manifestations of feeling are weaknesses, securing prompt ridicule.
Reticence, a shrewd alertness to the main chance of the hour, and the
spirit of the entire proverb, 'Every man for himself,' become such
fixed characteristics that I suppose there is danger that the deepest
springs in one's nature may dry up, and no Artesian shaft of mercy or
truth be able to find anything in a man's soul save arid selfishness.
In spite of all that conscience can say against me--and it can say very
much--I feel sure that I have not yet reached that hopeless condition."
"No, Richard Morton, thee has not."
"I honestly hope I never may, and yet I fear it. Perhaps the
turning-point has come when I must resolutely look my old life and its
tendencies in the face and as resolutely work out such changes as true
manhood requires. If you will permit a metaphor, I feel like a
shipmaster whom a long-continued and relentless gale has driven into an
unexpected and quiet harbor. Before I put to sea again I would like to
rest, make repairs, and get my true bearings, otherwise I may make
shipwreck altogether. And so, impelled by my stress and need, I venture
to ask if you will permit me to become an inmate of your home for a
time on terms similar to those that you have made with Miss Warren.
That you may very naturally decline is the ground of the fear to which
I referred."
"Richard Morton," said the old lady heartily, "thee's welcome to stay
with us as long as thee pleases, and to come whenever thee can. The
leadings in this case are plain, and I shall pray the kind Heavenly
Father that all thy hopes may be realized."
"One has been realized truly. You cannot know how grateful I am."
"Thee's welcome, surely, and father will tell thee so, too. Come," and
she led me out to the further end of the veranda, where Mr. Yocomb sat
with Miss Warren, his daughters, and Silas Jones grouped near him.
"Well," exclaimed Adah eagerly, "what is Mr. Morton's calling? It must,
indeed, be a dreadful business, since you have had such a long and
serious time."
Mrs. Yocomb looked at me a little blankly.
"I declare," I exclaimed, laughing, "I forgot to tell you."
"Forgot to tell!" cried Adah. "Why, what on earth did you tell? There
is nothing about you in this paper that I can find."
Mr. Yocomb looked perplexed, and I saw Miss Warren's quick glance at
Mrs. Yocomb, who smiled back reassuringly.
"Father," she said, "Richard Morton wishes to stay with us for a time,
I have told him that he was welcome, and that thee would tell him so,
too. I think thee will. Thee may ask him any questions thee pleases. I
am satisfied."
"Thee is mistress of thy home, mother, and if thee's satisfied I am.
Richard Morton, thee's welcome. Thee was wise to get mother on thy
side."
"So I instinctively felt ever since I saw her at the meeting-house
door."
"Perhaps mother gave thee a bit of a sermon?"
"She has given me two things that a man can't be a man without--hope
and courage."
"Well, thee does kind of look as if thee had plucked up heart."
"You, too, are catching the infection of this home," Miss Warren said,
in a low voice, as she stood near me.
"So soon? I feel that I shall need an exposure of several weeks. There
is now but one obstacle in the way."
"Ah, yes! I remember what you said. It's time you explained."
"Not yet." And I turned and answered Adah's perplexed and frowning brow.
"You will find me in that paper, Miss Adah, as one of its chief faults.
I am one of its editors, and this fact will reveal to you the calling
from which I and many others, no doubt, have suffered. Thus you see
that, after all, I have revealed my secret to you only. To your mother
I revealed myself. I hope, sir, you will not reverse your decision?" I
said to Mr. Yocomb.
The old gentleman laughed heartily as he answered, "I have had my say
about editors in general. Mother and--I may add--something in thy own
manner, has inclined me to except present company. But I'll read thy
paper since Emily Warren takes it, so thee'd better beware."
I saw that Adah was regarding me with complacency, and seemed
meditating many other questions. I had fully decided, however, that
while I should aim to keep her goodwill I would not permit her to make
life a burden by her inane chatter, or by any sense of proprietorship
in me. She must learn, as speedily as possible, that I was not one of
her "half-dozen young men."
"Richard Morton, thee can keep thy room, and I hope thee will not find
our quiet, homely ways irksome, since we cannot greatly change them,"
said my hostess.
"I have a request to make, Mrs. Yocomb," I replied earnestly; "and I
shall derive no pleasure or benefit from my sojourn with you unless you
grant it. It is, that your family life may go on just the same as if I
were not here. As surely as I see that I am a source of restraint or
extra care and trouble, you will drive me out into the wilderness
again. You know why I wish to stay with you," I added meaningly.
"We shall take thee at thy word," said Mrs. Yocomb, with a smile on her
lips but a very wistful, kindly light in her eyes.
"Reuben, tell Richard Morton the truth," said his father. "Would it
give thee a great deal of trouble or much pleasure to take Dapple and
drive to the village for friend Morton's valise?"
The youth, who was a good-natured and manly boy, to whom Sundays passed
a trifle slowly, sprang up with such alacrity that I laughed as I said,
"No need of words, Reuben, but I owe you a good turn all the same."
Then turning to Miss Warren, I continued:
"You have been here a week. Will your conscience permit you to teach me
a little topography? It would be no worse than reading that newspaper."
"Indeed, I think it might be better. It will be a useful task, at
least; for, left to yourself, you might get lost, and make Mr. Yocomb
no end of trouble. Did you not tell me, sir (to our host), that on one
occasion you had to hunt some one up with fish-horns, lanterns, etc.?"
"Yes, and he was from New York, too," said Mr. Yocomb.
"If I get lost, leave me to my fate. There will be one editor the less."
"Very true; but I'd rather have thee on thy paper than on my
conscience. So Emily Warren, thee look after him, and show him the
right and proper ways, for I am now too old to enjoy a night hunt, even
with the music of fish-horns to cheer us on. I ask thee, Emily, for
some of thine instead when thee comes back."
CHAPTER VIII
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES
"Is it a task, then, to show me the right paths and proper ways?" I
asked, as we strolled away, leaving Adah looking as if--in her
curiosity to know more of the new species, a night editor--she wished
Silas Jones in the depths of the Dead Sea.
"That may depend on how apt and interesting a scholar you prove. I'm a
teacher, you know, and teaching some of my scholars is drudgery, and
others a pleasure."
"So I'm put on my good behavior at once."
"You ought to be on your good behavior anyway--this is Sunday."
"Yes, and June. If a man is not good now he'll never be. And yet such
people as Mrs. Yocomb--nor will I except present company--make me aware
that I am not good--far from it."
"I am glad Mrs. Yocomb made just that impression on you."
"Why?"
"Because it proves you a better man than your words suggest, and, what
is of more consequence, a receptive man. I should have little hope for
any one who came from a quiet talk with Mrs. Yocomb in a complacent
mood or merely disposed to indulge in a few platitudes on the sweetness
and quaintness of her character, and some sentimentalities in regard to
Friends. If the depths of one's nature were not stirred, then I would
believe that there were no depths. She is doing me much good, and
giving me just the help I needed."
"I can honestly say that she uttered one sentence that did find
soundings in such shallow depths as exist in my nature, and I ought to
be a better man for it hereafter."
"She may have found you dreadfully bad, Mr. Morton: but I saw from her
face that she did not find you shallow. If she had, you would not have
touched her so deeply."
"I touched her?"
"Yes. Women understand each other. Something you said--but do not think
I'm seeking to learn what it was--moved her sympathies."
"Oh, she's kind and sympathetic toward every poor mortal."
"Very true; but she's intensely womanly; and a woman is incapable of a
benevolence and sympathy that are measured out by the yard--so much to
each one, according to the dictates of judgment. You were so fortunate
as to move Mrs. Yocomb somewhat as she touched your feelings; and you
have cause to be glad; for she can be a friend that will make life
richer."
"I think I can now recall what excited her sympathies, and may tell you
some time, that is, if you do not send me away."
"I send you away?"
"Yes, I told you that you were the one obstacle to my remaining."
She looked at me as if perplexed and a little hurt. I did not reply at
once, for her countenance was so mobile, so obedient to her thought and
feeling, that I watched its varied expressions with an interest that
constantly deepened. In contrast to Adah Yocomb's her face was usually
pale; and yet it had not the sickly pallor of ill-health, but the
clear, transparent complexion that is between the brunette and the
blonde. Her eyes were full, and the impression of largeness, when she
looked directly at you, was increased by a peculiar outward curve of
their long lashes.
Whether her eyes could be called blue I could not yet decide, and they
seemed to darken and grow a little cold as she now looked at me; but
she merely said, quietly:
"I do not understand you."
"This was your chosen resting-place for the summer, was it not, Miss
Warren?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, what right have I, an entire stranger, to come blundering
along like a June beetle and disturb your rest? You did not look
forward to associations with night editors and like disreputable people
when you chose this sheltered nook of the world, and nestled under Mrs.
Yocomb's wing. You have the prior right here."
As I spoke, her face so changed that it reminded me of the morning of
this eventful day when I first looked out upon its brightness, and as I
ceased her laugh rang out heartily.
"So after all your fate is in my hands."
"It is. You have pre-empted this claim."
"Suppose I am a little non-committal, and should say, You may spend the
evening, you may stay till to-morrow; would you be content?"
"No, indeed, but I would have to submit."
"Well, this is rich. Who ever heard of an editor--and the shrewd,
alert, night editor at that--in such a dilemma! Do you realize what an
unwise step you have taken? Mr. Yocomb justly complimented your
shrewdness in getting Mrs. Yocomb on your side, and having won her over
you were safe, and might have remained in this Eden as long as you
chose. Now you place it within the power--the caprice even--of an utter
stranger to send you out into the wilderness again."
I said, with a smile, "I am satisfied that you differ from your mother
Eve in one respect."
"Ah! in what respect?"
"You are not the kind of woman that causes banishment from Eden."
"You know very little about me, Mr. Morton."
"I know that."
She smiled and looked pleased in spite of herself.
"I think I'll let you stay till--till to-morrow," she said, with an
arch side glance; then added, with a laugh, "What nonsense we are
talking! As if you had not as good a right to be here as I have."
"I beg your pardon. I spoke in downright sincerity. You found this
quiet place first. In a large hotel, all kinds of people can meet
almost as they do on Broadway; but here we must dwell together as one
family, and I feel that I have no right to force on you any association
without your leave, especially as you are here alone. In a certain
sense I introduce myself, and compel you to meet me socially without
your permission. You may have formed a very different plan for your
summer's rest."
"It is rather rare for a music-teacher to receive so much
consideration. It bewilders me a little."
"Pardon me. I soon discovered that you possessed woman's highest rank."
"Indeed! Am I a princess in disguise?"
"You are more than many princesses have been--a lady. And, as I said
before, you are here alone."
She turned and looked at me intently, and I felt that if I had not been
sincere she would have known it. It was a peculiar and, I eventually
learned, a characteristic act. I am now inclined to think that she saw
the precise attitude of my mind and feeling toward her; but my
awakening interest was as far removed from curiosity as is our natural
desire to have a melody completed, the opening strains of which are
captivating.
Her face quickly lost its aspect of grave scrutiny, and she looked
away, with a slight accession of color.
"Do you want to stay very much?" she asked.
"Miss Warren," I exclaimed, and my expression must have been eager and
glad, "you looked at me then as you would at a doubtful stranger, and
your glance was searching. You looked as only a woman can--as one who
would see her way rather than reason it out. Now tell me in sincerity
what you saw."
"You know from my manner what I saw," she said, smiling and blushing
slightly.
"No, I only hoped; I have not a woman's eyesight."
She bit her lip, contracted her wide, low brow for a moment, then
turned and said frankly:
"I did not mean to be rude in my rather direct glance. Even though a
music-teacher, I have had compliments before, and I have usually found
them as empty and insincere as the people who employed them. I am
somewhat alone in the world, Mr. Morton, and I belong to that class of
timid and rather helpless creatures whose safety lies in their
readiness to run to cover. I have found truth the best cover for me,
situated as I am. I aim to be just what I seem--neither more nor less;
and I am very much afraid of people who do not speak the truth,
especially when they are disposed to say nice things."
"And you saw?"
"I saw that bad as you are, I could trust you," she said, laughing; "a
fact that I was glad to learn since you are so bent on forcing your
society upon us all for a time."
"Thank Heaven!" I exclaimed, "I thought yesterday that I was a
bankrupt, but I must have a little of the man left in me to have passed
this ordeal. Had I seen distrust in your eyes and consequent reserve in
your manner, I should have been sorely wounded."
"No," she replied, shaking her head, "when a man's character is such as
to excite distrust, he could not be so sorely wounded as you suggest."
"I'm not sure of that," I said. "I think a man may know himself to be
weak and wicked, and yet suffer greatly from such consciousness."
"Why should he weakly suffer? Why not simply do right? I can endure a
certain amount of honest wickedness, but there is a phase of moral
weakness that I detest," and for a moment her face wore an aspect that
would have made any one wronging her tremble, for it was pure, strong,
and almost severe.
"I do believe," I said, "that men are more merciful to the foibles of
humanity than women." "You are more tolerant, perhaps. Ah! there's
Dapple," and she ran to meet the spirited horse that was coming from
the farmyard. Reuben, driving, sat confidently in his light open wagon,
and his face indicated that he and the beautiful animal he could
scarcely restrain shared equally in their enjoyment of young, healthful
life. I was alarmed to see Miss Warren run forward, since at the moment
Dapple was pawing the air. A second later she was patting his arched
neck and rubbing her cheek against his nose. He looked as if he liked
it. Well he might.
"Oh, Reuben," she cried, "I envy you. I haven't seen a horse in town
that could compare with Dapple."
The young fellow was fairly radiant as he drove away.
She looked after him wistfully, and drew a long sigh.
"Ah!" she said, "they do me good after my city life. There's life for
you, Mr. Morton--full, overflowing, innocent life--in the boy and in
the horse. Existence, motion, is to them happiness. It seems a pity
that both must grow old and weary! My hand fairly tingles yet from my
touch of Dapple's neck, he was so alive with spirit. What is it that
animates that great mass of flesh and blood, bone and sinew, making him
so strong, yet so gentle. At a blow he would have dashed everything to
pieces, but he is as sensitive to kindness as I am. I sometimes half
think that Dapple has as good a right to a soul as I have. Perhaps you
are inclined toward Turkish philosophy, and think so too."
"I should be well content to go to the same heaven that receives you
and Dapple. You are very fearless, Miss Warren, thus to approach a
rearing horse."
Her answer was a slight scream, and she caught my arm as if for
protection. At the moment I spoke a sudden turning in the lane brought
us face to face with a large matronly cow that was quietly ruminating
and switching away the flies. She turned upon us her large, mild,
"Juno-like" eyes, in which one might imagine a faint expression of
surprise, but nothing more.
My companion was trembling, and she said hurriedly:
"Please let us turn back, or go some other way."
"Why, Miss Warren," I exclaimed, "what is the matter?"
"That dreadful cow! Cows are my terror."
I laughed outright as I said, "Now is the time for me to display
courage, and prove than an editor can be the knight-errant of the age.
Upon my soul, Miss Warren, I shall protect you whatever horn of this
dilemma I may be impaled upon." Then advancing resolutely toward the
cow, I added, "Madam, by your leave, we must pass this way."
At my approach the "dreadful cow" turned and ran down the lane to the
pasture field, in a gait peculiarly feminine.
"Now you know what it is to have a protector," I said, returning.
"I'm glad you're not afraid of cows," she replied complacently. "I
shall never get over it. They are my terror."
"There is one other beast," I said, "that I am sure would inspire you
with equal dread."
"I know you are going to say a mouse. Well, it may seem very silly to
you, but I can't help it. I'm glad I wasn't afraid of Dapple, for you
now can think me a coward only in streaks."
"It does appear to me irresistibly funny that you, who, alone and
single-handed, have mastered this great world so that it is under your
foot, should have quailed before that inoffensive cow, which is
harmless as the milk she gives."
"A woman, Mr. Morton, is the mystery of mysteries--the one problem of
the world that will never be solved. We even do not understand
ourselves."
"For which truth I am devoutly thankful. I imagine that instead of a
week, as Mr. Yocomb said, it would require a lifetime to get acquainted
with some women. I wish my mother had lived. I'm sure that she would
have been a continuous revelation to me. I know that she had a great
deal of sorrow, and yet my most distinct recollection of her is her
laugh. No earthly sound ever had for me so much meaning as her laugh. I
think she laughed when other people would have cried. There's a tone in
your laugh that has recalled to me my mother again and again this
afternoon."
"I hope it is not a source of pain," she said gently.
"Far from it," I replied. "Memories of my mother give me pleasure, but
I rarely meet with one to whom I would even think of mentioning her
name."
"I do not remember my mother," she said sadly.
"Come," I resumed hastily, "you admit that you have been dull and
lonely to-day. Look at that magnificent glow in the west. So assuredly
ended in brightness the lives of those we loved, however clouded their
day may have been at times. This June evening, so full of glad sounds,
is not the time for sad thoughts. Listen to the robins, to that saucy
oriole yonder on the swaying elm-branch. Beyond all, hear that thrush.
Can you imagine a more delicious refinement of sound? Let us give way
to sadness when we must, and escape from it when we can. I would prefer
to continue up this shady lane, but it may prove too shadowy, and so
color our thoughts. Suppose we return to the farmyard, where Mr. Yocomb
is feeding the chickens, and then look through the old garden together.
You are a country woman, for you have been here a week; and so I shall
expect you to name and explain everything. At any rate you shall not be
blue any more to-day if I can prevent it. You see I am trying to reward
your self-sacrifice in letting me stay till to-morrow."
"You are so considerate that I may let you remain a little longer."
"What is that fable about the camel? If he once gets his head in--"
"He next puts his foot in it, is the sequel, perhaps," she replied,
with the laugh that was becoming to me like a refrain of music that I
could not hear too often.
CHAPTER IX
"OLD PLOD"
"Emily Warren, why does thee bring Richard Morton back so soon?" asked
Mr. Yocomb, suspending for a moment the sweep of his hand that was
scattering grain.
"You are mistaken, sir," I said; "I brought Miss Warren back. I thought
she would enjoy seeing you feed the poultry, the horses, and especially
the cows."
"Thee's more self-denying than I'd a been," he resumed, With his
humorous twinkle. "Don't tell mother, but I wouldn't mind taking a walk
with Emily Warren myself on a June evening like this."
"I will take a walk with you whenever you wish," laughed Miss Warren;
"but I'll surely tell Mrs. Yocomb."
"Oh! I know I'd get found out," said the old man, shaking his head
ruefully; "I always do."
"I'm sure you would if Miss Warren were here," I added. "I'm at a loss
to know how early in the day she found me out."
"Well, I guess thee's a pretty square sort of a man. If thee'd been
stealing sheep Emily Warren wouldn't laugh at thee so approvingly. I'm
finding out that she rather likes the people she laughs at. At least, I
take that view, for she laughs at me a great deal. I knew from Emily
Warren's laugh that thee hadn't anything very bad to tell mother."
"I admit that, at the time, I enjoyed being laughed at--a rather rare
experience."
"You needn't, either of you, plume yourselves that you are irresistibly
funny. I laugh easily. Mr. Yocomb, why do you feed the chickens so
slowly? I have noticed it before. Now Reuben and Hiram, the man, throw
the corn all down at once."
"They are in more of a hurry than I am. I don't like to do anything in
a hurry, least of all to eat my dinner. Now, why should these chickens,
turkeys and ducks gobble everything right down? The corn seems to taste
good to them; so, after a handful, I wait till they have had a chance
to think how good the last kernel was before they get another. You see
I greatly prolong their pleasure."
"And in these intervals you meditate on Thanksgiving Day, I suppose,"
she said.
"Emily Warren, thee's a good Yankee. I admit that that young gobbler
there did suggest a day on which I'm always very thankful, and with
good reason. I had about concluded before thee came that, if we were
both spared--i.e., that gobbler and I--till next November, I would
probably survive him."
"How can you have the heart to plan against that poor creature's life
so coolly? See how he turns his round, innocent eyes toward you, as if
in gratitude. If he could know that the hand that feeds him would chop
off his head, what a moral shock he would sustain! That upturned beak
should be to you like a reproachful face."
"Emily Warren, we expect thee to eat thy Thanksgiving dinner with us;
and that young gobbler will probably be on the table. Now what part of
him will thee take on that occasion?"
"A piece of the breast, if you please."
"Richard Morton, is not Emily Warren as false and cruel as I am?"
"Just about."
"Is thee not afraid of her?"
"I would be if she were unfriendly."
"Oh, thee thinks everybody in this house is friendly. Emily Warren,
thee must keep up our good name," he added, with a mischievous nod
toward her.
"Mr. Yocomb, you are forgetting the chickens altogether. There are some
staid and elderly hens that are going to bed in disgust, you have kept
them waiting so long."
"See how quick they'll change their minds," he said, as he threw down a
handful of corn. "Now isn't that just like a hen?" he added, as they
hastened back.
"And just like a woman also, I'm sure you want to suggest," said Miss
Warren.
"I suppose thee never changes thy mind."
"I'm going to change the subject. Poultry with their feathers on don't
interest me very much. The male birds remind me of a detestable class
of conceited men, that one must see daily in the city, whose gallantry
is all affectation, and who never for a moment lose sight of themselves
or their own importance. That strutting gobbler there, Mr. Morton,
reminds me of certain eminent statesmen whom your paper delights to
honor, and I imagine that that ridiculous creature embodies their idea
of the American eagle. Then the hens have such a simple, unthinking
aspect. They act as if they expected to be crowed over as a matter of
course; and thus typify the followers of these statesmen, who are so
pre-eminent in their own estimation. Their exalted perches seem to be
awarded unquestioningly."
"So you think, Miss Warren, that I have the simple, unthinking aspect
typified by the physiognomy of these hens?"
"Mr. Morton, I was generalizing. We always except present company.
Remember, I disagree with your paper, not you; but why you look up to
these human species of the gobbler is something I can't understand, and
being only a _woman_, that need not seem strange to you."
"Since I must tell you the truth on all occasions, _nolens volens_, you
have hit on a subject wherein I differ from my paper. Human phases of
the gobbler are not pleasant."
"But the turkey phase _is, very_," said Mr. Yocomb, throwing a handful
of corn down before his favorite, which, like certain eminent
statesmen, immediately looked after his own interests.
"Mr. Yocomb, please, let me help you feed the horses," said Miss
Warren, leading the way into the barn, where on one side were mows for
hay and grain, and, on the other, stalls for several horses. The sleek
and comfortable animals seemed to know the young girl, for they thrust
out their black and brown noses toward her and projected their ears
instead of laying them back viciously, as when I approached; and one
old plow-horse that had been much neglected, until Miss Warren began to
pet him, gave a loud ecstatic whinny.
"Oh, you big, honest old fellows!" she exclaimed, caressing one and
another, "I'd rather teach you than half my pupils."
"In which half do you place me?" I asked.
"You? oh, I forgot; I was to teach you topography. I will assign you by
and by, after you have had a few lessons."
"A man ought to do as well as a horse, so I hope to win your favor."
"I wish all men did as well as Mr. Yocomb's horses. They evidently feel
they have the family name and respectability to keep up. Mr. Yocomb,
what is it that smells so sweetly?"
"That is the red-top clover we cut last week."
"Oh, isn't it good? I wouldn't mind having some myself," and she
snatched down a fragrant handful from the mow. "Here, Old Plod," she
said, turning to the plow-horse, "the world has rather snubbed you, as
it has honest worth before. Mr. Yocomb, you and Reuben are much too
fond of gay horses."
"Shall I tell Reuben that thee'd rather ride after Old Plod, as thee
calls him?"
"No, I thank you; I'll go on as I've begun. I'm not changeable."
"Now, Friend Morton, is not Emily Warren as bad as I am about gay
horses?"
"I'm inclined to think she is about as bad as you are in all respects."
"Emily Warren, thee needn't put on any more airs. Richard Morton thinks
thee isn't any better than I am, and there's nothing under the sun an
editor doesn't know."
"I wish he were right this time," she said, with a laugh and sigh
curiously blended. "It seems to me, Mr. Yocomb, that you have grown
here in the country like your clover-hay, and are as good and
wholesome. In New York it is so different, especially if one has no
home life; you breathe a different atmosphere from us in more respects
than one. This fragrant old barn appears to me more of a sanctuary than
some churches in which I have tried to worship, and its dim evening
light more religious." "According to your faith," I said, "no shrine
has ever contained so precious a gift as a manger."
"According to _our_ faith, if you please, Mr. Morton."
By an instinct that ignored a custom of the Friends, but exemplified
their spirit, the old man took off his hat as he said, "Yes, friend
Morton, according to _our_ faith. The child that was cradled in a
manger tends to make the world innocent."
"The old barn has indeed become a sanctuary," I thought, in the brief
silence that followed. Miss Warren stepped to the door, and I saw a
quick gesture of her hands to her eyes. Then she turned and said, in
her piquant way:
"Mr. Yocomb, our talk reminds me of the long grace in Latin which the
priests said before meals, and which the hungry people couldn't
understand. The horses are hinting broadly that oats would be more
edifying. If it were Monday, I'd wager you a plum that they would all
leave your oats to eat clover-hay out of my hand."
"We'll arrange about the bet to-morrow, and now try the experiment,"
said Mr. Yocomb, relapsing into his genial humor at once.
I was learning, however, that a deep, earnest nature was hidden by this
outward sheen and sparkle. Filling his four-quart measure from the
cobwebbed bin, he soon gave each horse his allowance.
"Now, Richard Morton, thee watch her, and see that she doesn't coax too
much, or come it over them with any unlawful witchery. Take the hay
thyself, Emily, and we'll stand back."
I went to the further end of the barn, near Old Plod, and stood where I
could see the maiden's profile against the light that streamed through
the open door. Never shall I forget the picture I then saw. The tall,
ample figure of the old Quaker stood in the background, and his smile
was broad and genial enough to have lighted up a dungeon. Above him
rose the odorous clover, a handful of which Miss Warren held out to the
horse in the first stall. Her lips were parted, her eyes shining, and
her face had the intent, eager interest of a child, while her attitudes
and motions were full of unstudied and unconscious grace.
The first horse munched stolidly away at his oats. She put the tempting
wisp against his nose, at which he laid back his ears and looked
vicious. She turned to Mr. Yocomb, and the old barn echoed to a laugh
that was music itself as she said:
"You have won your plum, if it is Sunday. I shall try all the other
horses, however, and thus learn to value correctly the expressions of
affection I have received from these long-nosed gentlemen."
One after another they munched on, regardless of the clover. Step by
step she came nearer to me, smiling and frowning at her want of
success. My heart thrilled at a beauty that was so unconventional and
so utterly self-forgetful. The blooming clover, before it fell at a
sweep of the scythe, was the fit emblem of her then, she looked so
young, so fair, and sweet.
"They are as bad as men," she exclaimed, "who will forgive any wrong
rather than an interruption at dinner."
She now stood at my side before Old Plod, that thus far, in his
single-minded attention to his oats, had seemingly forgotten her
presence; but, as he lifted his head from the manger and saw her, he
took a step forward, and reached his great brown nose toward her,
rather than for the clover. In brief, he said, in his poor dumb way:
"I like you better than hay or oats."
The horse's simple, undisguised affection, for some reason, touched the
girl deeply; for she dropped the hay and threw her arm around the
horse's head, leaning her face against his. I saw a tear in her eye as
she murmured:
"You have more heart than all the rest put together. I don't believe
any one was ever kind to you before, and you've been a bit lonely, like
myself." Then she led the way hastily out of the barn, saying, "Old
Plod and I are sworn friends from this time forth; and I shall take
your advice, Old Plod."
I was soon at her side, and asked:
"What advice did Old Plod give you?"
For some inexplicable reason she colored deeply, then laughed as she
said:
"It's rarely wise to think aloud; but impulsive people will do it
sometimes. I suppose we all occasionally have questions to decide that
to us are perplexing and important, though of little consequence to the
world. Come; if we are to see the old garden, we must make the most of
the fading light. After my interview with Old Plod, I can't descend to
cows and pigs; so good-by, Mr. Yocomb."
CHAPTER X
A BIT OF EDEN
"This is my first entrance into Eden," I said, as we passed through the
rustic gate made of cedar branches and between posts green with
American ivy.
"Like another man, you won't stay here long."
"Like Adam, I shall certainly go out when you do."
"That will be before very long, since I have promised Mr. Yocomb some
music."
"Even though a Bohemian editor, as you may think, I am conscious of a
profound gratitude to some beneficent power, for I never could have
chosen so wisely myself. I might have been in Sodom and Gomorrah--for
New York in contrast seems a union of both--receiving reports of the
crimes and casualties of the day, but I am here with this garden in the
foreground and music in the background."
"You don't know anything about the music, and you may yet wish it so
far in the background as to be inaudible."
"I admit that I will be in a dilemma when we reach the music, for no
matter how much I protest, you will know just what I think."
"Yes, you had better be honest."
"Come, open for me the treasures of your ripe experience. You have been
a week in the country. I know you will give me a rosebud--a rare
old-fashioned one, if you please, with a quaint, sweet meaning, for I
see that such abound in this garden, and I am wholly out of humor with
the latest mode in everything. Recalling your taste for homely, honest
worth, as shown by your passion for Old Plod, I shall seek a blossom
among the vegetables for you. Ah, here is one that is sweet, white, and
pretty," and I plucked a cluster of flowers from a potato-hill. "By the
way, what flower is this?" I asked demurely.
She looked at it blankly for a moment, then remarked, with a smile,
"You have said that it was sweet, white, and pretty. Why inquire
further?"
"Miss Warren, you have been a week in the country and don't know a
potato-blossom."
"Our relations may be changed," she said, "and you become the teacher."
"Oh, here comes Zillah. We will settle the question according to
Scripture. Does it not say, 'A little child shall lead them'? Who are
you so glad to see, little one, Miss Warren or me?"
"I don't know thee very well yet," she said shyly.
"Do you know Miss Warren very well?"
"Oh, yes, indeed."
"How soon did you come to know her well?"
"The first day when she kissed me."
"I think that's a very nice way of getting acquainted. Won't you let me
kiss you good-night when you get sleepy."
She looked at me with a doubtful smile, and said, "I'm afraid thy
mustache will tickle me."
The birds were singing in the orchard near, but there was not a note
that to my ear was more musical than Miss Warren's laugh. I stooped
down before the little girl as I said:
"Suppose we see if a kiss tickles you now, and if it don't now, you
won't mind it then, you know."
She came hesitatingly to me, and gave the coveted salute with a
delicious mingling of maidenly shyness and childish innocence and
frankness.
"Ah!" I exclaimed, "Eden itself contained nothing better than that. To
think that I should have been so honored--I who have written the
records of enough crimes to sink a world!"
"Perhaps if you had committed some of them she wouldn't have kissed
you."
"If I had to live in a ninety-nine story tenement-house, as so many do,
I think I would have committed them all. Well, I may come to it. Life
is a risky battle to such as I, but I'm in heaven now."
"You do seem very happy," she said, looking at me wistfully.
"I am very happy. I have given myself up wholly to the influences of
this day, letting them sway me, lead me whithersoever they will. If
this is a day of destiny, no stupid mulishness of mine shall thwart the
happy combination of the stars. That the Fates are propitious I have
singular reason to hope. Yesterday I was a broken and dispirited man.
This evening I feel the influence of all this glad June life. Good Mrs.
Yocomb has taken me in hand. I'm to study topography with a teacher who
has several other bumps besides that of locality, and Zillah is going
to show us the garden of Eden."
"Is this like the garden of Eden?" the little girl asked, looking up at
me in surprise.
"Well, I'm not sure that it's just like it, but I'm more than content
with this garden. In one respect I think it's better--there are no
snakes here. Now, Zillah, lead where you please, I'm in the following
mood. Do you know where any of these birds live? Do you think any of
them are at home on their nests? If so, we'll call and pay our
respects. When I was a horrid boy I robbed a bird's nest, and I often
have a twinge of remorse for it." "Do you want to see a robin's nest?"
asked Zillah excitedly.
"Yes, indeed."
"Then come and walk softly when I do. There's one in that lilac-bush
there. If we don't make a noise, perhaps we can see mother robin on the
nest. Sh--, sh--, very softly; now lift me up as father did--there,
don't you see her?"
I did for a moment, and then the bird flew away on a swift, silent
wing, but from a neighboring tree the paternal robin clamored loudly
against our intrusion. Nevertheless, Zillah and I peeped in.
"Oh, the queer little things!" she said, "they seem all mouth and
swallow."
"Mrs. Robin undoubtedly thinks them lovely. Miss Warren, you are not
quite tall enough, and since I can't hold you up like Zillah, I'll get
a box from the tool-house. Isn't this the jolliest housekeeping you
ever saw? A father, mother, and six children, with a house six inches
across and open to the sky. Compare that with a Fifth Avenue mansion!"
"I think it compares very favorably with many mansions on the Avenue,"
she said, after I returned with a box and she had peered for a moment
into the roofless home.
"I thought you always spoke the truth," I remarked, assuming a look of
blank amazement.
"Well, prove that I don't."
"Do you mean to say that you think that a simple house, of which this
nest is the type, compares favorably with a Fifth Avenue mansion?"
"I do."
"What do you know about such mansions?"
"I have pupils in some of the best of them."
"I hear the voices of many birds, but you are the _rara avis_ of them
all," I said, looking very incredulous.
"Not at all; I am simply matter-of-fact. Which is worth the more, a
furnished house or the growing children in it?"
"The children ought to be."
"Well, many a woman has so much house and furniture to look after that
she has no time for her children. The little brown mother we have
frightened away can give nearly all her time to her children; and, by
the way, they may take cold unless we depart and let her shelter them
again with her warm feathers. Besides, the protesting paterfamilias on
the pear-tree there is not aware of our good-will toward him and his,
and is naturally very anxious as to what we human monsters intend. The
mother bird keeps quiet, but she is watching us from some leafy cover
with tenfold his anxiety."
"You will admit, however, that the man bird is doing the best he can."
"Oh, yes, I have a broad charity for all of his kind."
"Well, I am one of his kind, and so shall take heart and bask in your
general good-will. Stop your noise, old fellow, and go and tell your
wife that she may come home to the children. I differ from you, Miss
Warren, as I foresee I often shall. You are not matter-of-fact at all.
You are unconventional, unique--" "Why not say queer, and give your
meaning in good plain English?"
"Because that is not my meaning. I fear you are worse--that you are
romantic. Moreover, I am told that girls who dote on love in a cottage
all marry rich men if the chance comes." She bit her lip, colored, and
seemed annoyed, but said, after a moment's hesitation, "Well, why
shouldn't they, if the rich men are the right men?"
"Oh, I think such a course eminently proper and thrifty. I'm not
finding fault with it in the least. They who do this are a little
inconsistent, however, in shunning so carefully that ideal cottage,
over which, as young ladies, they had mild and poetic raptures. Now, I
can't associate this kind of thing with you. If you had 'drawings or
leadings,' as Mrs. Yocomb would say, toward a Fifth Avenue mansion, you
would say so in effect. I fear you are romantic, and are under the
delusion that love in a cottage means happiness. You have a very honest
face, and you looked into that nest as if you liked it."
"Mr. Morton," she said, frowning and laughing at the same time, "I'm
not going to be argued out of self-consciousness. If we don't know what
we know, we don't know anything. I insist upon it that I am utterly
matter-of-fact in my opinions on this question. State the subject
briefly in prose. Does a family exist for the sake of a home, or a home
for the sake of a family? I know of many instances in which the former
of these suppositions is true. The father toils and wears himself out,
often gambles--speculating, some call it--and not unfrequently cheats
and steals outright in order to keep up his establishment. The mother
works and worries, smooths her wrinkled brow to curious visitors,
burdens her soul with innumerable deceits, and enslaves herself that
her house and its belongings may be as good or a little better than her
neighbor's. The children soon catch the same spirit, and their souls
become absorbed in wearing apparel. They are complacently ignorant
concerning topics of general interest and essential culture, but would
be mortified to death if suspected of being a little off on 'good form'
and society's latest whims in mode. It is a dreary thraldom to mere
things in which the soul becomes as material, narrow, and hard as the
objects which absorb it. There is no time for that which gives ideality
and breadth."
"Do you realize that your philosophy would stop half the industries of
the world? Do you not believe in large and sumptuously furnished
houses?"
"Yes, for those who have large incomes. One may live in a palace, and
yet not be a slave to the palace. Our home should be as beautiful as
our taste and means can make it; but, like the nest yonder, it should
simply serve its purpose, leaving us the time and means to get all the
good out of the world at large that we can."
A sudden cloud of sadness overcast her face as she continued, after a
moment, half in soliloquy:
"The robins will soon take wing and leave the nest; so must we. How
many have gone already!"
"But the robins follow the sun in their flight," I said gently, "and
thus they find skies more genial than those they left."
She gave me a quick, appreciative smile as she said:
"That's a pleasant thought."
"Your home must be an ideal one," I remarked unthinkingly.
She colored slightly, and laughed as she answered:
"I'm something like a snail; I carry my home, if not my house, around
with me. A music-teacher can afford neither a palace nor a cottage."
I looked at her with eager eyes as I said, "Pardon me if I am unduly
frank; but on this day I'm inclined to follow every impulse, and say
just what I think, regardless of the consequences. You make upon me a
decided impression of what we men call comradeship. I feel as if I had
known you weeks and months instead of hours. Could we not have been
robins ourselves in some previous state of existence, and have flown on
a journey together?"
"Mrs. Yocomb had better take you in hand, and teach you sobriety."
"Yes, this June air, laden with the odors of these sweet old-style
roses and grape-blossoms, intoxicates me. These mountains lift me up.
These birds set my nerves tingling like one of Beethoven's symphonies,
played by Thomas's orchestra. In neither case do I know what the music
means, but I recognize a divine harmony. Never before have I been
conscious of such a rare and fine exhilaration. My mood is the product
of an exceptional combination of causes, and they have culminated in
this old garden. You know, too, that I am a creature of the night, and
my faculties are always at their best as darkness comes on. I may seem
to you obtuseness itself, but I feel as if I had been endowed with a
spiritual and almost unerring discernment. In my sensitive and highly
wrought condition, I know that the least incongruity or discord in
sight or sound would jar painfully. Yes, laugh at me if you will, but
nevertheless I'm going to speak my thoughts with no more restraint than
these birds are under. I'm going back for a moment to the primitive
condition of society, when there were no disguises. You are the mystery
of this garden--you who come from New York, where you seem to have
lived without the shelter of home life, to have obtained your
livelihood among conventional and artificial people, and to whom the
false, complicated world must be well known, and yet you make no more
discord in this garden than the first woman would have made. You are in
harmony with every leaf, with every flower, and every sound; with that
child playing here and there; with the daisies in the orchard; with the
little brown mother, whose children you feared might take cold. Hush!"
I said, with a deprecatory gesture, "I will speak my mind. Never before
in my life have I enjoyed the utter absence of concealment. In the city
one must use words to hide thoughts more often than to express them,
but here, in this old garden, I intend to reproduce for a brief moment
one of the conditions of Eden, and to speak as frankly as the first man
could have spoken. I am not jesting either, nor am I irreverent. I say,
in all sincerity, you are the mystery of this garden--you who come from
New York, and from a life in which your own true womanhood has been
your protection; and yet if, as of old, God should walk in this garden
in the cool of the day, it seems to me you would not be afraid. Such is
the impression--given without reserve--that you make on me--you whom I
have just seen, as it were!"
As she realized my sincerity she looked at me with an expression of
strong perplexity and surprise.
"Truly, Mr. Morton," she said slowly, "you are in a strange, unnatural
mood this evening."
"I seem so," I replied, "because absolutely true to nature. See how far
astray from Eden we all are! I have merely for a moment spoken my
thoughts without disguise, and you look as if you doubted my sanity."
"I must doubt your judgment," she said, turning away.
"Then why should such a clearly defined impression be made on me? For
every effect there must be a cause."
She turned upon me suddenly, and her look was eager, searching, and
almost imperious in its demand to know the truth.
"Are you as sincere as you are unconventional?" she asked.
I took off my hat, as I replied, with a smile, "A garden, Miss Warren,
was the first sacred place of the world, and never were sincerer words
spoken in that primal garden."
She looked at me a moment wistfully, and even tearfully. "I wish you
were right," she said, slowly shaking her head; "your strange mood has
infected me, I think; and I will admit that to be true is the struggle
of my life, but the effort to be true is often hard, bitterly hard, in
New York. I admit that for years truthfulness has been the goal of my
ambition. Most young girls have a father and mother and brothers to
protect them: I have had only the truth, and I cling to it with the
instinct of self-preservation."
"You cling to it because you love it. Pardon me, you do not cling to it
at all. Truth has become the warp and woof of your nature. Ah! here is
your emblem, not growing in the garden, but leaning over the fence as
if it would like to come in, and yet, among all the roses here, where
is there one that excels this flower?" And I gathered for her two or
three sprays of sweetbrier.
"I won't mar your bit of Eden by a trace of affectation," she said,
looking directly into my eyes in a frank and friendly manner; "I'd
rather be thought true than thought a genius, and I will make allowance
for your extravagant language and estimate on the ground of your
intoxication. You surely see double, and yet I am pleased that in your
transcendental mood I do not seem to make discord in this old garden.
This will seem to you a silly admission after you leave this place and
recover your everyday senses. I'm sorry already I made it--but it was
such an odd conceit of yours!" and her heightened color and glowing
face proved how she relished it.
It was an exquisite moment to me. The woman showed her pleasure as
frankly as a happy child. I had touched the keynote of her character as
I had that of Adah Yocomb's a few hours before, and in her supreme
individuality Emily Warren stood revealed before me in the garden.
She probably saw more admiration in my face than she liked, for her
manner changed suddenly.
"Being honest doesn't mean being made of glass," she said brusquely;
"you don't know anything about me, Mr. Morton. You have simply
discovered that I have not a leaning toward prevarication. That's all
your fine words amount to. Since I must keep up a reputation for
telling the truth, I'm obliged to say that you don't remind me of Adam
very much."
"No, I probably remind you of a night editor, ambitious to be smart in
print."
She bit her lip, colored a little. "I wasn't thinking of you in that
light just then," she said. "And--and Adam is not my ideal man."
"In what light did you see me?"
"It is growing dusky, and I won't be able to see you at all soon."
"That's evasion."
"Come, Mr. Morton, I hope you do not propose to keep up Eden customs
indefinitely. It's time we returned to the world to which we belong."
"Zillah!" called Mrs. Yocomb, and we saw her coming down the garden
walk.
"Bless me! where is the child!" I exclaimed.
"When you began to soar into the realms of melodrama and forget the
garden you had asked her to show you, she sensibly tried to amuse
herself. She is in the strawberry-bed, Mrs. Yocomb."
"Yes," I said, "I admit that I forgot the garden; I had good reason to
do so."
"I think it is time we left the garden. You must remember that Mrs.
Yocomb and I are not night editors, and cannot see in the dark."
"Mother," cried Zillah, coming forward, "see what I have found;" and
her little hands were full of ripe strawberries. "If it wasn't getting
so dark I could have found more, I'm sure," she added,
"What, giving them all to me?" Miss Warren exclaimed, as Zillah held
out her hands to her favorite. "Wouldn't it be nicer if we all had
some?"
"Who held you up to look into the robin's nest?" I asked reproachfully.
"Thee may give Richard Morton my share," said the little girl, trying
to make amends.
I held out my hand, and Miss Warren gave me half of them.
"Now these are mine?" I said to Zillah. "Yes!"
"Then I'll do what I please with them."
I picked out the largest, and stooping down beside her, continued: "You
must eat these or I won't eat any."
"Thee's very like Emily Warren," the little girl laughed; "thee gets
around me before I know it."
"I'll give you all the strawberries for that compliment."
"No, thee must take half."
"Mrs. Yocomb, you and I will divide, too. Could there possibly be a
more delicious combination!" and Miss Warren smacked her lips
appreciatively.
"The strawberry was evolved by a chance combination of forces," I
remarked.
"Undoubtedly," added Miss Warren, "so was my Geneva watch."
"I like to think of the strawberry in this way," said Mrs. Yocomb.
"There are many things in the Scriptures hard to understand; so there
are in Nature. But we all love the short text: 'God is love.' The
strawberry is that text repeated in Nature."
"Mrs. Yocomb, you could convert infidels and pagans with a gospel of
strawberries," I cried.
"There are many Christians who prefer tobacco," said Mrs. Yocomb,
laughing.
"That reminds me," I exclaimed, "that I have not smoked to-day. I fear
I shall fall from grace to-morrow, however."
"Yes, I imagine you will drop from the clouds by tomorrow," Miss Warren
remarked.
"By the way, what a magnificent cloud that is rising above the horizon
in the southwest. It appears like a solitary headland in an azure sea."
"Ah--h!" she said, in satirical accent.
"Mrs. Yocomb, Miss Warren has been laughing at me ever since I came. I
may have to claim your protection."
"No! thee and father are big enough to take care of yourselves."
"Emily Warren, is thee and Richard Morton both lost?" called Mr. Yocomb
from the piazza. "I can't find mother either. If somebody don't come
soon I'll blow the fish-horn."
"We're all coming," answered Mrs. Yocomb, and she led the way toward
the house.
"You have not given me a rose yet," I said to Miss Warren.
"Must you have one?"
"A man never uses the word 'must' in seeking favors from a lady."
"Adroit policy! Well, what kind of a one do you want?"
"I told you long ago."
"Oh, I remember. An old-fashioned one, with a pronounced meaning. Here
is a York and Lancaster bud. That has a decided old-style meaning."
"It means war, does it not?"
"Yes."
"I won't take it. Yes I will, too," I said, a second later, and I took
the bud from her hand. "You know the law of war," I added: "To the
victor belong the spoils."
She gave me a quick glance, and after a moment said, a trifle coldly,
"That remark seems bright, but it does not mean anything."
"It often means a great deal. There, I'm out of the garden and in the
ordinary world again. I wonder if I shall ever have another bit of Eden
in my life."
"Oh, indeed you shall. I will ask Mr. Yocomb to give you a day's
weeding and hoeing there."
"What will you do in the meantime?"
"Sit under the arbor and laugh at you."
"Agreed. But suppose it was hot and I grew very tired, what would you
do?"
"I fear I would have to invite you under the arbor."
"You fear?"
"Well, I would invite you if you had been of real service in the
garden."
"That would be Eden unalloyed."
"Since I am not intoxicated, I cannot agree with you."
CHAPTER XI
"MOVED"
"Mr. Yocomb," I said, as we mounted the piazza, "what is the cause of
the smoke rising above yonder mountain to the east of us? I have
noticed it several times this afternoon, and it seems increasing."
"That mountain was on fire on Saturday. I hoped the rain of last night
would put it out, but it was a light shower, and the fire is under
headway again. It now seems creeping up near the top of the mountain,
for I think I see a faint light."
"I do distinctly; the mountain begins to remind me of a volcano."
"The moon will rise before very long, and you may be treated to a grand
sight if the fire burns, as I fear it will."
"This is a day of fate," I said, laughing, "and almost any event that
could possibly happen would not surprise me."
"It has seemed a very quiet day to me," said the old gentleman.
"Neither mother nor any one on the high seat had a message for us this
morning, and this afternoon I took a very long nap. If thee had not
come and stirred us up a little, and Emily Warren had not laughed at us
both, I would call it almost a dull day, as far as any peaceful day can
be dull. Such days, however, are quite to my mind, and thee'll like 'em
better when thee sees my age."
"I'm inclined to think," I replied, "that the great events of life
would rarely make even an item in a newspaper."
Mrs. Yocomb looked as if she understood me, but Miss Warren remarked,
with a mischievous glance:
"Personals are generally read."
"Editors gossip about others, not themselves."
"You admit they gossip."
"That one did little else seems your impression."
"News and gossip are different things; but I'm glad your conscience so
troubles you that you exaggerate my words."
"Emily Warren, thee can squabble with Richard Morton all day to-morrow
after thy amiable fashion, but I'm hankering after some of thy music."
"I will keep you waiting no longer, sir, and would have come before,
but I did not wish you to see Mr. Morton while he was in a very
lamentable condition."
"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked Adah, who had just joined us
in the lighted hall; "he seems to have very queer complaints."
"He admits that he was intoxicated, and he certainly talked very
strangely."
"Miss Adah, did I talk strangely or wildly this afternoon?"
"No, indeed, I think you talked very nicely; and I told Silas Jones
that I never met a gentleman before who looked at things so exactly as
I did."
This was dreadful. I saw that Miss Warren was full of suppressed
merriment, and was glad that Mrs. Yocomb was in the parlor lighting the
lamps.
"I suppose Mr. Jones was glad to hear what you said," I remarked,
feeling that I must say something.
"He may have been, but he did not look so."
"Mr. Yocomb, you have your daughter's testimony that I was sober this
afternoon, and since that time I have enjoyed nothing stronger than
milk and the odor of your old-fashioned roses. If I was in a lamentable
condition in the garden, Miss Warren was the cause, and so is wholly to
blame."
"Emily Warren, does thee know that thy mother Eve made trouble in a
garden?"
"I've not the least intention of taking Mr. Morton out of the garden.
He may go back at once, and I have already suggested that you would
give him plenty of hoeing and weeding there."
"I'm not so sure about that; I fear he'd make the same havoc in my
garden that I'd make in his newspaper."
"Then you think an editor has no chance for Eden?"
"Thee had better talk to mother about that. If there's any chance for
thee at all she'll give thee hope. Now, Emily Warren, we are all ready.
Sing some hymns that will give us all hope--no, sing hymns of faith."
Adah took a seat on the sofa, and glanced encouragingly at me, but I
found a solitary chair by an open window, where I could look out across
the valley to the burning mountain, and watch the stars come out in the
darkening sky. Within I faced Miss Warren's profile and the family
group.
I had not exaggerated when I told Miss Warren that I was conscious of a
fine exhilaration. Sleep and rest had banished all dragged and jaded
feelings. For hours my mind had been free from a sense of hurry and
responsibility, which made it little better than a driving machine. In
the mental leisure and quiet which I now enjoyed I had grown
receptive--highly sensitive indeed--to the culminating scenes of this
memorable day. Even little things and common words had a significance
that I would not have noted ordinarily, and the group before me was not
ordinary. Each character took form with an individuality as sharply
defined as their figures in the somewhat dimly lighted room, and when I
looked without into the deepening June night it seemed an obscure and
noble background, making the human life within more real and attractive.
Miss Warren sat before her piano quietly for a moment, and her face
grew thoughtful and earnest. It was evident that she was not about to
perform some music, but that she would unite with her sincere and
simple friends, Mr. and Mrs. Yocomb, in giving expression to feelings
and truths that were as real to her as to them.
"How perfectly true she is!" I thought, as I noted the sweet, childlike
gravity of her face. Then, in a voice that proved to be a sympathetic,
pure soprano, well trained, but not at all great, she sang:
"My faith looks up to Thee."
Their faith seemed very real and definite, and I could not help feeling
that it would be a cruel and terrible thing if that pronoun "Thee"
embodied no living and loving personality. The light in their faces,
like that of a planet beaming on me through the open window, appeared
but the inevitable reflection of a fuller, richer spiritual light that
now shone full upon them.
One hymn followed another, and Reuben, who soon came in, seemed to have
several favorites. Little Zillah had early asked for those she liked
best, and then her head had dropped down into her mother's lap, and
Miss Warren's sweet tones became her lullaby, her innocent, sleeping
face making another element in a picture that was outlining itself
deeply in my memory.
Adah, having found that she could not secure my attention, had fallen
into something like a revery. Very possibly she was planning out the
dress that she meant to "cut to suit herself," but in their repose her
features became very beautiful again.
Her face to me, however, was now no more than a picture on the wall;
but the face of the childlike woman that was so wise and gifted, and
yet so simple and true, had for me a fascination that excited my
wonder. I had seen scores of beautiful women--I lived in a city where
they abounded--but I had never seen this type of face before. The truth
that I had not was so vivid that it led to the thought that, like the
first man, I had seen in the garden the one woman of the world, the
mistress of my fate. A second later I was conscious of a sickening
fear. To love such a woman, and yet not be able to win her--how could
one thereafter go on with life! Beware, Richard Morton! On this quiet
June evening, in this home of peace and the peaceful, and with hymns of
love and faith breathed sweetly into your ears, you may be in the
direst peril of your life. From this quiet hour may come the unrest of
a lifetime. Then Hope whispered of better things. I said to myself, "I
did not come to this place. I wandered hither, or was led hither; and
to every influence of this day I shall yield myself. If some kindly
Power has led me to this woman of crystal truth, I shall be the most
egregious fool in the universe if I do not watch and wait for further
possibilities of good."
How sweet and luminous her face seemed in contrast with the vague
darkness without! More sweet and luminous would her faith be in the
midst of the contradictions, obscurities, and evils of the world. The
home that enshrined such a woman would be a refuge for a man's tempted
soul, as well as a resting-place for his tired body.
"Sing 'Tell me the Old, Old Story,'" said Mr. Yocomb, in his warm,
hearty way. Was I a profane wretch because the thought would come that
if I could draw, in shy, hesitating admission, another story as old as
the world it would be heavenly music?
Could it have been that it was my intent gaze and concentrated thought
that made her turn suddenly to me after complying with Mr. Yocomb's
request? She colored slightly as she met my eyes, but said quietly,
"Mr. Morton, you have expressed no preference yet."
"I have enjoyed everything you have sung," I replied, and I quietly
sustained her momentary and direct gaze.
She seemed satisfied, and smiled as she said, "Thank you, but you shall
have your preference also."
"Miss Warren, you have sung some little time, and perhaps your voice is
tired. Do you play Chopin's Twelfth Nocturne? That seems to me like a
prayer."
"I'm glad you like that," she said, with a pleased, quick glance. "I
play it every Sunday night when I am alone."
A few moments later and we were all under the spell of that exquisite
melody which can fitly give expression to the deepest and tenderest
feelings and most sacred aspirations of the heart.
Did I say all? I was mistaken. Adah's long lashes were drooping, her
face was heavy with sleep, and it suggested flesh and blood, and flesh
and blood only.
Miss Warren's eyes, in contrast, were moist, her mouth tremulous with
feeling, and her face was a beautiful transparency, through which shone
those traits which already made her, to me, pre-eminent among women.
I saw Mrs. Yocomb glance from one girl to the other, then close her
eyes, while a strong expression of pain passed over her face. Her lips
moved, and she undoubtedly was speaking to One near to her, though so
far, seemingly, from most of us.
A little later there occurred one or two exquisite movements in the
prayer harmony, and I turned to note their effect on Mrs. Yocomb, and
was greatly struck by her appearance. She was looking fixedly into
space, and her face had assumed a rapt, earnest, seeking aspect, as if
she were trying to see something half hidden in the far distance. With
a few rich chords the melody ceased. Mr. Yocomb glanced at his wife,
then instantly folded his hands and assumed an attitude of reverent
expectancy. Reuben did likewise. At the cessation of the music Adah
opened her eyes, and by an instinct or habit seemed to know what to
expect, for her face regained the quiet repose it had worn at the
meeting-house in the morning.
Miss Warren turned toward Mrs. Yocomb, and sat with bowed head. For a
few moments we remained in perfect silence. There was a faint flash of
light, followed after an interval by a low, deep reverberation. The
voices in nature seemed heavy and threatening. The sweet, gentle
monotone of the woman's voice, as she began to speak, was divine in
contrast. Slowly she enunciated the sentences:
"What I do, thou knowest not now: but thou shalt know hereafter."
After a pause she continued: "As the dear young friend was playing,
these words were borne in upon my mind. They teach the necessity of
faith. Thanks be to the God of heaven and earth, that He who spake
these words is so worthy of the faith He requires! The disciple of old
could not always understand his Lord; no more can we. We often shrink
from that which is given in love, and grasp at that which would
destroy. Though but little, weak, erring children, we would impose on
the all-wise God our way, instead of meekly accepting His way. Surely,
the One who speaks has a right to do what pleases His divine will. He
is the sovereign One, the Lord of lords; and though He slay me, yet
will I trust in Him.
"But though it is a King that speaks, He does not speak as a king. He
is talking to His friends; He is serving them with a humility and
meekness that no sinful mortal has surpassed. He is proving, by the
plain, simple teaching of actions, that we are not merely His subjects,
but His brethren, His sisters; and that with Him we shall form one
household of faith, one family in God. He is teaching the sin of
arrogance and the folly of pride. He is proving, for all time, that
serving--not being served--is God's patent of nobility. We should not
despise the lowliest, for none can stoop so far as He stooped."
Every few moments her low, sweet voice had, as an accompaniment,
distant peals of thunder, that after every interval rolled nearer and
jarred heavier among the mountains. More than once I saw Miss Warren
start nervously, and glance apprehensively at the open window where I
sat, and through which the lightning gleamed with increasing vividness.
Adah maintained the same utterly quiet, impassive face, and it seemed
to me that she heard nothing and thought of nothing. Her eyes were
open; her mind was asleep. She appeared an exquisite breathing
combination of flesh and blood, and nothing more. Reuben looked at his
mother with an expression of simple affection; but one felt that he did
not realize very deeply what she was saying; but Mr. Yocomb's face
glowed with an honest faith and strong approval.
"The Master said," continued Mrs. Yocomb, after one of the little
pauses that intervened between her trains of thought, "'What I do, thou
knowest not now.' There He might have stopped. Presuming is the subject
that asks his king for the why and wherefore of all that he does. The
king is the highest of all; and if he be a king in truth, he sees the
furthest of all. It is folly for those beneath the throne to expect to
see so far, or to understand why the king, in his far-reaching
providence, acts in a way mysterious to them. Our King is kingly, and
He sees the end from the beginning. His plans reach through eternities.
Why should He ever be asked to explain to such as we? Nevertheless, to
the fishermen of Galilee, and to us, He does say, 'Thou shalt know
hereafter.'
"The world is full of evil. We meet its sad mysteries on every side, in
every form. It often touches us very closely--" For a moment some deep
emotion choked her utterance. Involuntarily, I glanced at Adah. Her
eyes were drooping a little heavily again, and her bosom rose and fell
in the long, quiet breath of complete repose. Miss Warren was regarding
the suffering mother with the face of a pitying angel.
"And its evils _are_ evil," resumed the sad-hearted woman, in a tone
that was full of suppressed anguish; "at least, they seem so, and I
don't understand them--I can't understand them, nor why they are
permitted; but He has promised that good shall come out of the evil,
and has said, 'Thou shalt know hereafter.' Oh, blessed hereafter! when
all clouds shall have rolled away, and in the brightness of my Lord's
presence every mystery that now troubles me shall be made clear. Dear
Lord, I await Thine own time. Do what seemeth good in Thine own eyes;"
and she meekly folded her hands and bowed her head. For a moment or two
there was the same impressive silence that fell upon us before she
spoke. Then a louder and nearer peal of thunder awakened Zillah, who
raised her head from her mother's lap and looked wonderingly around, as
if some one had called her.
Never had I witnessed such a scene before, and I turned toward the
darkness that I might hide the evidence of feelings that I could not
control.
A second later I sprang to my feet, exclaiming, "Wonderful!"
Miss Warren came toward me with apprehension in her face, but I saw
that she noted my moist eyes.
I hastened from the room, saying, "Come out on the lawn, all of you,
for we may now witness a scene that is grand indeed."
CHAPTER XII
ONE OF NATURE'S TRAGEDIES
I had been so interested in Mrs. Yocomb's words, their effect on the
little group around her, and the whole sacred mystery of the scene,
that I had ceased to watch the smoking mountain, with its increasingly
lurid apex. In the meantime the fire had fully reached the summit, on
which stood a large dry tree, and it had become a skeleton of flame.
Through this lurid fire and smoke the full moon was rising, its silver
disk discolored and partially obscured.
This scene alone, as we gathered on the piazza and lawn below it, might
well have filled us with awe and wonder; but a more impressive
combination was forming. Advancing from the southwest, up the star-lit
sky, which the moon was brightening momentarily, was a cloud whose
blackness and heaviness the vivid lightning made only the more apparent.
"I am an old man," said Mr. Yocomb, "but I never saw anything so grand
as this before."
"Mother, mother," said little Zillah, "I'm afraid. Please take me
upstairs and put me to bed." And the mother, to whom the scene in the
heavens was a glorious manifestation of the God she loved rather than
feared, denied herself of what was almost like a vision, for the sake
of the child.
"It's awful," said Adah; "I won't look at it any longer. I don't see
why we can't have nice quiet showers that one can go to sleep in;" and
she disappeared within the house. Reuben sat down on the piazza, in his
quiet, undemonstrative way. Miss Warren came down and stood close to
Mr. Yocomb's side, as if she half unconsciously sought the good man's
protection.
Incessant lightnings played from some portion of the cloud, zigzagging
in fiery links and forkings, while, at brief intervals, there would be
an exceptionally vivid flash, followed more and more closely by heavier
and still heavier explosions. But not a leaf stirred around us: the
chirp of a cricket was sharply distinct in the stillness. The stars
shone serenely over our heads, and the moon, rising to the left out of
the line of the smoke and fire, was assuming her silvery brightness,
and at the same time rendering the burning mountain more lurid from
contrast.
"Herbert, Herbert, now I know how brave you were," I heard Miss Warren
exclaim, in a low, awed tone.
I saw by the frequent flashes that she was very pale, and that she was
trembling.
"You mean your brother," I said gently.
With her eyes fixed on the threatening and advancing cloud as if
fascinated by it, she continued in the same tone, that was full of
indescribable dread: "Yes, yes, I never realized it so fully before,
and yet I have lain awake whole nights, going, by an awful necessity,
over every scene of that terrible day. He stood in his place in the
line of battle on an open plain, and he watched battery after battery
come down from the heights above and open fire. He stood there till he
was slain, looking steadily at death. This cloud that is coming makes
me understand the more awful storm of war that he faced. Oh, I wish
this hadn't happened," and there was almost agony in her tone. "I'm not
brave as he was, and every nearer peal of thunder shakes my very soul."
Mr. Yocomb put his hand tenderly on her shoulder as he said:
"My dear, foolish little child--as if thy Father in heaven would hurt
thee!"
"Miss Warren," I said earnestly, "I have too little of Mr. and Mrs.
Yocomb's faith; but it seems impossible that anything coming from
heaven could harm you."
She drew closer to Mr. Yocomb's side, but still looked at the cloud
with the same wide-eyed dread, as if spellbound by it.
"To me," she resumed in her former tone, that only became more hurried
and full of fear as the tempest approached, "these awful storms are no
part of heaven. They are wholly of earth, and seem the counterparts of
those wild outbreaks of human passion from which I and so many poor
women in the past have suffered;" and a low sob shook her frame. "I
wish I had more of good Mr. Yocomb's spirit; for this appalling cloud
seems to me the very incarnation of evil. Why _does_ God permit such
things?"
With a front as calm and serene as that of any ancient prophet could
have been, Mr. Yocomb began repeating the sublime words, "The voice of
Thy thunder was in the heavens; the lightnings lightened the world."
"Oh, no, no!" cried the trembling girl, "the God I worship is not in
the storm nor in the fire, but in the still small voice of love. You
may think me very weak to be so moved, but truly I cannot help it. My
whole nature shrinks from this." I took her hand as I said warmly, "I
do understand you, Miss Warren. Unconsciously you have fully explained
your mood and feeling. It's in truth your nature, your sensitive,
delicate organism, that shrinks from this wild tumult that is coming.
In the higher moral tests of courage, when the strongest man might
falter and fail, you would be quietly steadfast."
She gave my hand a quick, strong pressure, and then withdrew it as she
said, "I hope you are right; you interpret me so generously that I hope
I may some day prove you right."
"I need no proof. I saw your very self in the garden."
"How strange--how strange it all is!" she resumed, with a manner that
betokened a strong nervous excitability. "Can this be the same
world--these the same scenes that were so full of peace and beauty an
hour ago? How tremendous is the contrast between the serene, lovely
June day and evening just passed and this coming tempest, whose sullen
roar I already hear with increasing dread! Mr. Morton, you said in jest
that this was a day of fate. Why did you use the expression? It haunts
me, oppresses me. Possibly it is. I rarely give way to presentiments,
but I dread the coming of this storm inexpressibly. Oh!" and she
trembled violently as a heavier peal than we had yet heard filled the
wide valley with awful echoes.
"Not even a sparrow shall fall to the ground without your Father. We
are safe, my child. God will shield thee more lovingly than I;" and he
drew her closer to him.
"I know what you say is true, and yet I cannot control this mortal fear
and weakness."
"No, Miss Warren, you cannot," I said; "therefore do not blame
yourself. You tremble as these trees and shrubs will be agitated in a
few moments, because you cannot help it."
"You are not so moved."
"No, nor will that post be moved," I replied, with a reckless laugh. "I
must admit that I am very much excited, however, for the air is full of
electricity. I can't help thinking of the little robins in a home open
to the sky."
Her only answer was a low sob, but not for a moment did she take her
wide, terror-stricken gaze from the cloud whose slow, deliberate
advance was more terrible than gusty violence would have been.
The phenomena had now become so awful that we did not speak again for
some moments. The great inky mass was extending toward the eastward,
and approaching the fire burning on the mountain-top, and the moon
rising above and to the left of it; and from beneath its black shadow
came a heavy, muffled sound that every moment deepened and intensified.
Suddenly, as if shaken by a giant's hands, the tree-tops above us
swayed to and fro; then the shrubbery along the paths seemed full of
wild terror and writhed in every direction.
Hitherto the moon had shone on the cloud with as serene a face as that
with which Mr. Yocomb had watched its approach, but now a scud of vapor
swept like a sudden pallor across her disk, giving one the odd
impression that she had just realized her peril, and then an abyss of
darkness swallowed her up. For a few moments longer the fire burned on,
and then the cloud with its torrents settled down upon it, and the
luridly luminous point became opaque.
The night now alternated between utter darkness and a glare in which
every leaf and even the color of the tossing roses were distinct.
After the first swirl of wind passed, there fell upon nature round us a
silence that was like breathless expectation, or the cowering from a
blow that cannot be averted, and through the stillness the sound of the
advancing tempest came with awful distinctness, while far back among
the mountains the deep reverberations scarcely ceased a moment.
Broken masses of vapor, the wild skirmish line of the storm, passed
over our heads, blotting out the stars. The trees and shrubbery were
bending helplessly to the gust, and Miss Warren could scarcely stand
before its violence. The great elm swayed its drooping branches over
the house as if to protect it. The war and whirl of the tempest was all
about us, the coming rain reminded one of the resounding footsteps of
an innumerable host, and great drops fell here and there like
scattering shots.
"Come in, my child," said Mr. Yocomb; "the storm will soon be passed,
and thee and the robins shall yet have quiet sleep to-night. I've seen
many such wild times among the mountains, and nothing worse than
clearer skies and better grain followed. You will hear the robins
singing--"
A blinding flash of lightning, followed by such a crash as I hope I may
never hear again, prevented further reassuring words, and he had to
half support her into the house.
I had never been in a battle, but I know that the excitement which
mastered me must have been akin to the grand exaltation of conflict,
wherein a man thinks and acts by moments as if they were hours and
years. Well he may, when any moment, may end his life. But the thought
of death scarcely entered my mind. I had no presentiment of harm to
myself, but feared that the dwelling or outbuildings might be struck.
Almost with the swiftness of lightning came the calculation:
"Estimating distance and time, the next discharge of electricity will
be directly over the house. If there's cause, which God forbid, may I
have the nerve and power to serve those who have been so kind!"
As I thought, I ran to an open space which commanded a view of the
farmhouse. Scarcely had I reached it before my eyes were blinded for a
second by what seemed a ball of intense burning light shot vertically
into the devoted home.
"O God!" I gasped, "it is the day of fate." For a moment I seemed
paralyzed, but the igniting roof beside the chimney roused me at once.
"Reuben!" I shouted.
A flash of lightning revealed him still seated quietly on the piazza,
as if he had heard nothing. I rushed forward, and shook him by the
shoulder.
"Come, be a man; help me. Quick!" and I half dragged him to a
neighboring cherry-tree, against which I had noticed that a ladder
rested.
By this time he seemed to recover his senses, and in less than a moment
we had the ladder against the house. Within another moment he had
brought me a pail of water from the kitchen.
"Have two more pails ready," I cried, mounting the low, sloping roof.
The water I carried, and rain, which now began to fall in torrents,
extinguished the external fire, but I justly feared that the woodwork
had been ignited within. Hastening back at perilous speed, I said to
Reuben, who stood ready: "Take one of the pails and lead the way to the
attic and the rooms upstairs."
The house was strangely and awfully quiet as we rushed in.
I paused a second at the parlor door. Miss Warren lay motionless upon
the floor, and Mr. Yocomb sat quietly in his great armchair.
A sickening fear almost overwhelmed me, but I exclaimed loudly, "Mr.
Yocomb, rouse yourself; I smell fire; the house is burning!"
He did not move nor answer, and I followed Reuben, who was half-way up
the stairs. It took but a few seconds to reach the large, old-fashioned
garret, which already was filling with smoke.
"Lead the way to the chimney," I shouted to Reuben in my terrible
excitement. "Do not waste a drop of water. Let me put it on when I find
just where the fire is."
Through the smoke I now saw a lurid point. A stride brought me thither,
and I threw part of the water in my pail up against it. The hissing and
sputtering proved that we had hit on the right spot, while the torrents
falling on the roof so dampened the shingles that further ignition from
without was impossible.
"We must go down a moment to breathe," I gasped, for the smoke was
choking us.
As we reached the story in which were the sleeping apartments, I cried:
"Great God! Why don't some of the family move or speak?"
Hitherto Reuben had realized only the peril of his home; but now he
rushed into his mother's room, calling her in a tone that I shall never
forget.
A second later he uttered my name in a strange, awed tone, and I
entered hesitatingly. Little Zillah apparently lay sleeping in her
crib, and Mrs. Yocomb was kneeling by her bedside.
"Mother!" said Reuben, in a loud whisper.
She did not answer.
He knelt beside her, put his arm around her, and said, close to her
ear, "Mother! why don't you speak to me?" She made no response, and I
saw that she leaned so heavily forward on the bed as to indicate utter
unconsciousness.
The boy sprang up, and gazed at me with wild questioning in his eyes.
"Reuben!" I said quickly, "she's only stunned by the lightning. Will
you prove yourself a man, and help me in what must be done? Life may
depend upon it."
"Yes," eagerly.
"Then help me lift your mother on the bed; strong and gentle,
now--that's it."
I put my hand over her heart.
"She is not dead," I exclaimed joyously; "only stunned. Let us go to
the attic again, for we must keep shelter this wild night."
We found that the smoke had perceptibly lessened; I dashed the other
pail of water on the spot that had been burning, then found that I
could place my hand on it. We had been just in time, for there was
light woodwork near that communicated with the floor, and the attic was
full of dry lumber, and herbs hanging here and there, that would have
burned like tinder. Had these been burning we could not have entered
the garret, and as it was we breathed with great difficulty. The roof
still resounded to the fall of such torrents that I felt that the
dwelling was safe, unless it had become ignited in the lower stories,
and it was obviously our next duty to see whether this was the case.
"Reuben," I said, "fill the pails once more, while I look through the
house and see if there's fire anywhere else. It's clear that all who
were in the house were stunned--even you were, slightly, on the
piazza--so don't give way to fright on their account. If you do as I
bid, you may do much to save their lives; but we must first make sure
the house is safe. If it isn't, we must carry them all out at once."
He comprehended me, and went for the water instantly.
I again looked into Mrs. Yocomb's room. It was impregnated with a
strong sulphurous odor, and I now saw that there was a discolored line
down the wall adjoining the chimney, and that little Zillah's crib
stood nearer the scorching line of fire than Mrs. Yocomb had been. But
the child looked quiet and peaceful, and I hastened away.
My own room was dark and safe. I opened the door of Miss Warren's room,
and a flash of lightning, followed by complete darkness, showed that
nothing was amiss.
I then opened another door, and first thought the apartment on fire, it
was so bright; but instantly saw that two lamps were burning, and that
Adah lay dressed upon the bed, with her face turned toward them. By
this common device she had sought to deaden the vivid lightning. Her
face was white as the pillow on which it rested; her eyes were closed,
and from her appearance she might have been sleeping or dead. Even
though almost overwhelmed with dread, I could not help noting her
wonderful beauty. In my abnormal and excited condition of mind,
however, it seemed a natural and essential part of the strange,
unexpected experiences of the day.
I was now convinced that there was no fire in the second story, and the
thought of Miss Warren drew me instantly away. I already had a strange
sense of self-reproach that I had not gone to her at once, feeling as
if I had discarded the first and most sacred claim. I met Reuben on the
stairway, and told him that the second story was safe, and asked him to
look through the first story and cellar, and then to go for a physician
as fast as the fleetest horse could carry him.
CHAPTER XIII
THE LIGHTNING AND A SUBTLER FLAME
On entering the parlor, I found Mr. Yocomb standing up and looking
around in a dazed manner. He did not seem to know me, and in my deep
anxiety I did not heed him. Kneeling beside Miss Warren, I found that
her pulse was very feeble. I lifted her gently upon the sofa, and threw
open a window, so that the damp, gusty wind, full of spray from the
rain, might blow in upon her.
Mr. Yocomb laid his hand heavily on my shoulder, and asked, in a thick
voice, "What does it all mean?"
I saw that he was deathly pale, and that he tottered. Taking his arm, I
supported him to a lounge in the hall, and said, "Mr. Yocomb, you were
taken ill. You must lie down quietly till the physician comes."
He seemed so confused and unable to think that he accepted my
explanation. Indeed, he soon became so ill from the effects of the
shock that he could not rise.
Again I knelt at Miss Warren's side, and began chafing her hands; but
the cool wind and spray did the most to revive her. She opened her
eyes, looked at me fixedly a few moments, and then tried to rise.
"Please keep quiet," I said, "till I bring you some brandy;" and I
hastened to my room, tore open my valise, and was soon moistening her
lips from a small flask. After swallowing a little she regained
self-possession rapidly.
"What happened?" she asked.
"I fear you swooned."
She passed her hand over her brow, and looked around as if in search,
of some one, then said, "Where is Mrs. Yocomb?"
"She is in her room with Zillah."
"Please let me go to her;" and she again essayed to rise.
"Miss Warren," I said gently, "I have no right to ask a favor of you,
but I will thank you very much if you will just remain quietly on this
sofa till you are better. You remember we had a frightful storm. I
never knew such heavy thunder."
"Ah! there it is again," she said, shuddering, as a heavy peal rolled
away to the north.
"Miss Warren, you said once to-day that you could trust me. You can. I
assure you the storm is past; there is no more danger from it, but
there is danger unless you do as I bid you. Remain quietly here till
you have recovered from--from your nervous prostration. I happen to
have some knowledge in a case of this kind, and I know that much
depends on your being quiet for an hour or more. You need not be
alarmed if you do as I bid you. I will see to it that some one is
within call all the time;" and I tried to speak cheerfully and
decisively.
She smiled as she said, "Since you have assumed the role of doctor,
I'll obey, for I know how arbitrary the profession is."
Then she again reclined wearily on the sofa, and I went out, closing
the door.
I found Reuben beside his father, who certainly needed care, for the
terrible nausea which attends recovery from a severe shock from
electricity had set in.
"Reuben," I urged, "_do_ go for the doctor; I'll do everything for your
father that I can, but we must have a good physician at once. Go in
your buggy as fast as you can drive in the dark--can't you take a
lantern?--and bring the doctor with you. First tell him what has
happened, so that he can bring the proper remedies. Be a man, Reuben;
much depends on you to-night."
Within five minutes I heard the swift feet of Dapple splash out upon
the road. The night was growing still and close, and the gusts occurred
at longer intervals. The murky cloud had covered the sky, utterly
obscuring the moonlight, and there was a steady and heavy fall of rain.
After Reuben had gone, a terrible sense of isolation and helplessness
oppressed me. I remembered strange tales of lightning and its effects
that I had heard. Would the mother and her two daughters survive? Was
Mr. Yocomb seriously ill? But I found that the anxiety which tortured
me most was in behalf of the one who gave the best promise of speedy
recovery; and it was my chief hope that she would remain quietly where
I had left her till the physician arrived. I had pretended to a far
greater knowledge than I possessed, since in truth I had had very
little experience in illness. If Miss Warren should leave the parlor,
and thus learn that the farmhouse might become the scene of an awful
tragedy, the effect upon her would probably be disastrous in the
extreme.
These and like thoughts were coursing swiftly through my mind as I
waited upon Mr. Yocomb, and sought to give him relief.
"Ice!" he gasped; "it's in cellar."
I snatched up the candle that Reuben had left burning on the
hall-table, and went for it. The place was strange, and I was not as
quick and deft as many others would have been, and so was absent some
moments.
Great was my surprise and consternation when I returned, for Miss
Warren stood beside Mr. Yocomb, holding his head.
"Why are you here?" I asked, and my tone and manner betokened deep
trouble.
"I'm better," she said, quietly and firmly.
"Miss Warren," I remonstrated, "I won't answer for the consequences if
you don't go back to the parlor and remain there till the doctor comes.
I know what I'm about."
"You don't look as if master of the situation. You are haggard--you
seem half desperate--"
"I'm anxious about you, and if--"
"Mr. Morton, you are far more anxious about others. I've had time to
think. A swoon is not such a desperate affair. You guessed rightly--a
thunderstorm prostrates me, but as it passes I am myself again."
After aiding Mr. Yocomb to recline feebly on the lounge, she came to
the table where I was breaking the ice, and said, in a low tone:
"Something very serious has happened."
I could not look at her. I dared not to speak even, for I was oppressed
with the dread of a worse tragedy. With her morbid fear of lightning
she might almost lose her reason if now, in her weak, unnerved
condition, she saw its effect on Mrs. Yocomb and Adah.
"Mother," moaned Mr. Yocomb; "why don't mother come?"
"She's with Zillah upstairs," I faltered. "Zillah's ill!"
"Then why does not Adah come to her father?" Miss Warren questioned,
looking at me keenly.
I felt that disguise was useless.
"Mr. Morton, your hand so trembles that you can scarcely break the ice.
Something dreadful has happened--there's the smell of smoke and fire in
the house. Tell me, tell me!" and she laid her hand appealingly on my
arm.
"Oh, Miss Warren," I groaned, "let me shield you. If further harm
should come to you to-night--"
"Further harm will come unless you treat me as a woman, not as a
child," she said firmly. "I know you mean it kindly, and no doubt I
have seemed weak enough to warrant any amount of shielding."
At this moment there came a peal of thunder from the passing storm, and
she sank shudderingly into a chair. As it passed she sprang up and said:
"I can't help that, but I can and will help you. I understand it all.
The house has been struck, and Zillah, Adah, and Mr. Yocomb have been
hurt. Let me feed Mr. Yocomb with the ice. Are you sure he should have
ice? I would give him brandy first if I had my way, but you said you
knew--"
"Miss Warren, I don't know--I'm in mortal terror in behalf of the
family; but my chief dread has been that you would come to know the
truth, and now I can't keep it from you. If you can be brave and strong
enough to help me in this emergency, I will honor you and thank you
every day of my life."
"Mother! mother! why doesn't mother come?" Mr. Yocomb called.
Miss Warren gave me a swift glance that was as reassuring as sunlight,
and then went quietly into the parlor. A moment later she was giving
Mr. Yocomb brandy and water, and quieting him with low, gentle words.
"You remember, Mr. Yocomb," she said, "that Zillah was greatly
frightened by the storm. You would not have the mother leave the child
just yet. Mr. Morton, will you go upstairs and see if I can be of any
assistance? I will join you there as soon as I have made Mr. Yocomb a
little more comfortable," and she went to the parlor and brought out
another pillow, and then threw open the hall-door in order that her
patient might have more air, for he respired slowly and laboriously.
Her words seemed to quiet him, and he gave himself into her hands. I
looked at her wonderingly for a moment, then said, in a low tone:
"You are indeed a woman and a brave one. I recognize my superior
officer, and resign command at once."
She shook her head as she gave me a glimmer of a smile, but urged, in a
whisper, "Hasten, we must not lose a moment."
I swiftly mounted the stairs, relieved of my chief anxiety.
Through the open door I saw Adah's fair white face. She had not
stirred. I now ventured in and spoke to her, but she was utterly
unconscious. Taking her hand I was overjoyed to find a feeble pulse.
"It may all yet be well. God grant it," I muttered.
"He will," said Miss Warren, who had joined me almost immediately;
"this is not a day of fate, I trust;" and she began moistening Adah's
lips with brandy, and trying to cause her to swallow a little, while I
chafed her pretty hands and rubbed brandy on her wrists.
"It seems to me as if an age, crowded with events, had elapsed since I
started on my aimless walk this morning," I said, half in soliloquy.
"That you were directed hither will be cause for lasting gratitude. Was
not the house on fire?"
"Yes, but Reuben was invaluable. He was out on the piazza, and so was
not hurt."
"Was Mrs. Yocomb hurt?" she asked, looking at me in wild alarm.
"Please do not fail me," I entreated; "you have been so brave thus far.
Mrs. Yocomb will soon revive, I think. You were unconscious at first."
She now realized the truth that Mrs. Yocomb was not caring for Zillah,
and hastened to their room, impelled by an overmastering affection for
the woman who had treated her with motherly kindness.
I followed her, and assured her that her friend was living. It needed
but a moment to see that this was true, but little Zillah scarcely gave
any sign of life. Both were unconscious.
The young girl now looked at me as if almost overwhelmed, and said, in
a low shuddering tone, "This is awful--far worse than I feared; I do
wish the doctor was here."
"He must be here soon. I know you won't give way. In great emergencies
a true woman is great. You may save--"
A thunder-peal from the retreating storm drowned my words. She grew
white, and would have fallen had I not caught her and supported her to
a chair.
"Give me--a few moments," she gasped, "and I'll be--myself again. This
shock is awful. Why, we would all have burned up--had you not put the
fire out," and her eyes dilated with horror.
"We have no time for words," I said, brusquely. "Here, take this
brandy, and then let us do everything in our power to save life. I
scarcely know what to do, but something must be done. If we can only do
the right thing, all may yet be well."
In a moment the weakness passed, and she was her brave, quiet self once
more.
"I won't fail you again," she said resolutely, as she tried to force a
little brandy between Mrs. Yocomb's pallid lips.
"You are a genuine woman," I replied heartily, as I chafed Mrs.
Yocomb's wrists with the spirits; "I know how terrible the ordeal has
been for you, and most young ladies would have contributed to the
occasion nothing but hysterics."
"And you feared I would."
"I feared worse. You are morbidly timid in a thunder-storm, and I
dreaded your learning what you now know beyond measure."
"You were indeed burdened," she said, looking at me with strong
sympathy.
"No matter. If you can keep up and suffer no ill consequences from this
affair, I believe that the rest will come through all right. After all,
they are affected only physically, but you--"
"I have been a little weak-minded. I know it. But if it doesn't thunder
any more I'll keep up. Ever since I was a child the sound of thunder
paralyzed me. Thank God, Mrs. Yocomb is beginning to revive."
"I will leave her in your care, and see if I can do anything for Mr.
Yocomb. I thus show that I trust you fully."
As I passed out I heard a faint voice call, "Mother!"
Going to the door of Adah's room I saw that she was conscious, and
feebly trying to rise. As I entered she looked at me in utter
bewilderment, then shrank with instinctive fear from the presence of a
seeming intruder. I saw the impulse of her half-conscious mind, and
called Miss Warren, who came at once, and her presence seemed
reassuring.
"What's the matter?" she asked, with the same thick utterance that I
had noted in Mr. Yocomb's voice. It seemed as if the organs of speech
were partially paralyzed.
"You have been ill, my dear, but now you are much better. The doctor
will be here soon," Miss Warren said soothingly.
She seemed to comprehend the words imperfectly, and turned her
wondering eyes toward me.
"Oh, that the doctor would come!" I groaned. "Here you have two on your
hands, and Mr. Yocomb is calling."
"Who's that?" asked Adah, feebly pointing to me.
"You remember Mr. Morton," Miss Warren said quietly, bathing the girl's
face with cologne. "You brought him home from meeting this morning."
The girl's gaze was so fixed and peculiar that it held me a moment, and
gave the odd impression of the strong curiosity of one waking up in a
new world. Suddenly she closed her eyes and fell back faint and sick.
At that moment, above the sound of the rain, I heard the quick splash
of a horse's feet, and hastened down to greet the doctor.
In a few hasty words I added such explanation of the catastrophe as
Reuben's partial account rendered necessary, and by the time I had
finished we were at Mrs. Yocomb's door. Mr. Yocomb seemed sufficiently
at rest to be left for a while.
"This is Miss Warren," I said. "She will be your invaluable assistant,
but you must be careful of her, since she, too, has suffered very
severely, and, I fear, is keeping up on the strength of her brave will,
mainly."
The physician, fortunately, was a good one, and his manner gave us
confidence from the start.
"I think I understand the affair sufficiently," he said; "and the best
thing you can do for my patients, and for Miss Warren also, Mr. Morton,
is to have some strong black coffee made as soon as possible. That will
now prove an invaluable remedy, I think."
"I'll show you where the coffee is," Miss Warren added promptly.
"Unfortunately--perhaps fortunately--Mrs. Yocomb let the woman who
assisted her go away for the night. Had she been here she might have
been another burden."
Even though I had but a moment or two in the room, I saw that the
doctor was anxious about little Zillah.
As Miss Warren waited on me I said earnestly, "What a godsend you are!"
"No," she replied with a tone and glance that, to me, were sweeter and
more welcome than all the June sunshine of that day. "I was here, and
you were sent." Then her eyes grew full of dread, reminding me of the
gaze she had bent on the storm before which she had cowered. "The house
was on fire," she said; "we were all helpless--unconscious. You saved
us. I begin to realize it all."
"Come, Miss Warren, you now are 'seeing double.' Here, Reuben," I said
to the young fellow, who came dripping in from the barn. "I want to
introduce you in a new light. Miss Warren doesn't half know you yet,
and I wish her to realize that you are no longer a boy, but a brave,
level-headed man, that even when stunned by lightning could do as much
as I did."
"Now, Richard Morton, I didn't do half as much as thee did. How's
mother?" and he spoke with a boy's ingenuousness.
"Doing well under the care of the doctor you brought," I said; "and if
you will now help me make this dying fire burn up quickly, she will
have you to thank more than any one else when well again."
"I'm going to thank you now," Miss Warren exclaimed, seizing both of
his hands. "God bless you, Reuben! You don't realize what you have done
for us all."
The young fellow looked surprised. "I only did what Richard Morton told
me," he protested, "and that wasn't much."
"Well, there's a pair of you," she laughed. "The fire put itself out,
and Dapple went after the doctor." Then, as if overwhelmed with
gratitude, she clasped her hands and looked upward, as she said, in
low, thrilling tones: "Thank God, oh thank God! what a tragedy we have
escaped!"
"Yes," I said, "it might have been a day of fate indeed. Life would
have been an unendurable burden if what you feared had happened. What's
more, I would have lost my faith in God had such a home and its inmates
been destroyed. The thought of it makes me sick," and I sank into a
chair.
"We must not think of it," she cried earnestly, "for there's much to be
done still. There, I've helped you all I can here. When the coffee's
ready, call me, and I'll come for it. Get on dry clothes as soon as you
can, Reuben, for you can be of great service to us upstairs. I'm
astonished at you, Mr. Morton, you haven't any nerve at all--you who
have dealt in conflagrations, murders, wars, pestilences, earthquakes,
writing them up in the most harrowing, blood-curdling style; you have
absolutely turned white and faint because the inmates of a farmhouse
were shocked. I won't believe you are an editor at all unless you call
me within five minutes."
Whether because her piquant words formed just the spur I needed, or
because she had a mysterious power over me which made her will mine, I
threw off the depression into which I had reacted from my overwhelming
excitement and anxiety, and soon had my slowly kindling fire burning
furiously, dimly conscious in the meantime that deep in my heart
another and subtler flame was kindling also.
CHAPTER XIV
KINDLING A SPARK OF LIFE
I soon had coffee made that was as black as the night without. Instead
of calling Miss Warren, I took a tray from the dining-room, and carried
it with several cups upstairs.
"Bring it here!" called the doctor.
I entered Mrs. Yocomb's room, and found that she had quite fully
revived, and that Reuben had supported his father thither also. He
reclined on the lounge, and his usually ruddy face was very pale. Both
he and his wife appeared almost helpless; but the doctor had succeeded
in arresting, by the use of ice, the distressing nausea that had
followed consciousness. They looked at me in a bewildered manner as I
entered, and could not seem to account for my presence at once. Nor did
they, apparently, try to do so long, for their eyes turned toward
little Zillah with a deeply troubled and perplexed expression, as if
they were beginning to realize that the child was very ill, and that
events of an extraordinary character had happened.
"Let me taste the coffee," said the doctor. "Ah! that's the kind--black
and strong. See how it will bring them around," and he made Mr. and
Mrs. Yocomb each swallow a cup of it.
"Miss Warren," he called, "give some of this to Miss Adah, if she is
quiet enough to take it. I cannot leave the child."
Miss Warren came at once. Her face was clouded and anxious, and she
looked with eager solicitude toward the still unconscious Zillah, whose
hands Reuben was chafing.
"I think Miss Adah will soon be better," she replied to the doctor's
inquiring glance, and she went back to her charge.
"Take some yourself," said the physician to me, in a low tone. "I fear
we are going to have a serious time with the little girl."
"You do not realize," I urged, "that Miss Warren needs keeping up
almost as truly as any of them."
"You'll have to take care of her then," said the doctor hastily; "she
seems to be doing well herself, and doing well for others. Take her
some coffee, and say that I said she must drink it."
I knocked at Adah's door and called, "Miss Warren, the doctor says you
must drink this coffee."
"In a few moments," she answered, and after a little time she came out.
"Where's your cup?" she asked. "Have you taken any?"
"Not yet, of course."
"Why of course? If you want me to drink this you must get some at once."
"There may not be enough. I don't know how much the doctor may need."
"Then get a cup, and I'll give you half of this."
"Never," I answered promptly. "Do as the doctor bade you."
She went swiftly to Mrs. Yocomb's room and filled another cup.
"I pledge you my word I won't touch a drop till you have taken this.
You don't realize what you have been through, Mr. Morton. Your hand so
trembled that you could scarcely carry the cup; you are all unnerved.
Come," she added gravely, "you must be in a condition to help, for I
fear Zillah is in a critical condition."
"I'm not going to break down," I said resolutely. "Give it to Reuben.
Poor fellow, he was very wet."
She looked at my clothes, and then exclaimed:
"Why, Mr. Morton, don't you know you are wet through and through?"
"Am I?" and I looked down at my soaked garments.
"I don't believe you have a dry thread on you."
"I've been too excited to think of it. Of course, I got wet on the
roof; but what's a summer shower! Your coffee's getting cold."
"So is yours."
"You have the doctor's orders."
"I would be glad if my wishes weighed a little with you," she said,
appealingly.
"There, Miss Warren, if you put it that way I'd drink gall and
vinegar," and I gulped down the coffee.
She vanished into Adah's room, saying, "You must take my word for it
that I drink mine. I shall sip it while waiting on my patient."
Having insisted on Reuben's taking some also, I returned to the kitchen
and made a new supply. Mr. and Mrs. Yocomb's extreme prostration, both
mental and physical, perplexed me. Their idolized child was still
unconscious, and yet they could only look on in wondering and perplexed
anxiety. I afterward learned that a partial paralysis of every faculty,
especially of memory, was a common effect of a severe shock of
electricity. It was now evident that Miss Warren, from some obscure
cause, escaped harm from lightning. The words I had employed to
reassure her turned out to be true--she had merely swooned--and thus,
on recovery, had full possession of all her faculties.
"I would be glad if my wishes weighed a little with you," she had said.
In wonder at myself, I asked, "What weighs more with me? By what right
is this maiden, whom I have met but to-day, taking such absolute
control of my being? Am I overwrought, morbid, fanciful, deluded by an
excited imagination into beliefs and moods that will vanish in the
clear sunlight and clearer light of reason? or has the vivid lightning
revealed with absolute distinctness the woman on whom I can lean in
perfect trust, and yet must often sustain in her pathetic weakness? The
world would say we are strangers; but my heart and soul and every fibre
of my being appear to recognize a kinship so close that I feel we never
can be strangers again. It is true the lightning fuses the hardest
substances, making them one; however, I am beginning to think that my
hitherto callous nature has been smitten by a diviner fire. If so,
Heaven grant that I'm not the only one struck.
"Well, it's a queer world. When I broke down, last Friday night, and
sat cowering before the future in my editorial sanctum, I little
dreamed that on Sunday night I should be making coffee in a good old
Quaker's kitchen, and, what is still more strange, making a divinity
out of a New York music-teacher!"
A moment later I added, "That's a stupid way of putting it. I'm not
making a divinity out of her at all. She is one, and I've had the wit
to recognize the truth. Are her gentlemen friends all idiots that they
have not--"
"What! talking to yourself, Mr. Morton? I fear the events of this day
are turning your head." And Miss Warren entered.
"Speak of an angel--you know the saying." "Indeed! The only word I
heard as I entered was 'idiot.'"
"Pardon me, you overheard the word 'idiots,' so can gather nothing from
that."
"No, your mutterings are dark indeed. I see no light or sense in them;
but the doctor came to Adah's door and asked me for more coffee."
"How is Miss Adah?"
"Doing nicely. She'll sleep soon, I think."
"I do hope little Zillah is recovering."
"Yes, Reuben put a radiant face within the door, a few minutes since,
and said Zillah was 'coming to,' as he expressed it. Adah is doing so
well that I feel assured about the others. Now that she is becoming
quiet, I think I can leave her and help with Zillah."
"And you're not exhausting yourself?"
"I've not yet reached the stage of muttering delirium. Mr. Morton, will
you permit me to suggest that you go to your room and put on dry
clothes. You are not fit to be seen. Moreover, there is a mark athwart
your nose that gives to your face a sinister aspect, not becoming in
one whose deeds of darkness this night will bear the light of all
coming time. It might be appropriate in a printing-office; but I don't
intend to have little Zillah frightened. Oh, I'm so glad and grateful
that we have all escaped! There, that will do; give me the tray."
"Beg your pardon: I shall carry it up myself. What on earth would I
have done without you in this emergency?"
"Come, Mr. Morton, I'm not used to being disobeyed. Yes, you did look
as helpless as only a man can look when there's illness; and there's no
telling what awful remedies you might have administered before the
doctor came. I think I shall take the credit of saving all our lives,
since you and Reuben won't."
She pushed open the door of Mrs. Yocomb's room, and her face changed
instantly.
Little Zillah lay on the bed and was still unconscious. Mrs. Yocomb had
been moved into an armchair, and every moment comprehension of the
truth grew clearer, and her motherly solicitude was intensified.
Reuben evidently was frightened, and the doctor's brow was knitted into
a frown of perplexity.
"We thought she was coming to," said Reuben to Miss Warren, "but she's
gone back worse than ever."
"Mr. Morton, I wish you to give to all a cup of that coffee and take
some yourself," said the physician, in a quiet but authoritative voice.
"Mr. Yocomb, you must not rise; you will be ill again, and I now need
all the help I can get with this child. We must try artificial
respiration, spraying the chest with cold water, and every possible
means."
"Would to God that I could help thee!" cried Mrs. Yocomb.
"You can help by keeping absolutely quiet. Mr. Morton, in this
emergency you must become as a brother or one of the family."
"I am one with them to-night," I said earnestly; "let me help you in
any way."
"You three must rub her with flannel and spirits, while I lift her arms
slowly up and down to try to induce respiration."
The poor limp little body--how sacred it seemed to me!
We worked and worked till the perspiration poured from our faces. Every
expedient was tried, until the physician at last desisted and stood
back for a moment in anxious thought.
Then, in a tone broken with anguish, Mr. Yocomb exclaimed:
"Would to God the bolt had fallen on my head, and not on this dear
little lamb."
In bitter protest against it all I cried, "The bolt has fallen on your
heart, Mr. Yocomb. How is it that God has thunderbolts for lambs?"
"Richard Morton, thee's unjust," began Mrs. Yocomb, in a voice that she
tried to render quiet and resigned. "Who art thou to judge God? 'What I
do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know--' Oh, my child, my
child!" broke out her wailing cry, and motherhood triumphed.
Reuben was sobbing over his sister with all the abandon of boyish
grief, but Miss Warren stood before the little form, apparently
lifeless, with clasped hands and dilated eyes.
"I can't--I won't give her up," she exclaimed passionately, and darted
from the room.
I followed wonderingly. She was already in the kitchen, and had found a
large tub.
"Fill this with hot water," she said to me. "No! let me do it; I'll
trust no one. Yes, you may carry it up, but please be careful. I'll
bring some cold water to temper it. Doctor," she exclaimed, re-entering
the room, "we must work till we know there is no chance. Yes, and after
we know it. Is not hot water good?"
"Anything is good that will restore suspended circulation," he replied;
"we'll try it. But wait a moment. I've employed a nice test, and if
there's life I think this little expedient will reveal it." He held the
child's hand, and I noted that a string had been tied around one of the
small white fingers, and that he intently watched the part of the
finger beyond the string. I comprehended the act at once, and
recognized the truth that there would be little hope of life if this
test failed. If there was any circulation at all the string would not
prevent the blood flowing out through the artery, but it would prevent
its return, and, therefore, if there was life a faint color would
manifest itself in the finger. I bent over and held my breath in my
eager scrutiny.
"The child's alive!" I exclaimed.
By a quick, impressive gesture the physician checked my manifestation
of feeling and excitement as he said:
"Yes, she's alive, and that's about all. We'll try a plunge in the hot
bath, and then friction and artificial respiration again."
We set to work once more with double zeal under the inspiration of Miss
Warren's words and manner, but especially because assured that life
still lingered. In less than a quarter of an hour there was a
perceptible pulse. At last she was able to swallow a little stimulant,
and the faint spark of life, of which we scarcely dared to speak lest
our breath might extinguish it, began to kindle slowly. When at last
she opened her eyes, Miss Warren turned hers heavenward with a fulness
of gratitude that must have been sweet to the fatherly heart of God if
the words be true, "Like as a father pitieth his children."
Mrs. Yocomb threw herself on her knees by the bedside, sobbing, "Thank
God! thank God!"
Reuben was growing wild with joy, and the father, overwhelmed with
emotion, was struggling to rise, when the doctor said, in low, decided
tones:
"Hush! Nothing must be said or done to excite or surprise her. Mr. and
Mrs. Yocomb, as you love your child, control yourselves. You, Mr.
Morton, would seem strange to her, and, with Reuben, had better leave
us now. Miss Warren will help me, and I think all will be well."
"Don't overtax Miss Warren," I urged, lingering anxiously at the door a
moment.
She gave me a smiling, reassuring nod, as much as to say that she would
take care of herself.
"God bless her!" I murmured, as I sought my room. "I believe she has
saved the child."
CHAPTER XV
MY FATE
Having lighted the lamp in my room, I looked around it with a delicious
sense of proprietorship. Its quaint, homely comfort was just to my
taste, and now appeared doubly attractive. Chief of all, it was a
portion of the home I had had some part in saving, and we instinctively
love that which ministers to our self-complacency. An old house seems
to gain a life and being of its own, and I almost imagined it conscious
of gratitude that its existence had not been blotted out. Mrs. Yocomb's
cordial invitation to come and stay when I could gave me at the time a
glad sense that I had found a country refuge to which I could
occasionally escape when in need of rest. I felt now, however, as if
the old walls themselves would welcome me. As to the inmates of the
home, I feared that their grateful sense of the services I was so
fortunate as to render might make their boundless sense of obligation
embarrassing to me. It would be their disposition to repay an ordinary
favor tenfold, and they would always believe that Reuben and I had
saved their lives, and the old home which no doubt had long been in
their family.
"Well, I'll never complain of fortune again," I thought, "since I've
been permitted to do for these people what I have;" and I threw myself
down on the lounge, conscious of the warm, comfortable glow imparted by
dry clothes and the strong coffee, still more conscious of an inner
satisfaction that the threatening events of the night had ended just as
I could have wished.
"Since it was to be, thank God I was here and was able to act for the
best," I murmured. "The June sunshine and the lightning have thrown
considerable light on my future. I said to Emily Warren, 'What could I
have done without you in this emergency?' With still greater emphasis I
feel like asking, What would life be without you? It seems absurd that
one person should become essential to the life of another in a few
brief hours. And yet, why absurd? Is it not rather in accord with the
deepest and truest philosophy of life? Is the indissoluble union of two
lives to result from long and careful calculations of the pros and
cons? In true marriage it seems to me the soul should recognize its
mate when meeting it."
It thus may be seen that I was no exception to that large class who
accept or create a philosophy pleasing to it, and there is usually
enough truth in any system to prevent its being wholly unreasonable.
I heard a step in the hall, and as I had left my door open so that at
any sound I could spring up, I was so fortunate as to intercept the
object of my thoughts. Her face was full of deep content, but very
pale. To the eager questioning of my manner, she replied:
"The doctor says Zillah is doing as well as we could expect. Oh, I'm so
glad!" "Miss Warren, you don't know how pale you are. When are _you_
going to rest? I've been lying down, and my conscience troubled me as I
thought of you still working."
"I never imagined that editors had such tender consciences," she said,
with a low laugh, and she vanished into Adah's room.
I knew she wouldn't stay long, and remained at the end of the hall,
looking out of the window. The lightning flashes had grown faint and
distant, but they were almost incessant, and they revealed that the
clouds were growing thin toward the west, while near the horizon a star
glimmered distinctly.
"Miss Warren," I called, as she came out of Adah's room, "I've a good
omen to show you. Do you see that star in the west? I think the morning
will be cloudless?"
"But those flashes prove that the storm is causing fear and loss to
other and distant homes."
"Not at all. It is, no doubt, causing 'better grain and clearer skies,'
as Mr. Yocomb said. Such an experience as we have had to-night, while
having its counterparts not infrequently, take the world over, is by no
means common."
"Oh, I hope we may have no more heavy thunderstorms this summer. They
are about the only drawback to this lovely season."
"You are perfectly safe so long as you remain here," I laughed; "you
know the lightning never strikes twice in the same place."
"I hope to stay here, but for better reasons than that."
"So do I."
"I should think you would. You, certainly, are no longer homeless. Mr.
and Mrs. Yocomb will adopt you in spite of yourself as soon as they
realize it all. The string of the latch will always hang outside of the
door for you, I can tell you; and a nice place it will be for a city
man to come."
"And for a city woman, too. Mrs. Yocomb had adopted you before all this
happened, and I don't believe she'll forget that you really saved
little Zillah's life."
"The dear little thing!" she exclaimed, tears starting to her eyes.
"How pathetic her little unconscious form was!"
"To me," I replied earnestly, "it was the most exquisite and sacred
thing I ever saw. I don't wonder you felt as you did when you said, 'I
can't--I won't give her up,' for it seemed at the moment almost as if
my life depended on her life, so powerful was her hold on my sympathy.
The doctor spoke truer than he thought, for it seems as if the
lightning had fused me into this family, and my grief would have been
almost as great as Reuben's had little Zillah not revived."
"I feel as if it would have broken my heart," and her tears fell fast.
Dashing them away she said, "I cry as well as laugh too easily, and I'm
often so provoked that I could shake myself. I must say that I think
we're all becoming well acquainted for people who have met so recently."
"Oh, as for you," I replied, "I knew you well in some previous state of
existence, and have just met you again."
"Mr. Morton," she said, turning on me brusquely, "I shall not be quite
sure as to your entire sanity till you have had a long sleep. You have
seemed a little out of your head on some points ever since our extended
acquaintance began. You have appeared impressed or oppressed with the
hallucination that this day--is it to-day or to-morrow?"
"It's to-day for a little while longer," I replied, looking at my watch.
"Well, then, that to-day was 'a day of fate,' and you made me nervous
on the subject--"
"Then I'm as sane as you are."
"No, I hadn't any such nonsense in my mind till you suggested it, but
having once entertained the idea it haunted me."
"Yes, and it haunts you still," I said, eagerly.
"What time is it, Mr. Morton?"
"It lacks but a few moments of midnight."
"No," she said, laughingly, "I don't believe anything more will happen
to-day, and as soon as the old clock downstairs strikes twelve I think
the light of reason will burn again in your disordered mind.
Good-night."
Instead of going, however, she hesitated, looked at me earnestly a
moment, then asked:
"You said you found me unconscious?"
"Yes."
"How did you revive me?"
"I carried you to the sofa under the window, which I opened. I then
chafed your hands, but I think the wind and spray restored you."
"I don't remember fainting before; and--oh, well, this whole experience
has been so strange that I can't realize it."
"Don't try to. If I'm a little out of my head, your soul will be out of
your body if you don't take better care of yourself. You might as well
be killed by lightning as over-fatigue. That doctor seems to think you
are made of india-rubber."
"I've laughed to myself more than once at your injunctions to the
doctor since Zillah revived. We've had such a narrow escape that I feel
as if I ought not to laugh again for a year, but I can't help it. I
won't thank you as I meant to--it might make you vain. Good-night," and
she gave my hand a quick, strong pressure, and went swiftly back to
Mrs. Yocomb's room.
Had my hand clasped only flesh and blood, bone and sinew? No, indeed. I
felt that I had had within my grasp a gratitude and friendly regard
that was so full and real that the warm-hearted, impulsive girl would
not trust herself to express it in words. Her manner, however, was so
frank and unconstrained that I knew her feelings to be only those of
gratitude and friendly regard, seeing clearly that she entertained no
such thoughts as had come unbidden to me.
In spite of my fatigue, the habit of my life and the strong coffee
would have banished all thought of sleep for hours to come, if there
had been no other cause, but the touch of a little hand had put more
glad awakening life within me than all the stimulants of the world.
I went downstairs and looked through the old house to see that all was
right, with as much solicitude as if it were indeed my own home.
Excepting the disorder I had caused in the kitchen and hall, it had the
midnight aspect of quiet and order that might have existed for a
century.
"I would not be afraid of the ghosts that came back to this home," I
muttered. "Indeed, I would like to see Mr. and Mrs. Yocomb's ancestors;
and, now I think of it, some one of them should wear a jaunty, worldly
hat to account for Adah. By Jove! but she was beautiful as she lay
there, with her perfect physical life suspended instantaneously. If the
lightning would only create a woman within the exquisite casket, the
result would well repay what we have passed through. Her mother would
say, as I suppose, that another and subtler fire from heaven were
needed for such a task."
As I came out into the hall the great clock began to strike, in the
slow, dignified manner befitting its age--
"One, two, three--twelve."
The day of fate had passed. I knew Emily Warren was laughing at me
softly to herself as she and the physician watched with the patients in
Mrs. Yocomb's room.
I was in no mood to laugh, for every moment the truth was growing
clearer that I had met my fate.
I looked into the parlor, in which a lamp was burning, and conjured up
the scene I had witnessed there. I saw a fair young face, with eyes
turned heavenward, and heard again the words, "My faith looks up to
Thee."
Their faith had been sorely tried. The burning bolt from heaven seemed
a strange response to that faith; the crashing thunder a wild, harsh
echo to the girl's sweet, reverent tones.
"Is it all chance?" I queried, "or all inexorable law? Who or what is
the author of the events of this night?" As if in answer, Mrs. Yocomb's
text came into my mind: "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt
know hereafter."
"Well," I muttered, "perhaps there is as much reason in their
philosophy as in any other. Somebody ought to be in charge of all this
complex life and being."
I went out on the piazza. The rain was still falling, but softly and
lightly. A freshening breeze was driving the thin, lingering clouds
before it, and star after star looked out, as if lights were being
kindled in the western sky. The moon was still hidden, but the vapor
was not dense enough to greatly obscure her rays. In the partial light
the valley seemed wider, the mountains higher, and everything more
beautiful, in contrast with the black tempest that had so recently
filled the scene.
I sat down on the piazza to watch with those who were watching with the
child. I made up my mind that I certainly should not retire until the
physician departed; and in my present mood I felt that my midsummer
night's dream would be to me more interesting than that of Will
Shakespeare. Hour after hour passed almost unnoted. The night became
serene and beautiful. The moon, like a confident beauty, at last threw
aside her veil of clouds, and smiled as if assured of welcome.
Raindrops gemmed every leaf; and when the breeze increased, myriads of
them sparkled momentarily through the silver light. As morning
approached the air grew so sweet that I recognized the truth that the
new flowers of a new day were opening, and that I was inhaling their
virgin perfume.
I rose and went softly to the ivy-covered gateway of the old garden,
and the place seemed transfigured in the white moonlight. Even the
kitchen vegetables lost their homely, prosaic aspect. I stole to the
lilac-bush, and peered at the home that had been roofless through all
the wild storm. My approach had been so quiet that the little brown
mother sat undisturbed, with her head under her wing; but the paternal
robin, from an adjacent spray, regarded me with unfeigned surprise and
alarm. He uttered a note of protest, and the mother-bird instantly
raised her head and fixed on me her round, startled eyes. I stole away
hastily, smiling to myself as I said:
"Both families will survive unharmed, and both nests are safe."
I went to the spot where I had stood with Emily Warren at the time I
had half-jestingly, half-earnestly indulged my fancy to reproduce a bit
of Eden-like frankness. Under the influence of the hour and my mood I
was able to conjure up the maiden's form almost as if she were a real
presence. I knew her far better now. With her I had passed through an
ordeal that would test severely the best and strongest. She had been
singularly strong and very weak; but the weakness had left no stain on
her crystal truth, and her strength had been of the best and most
womanly kind. As in the twilight, so in the white moonlight, she again
made perfect harmony in the transfigured garden.
"There is but one woman in the world for me," I murmured, "as truly as
there was only one for the first lonely man. I know not how it is with
her, but I hope--oh, what would life now be to me without this
hope!--that she cannot have inspired this absolute conviction that she
is essential to my being without some answering sympathy in her own
woman's heart. But whether this is true or not, or whether it ever can
be true, _I have met my fate_."
As I returned from the garden I saw that the dawn was coming, and I sat
down and watched it brighten with the feeling that a new and happy life
was also coming.
THE END OF BOOK FIRST
_BOOK SECOND_
CHAPTER I
THE DAY AFTER
The epochs of one's life are not divided according to the calendar, nor
are they measured by the lapse of time. Within a few brief hours I had
reached a conclusion that left no shadow of doubt on my mind. As I sat
there in the beautiful June dawn I turned a page in my history. The
record of future joys and ills would have to be kept in double entry,
for I felt with absolute conviction that I could entertain no project
and decide no question without instinctively and naturally consulting
the maiden who had quietly and as if by divine right obtained the
mastery of my soul. But a day since I would have said that my present
attitude was impossible, but now it seemed both right and inevitable.
The doubt, the sense of strangeness and remoteness that we justly
associate with a comparative stranger, had utterly passed away, and in
their place was a feeling of absolute trust and rest. I could place in
her hands the best treasures of my life, without a shadow of hesitancy,
so strongly had I been impressed with her truth.
And yet it all was a beautiful mystery, over which I could have dreamed
for hours.
I had not shunned society in the past, and had greatly admired other
ladies. Their voices had been sweet and low, as a woman's tones should
be, and their glances gentle and kind, but not one of them had
possessed the power to quicken my pulse or to disturb the quiet slumber
of my heart; but this woman spoke to me as with authority from heaven.
"My whole being," I murmured, "bows down to her by a constraint that I
could scarcely resist, and no queen in the despotic past ever had a
more loyal subject than I have become. To serve her, even to suffer for
her and to stand between her and all evils the world could inflict, are
privileges that I covet supremely. My regard is not a sudden passion,
for passion is selfish and inconsiderate. My love is already united
with honor and reverence, and my strongest impulse is to promote her
happiness before my own. The thought of her is an inspiration toward a
purer, better manhood than I have yet known. Her truth and innate
nobility produce an intense desire to become like her, so that she may
look into my eyes and trust also."
I scarcely know how long my bright-hued dream would have lasted, but at
length the door of Mrs. Yocomb's room opened, and steps were on the
stairs. A moment later the physician came out, and Miss Warren stood in
the doorway.
"They are all sleeping quietly," he said, in answer to my inquiry.
"Yes; all danger in Zillah's case is now passed, I think; but she's had
a serious time of it, poor little thing!"
"There's no need of your walking home to-night," protested Miss Warren.
"We can make you comfortable here, and Reuben will gladly drive you
over in the morning."
"It's morning now," he said, smiling, "and I'll enjoy the walk in the
fresh air. I'll call again before very long. Good-day!" and he walked
lightly down the path, as if all were very satisfactory to him.
"What are you doing here, Mr. Morton?" Miss Warren asked, assuming an
expression of strong surprise.
"Helping to watch."
"What a waste! You haven't done Zillah a bit of good."
"Didn't you know I was here?"
"Yes; but I hope you don't think that I need watching?"
"I was within call." "So you would have been if sleeping. I could have
blown the great tin horn if it had been necessary to waken you, and you
had remained undisturbed by other means."
"Oh, well, then, if it made no difference to you, I'll merely say I'm a
night editor, and kept awake from habit."
"I didn't say it made no difference to me," she answered. "You ought to
have known better than to have made that speech."
"Miss Warren," I urged anxiously, "you look white as a ghost in this
mingling of moonlight and morning. When _will_ you rest?"
"When the mind and heart are at rest a tired body counts for little. So
you're not afraid of ghosts?"
I looked at her intently as I replied: "No, I would like to be haunted
all my life."
It was not wholly the reflection of the dawn that tinged the pallor of
her face as I spoke these words.
After a moment's hesitation she apparently dismissed a thought, and
maintained her old frank manner.
"Oh, how beautiful, how welcome the morning is!" she exclaimed, coming
out on the piazza. "To think that this is the same world that we saw
last night--it's almost impossible."
"Mr. Yocomb's words will yet prove true," I said, "and clearer skies
and better grain will be the result of the storm."
"Oh, I'm so glad, I'm so very glad," she murmured. "This morning is
like a benediction;" and its brightness and beauty glowed in her face.
"I can tell you something that will please you greatly," I continued.
"I have visited the little home in the garden that was open to last
night's sky. The father and mother robins are well, and I'm sure all
the little ones are too, for the mother robin had her head under her
wing--a thing impossible, I suppose, if anything was amiss with the
children."
"Oh, I'm so glad!" she again repeated, and there was a joyous,
exquisite thrill in her tones.
At that moment there came a burst of song from the top of the pear-tree
in the garden, and we saw the head of the little household greeting the
day.
Almost as sweetly and musically my companion's laugh trilled out:
"So it wasn't the day of fate after all."
Impelled by an impulse that for the moment seemed irresistible, I took
her hand as I said earnestly:
"Yes, Miss Warren, for me it was, whether for a lifetime of happiness
or of disappointment."
At first she appeared startled, and gave me a swift, searching glance;
then a strong expression of pain passed over her face. She understood
me well, for my look and manner would have been unmistakable to any
woman.
She withdrew her hand as she said gently:
"You are overwrought from watching--from all that's happened; let us
both forget that such rash words were spoken."
"Do not think it," I replied, slowly and deliberately. "I have learned
to know you better since we have met than I could in months or years
amid the conventionalities of society. In you I recognize my fate as
vividly and distinctly as I saw you in the lightning's gleam last
night. Please hear and understand me," I urged, as she tried to check
my words by a strong gesture of dissent. "If you had parents or
guardians, I would ask them for the privilege of seeking your hand.
Since you have not, I ask you. At least, give me a chance. I can never
prove worthy of you, but by years of devotion I can prove that I
appreciate you."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, so very sorry you feel so," she said, and there was
deep distress in her tones; "I was in hopes we should be life-long
friends."
"We shall be," I replied quietly. She looked at me hesitatingly a
moment, then said impulsively:
"Mr. Morton, you are too honorable a man to seek that which belongs to
another. There," she added, flushing deeply, "I've told you what I've
acknowledged to no one--scarcely to myself."
I know that the light of hope faded out of my face utterly, for I felt
ill and faint. If in truth she belonged to another, her absolute truth
would make her so loyal to him that further hope would be not only vain
but an insult, which she would be the first to resent.
"I understand you too well," I began despondently, "to say another
word. Miss Warren. I--I wish--it seems rather odd I should have felt so
toward you when it was no use. It was as inevitable as our meeting. The
world and all that's in it is an awful muddle to me. But God bless you,
and if there's any good God, you will be blessed." I shivered as I
spoke, and was about to leave the piazza hastily, when her eager and
entreating tones detained me.
"Mr. Morton, you said that in spite of all we should be friends; let me
claim my privilege at once. I'm sure I'm right in believing that you're
overwrought and morbid, from the strange experiences you have just
passed through. Do not add to your exhaustion by starting off on
another aimless walk to-day; though you may think it might lead you to
a better fate, it cannot bring you to those who care so deeply for you.
We'll be merry, true-hearted friends after we've had time to rest and
think it all over."
"True-hearted, anyway," I said emphatically. "What's more, I'll be sane
when we meet again--entirely matter-of-fact, indeed, since I already
foresee that I shall be troubled by no more days of fate. Good-by now;
go and sleep the sleep of the just; I'll rest quietly here;" and I held
out my hand.
She took it in both of hers, and said gently: "Mr. Morton, I believe
you saved my--our lives last night."
"I had some hand in it--yes, that should be happiness enough. I'll make
it answer; but never speak of it again."
"When I cease to think of it I shall cease to think at all," she said,
in strong emphasis; and with a lingering wistful glance she passed
slowly in and up the winding stairway.
I watched her as I would a ship that had left me on a desolate rock.
"She is one that could not change if she would," I thought. "It's all
over. No matter; possibly I saved her life."
I sat down again in a rustic chair on the piazza, too miserable and
disheartened to do more than endure the pain of my disappointment.
Indeed there was nothing else to do, for seemingly I had set my heart
on the impossible. Her words and manner had made but one
impression--that she had given her love and faith to an earlier and
more fortunate suitor.
"It would be strange if it were otherwise," I muttered. "I was the
'idiot,' in thinking that her gentlemen friends were blind; but I
protest against a world in which men are left to blunder so fatally.
The other day I felt broken down physically; I now know that I'm broken
and disabled in all respects. The zest and color have wholly gone out
of life. If I ever go back to my work I shall find my counterpart in
the most jaded and dispirited stage-horse in the city. Miss Warren will
have no more occasion to criticise light, smart paragraphs. Indeed, I
imagine that I shall soon be restricted to the obituary notices, and I
now feel like writing my own. Confound these birds! What makes them
sing so? Nature's a heartless jade anyway. Last night she would have
burned us up with lightning, and this morning there would have been not
a whit less of song and sunshine. Oh, well, it's far better that my
hopes are in ashes than that this house should be. I, and all there is
of me, is a small price to pay for this home and its inmates; and if I
saved her little finger from being scorched, I should be well content.
But why the devil did I feel so toward her when it was of no use! That
fact irritates me. Is my whole nature a lie, and are its deepest
intuitions and most sacred impulses false guides that lead one out into
the desert to perish? In the crisis of my life, when I had been made to
see that past tendencies were wrong, and I was ready for any change for
the better, my random, aimless steps led to this woman, and, as I said
to her, the result was inevitable. All nature seemed in league to give
emphasis to the verdict of my own heart, but the moment I reached the
conviction that she was created for me and I for her, I am informed
that she was created for another. I must therefore be one of the odd
ones, for whom there is no mate. Curse it all! I rather feel as if
another man were going to marry my wife, and I must admit that I have a
consuming curiosity to see him.
"But this can't be. Her heart must have recognized the true kinship in
this other man--blast him! no, bless him, if she marries him--for she's
the last one in the world to enter into merely legal relations,
unsanctioned by the best and purest instincts of her womanly nature.
"It's all the devil's own muddle."
And no better conclusion did I reach that dismal morning--the most
dismal I can remember, although the hour abounded in beauty and the
glad, exuberant life that follows a summer rain. I once heard a
preacher say that hell could be in heaven and heaven in hell. I thought
him a trifle irreverent at the time, but now half believed him right.
My waking train of thought ended in a stupor in which I do not think I
lost for a moment the dull consciousness of pain. I was aroused by a
step upon the gravel-path, and, starting up, saw the woman who served
Mrs. Yocomb in the domestic labors of the farmhouse. She stopped and
stared at me a moment, and then was about to continue around the house
to the kitchen entrance.
"Wait a moment, my good woman," I said; "and you'll now have a chance
to prove yourself a good woman, and a very helpful and considerate one,
too. The house was struck by lightning last night."
"Lord a massy!" she ejaculated, and she struck an attitude with her
hands on her hips, and stared at me again, with her small eyes and
capacious mouth opened to their utmost extent.
"Yes," I continued, "and all were hurt except Reuben. The doctor has
been here, and all are now better and sleeping, so please keep the
house quiet, and let us sleep till the doctor comes again. Then have a
good fire, so that you can get ready at once whatever he orders for the
patients."
"Lord a massy!" she again remarked very emphatically, and scuttled off
to her kitchen domains in great excitement.
I now felt that my watch had ended, and that I could give the old
farmhouse into the hands of one accustomed to its care. Therefore I
wearily climbed the stairs to my room, and threw myself, dressed, on
the lounge.
After a moment or two Miss Warren's door opened, and her light step
passed down to the kitchen. She, too, had been on the watch for the
coming of the domestic, and, if aware that I had seen the woman, did
not regard me as competent to enlighten her as to her duties for the
day. The kitchen divinity began at once:
"Lord a massy, Miss Em'ly, what a time yer's all had! The strange man
told me. There hain't no danger now, is there?"
In response to some remark from Miss Warren she continued, in shrill
volubility:
"Yes, he told me yer's all struck but Reub'n. I found him a-sittin' on
the stoop, and a-lookin' all struck of a heap himself. Is that the way
lightning 'fects folks? He looked white as a ghost, and as if he didn't
keer ef he was one afore night. 'Twas amazin'--" and here Miss Warren
evidently silenced her.
I heard the murmur of her voice as she gave a few brief directions, and
then her steps returned swiftly to her room.
"She can be depended upon," I sighed, "to do all she thinks right. She
must have been wearied beyond mortal endurance, and worried by my rash
and unlooked-for words, and yet she keeps up till all need is past.
Every little act shows that I might as well try to win an angel of
heaven as sue against her conscience, she is so absolutely true. You're
right, old woman; I _was_ 'struck,' and I wish it had been by lightning
only."
Just when I exchanged waking thoughts for hateful dreams I do not
remember. At last I started to my feet, exclaiming:
"It's all wrong; he shall not marry my wife!" and then I sat down on
the lounge and tried to extricate myself from the shadows of sleep, and
thus become able to recognize the facts of the real world that I must
now face. Slowly the events of the previous day and night came back,
and with them a sense of immeasurable loss. The sun was low in the
west, thus proving that my unrefreshing stupor had lasted many hours.
The clatter of knives, and forks indicated preparations for supper in
the dining-room below. I dreaded meeting the family and all words of
thanks, as one would the touching of a diseased nerve. More than all, I
dreaded meeting Miss Warren again, feeling that we both would be under
a wretched constraint. My evil mood undoubtedly had physical causes,
for my mouth was parched, my head throbbed and ached, and I felt so ill
in body and mind, so morbid and depressed, that I was ready to escape
to New York without seeing a soul, were the thing possible.
The door opened softly, and I saw Reuben's ruddy, happy face.
"Oh, I'm so glad thee's awake," he said. "They're all doing well.
Adah's got well so fast that she actually looks better than Emily
Warren. Even Zillah's quite bright this evening, only she's so weak she
can't sit up much, but the doctor says it'll wear away. Thee doesn't
look very extra, and no wonder, thee did so much. Father, mother, and
Emily Warren have been talking about thee for the last two hours, and
Adah can't ask questions enough about thee, and how thee found her. She
says the last thing she saw was thee on the lawn, and thee was the
first thing she saw when she came to, and now she says she can't help
seeing thee all the time. Emily Warren said we must let thee sleep as
long as thee would, for that, she said, was what thee needed most of
all."
"She's mistaken," I muttered, starting up. "Reuben," I continued aloud,
"you're a good, brave fellow. I'll come down to supper as soon, as I
can fairly wake up. I feel as stupid as an owl at midday, but I'm
exceedingly glad that all are doing well."
When he left me I thought, "Well, I will keep up for two or three
hours, and then can excuse myself. To-morrow I can return to New York,
since clearly this will be no place for me. Miss Warren thinks that a
little sleep will cure me, and that I will be sane and sensible now
that I am awake. She will find me matter-of-fact indeed, for I feel
like a bottle of champagne that has stood uncorked for a month; but may
the devil fly away with me if I play the forlorn, lackadaisical lover,
and show my wounds."
I bathed my face again and again, and made as careful a toilet as
circumstances permitted.
In their kind-hearted simplicity they had evidently planned a sort of
family ovation, for as I came out on the piazza, they were all there
except Miss Warren, who sat at her piano playing softly; but as Mr.
Yocomb rose to greet me she turned toward us, and through the open
window could see us and hear all that passed. The old gentleman still
bore marks of his shock and the illness that followed, but there was
nothing weak or limp in his manner as he grasped my hand and began
warmly:
"Richard Morton, last night I said thee was welcome; I now say this
home is as truly thine as mine. Thee saved mother and the children
from--" and here his voice was choked by emotion.
Mrs. Yocomb seized my other hand, and I saw that she was "moved" now if
ever, for her face was eloquent with kindly, grateful feeling.
"Please don't," I said, so sharply as to indicate irritation, for I
felt that I could not endure another syllable. Then, slapping Reuben
brusquely on the shoulder, I added, "Reuben was quite as helpful as I:
thank him. Any tramp from New York would try to do as much as I did,
and might have done better. Ah, here is Zillah!" And I saw that the
little girl was propped up on pillows just within the parlor window,
where she could enjoy the cool evening air without too great exposure.
"If she'll give me another kiss we'll call it all square and say no
more about it," and I leaned over the window-sill.
The child put her arms around my neck and clung to me for a moment.
There could have been no better antidote for my mood of irritable
protest against my fate than the child's warm and innocent embrace, and
for a moment it was balm indeed.
"There," I cried, kissing her twice, "now I'm overpaid." Raising my
eyes, I met those of Miss Warren as she sat by her piano.
"Yes," she said, with a smile, "after that I should think you would be
more than content."
"I certainly ought to be," I replied, looking at her steadily.
"Zillah's very grateful," Miss Warren continued. "She knows that you
watched with her till morning."
"So did other night-owls, Zillah, and they were quite as useful as I
was."
She reached up her hand and pulled me down. "Mother said," she began.
"You needn't tell a stranger what mother said," and I put my finger on
her lips.
"Thee's no more of a stranger than Emily Warren," said the little girl
reproachfully. "I can't think of thee without thinking of her."
I raised my eyes in a quick flash toward the young lady, but she had
turned to the piano, and her right hand was evoking a few low chords.
"Miss Warren can tell you," I said, laughing, "that when people have
been struck by lightning they often don't think straight for a long
time to come."
"Crooked thinking sometimes happens without so vivid a cause," Miss
Warren responded, without looking around.
"Zillah's right in thinking that thee can never be a stranger in this
home," said Mrs. Yocomb warmly.
"Mrs. Yocomb, please don't think me insensible to the feelings which
are so apparent. Should I live centuries, the belief that I had served
you and yours after your kindness would still be my pleasantest
thought. But you overrate what I have done: it was such obvious duty
that any one would have done the same, or else his ears should have
been cropped. It gives me a miserably mean feeling to have you thank me
so for it. Please don't any more."
"We forget," said Miss Warren, advancing to the window, "that Mr.
Morton is versed in tragedies, and has daily published more dreadful
affairs."
"Yes, and has written 'paragraphs' about them that no doubt seemed
quite as lurid as the events themselves, suggesting that I gloated over
disasters as so much material."
"Mr. Morton, isn't it nearly as bad to tell fibs about one's self as
about other people?"
"My depravity will be a continuous revelation to you, Miss Warren," I
replied.
With a low laugh she answered, "I see you make no secret of it," and
she went back to her piano.
I had bowed cordially to Adah as I joined the family group, and had
been conscious all the time of her rather peculiar and fixed scrutiny,
which I imagined suggested a strong curiosity more than anything else.
"Well, Richard Morton," said Mr. Yocomb, as if the words were
irrepressible, "thee knows a little of how we feel toward thee, if thee
won't let us say as much as we would like. I love this old home in
which I was born and have lived until this day. I could never build
another home like it if every leaf on the farm were a bank-note. But I
love the people who live here far more. Richard Morton, I know how it
would all have ended, and thee knows. The house was on fire, and all
within it were helpless and unconscious. I've seen it all to-day, and
Reuben has told us. May the Lord bless thee for what them hast done for
me and mine! I'm not going to burden thee with our gratitude, but truth
is truth, and we must speak out once for all, to be satisfied. Thee
knows, too, that when a Friend has anything on his mind it's got to
come; hasn't it, mother? Richard Morton, thee has saved us all from a
horrible death."
"Yes, Mr. Morton," said Miss Warren, coming again to the window and
laughing at my crimson face and embarrassment, "you _must_ face that
truth--there's no escaping it. Forgive me, Mr. Yocomb, for laughing
over so serious a subject, but Reuben and Mr. Morton amuse me greatly.
Mr. Morton already says that any tramp from New York would have done
the same. By easy transition he will soon begin to insist that it was
some other tramp. I now understand evolution."
"Emily Warren, thee needn't laugh at Richard Morton," said Reuben a
little indignantly; "thee owes more to him than to any other man
living."
She did not turn to the piano so quickly now but that I saw her face
flush at the unlooked-for speech.
"That you are mistaken, Reuben, no one knows better than Miss Warren
herself," I replied irritably.
She turned quickly and said, in a low tone, "You are right, Mr. Morton.
Friends do not keep a debit and credit account with each other. I shall
not forget, however, that Reuben is right also, even though I may seem
to sometimes," and she left the room.
I was by the open window, and I do not think any one heard her words
except Zillah, and she did not understand them.
I stood looking after her, forgetful of all else, when a hand laid upon
my arm caused me to look around, and I met Adah's gaze, and it was as
fixed and intent as that of a child.
"She doesn't owe thee any more than I do," she said gravely. "I wish I
could do something for thee."
"Why do you say 'thee' to me now?--you always said 'you' before," I
asked.
"I don't know. It seems as if I couldn't say 'you' to thee any more,"
and a delicate color stole into her face.
"We all feel as if thee were one of us now," explained Mrs. Yocomb
gently, "and I trust that life will henceforth seem to Adah a more
sacred thing, and worthy of more sacred uses." And she passed into the
house to prepare for supper.
Mr. Yocomb followed her, and Reuben went down to the barn.
"If you live to grow like your mother, Miss Adah, you will be the most
beautiful woman in the world," I said frankly, for I felt as if I could
speak to her almost as I would to Zillah.
Her eyes drooped and her color deepened as she shook her head and
murmured:
"I'd rather be Emily Warren than any other woman in the world."
Her words and manner so puzzled me that I thought she had not fully
recovered from the effects of the shock, and I replied, in an off-hand
way:
"After a few weeks of teaching stupid children to turn noise into music
you would gladly be yourself again."
She paid no heed to this remark, but, with the same intent, exploring
look, asked:
"Thee was the first one I saw when I came to last night?"
"Yes, and you were much afraid of me."
"I was foolish--I fear mother's right, and I've always been foolish."
"Your manner last night was most natural. I was a stranger, and a
hard-looking customer, too, when I entered your room."
"I hope I didn't look very--very bad."
"You looked so like a beautiful piece of marble that I feared you were
dead."
"Thee wouldn't have cared much."
"Indeed I would. If you knew how anxious I was about Zillah--"
"Ugh!" she interrupted, with an expression of strong disgust, "I might
have been a horrid, blackened thing if it hadn't been for thee."
"Oh, hush!" I cried; "I merely threw a couple of pails of water on the
roof. Please say no more about it."
She passed her hand over her brow, and said hesitatingly:
"I'm so puzzled--I feel so strangely. It seems an age since yesterday."
"You've had a very severe shock, Miss Adah."
"Yes, that may be it; but it's so strange that I was afraid of thee."
"Why, Miss Adah, I was wet as a drowned rat, and had a black mark
across my nose. I would have made an ideal burglar."
"That oughtn't to have made any difference; thee was trying to save my
life."
"But you didn't know it."
"I don't believe I know anything rightly. I--I feel so strange--just as
if I had waked up and hadn't got anything clear. But I know this much,
in spite of what Reuben said," she added impulsively; "Emily Warren
doesn't owe thee any more than I do." And she turned like a flash and
was gone.
"Poor child," I muttered, "she hasn't recovered so fully as the others."
I had been holding one of Zillah's hands during the interview, and she
now pulled me down and whispered:
"What's the matter with thee, Richard Morton?"
"Heaven grant you may never know, little one. Good-by." I had scarcely
left the piazza, however, before Mrs. Yocomb called:
"Richard Morton, thee must be famished. Come to supper."