THE DIFFERENCE
On the further side of the Long Bridge the railway tracks swept off in a
smooth curve to the right, and, as there was a high embankment to adapt
the grade to the hillside, a long flight of steps ran down beside it
into the glen below.
A pretty glen, dark with shadows, bright with dancing sun-rays. A glen
which bore an odd likeness to some lives that we may meet (if we have
that happiness), lives that lead their ways in peace and beauty, with
the roar and smoke of the world but a stone's throw distant.
Lassie's eyes, looking down, were full of appreciation.
"Is it there that you are going to live?" she asked.
Alva shook her head. "Oh, no, not there; that is Ledge Park, the place
that all the hue and cry is being raised over just now."
"Oh, yes," Lassie turned eagerly; "tell me about that. I read something
in the papers, but I forgot that it was here."
"It is 'here,' as you say. But it concerns all the country about here,
only it's much too big a subject for us to go into now. There are two
sides, and then ever so many sides more. I try to see them all, I try to
see every one's side of everything as far as I can, but there is one
side that overbalances all else in my eyes, and that happens to be the
unpopular one."
"That's too bad."
"Yes, dear," Alva spoke very simply; "but what makes _you_ say so?"
"Why? Why, because then you won't get what you want."
Her friend laughed. "Don't say that in such a pitying tone, Lassie.
Better to be defeated on the right side, than to win the most glorious
of victories for the wrong. Who said that?"
Lassie looked doubtful.
Alva laughed again and touched her cheek with a finger-caress. "I'll
tell you just this much now, dear;--all of both the river banks--above,
below and surrounding the three falls--belong to Mr. Ledge, and he has
always planned to give the whole to the State as a gift, so that there
might be one bit of what this country once was like, preserved. He made
all his arrangements to that end, and gave the first deeds last winter.
What do you think followed? As soon as the State saw herself practically
in possession, it appointed a commission to examine into the
possibilities of the water power!" Alva paused and looked at her friend.
"But--" Lassie was clearly puzzled.
"The engineers are here surveying now. Ronald Ingram is at the head and
the people of all the neighborhood are so excited over the prospect of
selling their farms that no one stops to think what it would really
mean."
"What would it really mean?"
"A manufacturing district with a huge reservoir above it."
"Where?"
"Back there," she turned and pointed; "they say that there was a great
prehistoric lake there once, and they will utilize it again."
"But there's a town down there."
"Yes, my dear, Ledgeville. Ledgeville and six other towns will be
submerged."
Lassie stopped short on the railroad track and stared. She had come to a
calamity which she could realize now.
"Why, what ever will the people do then?"
"Get damages. They're so pleased over being drowned out. You must talk
it over with Mrs. Ray. You must get Mrs. Ray's standpoint, and then get
Ronald's standpoint. Theirs are the sensible, practical views, the
world's views. My views are never practical. I'm not practical. I'm only
heartbroken to think of anything coming in to ruin the valley. Mr. Ledge
and I share the same opinions as to this valley; it seems to us too
great a good to sell for cash."
"You speak bitterly."
"Yes, dear, I'm afraid that I do speak bitterly. On that subject. But we
won't talk of it any more just now. See, here's the wood road that leads
to my kingdom; come, take it with me."
They turned into a soft, pine-carpeted way on the left, and in the
length of a bow-shot seemed buried in the forest.
"Lassie, wait!"
Turning her head, Lassie saw that Alva had stopped behind, and was
standing still beside where a little pine-tree was growing out from
under a big glacial boulder. She went back to her.
"Dear, look at this little tree. Here's my daily text."
"How?"
"Do you see how it has grown out and struggled up from under the rock?"
Lassie nodded.
"You know very little of what makes up life, dear. I've sent for you to
teach you." She lifted her eyes earnestly to the face near hers, and her
own eyes were full of appeal. "Lassie, try to understand all I say to
you these days; try to believe that it's worth learning. See this little
tree--" she touched her fingers caressingly to the pine branches as she
spoke--"it's a very little tree, but it has taught me daily since I
came, and I believe that you can learn of it, too."
Lassie's big eyes were very big indeed. "Learn of a tree!"
Alva lifted one of the little stunted uneven branches tenderly in her
fingers. "This is its lesson," she said; "the pine-cone fell between the
rocks; it didn't choose where it would fall, it just found itself alive
and under the rocks; there wasn't much earth there, but it took root and
grew. There was no room to give out branches, so it forced its way
crookedly upward; crookedly because there was no room to grow straight,
but always upward; there wasn't much sunlight, but it was as bravely
green as any other tree; the big rock made it one-sided, but it put out
thickly on the side where it had space. My life hasn't been altogether
sunlit. I was born between rocks, and I have been forced to grow
one-sided, too. But the tree's sermon came home to me the first day that
I saw it. Courageous little tree, doing your best in the woods, where
no one but God could take note of your efforts,--you'll be straight and
have space and air and sunshine in plenty next time--next time! Oh,
blessed 'next time' that is to surely right the woes of those who keep
up courage and continue fighting. That's the reward of all. That's the
lesson."
Lassie listened wonderingly. "Next time!" she repeated questioningly,
"what next time? Do you believe in a heaven for trees?"
"I am not sure of a heaven for anything," said Alva, "not an orthodox
heaven. But I believe in an endless existence for every atom existing in
the universe, and I believe that each atom determines the successive
steps of its own future, and so a brave little pine-tree fills me with
just as sincere admiration as any other species of bravery. 'Next time'!
It will have a beautiful 'next time' in the heaven which means something
so different from what we are taught, or here again on earth, or
wherever its little growing spirit takes form again. I'm not wise enough
to understand much of that, but I'm wise enough to know that there is a
next time of so much infinitely greater importance than this time, that
this time is really only of any importance at all in comparison just
according to how we use it in preparation. That's part of the lesson
that the tree teaches. But you can't understand me, Lassie, unless you
are able to grasp my belief--my fixed conviction--that this world is
only an instant in eternity. I couldn't live at all unless I had this
belief and hope, and it's the key to everything with me; so
please--please--give me credit for sincerity, at least."
Lassie looked thoroughly awed. "I'll try to see everything just as you
do," she said.
Alva pressed her hand. "Thank you, dear."
Then they went on up the road.
Presently the sound of hammer and saw was heard, and the smell of wet
plaster and burning rubbish came through the trees.
"Is it from your house?" Lassie asked, with her usual visible relief at
the approach of the understandable.
"Yes, from my house," Alva answered. "They are very much occupied with
my house; fancy buying a dear, old, dilapidated dwelling in the
wilderness, and having to make it new and warm and bright and cheerful
in a fortnight! Why, the tale of these two weeks will go down through
all the future history of the country, I know. Such a fairy tale was
never before. I shall become the Legend of Ledge, I feel sure."
The road, turning here, ended sharply in a large, solid, wooden gate,
set deep in a thick hedge of pine trees.
"It is like a fairy tale!" Lassie cried delightedly; "a regular
Tourangean _porte_ with a _guichet_!"
"It is better than any fairy tale," said Alva; "it is Paradise, the
lovely, simple-minded, Bible-story Paradise, descending upon earth for a
little while." She pushed one half of the great gate-door open, and they
went through.
A small, old-fashioned, Colonial dwelling rose up before them in the
midst of dire disorder. Shingling, painting, glass-setting, and the like
were all going forward at once. Workmen were everywhere; wagons loading
and unloading were drawn up at the side; mysterious boxes, bales and
bundles lay about; confusion reigned rampant.
"Not exactly evolution, but rather revolution," laughed Alva, ceasing
transcendentalism with great abruptness, and becoming blithely gay. "And
oh, Lassie, the joy of it, the downright childish fun of it! Don't you
see that I couldn't be alone through these days; they are too grand to
be selfish over. I had to have some one to share my fun. We'll come here
and help every day after this; the pantries will be ready soon, and you
and I will do every bit of the putting them in order. Screw up the
little hooks for the cups, you know, and arrange the shelves, and oh,
won't we have a good time?"
Lassie's eyes danced. "I just love that kind of work," she said, fully
conscious of the pleasant return to earth, "I can fit paper in drawers
beautifully."
"Which proves that after all women stay women in spite of many modern
encouragements to be men," Alva said. "You know really I'm considered to
be most advanced, and people look upon me as quite intellectual; but I'm
fairly wild over thinking how we'll scrub the pantries, and put in the
china--and then there's a fine linen-closet, too. We'll set that in
order afterwards, and put all the little piles straight on the shelves."
By this time they had gone up the plank that bridged over the present
hiatus between ground and porch, and entered the living-room, which was
being papered in red with a green dado and ceiling.
"How pretty and bright!" Lassie exclaimed.
"It's going to be furnished in the same red and green, with little
book-shelves all around and the dining table in the middle," Alva
explained. "Oh, I do love this room. It's my ideal sitting-room. It has
to be the dining-room, too, but I don't mind that."
"Won't the table have to be very small?"
"Just big enough for two."
"But when you have company?"
"We shall never have any company."
"I mean when you have friends with you here."
"I shall never have any friends with me, dear."
"Alva! Why--I can come--can't I?--Sometime?"
Alva shook her head.
"That's part of the story, Lassie, part of the story that I am going to
tell you in a few minutes now. But be a little patient, dear; give me a
few minutes more. Come in here first; see--this was the dining-room, but
it has been changed into--I don't know what. A sort of bedroom, I
suppose one would call it. I've had it done in blue, with little green
vines and birds and bees and butterflies painted around it. Birds and
bees and butterflies are always so lively and bright, so busy and
cheerful. All the pictures here are going to be of animals, either out
in the wild, free forest or else in warm, sunshiny farmyards. I have a
lovely print of Wouverman's 'Im Stall' to hang in the big space. You
know the picture, don't you?--the shadowy barn-room with one whole side
open, and the hay dripping from above, and the horses just ridden in,
and the chickens scratching, and some little children playing in the
corner by the well. It's such a sweet _gemuthliche_ picture--so full of
fresh country air--I felt that it was the picture of all others to hang
in this room. There will be a big sofa-bed at one side, and my piano,
and pots of blooming flowers. And you can't think, little Lassie, of all
that I look forward to accomplishing in this room. I expect to learn to
be a very different woman, every atom and fibre of my being will be
altered here. All of my faults will be atoned for--" she stopped
abruptly, and Lassie turned quickly with an odd impression that her
voice had broken in tears.
"Alva!" she exclaimed.
"It's nothing, dear, only that side of me that keeps forgetting the
lesson of the tree. Don't mind me,--I am so happy that you must not mind
anything nor must I mind anything either; but--when I come into this
room and think--" her tone suddenly turned dark, full of quivering
emotion, and she put her hand to her eyes.
"Alva, tell me what you mean? I feel frightened,--I must know what's
back of it all now. Tell me. Tell me!"
"I'm going to tell you in just a minute, as soon as I've shown you all
over the house." She took her handkerchief, pressed it to her eyes, made
a great, choking effort at self-control, and then managed to go on
speaking. "See," pushing open a door, "this is a nice little
dressing-room, isn't it? And then around and through this narrow back
hall comes the kitchen. There is an up-stairs, but I've done nothing
there except make a room comfortable and pleasant for the Japanese
servant who will do the work, that is, all that I don't do myself."
"Won't you want but one servant?"
"I think so. A man from outside will take the extras, and really it's a
very small house, dear. The laundry will be sent out. Dear me, how I do
enjoy hearing that kind of speech from my own lips. 'The laundry will be
sent out!' That sounds so delightfully commonplace, so sort of everyday
and like other people. I can't express to you what the commonplaces,
the little monotonies of ordinary lives, mean to me here. You'll divine
later, perhaps. But fancy a married life where nothing is too trivial to
be glorified! That is how things will be with us."
"Are you so sure?" Lassie tried to smile and speak archly. Tried very
hard to do both, because an intangible atmosphere of sorrow was
beginning to press heavily on her spirits.
"Very sure,--really, quite confident. You must not think that, because I
sob suddenly as I did just now, I am ever weak or ever doubt myself or
any one else. I never doubt or waver. It is only that no matter how hard
one tries, one can hardly rise completely out of the thrall of one
existence into the freedom of another at only a week's notice."
"Is that what you are trying to do?"
"Dear, I'm not only trying to do it, but the greater part of the time I
do do it. It's only very seldom that my soul faints and the tears come.
I am really happy! You are not going to be able to comprehend how happy
I am. Every one who wants anything in this world always wants it in such
a narrow, finite way,--no one can understand joy too limitless to be
finite. The difficulty is that occasionally I get blind myself, or else
in mercy God sometimes veils the splendor for a few minutes. When I
faint or struggle, it is just that my soul is absent; you must not mind
when you see me suffer, for the suffering has no meaning. It's just a
sort of discipline,--it doesn't count." She smiled with wonderful
brightness into Lassie's troubled face, and then, pushing open the outer
door,--"You don't quite see how it is, but be patient with yourself,
dearie; it will come. All things come to him who waits."
"Oh, but I don't understand, not one bit," Lassie cried, almost
despairingly.
They were in the yard now; Alva looked at her and took her hand within
her own. "Come," she said, "we'll go down through the woods to a certain
lovely, bright spot where the view is big and wide, and there I'll tell
you all about it."
"I so want to know!"
"I know you do, dear, and I want to tell you, too. I'm not purposely
tormenting you, but there is no one else to whom I can speak. And that
human, sobbing part of me needs companionship just as much these days,
as the merry, house-loving spirit, or the beatifically blessed soul.
Can't you see, dear, that with all my affection for you, I dread telling
you my story, and the reason for that is that it will be too much for
you to comprehend at first, and that I know perfectly well that it is
going to shock and pain you." The last words burst forth like a storm
repressed.
"Shock and pain me!" Lassie opened mouth and eyes.
"Yes, dear, of a certainty."
They were in the woods, quite alone.
Involuntarily Lassie drew a little away; a common, cruel suspicion
flashed through her head. "Alva, is it--is it that you do not mean to
marry the man?"
Alva laughed then, not very loudly, but clearly and sweetly. "No,
Lassie, it isn't that. I am going to be married in the regular way and,
besides, I will tell you in confidence that I fully believe that I have
been married to the same man hundreds of times before, and shall be
married to him countless times again. Does that help you?"
"Alva!"
"There! I told you that you wouldn't understand, and you don't."
"No, I certainly don't, when you talk like that."
"It's natural that you shouldn't, dear; but at the end of the week you
will, perhaps. We'll hope so, any way. Oh, Lassie, how much we are both
to live and learn in the next week."
Lassie turned her eyes to the eyes of the other.
"It's queer, Alva; you talk as if you were crazy, but I know you're not
crazy, and yet I'm worried."
"You don't need to be worried,--"
"I'll try not to be." She raised her sweet eyes to her friend's face as
she spoke, and her friend bent and kissed her. "Don't keep me waiting
much longer," she pleaded.
They were passing through the little, tree-grown way which led out on
the brow of the hill. All the wide, radiant wonder of that October
morning unrolled before them there. For an instant Lassie stood
entranced, forgetting all else; and then:
"Tell me now!" she cried.
"Let us sit down here," Alva said, pointing to a rough seat made out of
a plank laid across two stumps. They sat down side by side.
"Alva, it seems as if I cannot wait another minute; I must know it all
now. Tell me who he is, first; is it some one that I know?"
Alva's eyes rested on the wide radiance beyond.
"You know of him, dear," she replied quietly.
"Who is it?"
The woman laid her arm around the girl and drew her close and kissed her
gently. Then she whispered two words in her ear.
With a scream, Lassie started to her feet. "Oh--no!--no!--_no!_"
Alva looked straight up at her where she stood there above her and
smiled, steadily.
"No, no,--it can't be! I didn't hear right."
"Yes, you heard quite right."
The girl's hands shook violently; tears came fast pouring down her face.
"But, Alva, he is--he can't--"
Tears filled the other's eyes, too, at that, and stole thickly out upon
her cheeks. "I know, my dear child, but didn't I tell you how to me--to
us--this life is only a small part of the whole?"
"Oh, but--but--oh, it's too horrible!" She sank down on the seat again
and burst out sobbing.
"No, dear," Alva exclaimed, her voice suddenly firm, "not horrible, just
that highest summit of life of which I spoke before--the point toward
which I've lived, the point from which I shall live ever afterwards,--my
point of infinite joy,--my all. For he is the man I love--have always
loved--shall always love. Only, dear, don't you see?--he isn't a _man_
as you understand the word; the love isn't even _love_ as you understand
love. It's all so different! So different!"
A long, keenly thrilling silence followed, broken only by the sound of
the younger girl's repressed weeping.
It was one of those pauses during which men and women forget that they
are men and women, that the world is the world, or that life is life.
Every human consideration loses weight, and one is stunned into heaven
or oblivion, according to his or her preparation for such an entry to
either state.
The two friends remained seated side by side, facing the wonderful
valley in all its rich beauty of varied colorings; but neither saw
valley or color, neither remembered for a little what she was or where
she was. Alva, with her hands linked around her knees, was out and away
into another existence; Lassie, her eyes deadened and darkened with a
horror too acute for any words to relieve, sat still beside her, and
knew nothing for the time being but a fearful throbbing in her
temples--a black cloud smothering her whole brain--and tears.
It was Lassie who broke the silence at last, trying hard to speak
evenly. "But, Alva, I never knew ... when did you learn to love him ...
why--" her voice died again just there, and she buried her face on the
other's shoulder.
Alva laid her hand upon the little hand that shook under a fresh stress
of emotion, and said gently, her tone one of deepest pity: "Shall I tell
you all about it? Would you like to know the whole story?"
"Oh, yes, yes,--so much."
"You'll try to be patient and give yourself time to really see how
things may be to one who is altogether outside of your way of thinking,
won't you, dear? You won't pass judgment too quickly?"
"I'll try. Indeed, I will, as well as I can--"
Alva pressed the hand. "Dear little girl," she said, very tenderly, "you
see I look at even you with quite different eyes from those with which
the ordinary person sees you. If you could only see things as I do,
you'd see everything so much more clearly. How can I put it all straight
for you? When even my love for you is not at all what any other gives
you."
Lassie lifted up her head. "How do you mean?"
"There are two Lassies to me, dear,--the pretty, sweet-looking girl, and
the Lassie who loves me. Most people confuse the two, and think them one
and the same; I don't. No matter what happened to you, the Lassie whom I
love could never alter--she is unchangeable. She is not subject to
change; she doesn't belong to this world; she cannot die. And just as I
feel about you, I feel about everybody. What I can see and touch in
those I love is what I love least in them."
"Oh, Alva!" it was like a little moan--the girl's voice.
"That is my earnest belief. Bodies and what they suffer don't count.
That has come to me bit by bit under the pressure of these last years.
But it has come in its completest form in the end. I am entirely
satisfied as to the only truth in the universe being the fact that only
Truth is eternal. Please try to remember all this, while you listen to
my story; try not to forget it. You will, won't you?"
"I'll try, but it isn't clear to me."
"No, I don't suppose so--" Alva sighed--"but do your best, my dear;" she
paused a moment, then drew the hand that she held close between her own
two, and went on slowly; "I must tell you first of all that I have never
seen him but three times in my life. Just think--only three times!"
"Only three--" Lassie looked up in surprise.
"Only three times. And hardly any one knows that I saw him even those
times. No one knows to-day that we love one another, or that we are to
be married, except the surgeons and nurses, who had to be told, of
course. It's a very great secret."
"Tell me how it all began, Alva."
"I don't know when I first heard his name. It all began here, dear, five
years ago. When I stopped off for a few days to visit the Falls. I've
always loved this country, and from the time that I was born I've always
been here for a few days now and then. I always had a queer feeling that
something drew me here. I have those queer feelings about things and
places and people, you know, and out there on the bridge has always
seemed to me a sort of pivot in my life. Every time I go there, the
clock seems to strike some hour for me--" she stopped.
Lassie opened and shut her free hand with a sensation of being very
uneasy; the suspicion that Alva was not quite sane just lightly crossed
her mind. It certainly was not sane to talk as she did.
"So I came here again, on my way home from New York, just five years ago
now. And he was here then, staying at Ledge Park, and I saw him for the
first time; we met out there on the bridge;" she stopped for just a
second or so, then went steadily on. "I think I read about him in the
papers. I had learned to admire him intensely--who could help it?--but
of course I'd never for one instant thought of loving him. He was like a
sort of a story-hero to me; he never seemed like a man; I never thought
of any woman's loving him. He just seemed to be himself, all
alone--always alone. He had seemed quite above and apart from all other
men to me. He interested me; I wanted to learn all that I could about
him and his work, and I did learn a great deal, but I'd never dreamed of
meeting him face to face, of really speaking to him, of having his eyes
really looking at me; he seemed altogether beyond and away from my
existence. As if he lived on another world. And then I met him that
evening on the bridge, in just the simplest sort of way. Oh, it was very
wonderful."
"Did you know him right off?"
"Yes, he looked just like his picture; but then I knew him in another
way, too. I can't describe it; it was all very--very strange. It doesn't
seem strange to me now, but it would seem almost too strange to you."
"Won't you try to tell me?"
"I will some day, dear, perhaps. I can't tell you now, I couldn't
explain it all to you; but, anyway, we met and I looked at him and he
looked at me--" she pressed the hand within her own yet closer, adding
simply, "I believe that love--real love--comes like that, first of all
that one look, and then all the past rushes in and makes the bridge to
all the future. Oh, Lassie," her voice sank to a whisper, "when I think
of that meeting and of all that it brought me, I am so happy that I want
to take the whole wide world into my confidence, and beg every one not
to play at love or to take Love's name in vain; but to be patient, and
wait, and starve, or beg, or endure anything, just so as to merit the
joy which may perhaps be going to be. I never had thought of what love
might be; at least I had never been conscious of such thinking. My life
all these years had been bound so straitly and narrowly there at home.
How could I think of anything that would take me from those duties! And
yet I see now that it was all preparation, all the getting ready. If I
had only known it, though,--if I had only known it then! It would all
have been so much easier."
The whisper died away; she sat quite still looking out over the hills.
Lassie's eyes gazed anxiously upon her; nothing in her own spirit tuned
to this key; instead, flashes of recollection kept lighting up the
present with forgotten paragraphs out of the newspaper accounts of the
accident. She shivered suddenly.
Alva did not notice. After a while she went on again.
"Some day you'll learn to love some one, and then you'll know something
of what I feel. I don't want you to suffer enough to know all that I
feel. But, believe me, whatever one suffers, love is worth it. In that
first instant I learned--that first look showed me--that it can mean
all, everything, more even than happiness itself; oh, yes, a great,
great deal more than happiness itself. In one way they're not synonymous
at all, love and happiness. I have been happy without love all my life,
and now I shall love without being what the world calls 'happy'; but I
_shall_ be happy--happy in my own way, just as I am happy now in
something that makes you tremble only to think of."
She paused; her eyelids fell over her eyes and the lashes quivered where
they lay on her cheeks, but her hand continued to hold Lassie's, warm
and close. There was another long pause. And then another sigh.
"So in that first hour--it was only one hour--I learned the beginning of
life's biggest lesson--what life may be, what love may be, and also what
for me could never be. For just as soon as I really saw him, I saw why
he had remained alone. It was perfectly plain to me. It was that he
didn't live for himself; he lived to carry out his purpose. One reads of
such people, but I never had met any one who was unable to see himself
in his own life before. It was a tremendous lesson to me. It was like
opening a door and looking suddenly out upon a new order of universe.
Everything whirled for the first minutes, and then I saw that my own
life had been sufficiently unselfish to have made me capable of
comprehending his. It rose like a flood through my soul, that everything
has a reason, and that my blind, stupid, hopeless years there at home
had all been leading straight up to that minute. It was such a
revelation, and such a new light on all things. I was born anew, myself;
I have never been the same woman since. Never, never!"
Lassie's brows drew together; the revelation did not appeal to her
personal reason as reasonable.
"We talked for quite a while--not about ourselves--we understood each
other too well to need do that. It seems to me now that we were almost
one then, but I didn't know it. All I knew was that I could measure a
little of what he was, and that there was a bond between us of absolute
content in working out God's will rather than our own. I believe now
that that is really the only true love or the only true basis for any
marriage, and that when that mutual bond is once accepted, nothing can
alter, not even an ocean rolling between--not even ten oceans. He spoke
of the Falls, and he spoke of his own work. I listened and thanked God
that I knew what he meant, and comprehended what it meant to me. At the
end of the hour we parted, and I came back to the hotel and started for
home the morning after.... He went away, too, and it was later--when we
began to write letters--that our life together, our beautiful ideal life
together, began. You can't realize its happiness any more than you can
measure all that my words really mean. I can't explain myself any
better, either. After a while it will all come to you, I hope. I went on
with the work at home, and he continued his labors which allowed him
neither home nor family. Nobody knew and nobody would have known, even
if he or she thought that they knew. The very best and loveliest things
lie all around the most of us, and the best and loveliest of all
treasures are within our own hearts--and yet very few of us know
anything about them. Perhaps better that the world in general shouldn't
understand the joy of my kind of love, anyhow; it isn't time for that
yet."
"How, Alva?"
She smiled almost whimsically, "Dearest, as soon as the whole world
understands that sort of life, its own mission will be fulfilled, and
then there will be no more of this particular world. You see!"
"Oh!"
"So then, dear, time went on and on, and I was happy, very happy. And he
was very happy, also. There was something truly childlike in his
happiness; he had never expected love in his life, because he had never
thought of meeting any one who would be able to adapt herself to his
circumstances. We never met, because it didn't seem best or wise. We
just loved, and I don't believe that any two people have ever been
happier together than we were, apart, for these five years--these happy,
happy five years."
Lassie felt a deepening misery; the last horrible part must be going to
come now.
Alva passed her hand over her eyes and drew a long breath.
"It's so difficult to be different from other people, and then to bear
their way of looking at things. It's so hopeless to try to translate
one's feeling into their language all the time. How can I go on, when I
know just how it all looks to you. It's fearfully hard for me."
"I won't say a word,"--the girl's cry was pitiful.
Alva threw both arms quickly about her and held her close. "Bless you,
darling, I know it. But you'll suffer and I know that, too; and I feel
your suffering more than you guess. I know just how it all seems to you.
There is that within me which shudders too, sometimes, and would shrink
and weep only for the strong, divine power that fills me with something
better than I can describe, something big enough and high enough to
fight down the coward. You have that same divinity within you, dear, and
you can't tell when or where it will be called out, but once it is
called out, you never will be weak in the face of this earth's woes."
Lassie was weeping softly again.
"One morning--you know when--I opened the paper to read it to papa after
breakfast, and I saw on the first page, across the top in bright red
letters, that he had been killed."
There was a little sharp cry--"But he wasn't?"--and then a great sob.
"No, dear, but that was the first report."
"And you thought--"
"Yes, of course I believed it. But, Lassie, try to calm
yourself--because it wasn't to me what you think. I was calm; I had
learned so much, he had taught me so much, during the five years, that I
astonished myself with my strength; really, I did. I went about all that
day just as usual, only thinking with a white sort of numbness how long
the rest of life would seem; and then, in the evening, the paper said
that he was still alive. Then I telegraphed and the next day I went to
him. I knew that I must go to him and see him once more, so I arranged
things and went. I was surprised all the journey at my own courage; it
was like a miracle, my power over myself. It was a long journey, but I
knew that I should see him again at the end. I knew that he would not
leave me without saying good-bye, now that he was conscious that he was
going. I was sure of that. So confident can love and strength be in love
and strength.
"I arrived--I went to the hospital--they had the room darkened
because--well, you can guess. I went to where the bed stood and knelt
down beside him, and laid my hand on his bosom. I felt his heart
beating--ever so faintly, but still beating,--and I heard his voice.
Only think, I had not heard his voice for five years! To you or to any
one else it might have all been frightful, because, of course, the
reality was frightful. The man, as you understand men, was mangled and
dying, and could not possibly be with me except for a few brief days.
But, oh, my dearest,--with me it was so different; it was all so
absolutely different. The man that _I_ loved was unhurt, and the evil
chance had only made us nearer and dearer forever. I don't say that I
was not trembling, and that I was not almost unnerved by the shock; but
I can say, too, and say truly, that the Something Divine which had
filled me from the first day, filled and upheld me and made me know that
all was good even then, even in that dark hour and in that dark room,
where he whom I held dearest on earth was chained to pain beneath my
hand. The nurses were very kind. They left me there beside him while he
was conscious and unconscious for some hours. They saw very quickly that
it was different with us from most people; and when I went out two of
the surgeons took me into a room alone and told me the truth.
"I think that then was the greatest moment of my life--when I
comprehended that one who was not killed outright by such a shock might
live even months until--until--Well, if a man so injured has vitality
enough to live at all, he may--live--"
"Don't go on, Alva, please,--I don't want to know how long he may live."
"No, dear, I won't go into that. Only you must think that to me it was
such unexpected heaven. Instead of death, he was alive. Instead of
separation for this life, we were to have some days of absolute
companionship. It was something so much more than I had ever thought of
hoping. A life--even for a day--together! Companionship! Not letters,
but words. I to be his nurse, his solace, to have him for my own. I
stayed awake all night thinking. I knew what being swept suddenly away
meant to him. I knew of his life plans, and what made death hardest to
him. It came to me that I might ease that bitterness. That his need
could go forth through the medium of my love and interest. That his work
would pass on into other hands through mine. That all the golden web of
Fate had been woven directly to this end."
Lassie continued sobbing.
"I saw what we could do. In the morning I went to the surgeons, and they
said that each day added a week of possible life, and that although it
would be many days before anything could be done, after that, he could
be moved and wait for the end--with me. I went to him then, and again I
knelt there by the bed, and this time I told him how I was going to
spend the weeks, and what he must look forward to. He was unable to
talk, but he looked at me and--like the first time--we understood one
another absolutely. He accepted the happiness that was to be as
gratefully as I did myself. As I said before, it was so much more--so
much more--than we had ever expected! He took up his burden of agony as
cheerfully and courageously as he had taken everything in life, and I
came away. There was no use in my remaining there, as he would be either
unconscious or--I could not remain there; the surgeons forbade it.
"Then I had to find a place quickly, a place where no one would come or
would see. A place where he and I could share life and God, who is Life,
without any outsiders breaking in to stare and wonder."
Her voice suddenly became broken and hurried. "Of course I thought of
Ledge, where we had first met, and I wrote to Ronald at once. He found
me that dear little nest back there, and--" she stopped, for Lassie had
suddenly started to her feet. "What is it, dear?"
"Oh, I can't bear it at all. To me it is horrible--horrible! Why, he can
never stand up again--he--Oh, I want to be alone. I must be alone.
I'll--I'll come back--in time--"
She did not wait to finish; she gave one low, bitter cry, and wrung her
hands. Then she ran down the steep, little path that led to Ledgeville,
leaving her friend on the hilltop, with the October sun pouring its
splendor all about her.