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diff --git a/old/14575-h.zip b/old/14575-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b42ca12 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14575-h.zip diff --git a/old/14575-h/14575-h.htm b/old/14575-h/14575-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cdad9c8 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14575-h/14575-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4351 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Bylow Hill, by George Washington Cable</title> +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[*/ + <!-- + body { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; } + p { text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: .75em; + font-size: 100%; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { text-align: center; } + hr { width: 50%; } + hr.full { width: 100%; } + .foot { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 85%; } + .poem { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left; } + .poem .stanza { margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em; } + .poem p { margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em; } + .poem p.i2 { margin-left: 1.5em; } + .quote { margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-indent: 0em; font-size: 90%; } + .toc { margin-left: 15%; font-size: 80%; margin-bottom: 0em;} + .ad { text-align: center; font-size: 75%; line-height: .5em; text-indent: 0em;} + .figure {padding: 1em; margin: 0; text-align: center; font-size: 0.8em; margin: auto; width: 70%;} + .figure img {border: none;} + + center { padding: 0.8em;} + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + pre {font-size: 8pt;} +/*]]>*/ + // --> +</style> +</head> +<body> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Bylow Hill, by George Washington Cable, +Illustrated by F. C. Yohn</h1> +<pre> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Bylow Hill</p> +<p>Author: George Washington Cable</p> +<p>Release Date: January 3, 2005 [eBook #14575]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BYLOW HILL***</p> +<br /><br /><h3>E-text prepared by David Garcia<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (https://www.pgdp.net/)</h3><br /><br /> +<hr class="full" /> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> + +<div style="width: 50%; margin: auto; border: solid 1px;"> +<p style="text-align: center;"> By GEORGE W. CABLE </p> + +<p class="ad"> Bylow Hill. Illustrated in color by F.C. Yohn. $1.25. </p> +<p class="ad"> The Cavalier. Illustrated by H.C. Christy. $1.50. </p> +<p class="ad"> John March, Southerner. $1.50. </p> +<p class="ad"> Bonaventure. $1.50. </p> +<p class="ad"> Dr. Sevier. $1.50. </p> +<p class="ad"> The Grandissimes. $1.50. </p> +<p class="ad"> Old Creole Days. $1.50. </p> +<p class="ad"> Strong Hearts. $1.25. </p> +<p class="ad"> Strange True Stories of Louisiana. Illustrated. $1.25. </p> +<p class="ad"> The Creoles of Louisiana. Illustrated. $2.50. </p> +<p class="ad"> The Silent South. With Portrait. $1.00. </p> +<p class="ad"> The Negro Question. 75 cents. </p> +</div> + + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a> + +<div class="figure"> +<a href="images/illust-01.jpg"> +<img src="images/illust-01.jpg" width="70%" +alt="'Father,' laughed the daughter, 'isn't this rather youngish?'" /></a><br /> +<b>"Father," laughed the daughter, "isn't this rather youngish?"</b> +</div> + +<hr /> + +<a name="h2H_4_0001" id="h2H_4_0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h1> + <i>BYLOW HILL</i> +</h1> +<center> + <i>By</i> +</center> +<h2> +<i>GEORGE W. CABLE</i> +</h2> +<h4> +<i>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS</i> +</h4> +<h3> +<i>By F.C. YOHN</i> +</h3> +<p> </p> +<h6>Charles Scribner's Sons<br /> +New York</h6> + +<h4>MCMII</h4> + +<p> </p><p> </p> + +<hr /> + +<a name="h2H_4_0002" id="h2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + <i>CONTENTS</i> +</h2> + +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0003"> +<i>ILLUSTRATIONS</i> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0005"> +I. RUTH AND GODFREY +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0006"> +II. ISABEL +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0007"> +III. ARTHUR AND LEONARD +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0008"> +IV. AND BRING DOWN THE REMAINDER +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0009"> +V. SKY AND POOL +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0010"> +VI. IN THE PUBLIC EYE +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0011"> +VII. THE HOUR STRIKES +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0012"> +VIII. GIVE YOU FIVE MINUTES +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0013"> +IX. THE YOUNG YEAR SMILES +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0014"> +X. THE STORM REGATHERS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0015"> +XI. HAS IT COME TO THIS? +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0016"> +XII. THE LANTERN QUENCHED +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0017"> +XIII. BABY +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0018"> +XIV. THE TALKATIVE LEONARD +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0019"> +XV. THE THIN ICE BREAKS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0020"> +XVI. MUST GIVE YOU UP +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0021"> +XVII. SLEEP, OF A SORT +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0022"> +XVIII. MISSING +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0023"> +XIX. A DOUBLE STILL HUNT +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0024"> +XX. A DOUBLE RETURN +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0025"> +XXI. EVENING RED +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#h2H_4_0026"> +XXII. MORNING GRAY +</a></p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr /> + + +<a name="h2H_4_0003" id="h2H_4_0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + <i>ILLUSTRATIONS</i> +</h2> + +<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0001">"Father," laughed the daughter, "isn't this rather youngish?"</a> <i>Frontispiece</i></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0002">Indeed it was clear that to go away would be unfair.</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0003">"Arthur Winslow, I give you five minutes."</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0004">"But to know every day and hour that I'm watched."</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0005">"I am waiting busily for her slayer."</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0006">"Arthur! Arthur! can't you speak?"</a></p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> + +<hr /> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h1> + BYLOW HILL +</h1> + +<a name="h2H_4_0005" id="h2H_4_0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + I +</h2> +<h3> + RUTH AND GODFREY +</h3> +<p> +The old street, keeping its New England Sabbath afternoon so decently +under its majestic elms, was as goodly an example of its sort as the +late seventies of the century just gone could show. It lay along a +north-and-south ridge, between a number of aged and unsmiling cottages, +fronting on cinder sidewalks, and alternating irregularly with about as +many larger homesteads that sat back in their well-shaded gardens with +kindlier dignity and not so grim a self-assertion. Behind, on the west, +these gardens dropped swiftly out of sight to a hidden brook, from the +farther shore of which rose the great wooded hill whose shelter from the +bitter northwest had invited the old Puritan founders to choose the spot +for their farming village of one street, with a Byington and a Winslow +for their first town officers. In front, eastward, the land declined +gently for a half mile or so, covered, by modern prosperity, with a +small, stanch town, and bordered by a pretty river winding among meadows +of hay and grain. At the northern end, instead of this gentle decline, +was a precipitous cliff side, close to whose brow a wooden bench, that +ran half-way round a vast sidewalk tree, commanded a view of the valley +embracing nearly three-quarters of the compass. +</p> +<p> +In civilian's dress, and with only his sea-bronzed face and the polished +air of a pivot gun to tell that he was of the navy, Lieutenant Godfrey +Winslow was slowly crossing the rural way with Ruth Byington at his +side. He had the look of, say, twenty-eight, and she was some four years +his junior. From her father's front gate they were passing toward the +large grove garden of the young man's own home, on the side next the +hill and the sunset. On the front porch, where the two had just left +him, sat the war-crippled father of the girl, taking pride in the +placidity of the face she once or twice turned to him in profile, +and in the buoyancy of her movements and pose. +</p> +<p> +His fond, unspoken thought went after her, that she was hiding some care +again,—her old, sweet trick, and her mother's before her. +</p> +<p> +He looked on to Godfrey. "There's endurance," he thought again. "You +ought to have taken him long ago, my good girl, if you want him at all." +And here his reflections faded into the unworded belief that she would +have done so but for his, her own father's, being in the way. +</p> +<p> +The pair stopped and turned half about to enjoy the green-arched vista +of the street, and Godfrey said, in a tone that left his companion no +room to overlook its personal intent, "How often, in my long absences, +I see this spot!" +</p> +<p> +"You wouldn't dare confess you didn't," was her blithe reply. +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes, I should. I've tried not to see it, many a time." +</p> +<p> +"Why, Godfrey Winslow!" she laughed. "That was very wrong!" +</p> +<p> +"It was very useless," said the wanderer, "for there was always the same +one girl in the midst of the picture; and that's the sort a man can +never shut out, you know. I don't try to shut it out any more, Ruth." +</p> +<p> +The girl spoke more softly. "I wish I could know where Leonard is," she +mused aloud. +</p> +<p> +"Did you hear me, Ruth? I say I don't try any more, now." +</p> +<p> +"Well, that's right! I wonder where that brother of mine is?" +</p> +<p> +The baffled lover had to call up his patience. "Well, that's right, +too," he laughed; "and I wonder where that brother of mine is? I wonder +if they're together?" +</p> +<p> +They moved on, but at the stately entrance of the Winslow garden they +paused again. The girl gave her companion a look of distress, and the +young man's brow darkened. "Say it," he said. "I see what it is." +</p> +<p> +"You speak of Arthur"—she began. +</p> +<p> +"Well?" +</p> +<p> +"What did you make out of his sermon this morning?" +</p> +<p> +"Why, Ruth, I—What did you make out of it?" +</p> +<p> +"I made out that the poor boy is very, very unhappy." +</p> +<p> +"Did you? Well, he is; and in a certain way I'm to blame for it." +</p> +<p> +The girl's smile was tender. "Was there ever anything the matter with +Arthur, and you didn't think you were in some way to blame for it?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, now, don't confuse me with Leonard. Anyhow, I'm to blame this time! +Has Isabel told you anything, Ruth?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, Isabel has told me!" +</p> +<p> +"Told you they are engaged?" +</p> +<p> +"Told me they are engaged!" +</p> +<p> +"Well," said the young man, "Arthur told me last night; and I took an +elder brother's liberty to tell him he had played Leonard a vile trick." +</p> +<p> +"Godfrey!" +</p> +<p> +"That would make a much happier nature than Arthur's unhappy, wouldn't +it?" +</p> +<p> +Ruth was too much pained to reply, but she turned and called cheerily, +"Father, do you know where Leonard is?" +</p> +<p> +The father gathered his voice and answered huskily, laying one hand upon +his chest, and with the other gesturing up by the Winslow elm to the +grove behind it. +</p> +<p> +She nodded. "Yes!... With Arthur, you say?... Yes!... Thank you!... +Yes!" She passed with Godfrey through the wide gate. +</p> +<p> +"That's like Leonard," said the lover. "He'll tell Arthur he hasn't done +a thing he hadn't a perfect right to do." +</p> +<p> +"And Arthur has not, Godfrey. He has only been less chivalrous than we +should have liked him to be. If he had been first in the field, and +Leonard had come in and carried her off, you would have counted it a +perfect mercy all round." +</p> +<p> +"Ho-oh! it would have been! Leonard would have made her happy. Arthur +never can, and she can never make him so. But what he has done is not +all: look how he did it! Leonard was his beloved and best friend"— +</p> +<p> +"Except his brother Godfrey"— +</p> +<p> +"Except no one, Ruth, unless it's you. I'm neither persuasive nor kind, +nor often with him. Proud of him I was, and never prouder than when I +knew him to be furiously in love with her, while yet, for pure, sweet +friendship's sake, he kept standing off, standing off." +</p> +<p> +"I wish you might have seen it, Godfrey. It was so beautiful—and so +pitiful!" +</p> +<p> +"It was manly,—gentlemanly; and that was enough. Then all at once he's +taken aback! All control of himself gone, all self-suppression, all +conscience"— +</p> +<p> +"The conscience has returned," said the girl. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, not to guide him! Only to goad him! Fifty consciences can't +honorably undo the mischief now!" +</p> +<p> +"Did I not write you that there was already, then, a coolness between +her and Leonard?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes; but the whole bigness and littleness of Arthur's small, bad deed +lies in the fact that, though he knew that coolness was but a momentary +tiff, with Isabel in the wrong, he took advantage of it to push his suit +in between and spoil as sweet a match as two hearts were ever making." +</p> +<p> +"It was more than a tiff, Godfrey; it"— +</p> +<p> +"Not a bit more! not—a—bit!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes!—yes—it was a problem! a problem how to harmonize two fine +natures keyed utterly unlike. Leonard saw that. That is why he moved so +slowly." +</p> +<p> +"Hmm!" The lover stared away grimly. "I know something about slowness. +I suppose it's a virtue—sometimes." +</p> +<p> +"I think so," said the girl, caressing a flower. +</p> +<p> +"Ah, well!" responded the other. "She has chosen a nature now that—Oh +me!... Ruth, I shall speak to her mother! I am the only one who can. +I'll see Mrs. Morris some time this evening, and lay the whole thing out +to her as we four see it who have known one another almost from the one +cradle." +</p> +<p> +Ruth smiled sadly. "You will fail. I think the matter will have to go on +as it is going. And if it does, you must remember, Godfrey, we do not +really know but they may work out the happiest union. At any rate, we +must help them to try." +</p> +<p> +"If they insist on trying, yes; and that will be the best for Leonard." +</p> +<p> +"The very best. One thing we do know, Godfrey: Arthur will always be a +passionate lover, and dear Isabel is as honest and loyal as the day is +long." +</p> +<p> +"The day is not long; this one is not—to me. It's most lamentably +short, and to-morrow I must be gone again. I have something to say to +you, Ruth, that"— +</p> +<p> +The maiden gave him a look of sweet protest, which suddenly grew remote +as she murmured, "Isabel and her mother are coming out of their front +door." +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0006" id="h2H_4_0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + II +</h2> +<h3> + ISABEL +</h3> +<p> +There were two dwellings in the Winslow garden,—one as far across at +the right of the Byington house as the other was at the left. The one on +the right may have contained six or eight bedchambers; the other had but +three. The larger stood withdrawn from the public way, a well-preserved +and very attractive example of colonial architecture, refined to the +point of delicacy in the grace and harmony of its details. Here dwelt +Arthur Winslow, barely six weeks a clergyman, alone but for two or three +domestics and the rare visits of Godfrey, his only living relation. The +other and older house, in the garden's southern front corner, was a gray +gambrel-roofed cottage, with its threshold at the edge of the sidewalk; +and it was from this cottage that Isabel and her mother stepped, +gratefully answering the affectionate wave of Ruth's hand,—Mrs. Morris +with the dignity of her forty-odd years, and Isabel with a sudden eager +fondness. The next moment the two couples were hidden from each other by +the umbrageous garden and by the tall white fence, in which was repeated +the architectural grace of the larger house. +</p> +<p> +Mother and daughter conversed quietly, but very busily, as they came +along this enclosure; but presently they dropped their subject to bow +cordially across to the father of Ruth, and when he endeavored to say +something to them Mrs. Morris moved toward him. Isabel took a step or +two more in the direction of the Winslow elm and its inviting bench, but +then she also turned. She was of a moderate feminine stature and perfect +outline, her step elastic, her mien self-contained, and her face so +young that a certain mature tone in her mellow voice was often the cause +of Ruth's fond laughter. As winsome, too, she was, as she was beautiful, +and "as pink as a rose," said the old-time soldier to himself, as he +came down his short front walk, throwing half his glances forward to +her, quite unaware that he was equally the object of her admiration. +</p> +<p> +Though white-haired and somewhat bent he was still slender and handsome, +a most worthy figure against the background of the red brick house, +whose weathered walls contrasted happily with the blossoming shrubs +about their base, and with the green of lawn and trees. +</p> +<p> +"Good-afternoon, Isabel. I was saying to your mother, I hope such days +as this are some offset for the Southern weather and scenery you have +had to give up." +</p> +<p> +"You shouldn't tempt our Southern boastfulness, General," Isabel +replied, with an air of meek chiding. She had a pretty way of +skirmishing with men which always brought an apologetic laugh from her +mother, but which the General had discovered she never used in a company +of less than three. +</p> +<p> +"Oh! ho, ho!" laughed Mrs. Morris, who was just short, plump, and pretty +enough to laugh to advantage. "Why, General,"—she sobered abruptly, and +she was just pretty and plump and short enough to do this well, +also,—"my recovered health is offset enough for me." +</p> +<p> +"For <i>us</i>, my dear," said the daughter. "My mother's restored +health is offset enough for us, General. Indeed, for me"—addressing the +distant view—"there is no call for off-set; any landscape or climate is +perfect that has such friends in it as—as this one has." +</p> +<p> +"Oh! ho, ho!" laughed the mother again. Nobody ever told the Morrises +they had a delicious Southern accent, and their words are given here +exactly as they thought they spoke them. +</p> +<p> +"My dear," persisted Isabel, rebukingly, "I mean such friends as Ruth +Byington." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Morris let go her little Southern laugh once more. "Don't you +believe her, General—don't you believe her. She means you every bit as +much as she means Ruth. She means everybody on Bylow Hill." +</p> +<p> +"I'm at the mercy of my interpreter," said Isabel. "But I thought"—her +eyes went out upon the skyline again—"I thought that men—that men—I +thought that men—My dear, you've made me forget what I thought!" +</p> +<p> +They laughed, all three. Isabel, with a playful sigh, clutched her +mother's hand, and the pair drew off and moved away to the bench. +</p> +<p> +"He puts you in good spirits," said the mother, breaking a silence. +</p> +<p> +"Good spirits! He puts me in pure heartache. Oh, why did you tell him?" +</p> +<p> +"Tell him? My child! I have not told him!" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, mother, do you not see you've told him point-blank that it's all +settled?" +</p> +<p> +"No, dearie, no! I only see that your distress is making you fanciful. +But why should he not be told, Isabel?" +</p> +<p> +"I'm not ready! Oh, I'm not ready! It may suit him well enough to hear +it, for he knows Leonard is too fine and great for me; but I'm not ready +to tell him." +</p> +<p> +"My darling, he knows you are good enough for any Leonard he can bring." +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes, on the plane of the Ten Commandments." The girl smiled +unhappily. +</p> +<p> +"But precious, he loves Arthur deeply, and thinks the world of him." +</p> +<p> +"Mother, what is it like, to love deeply?" +</p> +<p> +The query was ignored. "And the old gentleman is fond of you, +sweetheart." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, he likes me. What a tame old invalid that word 'fond' has grown to +be! You can be fond of two or three persons at once, nowadays. My soul! +I wish I were fond of Arthur Winslow in the old mad way the word meant +when it was young!" +</p> +<p> +"Pshaw, dearie! you'll be fond enough of him, once you're his. He's +brilliant, upright, loving and lovable. You see, and say, he is so, and +I know your fondness will grow with every day and every experience, +happy or bitter." +</p> +<p> +"Yes.... Yes, I could not endure not to give my love bountifully +wherever it rightly belongs. But oh, I wish I had it ready to-day,—a +fondness to match his!" +</p> +<p> +"Now, Isabel! Why, pet, thousands of happy and loving wives will tell +you"— +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I know what they will tell me." +</p> +<p> +"They'll not tell you they get along without love, dearie. But ten years +from now, my daughter, not how fond you were when you first joined +hands, but what you have"— +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes,—been to each other, done for each other, borne from each +other, will be the true measure. Oh, of course it will; but there's so +much in the right start!" +</p> +<p> +"Beyond doubt! Understand me, precious: if you have the least ground to +fear"— +</p> +<p> +"Mother! mother! No! no! What! afraid I may love some one else? Never! +never! Oh, without boasting, and knowing what I am as well as Leonard +Byington knows"— +</p> +<p> +"Oh, pshaw! Leonard Byington!" +</p> +<p> +"He knows me, mother,—as if he lived at a higher window that looked +down into my back yard." The speaker smiled. +</p> +<p> +"Then he knows," exclaimed the mother, "you're true gold!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, but a light coin." +</p> +<p> +"My pet! He knows you're the tenderest, gentlest dear he ever saw." +</p> +<p> +"But neither brave nor strong." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, you not brave! you not strong! You're the lovingest, truest"— +</p> +<p> +"Only inclined to be a bit too hungry after sympathy, dear." +</p> +<p> +"You never bid for it, love, never." +</p> +<p> +"Well, no matter; I shall never love any one but myself too much. I +think I shall some day love Arthur as I wish I could love him now. I +never did really love Leonard,—I couldn't; I haven't the stature. That +was my trouble, dearie: I hadn't the stature. I never shall have; and if +it's he you are thinking of, you are wasting your dear, sweet care. But +he's going to be our best and nearest friend, mother,—he and Ruth and +Godfrey, together and alike. We've so agreed, Arthur and I. Oh, I'm not +going to come in here and turn the sweet old nickname of this happy spot +into a sneer." +</p> +<p> +"Then why are you not happy, precious?" +</p> +<p> +"Happy? Why, my dear, I am happy!" +</p> +<p> +"With touches of heartache?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, with big wrenches of heartache! Why not? Were you never so?" +</p> +<p> +"I'm so right now, dearie. For after all is said"— +</p> +<p> +"And thought that can't be said"—murmured Isabel. +</p> +<p> +"Yes," replied the mother, "after all is said and thought, I should +rather give you to Arthur than to any other man I know. Leonard will +have a shining career, but it will be in politics." +</p> +<p> +"I tried to dissuade him," broke in the daughter, "till I was ashamed." +</p> +<p> +"In politics," continued Mrs. Morris,—"and Northern politics, Isabel. +Arthur's will be in the church!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes," said the other, but her whole attention was within the fence at +their side, where a rough stile, made in boyhood days by the two +brothers and Leonard, led over into the garden. She sprang up. "Let's +go, mother; he's coming!" +</p> +<p> +"Who, my child?" +</p> +<p> +"Both! Come, dear, come quickly! Oh, I don't know why we ever came out +at all!" +</p> +<p> +"My dear, it was you proposed it, lest some one should come in!" +</p> +<p> +The daughter had moved some steps down the road, but now turned again; +for Ruth and Godfrey, returning, came out through the garden's high +gateway. However, they were giving all their smiles to the greetings +which the General sent them from his piazza. +</p> +<p> +"Come over, mother!" called Isabel, in a stifled voice. "Cross to the +hill path!" But before they could reach it Arthur and Leonard came into +full view on the stile. Isabel motioned her mother despairingly toward +them, wheeled once more, and with a gay call for Ruth's notice hurried +to meet her in the middle of the way. +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0007" id="h2H_4_0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + III +</h2> +<h3> + ARTHUR AND LEONARD +</h3> +<p> +Godfrey passed over to the General, who had walked down to his gate on +his way to the great elm. Out from behind the elm came the other two +men, Arthur leading and talking briskly:— +</p> +<p> +"The sooner the better, Leonard. Now while my work is new and taking +shape—Ah! here's Mrs. Morris." +</p> +<p> +Both men were handsome. Arthur, not much older than Ruth, was of medium +height, slender, restless, dark, and eager of glance and speech. Leonard +was nearer the age of Godfrey; fairer than Arthur, of a quieter eye, +tall, broad-shouldered, powerful, lithe, and almost tamely placid. Mrs. +Morris met them with animation. +</p> +<p> +"Have our churchwarden and our rector been having another of their long +talks?" +</p> +<p> +The joint reply was cut short by Godfrey's imperative hail: "Leonard!" +</p> +<p> +As Byington turned that way, Arthur said quietly to Mrs. Morris, "He's +promised to retain charge"—and nodded toward Isabel. The nod meant +Isabel's financial investments. +</p> +<p> +"And mine?" murmured the well-pleased lady. +</p> +<p> +"Both." +</p> +<p> +The two gave heed again to Godfrey, who was loudly asking Leonard, "Why +didn't you tell us the news?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh," drawled Leonard smilingly, "I knew father would." +</p> +<p> +"I haven't talked with Godfrey since he came," said Mrs. Morris; and as +she left Arthur she asked his brother: "What news? Has the governor +truly made him"— +</p> +<p> +"District attorney, yes," said Godfrey. "Ruth, I think you might have +told me." +</p> +<p> +"Godfrey, I think you might have asked me," laughed the girl, drawing +Isabel toward Arthur and Leonard, in order to leave Mrs. Morris to +Godfrey. +</p> +<p> +Arthur moved to meet them, but Ruth engaged him with a question, and +Isabel turned to Leonard, offering her felicitations with a sweetness +that gave Arthur tearing pangs to overhear. +</p> +<p> +"But when people speak to us of your high office," he could hear her +saying, "we will speak to them of your high fitness for it. And still, +Leonard, you must let us offer you our congratulations, for it is a high +office." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you," replied Leonard: "let me save the congratulations for the +day I lay the office down. Do you, then, really think it high and +honorable?" +</p> +<p> +"Ah," she rejoined, in a tone of reproach and defense that tortured +Arthur, "you know I honor the pursuit of the law." +</p> +<p> +Leonard showed a glimmer of drollery. "Pursuit of the law, yes," he +said; "but the pursuit of the lawbreaker"— +</p> +<p> +"Even that," replied Isabel, "has its frowning honors." +</p> +<p> +"But I'm much afraid it seems to you," he said, "a sort of blindman's +buff played with a club. It often looks so to the pursued, they say." +</p> +<p> +Isabel gave her chin a little lift, and raised her tone for those behind +her: "We shall try not to be among the pursued, Ruth and Arthur and I." +</p> +<p> +The young lawyer's smile broadened. "My mind is relieved," he said. +</p> +<p> +"Relieved!" exclaimed Isabel, with a rosy toss. "Ruth, dear, here is +your brother in distress lest Arthur or we should embarrass him in his +new office by breaking the laws! Mr. Byington, you should not confess +such anxieties, even if you are justified in them!" +</p> +<p> +His response came with meditative slowness and with playful eyes: +"Whenever I am justified in having such anxieties, they shall go +unconfessed." +</p> +<p> +"That relieves <i>my</i> fears," laughed Isabel, and caught a quick hint +of trouble on Arthur's brow, though he too managed to laugh. Whereupon, +half sighing, half singing, she twined an arm in one of Ruth's, swung +round her, waved to the General as he took a seat on the elm-tree bench, +and so, passing to Arthur, changed partners. +</p> +<p> +"Let us go in," whispered Leonard to his sister, with a sudden pained +look, and instantly resumed his genial air. +</p> +<p> +But the uneasy Arthur saw his moving lips and both changes of +countenance. He saw also the look which Ruth threw toward Mrs. Morris, +where that lady and Godfrey moved slowly in conversation,—he ever so +sedate, she ever so sprightly. And he saw Isabel glance as anxiously in +the same direction. But then her eyes came to his, and under her voice, +though with a brow all sunshine, she said, "Don't look so perplexed." +</p> +<p> +"Perplexed!" he gasped. "Isabel, you're giving me anguish!" +</p> +<p> +She gleamed an injured amazement, but promptly threw it off, and when +she turned to see if Leonard or Ruth had observed it they were moving to +meet Godfrey. Mrs. Morris was joining the General under the elm. +</p> +<p> +"How have I given you pain, dear heart?" asked Isabel, as she and Arthur +took two or three slow steps apart from the rest, so turning her face +that they should see its tender kindness. +</p> +<p> +"Ah! don't ask me, my beloved!" he warily exclaimed. "It is all gone! +Oh, the heavenly wonder to hear you, Isabel Morris, you—give me loving +names! You might have answered me so differently; but your voice, your +eyes, work miracles of healing, and I am whole again." +</p> +<p> +Isabel gave again the laugh whose blithe, final sigh was always its most +winning note. Then, with tremendous gravity, she said, "You are very +indiscreet, dear, to let me know my power." +</p> +<p> +His face clouded an instant, as if the thought startled him with its +truth and value. But when she added, with yet deeper seriousness of +brow, "That's no way to tame a shrew, my love," he laughed aloud, and +peace came again with Isabel's smile. +</p> +<p> +Then—because a woman must always insist on seeing the wrong side of the +goods—she murmured, "Tell me, Arthur, what disturbed you." +</p> +<p> +"Words, Isabel, mere words of yours, which I see now were meant in +purest play. You told Leonard"— +</p> +<p> +"Leonard! What did I tell Leonard, dear?" +</p> +<p> +"You told him not to confess certain anxieties, even if they were +justified." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, Arthur!" +</p> +<p> +"I see my folly, dearest. But Isabel, he ought not to have answered that +the more they were justified, the more they should go unconfessed!" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, Arthur! the merest, idlest prattle! What meaning could you"— +</p> +<p> +"None, Isabel, none! Only, my good angel, I so ill deserve you that with +every breath I draw I have a desperate fright of losing you, and a +hideous resentment against whoever could so much as think to rob me of +you." +</p> +<p> +"Why, dear heart, don't you know that couldn't be done?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I know it, you being what you are, even though I am only what I am. +But, Isabel, you know he loves you. No human soul is strong enough to +blow out the flame of the love you kindle, Isabel Morris, as one would +blow out his bedroom candle and go to sleep at the stroke of a clock." +</p> +<p> +"Arthur, I believe Leonard—and I do not say it in his praise—I believe +Leonard can do that!" +</p> +<p> +"No, not so, not so! Leonard is strong, but the fire of a strong man's +love, however smothered, burns on without mercy, my beautiful, and you +cannot go in and out of that burning house as though it were not on +fire." +</p> +<p> +"And shall Leonard, then, not be our nearest and best friend, as we had +planned?" +</p> +<p> +"He shall, Isabel. Ah yes; not one smallest part of your sweet +friendship will I take from him, nor of his from you. For, Isabel, +though he were as weak as I"— +</p> +<p> +"As weak as <i>I</i>, you should say, dear. You are not weak, Arthur, +are you?" +</p> +<p> +"Weak as the bending grass, Isabel, under this load of love. But though +he, I say, were as weak as I, you—ah, you!—are as wise as you are +bewitching; and if I should speak to you from my most craven fear, I +could find but one word of warning." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, you dear, blind flatterer! And what word would that be?" +</p> +<p> +"That you are most bewitching when you are wisest." +</p> +<p> +As Isabel softly laughed she cast a dreaming glance behind, and noticed +that she and Arthur were quite hidden in the flowery undergrowth of the +hill path. They kissed. +</p> +<p> +"Beloved," said her worshipper, with a clouded smile, as he let her down +from her tiptoes, "do you know you took that as though you were thinking +of something else?" +</p> +<p> +"Did I? Oh, I didn't mean to." +</p> +<p> +Such a reply only darkened the cloud. "Of whom were you thinking, +Isabel?" +</p> +<p> +She blushed. "I was think—thinking—why, I was—I—I was +think—thinking"—she went redder and redder as he went pale—"thinking +of everybody on Bylow Hill. Why—why, dear heart, don't you see? When +you"— +</p> +<p> +"Oh, enough, enough, my angel! I take the question back!" +</p> +<p> +"You <i>made</i> me think of everybody, Arthur, you were so sudden. Just +suppose I had done so to you!" They both thought that worthy of a good +laugh. "Next time, dear," added Isabel,—"no, no, no, but—next time, +you mustn't be so sudden. There's no need, you know,"—she blushed +again,—"and I promise you I'll give my whole mind to it! Get me some of +that hawthorn bloom yonder, and let's go back." +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0008" id="h2H_4_0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + IV +</h2> +<h3> + AND BRING DOWN THE REMAINDER +</h3> +<p> +This "hill path" was a narrowed continuance of the street, that led +gradually down along the hill's steep face to reach the town and the +river meadows. Godfrey, halting before Ruth and her brother, watched the +blooming hawthorn, over there, bend and shake and straighten and bend +again, above Arthur's unseen hands. Then, glancing furtively back toward +Mrs. Morris, he muttered to Ruth, while Leonard gravely looked out +across the landscape, "I live and learn." +</p> +<p> +"So we learn to live," was Ruth's playful reply. To her it was painfully +clear that Mrs. Morris, very sweetly no doubt, had eluded Godfrey's +endeavors to inform her of anything not to his brother's unqualified +praise. In the Bylow Hill group, Ruth had a way of smiling abstractedly, +which was very dear to Godfrey even when it meant he had best say no +more; and this smile had just said this to him when Isabel and Arthur +came into view again. As the two and the three drifted toward each +other, Ruth let Leonard outstep her, and joined Godfrey with a light in +her face that quickened his pulse. +</p> +<p> +After a word or two of slight import she said, as they slowly walked, +"Godfrey." +</p> +<p> +"Yes," eagerly responded the lover. +</p> +<p> +"Down in the garden, awhile ago—did I—promise something?" +</p> +<p> +"You most certainly did!" She had promised that if he would let a +certain subject drop she would bring it up again, herself, before he +must take his leave. +</p> +<p> +"And must you go very soon, now?" she asked. +</p> +<p> +"I've only a few minutes left," said the lover, with a lover's license. +</p> +<p> +"Well, I'm ready to speak. Of course, Godfrey, I know my heart." +</p> +<p> +The young man smiled ruefully. "I've known mine till I'm dead tired of +the acquaintance." +</p> +<p> +Other words passed, her eyes on the ground as they loitered, and after a +pause she murmured:—"But I've known my heart as long as you've known +yours." +</p> +<p> +"You've known—What do you—Oh, Ruth, look at me!" +</p> +<p> +She looked, very tenderly, although she said, "You forget we are +observed." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, observed! Do you mean hope—for me—after all?" +</p> +<p> +"I mean that if you will only wait until we can get a clear light on +this matter of Isabel's—which will most likely be by the next time you +come"— +</p> +<p> +"Oh, Ruth, Ruth, my own Ruth at last!" +</p> +<p> +"Please don't speak so. I'm not engaging myself to you now." +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes, you are! Yes, you are! Yes—you—are!" +</p> +<p> +"No—no—no—listen! Listen to me, Godfrey. I think that now, among us +all, we shall manage Isabel's affair well enough, and that the very next +time—you—come"—She began absently to pick her steps. +</p> +<p> +"What—what then?" +</p> +<p> +"Then you may ask me." +</p> +<p> +The response of the overjoyed lover was but one or two passionate words, +and her sufficient reply, as they halted among their fellows, was to +look across the valley with her meditative smile. Isabel took note, but +kindly gave a long sigh of admiration, and with an exalted sweep of the +hand drew the gaze of the five to the beauties of the scene below. The +day was near its end. The long shadow of the great cliff behind Bylow +Hill hung over the roofs of the town and over the hither meadows. The +sun's rays were laying their last touches upon the winding river, and +upon the grainfields that extended from its farther shore. In the upper +blue rested a few peaceful clouds, changing from silver to pink, from +pink to pearly gray, and on the skyline crouched in a purpling haze the +round-backed mountains of another county. +</p> +<p> +To Mrs. Morris and the General the sight, from the old elm-tree seat, +was even fairer than to the youthful group whose forms stood out against +the sky, the floral colors of the girls' draperies heightened by the +western light. For a while the two sitters gave the perfect scene the +tribute of a perfect silence, and then the General asked, as he +cautiously straightened his impaired frame, "Has not Isabel been making +some—eh—news for herself—and us?" +</p> +<p> +The lady's lips parted for their peculiar laugh of embarrassment, but +the questioner's smile was so serious that she forced her sweetest +gravity. "Why, General, according to our Southern ways," she +said,—every word mellowed by her Southern way of saying it,—"that's +for Isabel to tell you." +</p> +<p> +"Then why does she not do it, Mrs. Morris?" asked the veteran, who had +been district attorney himself once upon a time, and was clever with +witnesses. +</p> +<p> +"Why, really, General, Isabel hasn't had a cha—Oh! ho, ho! I oughtn't +to have said that!" Mrs. Morris had a killing dimple, but never used it. +</p> +<p> +"I suppose—of course"—said the General, "she will say +it's—eh—Arthur?" +</p> +<p> +"Now you're making me tell," she laughed, "and I mustn't! General, +Godfrey seems to be going." +</p> +<p> +In fact, Godfrey was shaking hands with Ruth and Leonard. Now he took +the hands of Arthur and Isabel together, and Mrs. Morris laughed more +sweetly and with more oh's and ho's than ever; for Isabel sedately +kissed Arthur's brother. +</p> +<p> +Ruth made signs to her father, who answered them in kind. "What does she +say, Mrs. Morris? Can you hear?" +</p> +<p> +"She says they're singing 'your hymn' down in a church under the hill." +</p> +<p> +"Ah yes." He beamed and nodded to Ruth; but when Mrs. Morris once more +laughed, his brow clouded a trifle. "Your daughter, Mrs. Morris"— +</p> +<p> +The lady broke in with a note of bright surprise, rose, and took an +unconscious step forward. The five young friends were advancing in a +compact cluster, with measured pace. Ruth and Isabel, in front abreast, +and making happy show of the hawthorn sprays, were just enough apart to +conceal, except for their superior height, the three lovers, and in +lowered tones, but with kindling eyes, the five, incited by Ruth, were +singing the song they had caught up from the valley,—the old man's +favorite from the days of his own song-time. The General got himself +hurriedly to his feet; the shade passed from his brow. The group came +close; he stepped out, and Isabel, meeting him, laid her two hands in +his, while the halting cluster ceased their song suspensively on a line +that pledged loves and friendships too ethereal to clash. +</p> +<p> +"Isabel,"—he turned up a broadened palm,—"here's my amen to that line; +where's yours?" +</p> +<p> +With blushing alacrity she laid her hand on his. +</p> +<p> +"Arthur!" he called, and the lively lover added his to the two. "Now, +Ruth!" +</p> +<p> +"Father!" laughed the daughter, "isn't this rather youngish?" But she +laid her hand promptly upon Arthur's, and the lines of the General's +face deepened playfully, and Mrs. Morris's dimple did the same, as +Godfrey thrust his hand in upon Ruth's, unasked. The matron laughed very +tenderly on the key of O while she added her hand, and received +Leonard's heavy palm above it. Then Arthur clapped a second hand upon +Leonard's, and Leonard was about to lay a second quietly upon Arthur's, +when Isabel, rose-red from brow to throat, gayly broke the heap and +embraced Ruth. +</p> +<p> +"Well, honey-girlie," said Mrs. Morris, as she and Isabel reentered +their cottage, "wasn't it sweet of them all, that 'laying on of hands,' +as Arthur called it?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes," replied the Southern girl, starting up the cramped old New +England stairway to her room. "It was child's play, but it was very +sweet of them, and especially of the General." +</p> +<p> +The mother detained her fondly. "And still, my child, you're not +satisfied?" +</p> +<p> +"Ah, mother, are you blind, stone blind, or do you only hope I am?" +</p> +<p> +"My dearie!" +</p> +<p> +"Why, mother, excepting Leonard, we haven't had one word of true consent +from one of them." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, now, Isabel! They'll all be glad enough by and by." +</p> +<p> +"Yes," said the daughter, from the landing above, "I've no doubt of +that." +</p> +<p> +She passed into her room, closed the door, and standing in the middle of +the floor, with her temples in her palms, said, "O merciful God! Oh, +Leonard Byington, if only that second hand of yours had hung back!" +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0009" id="h2H_4_0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + V +</h2> +<h3> + SKY AND POOL +</h3> +<p> +Arthur and Isabel were married in their own little church of All Angels, +at the far end of the old street. +</p> +<p> +"I cal'late," said a rustic member of his vestry, "th' never was as +pretty a weddin' so simple, nor as simple a weddin' so pretty!" +</p> +<p> +Because he said it to Leonard Byington he ended with a manly laugh, for +by the anxious glance of his spectacled daughter he knew he had slipped +somewhere in his English. But when he heard Leonard and Ruth, in +greeting the bride's mother, jointly repeat the sentiment as their own, +he was, for a moment, nearly as happy as Mrs. Morris. +</p> +<p> +"Such a pity Godfrey had to be away!" said Mrs. Morris. It was the only +pity she chose to emphasize. +</p> +<p> +Godfrey was on distant seas. The north-bound mid-afternoon express bore +away the bridal pair for a week's absence. +</p> +<p> +"Too short," said a friend or so whom Leonard fell in with as he came +from the railway station, and Leonard admitted that Arthur was badly in +need of rest. +</p> +<p> +At sunset Ruth came out of her gate and stood to welcome her brother's +tardy return. Both brightly smiled; neither spoke. +</p> +<p> +When he gave her a letter with a foreign stamp her face lighted +gratefully, but still without words she put it under her belt. Then they +joined hands, and he asked, "Where's father?" +</p> +<p> +"Inside on the lounge," she replied. Her lips fell into their faraway +smile, to which she added this time a murmur as of reverie, and Leonard +said almost as musingly, "Come, take a short turn." +</p> +<p> +They moved on to the Winslow gate, and entered the garden by a path +which brought them to a point midway between the old cottage and the +larger house. There it crossed under an arch transecting an arbor that +extended from a side door of the one dwelling to a like one of the +other, and the brother and sister had just passed this embowered spot +and were stepping down a winding descent by which the path sought the +old mill-pond, when behind them they observed two women pass athwart +their track by way of the arbor, and Ruth smiled and murmured again. +The crossing pair were Mrs. Morris and Sarah Stebbens, the Winslows' +life-long housekeeper, deeply immersed in arranging for Isabel to +become lady of the larger house, while her mother, with a single +young maidservant, was to remain mistress of the cottage. +</p> +<p> +The deep pond to whose edge Leonard and Ruth presently came was a narrow +piece of clear water held in between Bylow Hill and the loftier cliff +beyond by an old stone dam long unused. Rude ledges of sombre rock +underlay its depths and lined and shelved its sides. Broad beeches and +dark hemlocks overhung it. At every turn it mirrored back the slanting +forms of the white and the yellow birch, or slept under green mantles +of lily pads. It bore a haunted air even in the floweriest days of the +year, when every bird of the wood thrilled it with his songs, and it +gave to the entire region the gravest as well as richest note among all +its harmonies. Down the whole way to it some one long gone had gardened +with so wise a hand that later negligence had only made the wild +loveliness of this inmost refuge more affluent and impassioned. +</p> +<p> +At one point, where the hemlocks hung farthest and lowest over the pool, +and the foot sank deep in a velvet of green mosses, a solid ledge of +dark rock shelved inward from the top of the bank and down through the +flood to a depth cavernous and black. Here, brought from time to time by +the Byington and Winslow playmates, lay a number of mossy stones rounded +by primeval floods, some large enough for seats, some small; and here, +where Ruth had last sat with Godfrey, she now came with her brother. +</p> +<p> +The habitual fewness of Leonard's words was a thing she prized beyond +count. It made Mrs. Morris nervous, drained her mind's treasury, and +sent her conversational powers borrowing and begging; Isabel it awed; +Arthur it tantalized; to Godfrey it was an appetizing drollery; but to +Ruth it was dearer and clearer than all spoken eloquence. +</p> +<p> +The same trait in her, only less marked, was as satisfying to him, and +from one rare utterance to another their thoughts moved like consorted +ships from light to light along a home coast. A motion, a glance, a +gleam, a shade, told its tale, as across leagues of silence a shred of +smoke may tell one dweller in the wilderness the way or want of another. +Such converse may have been a mere phase of the New Englander's passion +for economy, or only the survival of a primitive spiritual commerce +which most of us have lost through the easier use of speech and print; +but the sister took calm delight in it, and it bound the two to each +other as though it were itself a sort of goodness or greatness. +</p> +<p> +"They have it of their mother," the old General sometimes said to +himself. +</p> +<p> +There were moments, too, when their intercourse was still more subtle, +and now they sat without exchange of glance or gesture, silent as chess +players, looking up the narrow water into a sunset exquisite in the +delicacy of its silvery plumes, fleeces pink and dusk, and illimitable +distances of palest green seen through fan-rays of white light shot down +from one dark, unthreatening cloud. +</p> +<p> +"Leonard," at length said the sister, as if she had studied every +possibility on the board before touching the chosen piece, "couldn't you +go away for a time?" +</p> +<p> +And with deliberate readiness the other gentle voice replied, "I don't +think I'd better." +</p> +<p> +While they spoke their gaze rested on the changing beauties of pool and +sky, and after the brief inquiry and response it still remained, though +the inner glow of their mutual love and worship deepened and warmed as +did the colors of the heavens and of the glassing waters. The brother +knew full well Ruth's poignant sense of his distresses; and to her his +mute tongue and unbent head were a sister's convincement that he would +endure them in a manner wholly faithful to every one of the loved hands +that had lain under his the evening Godfrey had said good-by. +</p> + +<a name="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a> + +<div class="figure"> +<a href="images/illust-02.jpg"> +<img src="images/illust-02.jpg" width="70%" +alt="'Indeed it was clear that to go away would be unfair.'" /></a><br /> +<b>"Indeed it was clear that to go away would be unfair."</b> +</div> + +<p> +Indeed, it was clear that to go away—unless he honestly felt too weak +to remain—would be unfair to almost every person, every interest, +concerned; and such a step was but second choice in Ruth's mind, +conditioned solely on any unreadiness he might have uprightly to bear +the burden brought upon him by—well, after all, by his own too +confident miscalculations in the game of hearts. +</p> +<p> +To him such flight signified the indeterminate continuance of his +sister's maiden singleness and a like prolongation of her lover's +galling suspense. To Ruth it stood not only for the loss of her brother, +but for the narrowing of their father's already narrowed life,—a +narrowing which might come to mean a shortening as well; and it meant +also the leaving of Isabel and Arthur to their mistake and to their +unskilfulness slowly and patiently to work out its cure. To go away +were, for him, to consent to be the one unbroken string on a noble but +difficult instrument. These thoughts and many more like them passed to +and fro, out through the abstracted eyes of the one, across to the +fading clouds, and back through the abstracted eyes and into the +responding heart of the other. +</p> +<p> +At length the sister rose. "I must go to father," she said. +</p> +<p> +The brother stood up. Their eyes exchanged a gentle gaze and tenderly +contracted. +</p> +<p> +"I will come presently," he replied, and was turning toward the water, +when he paused, threw a hand toward the steep wood across the pool, and +silently bade her listen. +</p> +<p> +The note he had remotely heard was rare on Bylow Hill since the town had +come in below, and one of the errands which oftenest brought the hill's +dwellers to this nook in solitary pairs was to hearken for that voice of +unearthly rapture,—a rapture above all melancholy and beyond all +mirth,—the call of the hermit thrush. +</p> +<p> +Now the waiting seemed in vain. The brother's hand sank, the sister +turned, and soon he saw her pass from view among the boughs as she wound +up the rambling path toward the three homes. +</p> +<p> +At the top she halted, still longing to hear at his side that marvellous +wood-note, and was just starting on once more, when from the same +quarter as before it came again, with new and fervent clearness. With +noiseless foot she sprang back down the bendings of the path, having no +other thought but to find her brother standing as she had left him, a +rapt hearer of the heavenly strain. +</p> +<p> +She reached the spot, but found no hearkening or standing form. The +young man's stalwart frame lay prone on the green bank, where he had +thrown himself the moment she had left his sight, and his face was +buried in the deep moss. +</p> +<p> +The stir of her swift coming reached his ear barely in time for him, +as she choked down a cry that had all but escaped her, to turn upon +his back, meet her glance, and drive the agony from his face with a +languorous smile. The melting song pervaded the air, but neither of +them lifted a noting finger. +</p> +<p> +Leonard rose to his feet. Ruth gave him a hand and then its fellow, and +as he pressed them together she said, "I wish you <i>would</i> go away +for a time." +</p> +<p> +He dropped one of her hands, and keeping the other, started slowly +homeward; and it was not until they had climbed half the ascent that, +with his most remote yet boyish smile, he replied, "I don't think I'd +better." +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0010" id="h2H_4_0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + VI +</h2> +<h3> + IN THE PUBLIC EYE +</h3> +<p> +August, September, October, November,—so passed the year in gorgeous +recession over Bylow Hill. Among their dismantled trees the three homes +stood unveiled to the town on the meadows and to travellers who looked +from train windows while crossing the river bridge. To those who +inquired whose they were there was always some one more than ready to +give names and details, and to tell how perfect a bond ever had +been—how beautiful a fellowship was yet, now—up there. +</p> +<p> +Sevenfold they called it, although one of the seven was away; namely, +Lieutenant Godfrey Winslow, of the navy, famed for his splendid behavior +in the late so-and-so affair. That stately house at the right, they +said, was his home what brief times the sea was not. +</p> +<p> +There lived, it would be added, his younger brother, so rapidly coming +into note,—the eccentric but gifted rector of All Angels; whose great +success in the heart of a Congregational community was due hardly more +to his high talents than to the combined winsomeness and practical +sympathies of his beautiful bride, or to the resourceful wisdom and zeal +of his churchwarden, Leonard Byington. +</p> +<p> +"Any relation to Byington, your new political leader in these parts?" +</p> +<p> +"Same man," the answer would be, and there the narrator was sure to fall +into a glowing tribute to the ideal companionship existing between the +rector, his bride, the young district attorney, and Ruth Byington. +</p> +<p> +What made this intimacy the more interesting was, in the eyes of a +growing number of observers, that, as they said, "Arthur Winslow was not +always an affable man, and was much more rarely a happy one." +</p> +<p> +Behind and above this popular verdict was that of the old street behind +and above the town,—a sort of revised version, a higher criticism. If +the young rector, this old street explained, oftener looked anxious than +complacent, so in their time, most likely, did St. Paul and St. Peter. +If he was not always affable, why, neither are volcanoes; the man was +all molten metal within. Anyhow, he filled his church to the doors. +</p> +<p> +Coaching parties of the vastly rich made the town their Sunday stopping +place purely to hear him; not so much because the boldness of his +speculations kept his bishop frightened as because he always fused those +speculations on, white-hot, to the daily issues of private and public +life, in a way to make pampered ladies hold their breath, and men of the +world their brows. Such a man, to whom the least sin seemed black and +bottomless, yet who appeared to know by experience the soul's every +throe in the foulest crimes, was not going to show his joys on the +surface in quips and smiles. +</p> +<p> +"You should have heard," said the old street, "his sermon to husbands +and wives! His own bride turned pale. He turned pale himself." +</p> +<p> +It was wonder enough that even the bride could be happy, at such an +altitude, so to speak; immersing herself utterly, as she did, in the +interests that devoured him. All Angels forgot his gloom in the radiance +of her charms,—the sweet genuineness of her formal pieties, the tender +glow and universality of her sympathies, the witchery of her ever ready, +never too ready playfulness. It was captivating to see how instantly and +entirely she had fitted herself into a partnership so exacting; though +it was pitiful to note, on second glance, how the tint and contour of +her cheek were losing their perfection, and her eyes were showing those +rapid alternations of languor and vivacity which story-tellers call a +"hunted look." Yet, oh, yes, she was happy; the pair were happy. It was +as a pair that they were happiest. Else, said the old street, they could +not keep up the old Winslow-Byington alliance so beautifully. +</p> +<p> +To the truth of this general outline the three homes' domestics, +dominated by Sarah Stebbens, certified with cordial and loyal brevity. +Yet when Ruth wrote Godfrey how well things were going, there lurked +between her bright lines one or two irrepressible meanings that locked +his jaws till they creaked. +</p> +<p> +In fact, both his brother and hers were "ailing." Both carried a jaded, +almost a broken look, and Arthur was taking things to make him eat and +sleep; while Leonard had daily accepted more and more of the young +rector's complicating cares, until he was really the parish's chief +burden-bearer. +</p> +<p> +"No," he said to his father, "Arthur carries his whole work manfully on +his own shoulders." +</p> +<p> +"But, my son," replied the old General, "don't you see you're carrying +Arthur?" +</p> +<p> +"No, I sha'n't do that," dryly responded the son; but Ruth saw a change +on his brow as on that of a guide who fears he has missed the path. +</p> +<p> +The four young friends spent many delightful evenings together in the +Winslow house, with Mrs. Morris and the General on one side at cribbage. +Ruth had frequent happy laughs, observing Isabel's gift for making +Leonard talk. It gave her a new joy in both of them to have the lovely +hostess draw him out, out, out, on every matter in the wide arena to +which he so vitally belonged; eliciting a flow of speech so animated +that only afterward did one notice how dumb as any tree on Bylow Hill +he had been in regard to himself. +</p> +<p> +"They are bow and violin," said Arthur to Ruth, with his dark, unsmiling +face so free from resentment that she gratefully wondered at him, and +was presently ashamed to find herself asking her own mind if he was +growing too subtle for her. +</p> +<p> +On these occasions Isabel was wont to court Ruth's counsel concerning +her wifely part in Arthur's work, thus often getting Leonard's as well. +Sometimes she impeached his masculine view of things, in her old +skirmishing way. Then she would turn rose-color once more and mirthfully +sigh, while Ruth laughed and wished for Godfrey, and Mrs. Morris +breathed soft ho-ho's from the cribbage board. +</p> +<p> +So came the Thanksgiving season, with strong, black ice on the mill +pond, where the four skated hand in hand. Then the piling snows stopped +the skating with a white Christmas, the old year sank to rest, the new +rose up, and Bylow Hill, under its bare elms and with the pine-crested +ridge at its back, sat in the cold sunshine like a white sea bird with +its head in its down. And when the nights were frigid and clear its +ruddy lights of lamp and hearth seemed to answer the downward gaze of +the stars in silent gratitude for conditions of happiness strangely +perfect for this imperfect world, and the town marvelled at the young +rector's grasp of his subject when his text was, "The heart knoweth his +own bitterness." +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0011" id="h2H_4_0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + VII +</h2> +<h3> + THE HOUR STRIKES +</h3> +<p> +But on a day in the very last of winter, when every one was in the thick +of all the year's tasks and cares, there came to Leonard this letter:— +</p> +<p class="quote"> + LEONARD BYINGTON, ESQUIRE: +</p> +<p class="quote"> + SIR,—I find myself compelled to ask that you consider your + acquaintanceship with my wife at an end. Doubtless this request will + give you more relief than surprise. The visible waste of your frame + and the loss of her exquisite bloom are proof enough that both you + and she have long been in daily dread of a far worse visitation. + It is not worse, because I know how sentimental your impotent and + conscience-plagued interchanges of affection have been. I shall permit + and assist you to keep this matter a secret. To let it be known would + instantly wreck your own career, and would blast at a breath the + fortunes of our church and of every one of both our kindreds. I will + therefore not at this time require you to resign your church office or + to break off those business intimacies with me which, though no longer + founded in personal esteem, are vital to interests that common decency + must move you to shield from new peril. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + I ask for no repair of the inextinguishable wrong you have done me. + I only ask you not to fancy that I am to be beguiled by arguments or + denials or moved by threats, or that one word I here write is founded + on conjecture or inference. Grovelling at my feet, in sobs of shame + and with prayers for pardon, Isabel has told me all. Has told me all, + Leonard Byington, my once trusted friend. Now, though prostrated on + her bed, she rejoices in the double forgiveness of her husband and + her priest, blessing him for deliverance from the misleadings of one + who—great God! must I write it?—might at last have dragged her into + crime. It is her request, as it is my command, that you darken our + threshold no more, and that as far as practicable you keep yourself + from her sight. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + Faithfully, +</p> +<p class="quote"> + ARTHUR WINSLOW. +</p> +<p> +With his swivel-chair overturned behind him the young lawyer stood at +the desk of his inner office, read this letter through at headlong +speed, turned it again, and re-read it slowly, searchingly, from his own +name to its writer's. +</p> +<p> +Then readjusting his chair he stepped to a door, asked a clerk in the +outer office to order his cutter, turned back, and was closing his desk, +when his partner came to him. +</p> +<p> +"Byington, are you ill?" asked the fatherly man. +</p> +<p> +"No; I'm only going out on some business. I'll be back about—" He +looked at his watch. +</p> +<p> +"Byington, don't go. You're ill. You don't realize how ill you are. If +you go at all, go home, and let me send some one with you. Why, your +hand is as cold"— +</p> +<p> +"I'm all right," said the young man, freeing his hand and smiling with +white lips. He took his hat and passed out. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile Isabel lay on her bed too overwhelmed to rise. In his room +adjoining, with doors locked, Arthur paced the floor. He had spent the +first half of the night in an agonizing interview with his wife, and the +second half in writing and rewriting the letter to Leonard. +</p> +<p> +Now Isabel noticed the cessation of his steps. In the door between +them the key turned; then the door opened, and he stood, haggard and +dishevelled, gazing on her. She sat up in the bed, wan, tear-spent, +her glorious hair falling over the embroideries of her nightdress. +</p> +<p> +"Arthur, dear, I am sorry for every angry word I have spoken. But the +things I have denied I must deny forever. +</p> +<p> +"If you should wait till doomsday, I could confess no more. +</p> +<p> +"I have never harbored one throb of unworthy or unsafe regard toward any +man in this wide world. +</p> +<p> +"For me to say differently would be to lie in God's own face. +</p> +<p> +"I have had great happiness of Leonard's companionship, and I have been +proud to be myself a proof that a man and a woman can be close, dear, +daily friends without being lovers or kin, and earth be only more like +heaven for it, to them and all theirs. If Leonard has confessed one word +more than that for me,—or even for himself, Arthur, dearest,—he has +lost his reason. It's a frightful explanation, but I find no other. +</p> +<p> +"Leonard Byington is not wicked, and if he were he wouldn't be so in a +dastard's way. +</p> +<p> +"Never since the day I first plighted my faith to you, dear heart, has +he given me one sign of a lover's love. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, Arthur, I do love my husband! This night has proved it to me as +I never knew it before; and if you will only believe me and go back to +Leonard, I believe he can tear the mask off this horrible mystery." +</p> +<p> +Arthur turned and once more locked the door. His wife flamed red and +hearkened, and the light footfall which had tortured her for hours began +again. Suddenly she left the bed and hurried to dress. +</p> +<p> +At the mirror, with her hair lifted on her hands, she paused and again +hearkened. Sleighbells stopped at the front door. +</p> +<p> +Now some one was let in down there, and now, at her husband's room, +Giles, his English man of all work, announced Mr. Byington:— +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir, but he says if you can't come down 'e will 'ave to come up, +sir." +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0012" id="h2H_4_0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + VIII +</h2> +<h3> + GIVE YOU FIVE MINUTES +</h3> +<p> +As Arthur entered the library Leonard came from its farther end, and +they halted on opposite sides of a large table. Arthur was flushed and +looked fearfully spent. Leonard was pale. +</p> +<p> +"I have your letter, Arthur." +</p> +<p> +The rector bowed. He gave a start, but tried to conceal a gleam of +triumph. +</p> +<p> +Leonard ignored it and spoke on:— +</p> +<p> +"A gentleman, Arthur,—I mean any one trying to be a whole +gentleman,—is a very helpless creature, nowadays, in matters of this +sort." +</p> +<p> +He looked formidable, and as he lightly grasped a chair at his side it +seemed about to be turned into a weapon. +</p> +<p> +"The old thing once called satisfaction," he continued, "is something +one can no longer either ask or offer, in any form. He can neither rail, +nor strike, nor spellbind, nor challenge, nor lampoon, nor prosecute." +</p> +<p> +"Nearly as helpless as a clergyman," said Arthur. +</p> +<p> +"Almost," replied the visitor. "No, there is no more satisfaction in any +of those things, for him, than if he were all a clergyman is supposed to +be. There is none even in saying this, to you, here, now, and I'm not +here to say it. Neither am I here to vindicate myself—no, nor yet +Isabel—with professions or arguments to you; I might as well argue with +a forest fire." +</p> +<p> +"Quite as well. What are you here for?" +</p> +<p> +"Be patient and I'll tell you; I'm trying to be so with you." +</p> +<p> +"You—trying"— +</p> +<p> +"Stop that nonsense, Arthur. Ah me, Arthur Winslow, I have no wish to +humiliate you. Through the loyalty of your wife's pure heart, whatever +humiliates you must humiliate her. Oh, I could wish her in her shroud +and coffin rather than have her suffer the humiliation you have prepared +for yourself and for her through you." +</p> +<p> +Arthur showed a thrill of alarm. "Do you propose to go down to public +shame and drag us all with you?" +</p> +<p> +"No, nor to let you, if I can prevent you. Arthur, you have allowed a +base jealousy to persuade you, in the face of every contrary evidence, +that your fair young wife has lost her loyalty—and your nearest friend +the commonest honesty—in a clandestine love. Under the goadings of that +passion you have foully guessed, have heartlessly accused, have brazenly +lied. Isabel has confessed nothing to you, and I know by your lies to +me how pusillanimously you must have been lying to her. Had your guess +been right, I should not have known you were only guessing, and your +successful iniquity would have remained hidden from everybody but +yourself—I still do you the honor to believe you would have realized +it. Now the vital question is, do you realize it, and will you undo it?" +</p> +<p> +Arthur was deadly pale; his pointing finger trembled. "Leave"—he +choked—"leave this house." +</p> +<p> +Leonard turned scarlet, but his tone sank low. "Arthur, I don't believe +your soul is rotten. If I did, I should not be such a knave or such a +fool as to make any treaty with you that would leave you in your pulpit +one Sabbath Day." +</p> +<p> +"What do you—what do you mean by that?" +</p> +<p> +"I mean that such a treaty would be foul faith to everybody." +</p> +<p> +"So, then, you do propose one common shipwreck for us all." +</p> +<p> +"Quite the contrary. To trust the fortunes of our loved ones to any +treaty with a rotten soul would indeed be to launch them upon a stormy +sea in a rotten boat. But I do not believe your soul is so. I believe it +is sound,—still sound, though on fire; and so, to help you quench its +burning, I give you my pledge to be from this day a stranger to your +sweet wife. And now will you do something for me, to prove that your +soul is sound and is going to stay sound? It shall be the least I can +ask in good faith to the world we live in." +</p> +<p> +"What is it?" asked Arthur. There was no capitulation in his face or his +voice. +</p> +<p> +"I want you to make to Isabel a full retraction and explanation of every +falsehood you have uttered to her or to me in this matter." Leonard was +pale again; Arthur burned red a moment, and then turned paler than +Leonard. +</p> +<p> +"You fiend!" gasped the husband. "I am to exalt you, and abase myself, +to her?" +</p> +<p> +"No. No, Arthur. Women are strange; every chance is that in her eyes I +shall be abased." The speaker went whiter than ever. +</p> +<p> +"But be that as it may, you shall have lifted your soul out of the mire. +You must do it, Arthur; don't you see you must?" +</p> +<p> +Arthur sank into the chair at his side. He seemed to have guessed what +Leonard was keeping unsaid. A moisture of anguish stood on his brow. +Yet— +</p> +<a name="image-0003"><!--IMG--></a> + +<div class="figure"> +<a href="images/illust-03.jpg"> +<img src="images/illust-03.jpg" width="70%" +alt="'Arthur Winslow, I give you five minutes.'" /></a><br /> +<b>"Arthur Winslow, I give you five minutes." </b> +</div> + +<p> +"I will die before I will do it," he said. +</p> +<p> +Leonard drew forth the letter, and then his watch. "Arthur Winslow, I +give you five minutes. If you don't make me that promise in that time, I +shall this day show this letter to your bishop." +</p> +<p> +The rector sat clenching his fingers and spreading them again, and +staring at the table. +</p> +<p> +A bead of sweat, then a second, and then a third started down his +forehead. +</p> +<p> +Presently he clutched the board, drew himself to his feet, and turned to +leave the chair, but fell across its arms, slid heavily from them, and +with one rude thump and then another lay unconscious on the floor. +</p> +<p> +Leonard sprang round the table, but when he would have lifted the fallen +head it was in the arms of Isabel, and her dilated eyes were on him in a +look of passionate aversion. +</p> +<p> +"Ring!" she cried. "Ring for Sarah—and go! +</p> +<p> +"No! stop! don't ring! he's coming to! Only go! go quickly and forever! +Say not a word,—oh, not a word! I heard it all! Despise me too, for I +listened at the door! +</p> +<p> +"Oh, my husband! Arthur, look at me, Arthur. Look, Arthur; it's your +Isabel. Oh, Arthur, my husband, my husband!" +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0013" id="h2H_4_0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + IX +</h2> +<h3> + THE YOUNG YEAR SMILES +</h3> +<p> +Martin Kelly, pious Irishman and out-door factotum of the Byington +place, paused from the last snow-shovelling of the season to reply to a +wandering salesman of fruit trees. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Airthur Winslow or Mr. Linnard Boyington,—naw, sor! ye can see +nayther the wan nor th' other, whatsomiver! How can ye see thim, moy +graciouz! whin 'tis two weeks since the two o' thim was tuck the same +noight wid the pneumonias, boy gorra! and the both of thim has thim on +the loongs!" +</p> +<p> +The nursery agent asked how it had happened so. +</p> +<p> +"Hawh! ask yer grandmother! All ye can say is they was roipe to catch +the maladee, whatsomiver! Ye cannot always tell how 'tis catched, and +whin ye cannot tell, moy graciouz! ye have got the wurrst koind!" +</p> +<p> +The two sick men recovered very nearly at the same time. +</p> +<p> +One day when Leonard had read all his accumulated mail and had seen +three or four men officially in his bedchamber, he told Ruth that a +certain criminal case, the trial of which had been waiting for his +recovery, would take him to the county-seat, and would keep him there +many days, probably weeks, except for brief visits to his office and yet +briefer moments at home. +</p> +<p> +Ruth gave him a look of tender approval, laid a hand in his, and bent +into the evening fire her far-off smile. Thus, and only thus, he knew +she had divined what had befallen. +</p> +<p> +A day or two afterward Mrs. Morris brought him a note from Arthur. He +wrote an answer while she stayed, and while Ruth listened elatedly to +her sprightly account of how well Isabel still bore the burden of +nursing a most loving but most nervous husband. +</p> +<p> +The missive from Arthur was a short but complete and propitiative +acknowledgment of his error and fraility. It offered no change in the +agreement as to Isabel, but it professed a high yet humble resolve to +fall no more, and it ended with a manly offer to resign his pulpit, and +even to lay aside his sacred calling, if Leonard retained any belief in +the moral necessity of his so doing. +</p> +<p> +Leonard's reply was a very brief exhortation to his friend to put away +all thought of resigning, and to take up his work again with the zeal +with which he had first entered upon it. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Morris went away refreshed, and left the Byingtons equally so. Her +buoyancy had been as prettily restrained, her sympathies as sweet, her +dimple as unconscious, her belief in everybody's wit and wisdom except +her own as genuine, and her timid dissimulations as kindly meant and as +transparent, as ever. Yet there was an unspoken compassion for her when +she was gone, for in the parting words with which she playfully vaunted +her ignorance of the correspondence she was bearing, it was clear, even +to the General, that behind that small ignorance she had a larger +knowledge,—a fact that made her dainty cheerfulness seem very brave. +</p> +<hr /> +<p> +The freshets swept down the valleys, the myriad yellow twigs of the +brookside willows turned green, a cheery piping rose from the ponds, the +last gleam of snow passed from the farthest hills, the bluebird sang, +the harrow followed the plough, Ruth's crocuses shone above the greening +sod, and down by the old mill-pool and on the steep hillside beyond it +she and Isabel gathered arbutus, anemones, and the yellow violet. Spring +had come. +</p> +<p> +Then through the thickening greenery the dogwood shone like belated +drifts, the flashing warblers passed on into the north, the bobolink had +arrived, the robin was already overeating, the whole chorus of birds +that had come to nest and stay broke forth, and it was summer. +</p> +<p> +Leonard was back in his own town, enriched with new esteem from the +public and from the men of his profession. The noted case was won, a +victory for the peace and dignity of the state, due wholly, it was said, +to the energy and sagacity of the young district attorney. A murder had +been so cunningly done that suspicion could fasten nowhere, until +Byington laid his finger upon a man of so unspotted a name that no one +else had had the mental courage to point to him. Through a long and +masterly untangling of contradictions the state's counsel had so +overwhelmingly proved him guilty that he had confessed without waiting +for the jury's verdict. +</p> +<p> +"Yes," said many, "it was a great stroke, Leonard's management of that +thing." And not a few added that it had made him an older man—"that or +something." Those who were of his politics, and even some who were not, +stopped him in Main Street and State Street to "shake" and to say, +without too much care for logical sequence, how soon, in their opinion, +he would be the commonwealth's "favorite son." +</p> +<p> +"My dear Mrs. Morris," said the General, "every town has at least one." +But even Mrs. Morris could see the father's faith and pride through the +old soldier's satire. +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0014" id="h2H_4_0014"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + X +</h2> +<h3> + THE STORM REGATHERS +</h3> +<p> +On the other hand, things were going ill with the little church of All +Angels. Arthur kept his people as tensely strung as ever, but he no +longer drew from them the chords of aspiration and enterprise. It was a +sad disenchantment, and none the less so because no one seemed to know +what the matter was. One darkly guessed he was writing a book, and the +vestryman who had praised the lovely simplicity of the wedding lucidly +explained that the young rector had "lost his grip." +</p> +<p> +At times there were flashes of recovery. One Sabbath the whole +congregation came out under his benediction uplifted by his word that +"loving is living." +</p> +<p> +"The more we love," they quoted him on their various ways home, "the +more we live. The deeper we love, the deeper we live. The more selfishly +or unselfishly, the higher, the broader, the purer, the wiser, we love, +the more selfishly or unselfishly, the higher, the broader, the purer, +the wiser, we live!" The rector's gentle wife was visibly and ever so +prettily rejoiced. +</p> +<p> +True, but hardly the whole truth. In her mother's cottage her smiles +were almost sad, and when she had crossed the garden and got into her +own room she dropped upon her bed and wept. Yet she quickly ceased, and +put on again a brave serenity, for a very tender reason which forbade +such risks. +</p> +<p> +A bunch of the church's best men got together and agreed that all Arthur +needed was rest; that this bright moment was the right one in which to +offer him a vacation; that his physician should flatly order him to take +it; and that Byington should arrange the matter. +</p> +<p> +Leonard accepted the task, the physician spoke with startling flatness, +and the whole kind plot worked well. Arthur consented to go away up into +the hills beyond all the jar of the busy world's unrest. +</p> +<p> +Isabel was to go with him, and they were to sojourn at some point where +she would still be within prompt reach of medical skill, yet from which +he could make long jaunts into the absolute wilds. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Morris was far from well when they left, and the day afterward she +was seriously ill. That night Ruth sat up with her, and the next day she +was worse, yet begged that no telegram be sent to her daughter. +</p> +<p> +At the close of the day there came a letter from Isabel. It said that +Arthur, "already a new man," would start the next morning at dawn for a +three days' trip into the wilderness. He went; and he had not been three +hours gone when Isabel received a dispatch calling her to her mother. +The only day train would leave in a few minutes, and she had the fortune +to catch it. +</p> +<p> +Ruth met her at the station with the blessed word "better." They went up +from the town in Ruth's carriage, Martin Kelly driving, who let it be +known that though the doctor's name, "moy graciouz!" were signed to the +telegram seven times over, the actual painstaker and sender was "Linnard +Boyington, whatsomiver!" +</p> +<p> +Still Ruth called it the doctor's telegram, and said it made no +difference who sent it; but she saw Isabel was disturbed. "Well, Martin, +Doctor will have to wait on himself to-morrow; Leonard will be out of +town." +</p> +<p> +That evening, alone with her brother, she said, "But I thought you were +to be out of town to-morrow." +</p> +<p> +"No," he replied, "I don't think I'd better." +</p> +<p> +Another day passed, another came, and Mrs. Morris was still in danger. +Isabel wrote Arthur that she would be with him the moment the peril was +over, if he needed her; but if he did not, she would stay on for her +mother's fuller recovery. Her letter had barely gone when she received a +pencilled line brought in to the mountain hotel by a chance messenger +and sent on to her, saying he would be out on his tramp five days +instead of three. On the fifth day she telegraphed that her mother was +getting well so fast that she would come, now, at his word. +</p> +<p> +The next morning she betrayed to Ruth a glad sense of relief as she +showed her a dispatch from Arthur, which read: "Going on another trip +to-morrow. Stay till I write." +</p> +<p> +Ruth repeated it to her father and brother at their noonday meal. +Leonard made no comment, but the General asked pleasantly— +</p> +<p> +"Is she certain he won't come in on this evening's express?" He was +discerning more than any one wanted him to. +</p> +<p> +However, at dusk came the train, took water at the tank, stopped at the +station, and passed on, and Arthur did not appear. +</p> +<p> +"Well, I'll go to bed," blithely spoke the General. "I'm not so old as I +used to be, but I'm tired, after writing that letter this afternoon—to +Godfrey. Good-night." So he gave fair notice that he had moved in this +matter, himself. +</p> +<p> +"I didn't know father had received a letter from Godfrey," said Ruth, +shading her face from the lamp, and lifting to Leonard a smile which +implied that it would have been but fair for him to have told her. +</p> +<p> +"It came the day before Arthur went away," replied Leonard, and Ruth +reluctantly chose a new topic. +</p> +<p> +They rarely had an evening together thus, and with a soft rain falling +at the open windows they sat and talked on many themes in what was to +them a very talkative way. When something brought up the subject of the +late noted trial, Ruth asked her brother how it had first come to him to +suspect so unsuspected a man. +</p> +<p> +His reply was tardy. "Partly," he said, and mused while he spoke, +"because I am so unsuspected a man myself." +</p> +<p> +He looked up with a smile, half play, half pain. "I know what the mind +of an unsuspected man is capable of—under pressure." +</p> +<p> +The questioner looked on him with fond faith, and then, dropping her +eyes to her needlework, said, "That wasn't all that prompted you, was +it?" +</p> +<p> +"No," replied the brother, again musing. "I had noticed the singular +value of wanton guesswork." +</p> +<p> +"I thought so," said the sister. Her needle flagged and stopped, and +each knew the other's mind was on the implacable divinations of one +morbid soul. +</p> +<p> +Leonard leaned and fingered the needlework,—a worsted slipper, too +small for most men, too large for most women. "Is that for him?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes," apologized Ruth; "it's the thing every clergyman has to incur. +But I'm only doing it to help Isabel out; she has the other." +</p> +<p> +The evening went quickly. When Leonard let down the window sashes and +lowered the shades, Ruth, standing by the lamp as if to put out its +light, said, "I'll not go up for a moment or two yet." +</p> +<p> +She sent him an ardent smile across the room and turned to a desk. +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0015" id="h2H_4_0015"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XI +</h2> +<h3> + HAS IT COME TO THIS? +</h3> +<p> +Ruth wrote to her lover. Her father's keeping secret his receipt of +Godfrey's letter until he had mailed its answer, could mean only that +the answer was for Godfrey to come home. The General's talk of being +tired by the writing of it was a purely expletive irony, for he had +written with the brevity of an old soldier to a young sailor; but he had +written that trouble was impending, that its source was Arthur, and that +the last hope of removing it lay with him, Godfrey. +</p> +<p> +A line from Ruth, pursuing after this message, would be one steamer +behind it all the way, but it would reach the far wanderer before any +leave would permit him to start homeward. +</p> +<p> +So, now, what should she write? If her father had discerned so much more +than he had let any one know he had discerned, how about others? How +about the kind whose chief joy is ruthless guesswork? <i>That</i> need +of haste was one she had overlooked. Wise father! +</p> +<p> +And yet—haste itself is such a hazardous thing! Ah, if Arthur had come +in on that evening express, what to write were an easier question. The +minutes sped by; her pen overhung the paper with the opening sentence +unfinished, and every moment the thought she kept putting away came +back: "Leonard!—Leonard!—Godfrey's summons should go to him from +Leonard; and it should flash under the seas, not crawl across +them!"—Hark! +</p> +<p> +She rose and glided to the door through which her brother had gone. +There she was startled by the sight of him speeding cautiously down +the stair. +</p> +<hr /> +<p> +On entering his unlighted room Leonard had moved across it to a front +window, where, veiled by the chamber's dusk, he stood looking out into a +night dimly illumined by the overclouded moon. The Winslow house widened +palely among its surrounding trees. The servants' rooms were remote as +well as on the farther side, and on the nearer side no lamplight shone. +A short way down the street a glow came from the Morris cottage. +Evidently Isabel was with her mother. +</p> +<p> +He stood and mused, unconsciously lulled by the cool drip of myriad +leaves, and with his mind poised midway between emotion and thought. To +yield to emotion would have been to chafe against the bands that knitted +his life and hers to every life about them. To yield to thought would +have been to think of her as no more to be drawn from these surrounding +ties than some animate rainbow-fringed flower of the sea can be torn +from its shell without laceration and death. To give thought word would +have been to cry, "Oh, truest of womankind, where would this unsuspected +man, this Leonard Byington, be if you were other than you are?" Yet the +suspense between avoided feeling and avoided thought held him where he +stood. +</p> +<p> +So standing, it drifted idly into his mind that yonder arbor must be +very wet to-night, and the cinder sidewalk out here much drier. As the +thought moved him to draw one step back, the glow from the cottage +broadened. Its front door had opened, and Mrs. Morris's young maid came +out with a lantern, followed by Isabel saying last fond words to her +mother as the convalescent closed the door. +</p> +<p> +"Good-night!" she called back. +</p> +<p> +In one great wave the young man's passion rolled over its bounds and +brought him to his knees with arms outstretched. "Oh, Isabel!" he +murmured. "Oh, my God! Oh, Isabel! Isabel! if I had but lost you +fairly!" +</p> +<p> +The two slight figures came daintily along the wet path in single file, +the maid throwing the lantern's beams hither and yon as she looked back +to answer Isabel's kindly questions; Isabel one moment half lost in the +gloom of the trees, and then so lighted up again from foot to brow that +it was easy to see the very lines of her winsome mouth, ripe for +compassion or fortitude, yet wishful as a little child's. +</p> +<p> +Her secret observer moaned as he stood erect. The fury of his soul +seemed to enhance his stature. He did not speak again, but, "Oh, Isabel! +harder to strive against than all the world beside!" was the unuttered +cry that wrote itself upon his tortured brow. "If your unfair winner +would only hold you by fair means! Yet I too was to blame! I too was to +blame, and you alone were blameless!" +</p> +<p> +Opposite his window Isabel ceased her light talk with the maid, halted, +bent, and scanned something just off the firm path, in the clean wet +sand. +</p> +<p> +The maid turned and flooded her with the light of the lantern just as +she impulsively lifted an alarmed glance to Leonard's window and as +quickly averted it. "Go on," said the mistress. "I can walk faster if +you can." +</p> +<p> +The girl quickened her steps, but had not taken a dozen when Isabel +stopped again. "Wait, Minnie. Now you can run back, thank you." She +reached for the lantern. +</p> +<p> +"I—I thought I was to go all the way, and—and bring the lantern back." +</p> +<p> +"No, I'll keep the lantern; but I'll stay here and throw the light after +you till you get in. Run along." +</p> +<p> +Minnie tripped away. As she came where they had first halted, a +purposely belated good-night softly overtook her; and when she looked +back, Isabel, as if by inadvertency, sent the lantern's beam into her +eyes. So too much light sent the maid by the spot unenlightened. +</p> +<p> +Leonard drew aside lest the beam swing next into his window. But the +precaution was wasted; the glare followed Minnie. +</p> +<p> +Isabel also followed, slowly, a few paces, and then moved obliquely into +the roadway and toward the window. Only for a moment the ray swept near +her unseen observer, and, lighting up the rain-packed sand close before +herself, revealed a line of footprints slanting toward her from +Leonard's own gate. +</p> +<p> +As the cottage door shut Minnie in, Isabel, reassured by the brightness +of the Byingtons' lower windows, stopped for a furtive instant, and +holding in her hand the fellow of the slipper so lately in Ruth's +fingers, exactly fitted it to one of these footprints. Then, with the +lantern on her farther side, and every vein surging with fright and +shame, she made haste toward the open gateway of the Winslow house. +</p> +<p> +A short space from it she recoiled with a gesture of dismay and +self-repression, and her light shone full upon a man. He stepped from +the garden, his form tensely lifted, his face aflame with anger. +</p> +<p> +But her small figure straightened also, and swiftly muffling the lantern +in a fold of her skirt, she exclaimed, audibly only to him, though in +words clear-cut as musical notes, "Oh, Arthur Winslow, has it come to +this?" +</p> +<p> +She arrested his resentful answer by the uplift of a hand, which left +the lantern again uncovered. "Inside! In the house!" she softly cried, +starting on. "Not here! Look!—those upper windows!—we're in full view +of them!" +</p> +<p> +Quickly she remuffled the lantern, but not in time to hide his motion as +he threw out an arm and pushed her rudely back, while he exclaimed, "In +full view of them answer me one question!" +</p> +<p> +It was then that Leonard went hurriedly downstairs. +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0016" id="h2H_4_0016"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XII +</h2> +<h3> + THE LANTERN QUENCHED +</h3> +<p> +"I will answer you nothing!" murmured Isabel, still facing her husband +as she moved round into the garden driveway. "Arthur Winslow, it is you +who are on trial, not I!" +</p> +<p> +"I on trial! God, listen to that!" +</p> +<p> +He sprang after her, gripped her shoulders, and hung over her, snarling, +"You two-faced runaway! what have I done but suffer?" +</p> +<p> +She kept the lantern hid. "What have you done? Oh, my husband, will you +hear if I tell you? You have hung the fates of all of us, living or yet +to live, on one thread,—please, dear, don't bear so heavily on me,—on +one poor thread which the jar of another misstep will surely break. Oh, +let us not make it! Come, Arthur,—my husband,—into the house; maybe +we can yet save ourselves and our dear ones! Arthur, you're hurting me +dreadfully. If you press me down that way, you'll force me to my knees." +</p> +<p> +Still she spoke in undertone, and still she muffled the light, while +steadily the weight of his arms increased. Suddenly he crowded her to +the earth. "Arthur," she murmured, "Arthur, what are you going to do? +Don't kill me here and now, Arthur; wait till to-morrow. I have that to +pass through to-night which may end my life peaceably in bed; and if it +should, then there will be no infamy on any of us,—on you or our child, +living, or on me, dead; and Godfrey, and Ruth, and mother, and all can +be"— +</p> +<p> +"Give me that lantern!" He held her with one hand, snatched the light +from cover, and thrust it into her face. "So this is what you signal him +with, is it?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh no, no! Arthur, dear, no! Before God's throne, no!" +</p> +<p> +He lifted it as high as his arm would go, and with all his force swung +it down, crashing and quenched, upon her head. +</p> +<p> +She gave a gentle sigh and rolled at his feet. Groaning with horror and +fright, he lifted her in his arms and bore her to her room and bed. +</p> +<p> +There she presently opened her eyes to find him laving her face and +head, moaning, covering them with kisses, and imploring her forgiveness +in a thousand hysterical repetitions. +</p> +<p> +"Hush, dear," she whispered. "I see how it all happened. Does anybody +know? Oh, God be thanked! don't let any one find out! It was all a +misunderstanding. So many things crowded together to mislead you!" +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes, so many, many things at once, my treasure! Oh yes, yes!" +</p> +<p> +"Call Sarah, will you, dear?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, beloved, why should I? You don't need Sarah for anything." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I need her. I must send her for mother—and Ruth—I promised Ruth; +and you must send Giles for the doctor; my hour is come." +</p> +<hr /> +<p> +In the Byington house Ruth and her brother met at the foot of the +stairs. +</p> +<p> +"Leonard," she whispered, "what is it? Is father ill? Leonard! Oh, what +have you seen?" +</p> +<p> +"Let me pass! quick!" He would have pressed her aside, but she laid +hands on him. +</p> +<p> +"What has Arthur done?" she asked. "What is he doing?" +</p> +<p> +"Ruth! Ruth! he is putting her out of his own gate!" The brother +extended both hands to turn the sister from his path, but she twined her +arms on his. +</p> +<p> +"Leonard! Leonard! for the love of heaven, let him do it! She has only +to go to her mother; let her go! It's the last hope. But she'd better be +dead, and she'd a hundred times rather be dead, than that Leonard +Byington should be her rescuer! Come in here a minute." +</p> +<p> +Slipping both hands into his she drew him into the lighted room, adding +as they went, "In a few minutes I can make some errand to her and find +how matters stand"— +</p> +<p> +They stumbled over a disordered rug. She fell into a chair; he sank to +his knees, and with his face in her hands he moaned, "Oh, Ruth! Oh, +Ruth! it's my fault after all! I should have gone away at the +beginning!" +</p> +<p> +Ruth and Arthur met face to face in the Winslow garden. "I was just +coming for you," he said, excitedly. +</p> +<p> +"For Isabel?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, her mother is with her, and"—a sound of wheels—"here's Giles, +now, off for the doctor." +</p> +<p> +The servant passed. "Yes, I got here by the sunset express. I couldn't +stay away—with this impending." +</p> +<p> +"I didn't see you come." +</p> +<p> +"No, of course you didn't see me, for I didn't go to the station, and so +I didn't pass anywhere near your house. I got off at the tank and came +up the hill path." +</p> +<p> +"You must have got drenched; you <i>are</i> drenched." +</p> +<p> +"Oh no! I got in before the rain began. Let myself in without seeing any +one, and found Isabel was over at her mother's. So I waited here." +</p> +<p> +"Didn't let her know you were home?" asked Ruth, with a penetrating +gaze. +</p> +<p> +"No, I haven't been off the place since I came, but I stepped out so +many times into the garden to see if she was coming that I'm soaking +wet." +</p> +<p> +They entered the lighted house, and he turned upon her a glance heavy +and wavering with falsehood. His tongue ran like a terrified horse. +"Oh—eh—before you go upstairs—Ruth—there's one thing I'm distressed +about. I've told Mrs. Morris, and she's promised to see that the doctor +understands it perfectly,—though I shall explain it to him myself the +moment he comes. And still I wish you'd see that he understands, will +you?" +</p> +<p> +"What is it?" +</p> +<p> +"Why, at last, as I was waiting for Isabel, and saw her coming, I went +to meet her. Unfortunately she took me for a stranger, turned to run, +and tripped and fell headlong! She somehow got her lantern between the +base of a tree and the crown of her head, smashed the lantern, and cut +and bruised her head pitifully!" +</p> +<p> +To hide her start of distress Ruth moved up the stair; but after a step +or two she turned. "Arthur, why say anything about it, if nothing is +asked?" +</p> +<p> +The husband stared at her and turned deadly pale. +</p> +<p> +"Th—that's tr—true!" he said, with an eager gesture. "I'll not mention +it. And—Ruth!"—she was leaving him—"you might s—say the same to Mrs. +Morris!" +</p> +<p> +She nodded, but would not trust her eyes to meet his. He was right; she +had divined his deed. +</p> +<p> +He went loiteringly into the library and gently closed the door. Then he +turned the light low, paced once up and down the room, and all at once +slammed himself full length upon a lounge, and lay face up, face down, +by turns, writhing and tearing his hair. +</p> +<p> +Soon again he was pacing the floor, and presently was prone once more, +and then once more up. +</p> +<p> +Giles, his English man, brought the doctor, and Arthur heard him +discoursing as the vehicle drew up. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir, quite so; quite so, sir. And yet I believe, sir, if h-all +money and lands was 'eld in common, the 'ole 'uman ryce would be as +'appy as the gentlemen and lydies on Bylow 'Ill!" +</p> +<p> +The young husband met the physician cheerily, sent him up, and went back +to his solitude. +</p> +<p> +An hour passed, and then Sarah Stebbens knocked and leaned in. "Mr. +Arthur!" +</p> +<p> +"What, Sarah?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh! I didn't see you. All's well, and it's a daughter." +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0017" id="h2H_4_0017"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XIII +</h2> +<h3> + BABY +</h3> +<p> +It was most pleasant, being asked by everyone, even by General Byington, +how it felt to be a grandmother. "Oh! ho, ho!" Mrs. Morris's unutilized +dimple kept itself busy to the point of positive fatigue. +</p> +<p> +Even more delightful was it, when the time came round for the totality +of her sex—the only sex worth considering—to call and see the babe and +mother, to hear them all proclaim it the prettiest infant ever seen, and +covertly pronounce Isabel more beautiful than on her wedding day. +</p> +<p> +In a way she was; and particularly when they fondly rallied her upon her +new accession of motherly practical manner, and she laughed with them, +and ended with that merry, mellow sigh which still gave Ruth new pride +in her and new hope. But another source of Ruth's new hope was that +Arthur, who had written to the bishop and resigned his calling the day +after Mrs. Morris's little namesake was born, had at length withdrawn +his letter. +</p> +<p> +"It is to your brother we owe its withdrawal," said the bishop, +privately, to Ruth. +</p> +<p> +She beamed gratefully, but did not tell him that, after the long, secret +conference between her brother and the rector, Leonard had come to her +and wept for Arthur the only tears he had ever shed in her presence. +Now Leonard had found occasion to go West for a time, though he still +held his office; and Arthur was filling the rectorate almost in the old +first way. On some small parish matter the rustic vestryman with the +spectacled daughter came to Arthur's library in better spirits than he +had shown for months, and by and by asked conjecturally, "I—eh—guess +you don't keep any babies here you're ashamed to show, do ye?" and held +his mouth very wide open. +</p> +<p> +The infinitesimal was brought. +</p> +<p> +"Well, I vum! Why, Miz. Winslow, I don't believe th' ever was a pretty +baby so puny, nor a puny baby so pretty! Now, if it's a fair question, I +hope y' ain't tryin' to push in between this baby and the keaow, be ye?" +</p> +<p> +"No," laughed Isabel. "I'm not that conceited. I should only be in the +way." +</p> +<p> +"Well," he said as they parted, shaking Arthur's hand to the end of his +speech, "I like to see a baby resemble its father, and that's what this +'n 's a-tryin' to do, jest 's hard 's she can." +</p> +<p> +So went matters for a time, and then, while the babe began to fill out +and lengthen out, Isabel showed herself daily more and more overspent. +The physician reappeared, and spoke plainly:— +</p> +<p> +"And if your cousin down South is so determined to have you at her +wedding, why, go! Leave your baby with your mother; she's older in the +business than you are." +</p> +<p> +But the cousin's wedding was weeks away yet, and Isabel clung to her wee +treasure, and temporized with the aunts and cousins in the South and +with her mother and Ruth at home, until the doctor spoke again. +</p> +<p> +"Let's see," he said to Arthur. "This is November, baby's five months +old. Send your wife away. Put her out! Something's killing her by +inches, and I believe it's just care o' the nest. We must drive her off +it, as I drove Leonard Byington off,—which, you remember, you, quietly, +were the first to suggest to me to do.... Coming back, you +say,—Byington? Yes, but only for a day or two,—election time." +</p> +<p> +It did not occur to the doctor that Arthur was secretly keeping his wife +from going anywhere. +</p> +<p> +The night Leonard came home the old pond, for the first time in the +season, froze over, and through Giles's activities it was arranged next +day that Martin Kelly, Sarah Stebbens, Minnie, and he should go down +there after supper and skate by the light of fagot fires made out on the +ice. Giles piled the fagots; but at a late moment, to the disgust of +Giles and Minnie, the older pair pitilessly changed their minds, and +decided they were too old to make such nincompoops of themselves. Minnie +would not go without Sarah, for Minnie was up to her pretty eyebrows in +love with Giles, as well as immensely correct; and so there, as it +seemed, was the end of that. +</p> +<p> +At tea Arthur told Isabel he was going for a long walk down through the +town and across the meadows, and would not be home before bedtime. +Isabel approved heartily, and said Sarah would stay near the sleeping +babe, and she would spend the evening with her mother. She and Arthur +went together as far as the cross-paths in the arbor, and there, in +parting, he clasped and kissed her with a sudden frenzy that only added +one more distressful misgiving to the many that now haunted her days. +</p> +<p> +She found her mother alone. They sat down, hand in hand, before an open +fire, and had talked in sweet quietness but a short while, when a chance +word and the knowledge that this time they would not be interrupted made +it easy for Isabel to say things she had for weeks been trying to say. +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0018" id="h2H_4_0018"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XIV +</h2> +<h3> + THE TALKATIVE LEONARD +</h3> +<p> +Across the street the father of Leonard and Ruth, already abed, lay +thinking of their tribulation and casting about in his mind for some new +move that might help to end it happily. Godfrey had not come. He had not +looked for him to appear with a hop, skip, and a jump, "a man under +authority" as he was; but here were five months gone. +</p> +<p> +"I can't clamor for him," thought he, and feared Ruth had written him +that the emergency was past. And so she had, in those days of new hope +and new suspense which had followed for a while Arthur's withdrawal of +his resignation. +</p> +<p> +At the fireside below sat Leonard and Ruth, not hand in hand, like +Isabel and her mother, yet conversing on the same theme as they. +</p> +<p> +Leonard had spent the day at the polls; his party had won an easy +victory; and, though not on the ticket, he was now awaiting a +telegraphic summons to the state capital. His fortunes were growing. +Yet that was not a thing to be wordy about, and now, when the murmur of +his voice continued so long and steadily that it found even the dulled +ear of the aged father in the upper room, that father knew what the +topic must be. On all other matters the son and brother had become more +silent than ever,—was being nicknamed far and near, flatteringly and +otherwise, for his reticence; but let Ruth sit down with him alone and +barely draw near this theme,—this wound,—and his speech bled from him +and would not be stanched. +</p> +<p> +"I can admit I have made the mistake of my life," he said, "but I cannot +and will not, even now, give up and say there is nothing to be saved out +of it. It's a mistake that has bound me to her, to you, to Godfrey, to +him, to all, and demands of me, pinioned and blindfolded as I am, every +effort I can make, every device I can contrive, to compel him to free +her and you and all of us from this torture. +</p> +<p> +"He shall not go on eating out our lives. I have dawdled with him +weakly, pitifully, but I did it in my hope to save him. I tried to save +him for his own sake, Ruth, truly,—as truly as for her sake and ours; +and I wanted to save his work with him,—his church, his and hers; so +much of it is hers. Oh, Ruth, I love that little bird-box, spite of all +its spunky beliefs and twittering complacencies. I wanted to save it and +him; and over and over there has seemed such good ground of hope in him. +It's been always so unbelievable that he should utterly fail us. +Ruth, if you could have seen his contrition the night I tore up that +shameful, servile resignation! I don't need to see Isabel to know he +is wearing the soul out of her. You needn't have answered one of my +questions,—which I honor you for answering so unwillingly; Mrs. Morris +gave me their answer in five minutes, though we talked only of +investments. And Mrs. Morris needn't have given it; to see Arthur +himself is enough. All the genuineness has gone out of the man,—out of +his words, out of his face, out of his voice. I wonder it hasn't gone +from all of us, driven out by this smirking masquerade into which he +has trapped us." +</p> +<p> +"Have you determined what to do?" asked the sister, gazing into the +fire. +</p> +<p> +"Not yet. But I sha'n't go back West. Flight doesn't avail. And, Ruth"— +</p> +<p> +"Yes, brother; you've cabled?" +</p> +<p> +"I have. He'll come at once, this time." A step on the porch drew the +speaker to the door. +</p> +<p> +The telegram from the capital had come. But until its bearer had gone +again and was out of hearing down the street the young man lingered in +the porch. His mind was wholly on that evening when Isabel had passed +with the lantern. Would she pass now? From the idle query he turned to +go in, when Ruth came out, and they stayed another moment together. +Presently their ear caught a stir at the side of the Morris cottage. +</p> +<p> +"Hmm," murmured Ruth half consciously, and, with a playful shudder at +the cold, whispered, "Come in, come in!" +</p> +<p> +But then quickly, lest this should carry a hint of distrust, she tripped +in alone, closed the door, and glided to the bright hearth. There a +moment of waiting changed her mind. She ran again to the door, and began +to say as she threw it open, "My brother! you'll catch your"— +</p> +<p> +But no brother was there. +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0019" id="h2H_4_0019"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XV +</h2> +<h3> + THE THIN ICE BREAKS +</h3> +<p> +Isabel, who had never confessed her trouble to her mother until now, had +this evening told all there was to tell. +</p> +<p> +"No, no, my dear," she said as she moved to go, "I have no dread of his +blows. I don't suppose he will ever strike me again. Ah, there's the +worst of it; he's got away, away beyond blows. I wish sometimes he'd +brain me, if only that would stop his secretly watching me. +</p> +<p> +"If he'd never gone beyond blows, I would have died before I would +have told; not for meekness, dearie, nor even for love,—of you, or my +child, or any one,—but just for pride and shame. But to know, every +day and hour, that I'm watched, and that every path I tread is full of +traps,—there's what's killing me. And I could let it kill me and never +tell, if being killed were all. But I tell you because—Oh, my poor +little mother dearie, do I wear you out, saying the same things over +and over? +</p> +<p> +"This is all I ask you to remember: that my reason for telling you is to +save the honor of my husband himself, and of you, dear heart, and of—of +my child, you know. For, mother, every innocent thing I do is being +woven into a net of criminating evidence. Sooner or later it's certain +to catch me fast and give me over, you and me and—and baby, to public +shame." +</p> +<p> +As they went toward the arbor door Isabel warily hushed, but her mother +said: "There's no one to overhear, honey-blossom; Minnie's at your house +with Sarah." +</p> +<p> +But neither was there more to be said. The daughter shut herself out, +and stood alone on the doorstep pondering what she had done. For she had +acted as well as spoken, and, without knowledge of Leonard's move, was +calling Godfrey home herself. Her mother was to send the dispatch in the +morning. +</p> + +<a name="image-0004"><!--IMG--></a> + +<div class="figure"> +<a href="images/illust-04.jpg"> +<img src="images/illust-04.jpg" width="70%" +alt="'But to know every day and hour that I'm watched.'" /></a><br /> +<b>"But to know every day and hour that I'm watched."</b> +</div> + +<p> +So standing and distressfully musing, she heard the click of the +Byingtons' door as Ruth left Leonard on the porch. But her thought went +after Arthur. Where was he? That he had honestly gone where he had said +he was going she painfully doubted. She stirred to move on, but had not +taken a step when a feminine cry of terror set her blood leaping and +sent her flying down the arbor, and where the two paths crossed she and +Leonard met at such a speed that only by seizing her with both his hands +did he avoid trampling her down. The scream was repeated again and +again. +</p> +<p> +"It's Minnie!" cried Isabel as they sprang down the path to the mill +pond; and Leonard, outrunning her, called back,— +</p> +<p> +"We'll get her out! She's not gone under!" +</p> +<p> +The next moment he, and then she, were on the scene. Minnie stood on +the firmer ice away from the bank, moaning in continued agitation, but +already rescued. It was Arthur Winslow who had saved her. +</p> +<p> +Now he gained the bank with the dripping girl, where he yielded her to +his wife, and without a word from him, from Isabel, or from Leonard to +any one but the incessantly talking maid, the four hurried up the path. +When they reached the arbor Ruth had joined them, and there the three +women turned to the cottage. Leonard passed on toward his home. Arthur +went into his own house. +</p> +<p> +In the cottage, while being hurried into dry clothes, Minnie more +coherently explained her mishap. Wishing to play a joke on Giles, she +had slipped away from the fireside company of him and Sarah to put a +match to his fagots on the pond, run back with word that they were +burning, and laugh with Sarah while Giles should plunge out to find the +incendiaries. But she had forgotten how frail good ice may be against a +warm bank, and leaping down, had promptly broken through. She had had +the fortune to hold on by the ice's outer edge until Arthur, whom she +felt sure only Providence could have sent there, drew her out. She was +tearfully ashamed, yet not so broken in spirit but she fiercely vowed +she would get even with Giles for this yet. +</p> +<p> +Leonard went to his room, Arthur to his, and each in his way shut +himself in to darkness, silence, and the fury of his own heart. +</p> +<p> +One of the things most harrowing to Leonard was that, at every turn, +the active part fell to Arthur, while him fate held mercilessly to the +passive; and his soul writhed in unworded prayer for any conceivable +turn of events that would give him leave to act, to do! +</p> +<p> +But all he could do was done. Godfrey was sent for: everything must +await his coming. Heaven hold Arthur's hand till Godfrey could come! +</p> +<p> +Ruth returned home and began to lock up the house. When, presently, she +tapped at her brother's door and looked in, he had lighted the room and +was reading his telegram. +</p> +<p> +"All right over the way," she said, and to hurry on over the grim +untruth repeated briefly Minnie's story. "Good-night. You go—to-morrow? +Well, you'll make haste back." +</p> +<p> +She left him, but later returned. +</p> +<p> +"Leonard." At the slightly opened door she thrust in her Bible, with a +finger on the line, "My soul, wait thou only upon God." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you," said the brother. "Good-night. I'm afraid we've kept Him +waiting on us." +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0020" id="h2H_4_0020"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XVI +</h2> +<h3> + MUST GIVE YOU UP +</h3> +<p> +Over on the Winslow side of the way, Isabel, having tarried in the +cottage to explain to her frightened mother how perfectly natural it was +that Arthur, after his tramp across the meadows, should have made a +circuit to the upper side of the old mill pool, went pensively home. +Presently, holding a lamp, she stood in the door between her room and +Arthur's, lifted the light above her head, and, shading her brows, +called his name. Hidden in the gloom, silent and motionless, he stared +for a moment on the beautiful apparition, and then moved without a sound +into the beams of the lamp, a picture of misery and desperation. +</p> +<p> +"Why in the dark?" amiably inquired the wife. +</p> +<p> +With widening eyes and spectral motions he drew near. +</p> +<p> +"In the dark?" he asked. "Why in the dark? The darkness is in me, and +all the lamps that light the world's ships into harbor could not dispel +it." +</p> +<p> +All at once he went to his knees. "Oh, my wife, my wife! save me, save +me! Hell is in my soul!" +</p> +<p> +She drew back, and with low vehemence urged him to his feet. "Up! up! My +husband shall not kneel to me!" +</p> +<p> +Laying her hand reverently upon his shoulder she pressed him into his +room, set the lamp aside, and let him clasp her wildly in his arms. +</p> +<p> +"Save me, Isabel," he moaned again. "Save me." +</p> +<p> +"From what, dear heart,—from what can I save you?" She drew him to a +seat and knelt beside him. +</p> +<p> +"From the green-eyed demon that has gnawed, gnawed, gnawed at my heart +till it is rent to shreds, and at my brain—my brain!—till it is almost +gone." His brow drooped to hers. "Almost gone, beloved; my brain is +almost gone." +</p> +<p> +"No, Arthur, dearest, no, no, no; your heart is torn, but your mind, +thank God, is whole. This is only a mood. Come, it will pass with one +night's sleep." +</p> +<p> +Still he held her brow beneath his. "Save me, Isabel; my soul is almost +gone. Oh, save me from the fiends that come before me and behind me, by +night and by day, eyes shut or eyes open." +</p> +<p> +"My husband! my love! how can I save you? How can I help you? Tell me +how." +</p> +<p> +"Hear me! hear me confess! That will save me, oh, so sweetly, so +sweetly! That will save me from the faces—the white, white faces that +float on that black pool down yonder, and move their accusing lips at +me: <i>his</i> face—and mine—and thine. Oh, Isabel, until you stood +before me in the golden light of your lamp, transfigured into a +messenger from heaven, it was in my lost soul to do the deed this +night." +</p> +<p> +The wife laid her palms upon her husband's temples, and putting forth +her strength lifted them and looked tenderly into his eyes. +</p> +<p> +"Dear heart, you do not frighten me. You know how unaccountably fear +deserts me in fearful moments. But I know there's nothing for either of +us to fear now. This is all in your tortured imagination, and there, +though you had not seen me, it would have stayed; you never would have +come to the act. Arthur, your soul is not lost. You who have pointed the +way of escape and deliverance so clearly and savingly to so many, you +need not miss it now yourself." +</p> +<p> +"Idle words, Isabel,—idle, idle words. The very words of Christ are +idle to me until I give you up." +</p> +<p> +"Give me up, my husband? Dear love, you cannot! You shall not! I will +not be given up. You haven't the cause, and I haven't the cause." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, Isabel, I stole you! And the curse of God has gone with the theft, +and with every step of the thief, from the first day till now. From the +first day until now God has lifted that other man up and brought me +down. And yet, before God who said, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's +wife, he loves you this moment—now!—with the love of a man for a +woman." +</p> +<p> +"Arthur, no! If he did"— +</p> +<p> +"Isabel, if he did not—if he did not love you yet as before he lost +you—oh! if he did not love you infinitely more now than then—he would +not be Leonard Byington. That is all my evidence, all my argument, all +the ground of my hate; and I hate him with a hatred that has +finished—finished!—with my heart, and is devouring my brain." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, my poor husband, listen to"— +</p> +<p> +"Listen to me!" he broke in. "Listen before I lose the blessed impulse +to say there is but one cure. I must give you up to Leonard Byington. +Oh, let me speak! I took you from him by law; by law I will give you +back." +</p> +<p> +"Do you mean divorce, Arthur?" +</p> +<p> +"I do." +</p> +<p> +"On what ground?" +</p> +<p> +"On the ground of ill treatment. You shall bring suit; I will plead +guilty." +</p> +<p> +She rose, with his temples still in her hands. "Ah! whose words are idle +now?" +</p> +<p> +She bent over him with eyes of passionate kindness. "You did not take me +from him. You asked me to take you, and for better for worse, till death +us do part, I took you, Arthur, knowing as much of any other man's love +for me as I know at this hour. You could not steal me; the shame would +be mine, to have let you. You are no thief! I am no stolen thing! You +shall be happy with me; you shall not give me up!" +</p> +<p> +He leaped to his feet and snatched her into his arms. The babe cried +sleepily from its mother's room. She tenderly disengaged herself, left +him in the door, moved on to the child's crib, and in the dim light of +the bedside taper, facing him from beyond it, soothed the little one by +her silent touch. +</p> +<p> +To Arthur, wan and frail though she was, the sight was heavenly fair, a +vision of ineffable peace to which it seemed a sacrilege to draw nearer; +but she beckoned, and he stole to the spot. With the quieted babe in its +crib between them, the pair knit arms about each other's neck and +kissed. +</p> +<p> +"My own! my own at last!" murmured the husband. "I never had you until +now!" +</p> +<p> +"The cure has worked, dear heart," breathed the wife,—"worked without +surgery, has it not?" +</p> +<p> +"The cure has worked," he replied,—"worked without the sacrifice. Oh, +the sudden sweet ease of it!" +</p> +<p> +Whispering a fervent good-night in response to hers, he covered her head +and brows with caresses; then stole away with eyes still fastened on +her, and at the dividing threshold waved a last parting and closed the +door. +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0021" id="h2H_4_0021"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XVII +</h2> +<h3> + SLEEP, OF A SORT +</h3> +<p> +Isabel went to her couch in great heaviness and agitation. Her sad +confidings to her mother, Minnie's adventure, Arthur's pitiful if not +alarming condition, she strove to reconsider duly and in their order; +but perpetually there interfered, with its every smallest detail +thrillingly clear and strong, that moment which had thrown her once more +into the company, tossed her into the very clutch, of Leonard Byington. +She turned her face into her pillow and prayed God for other thoughts +and visions, and at length, while charging herself to see her mother in +time to postpone the sending of her dispatch to Godfrey, she slept. +</p> +<p> +Sleep, of a sort, came also to Arthur, though not before many an evil +imagination had come back to tease and sting his galled mind. +</p> +<p> +What chafed oftenest was the fact that Isabel, had he allowed it, would +have sought to argue down his belief that Leonard loved her. Great +heaven! what must be her feeling toward him, that she should offer to +argue such a question? She might truly deny all knowledge of his +passion, but oh, where were her quick outcries of womanly abhorrence? +Where was the word that Leonard Byington was no more to her than any +other man,—that word which would have been the first to flash from her +if conscience had not stopped it? Twice he sprang up in his bed, +whispering: "They love! They love! Each knows it of the other! They +love!" +</p> +<p> +The second time, as he stared, suddenly he saw them! They stood just +beyond the foot of his couch, wrapped in each other's arms. Choking with +wrath, freezing with horror, he slid to the floor; but at his first step +they floated apart. Isabel glided toward her own door, fading as she +went, and dissolved in a broad moonbeam. Leonard, as he receded, grew +every instant more real, until, at his pursuer's second step, he melted +through a window and was gone. Arthur sprang to the spot and stared out +and down; but all he saw was the moon, the frosty night, and the silent, +motionless garden. +</p> +<p> +With a whisper of fierce purpose he turned and noiselessly threw on his +clothes, then clutched his head in his hands in a wild effort to recall +what the purpose was, and by and by lay quietly down again on his bed. +He could not recollect; but the inner tumult quieted more and more, and +after a time, without putting off any part of his dress, he drew the +bedcovers over himself, and in a few moments was partially asleep. So +for an hour or more he lay in half-waking dreams, ghastly with phantoms +and breathless with dismay of his own ferocious strivings. Then he rose +once more, and, with the noiselessness which habit had perfected, left +his room, moved down the upper hall and the stair, and let himself out +into the garden. Wadded in his arms he bore one or two of the coverings +from his bed. He took his way to the pond. +</p> +<p> +He was walking in his sleep. +</p> +<p> +At an earlier day Isabel would have been awakened by her husband's +softest movement; but now, used to his stirrings, weary in body and +mind, and in some degree reassured, she slept on unstartled until +Arthur's return. +</p> +<p> +He came as silently as he had gone, and was empty-handed. He had tied a +great stone in the two bed-coverings, and through the thin new ice of +the hole where Minnie had broken in had sunk them in the black depth +under the shelving rock. He was still asleep. +</p> +<p> +The door between the two chambers gave a faint sound as he opened it, +yet neither mother nor child moved. A moment passed, and he had reached +the bed. Another went by, and Isabel was awake, wildly but vainly trying +to scream, to rise. A knee was on her bosom, two hands grappled her +throat, and two out-starting eyes were close to hers. Her husband was +strangling her. +</p> +<p> +Then he too awoke. With a horrified cry he recoiled, and she, for the +first time in her life in a transport of terror, hurled him, in the +strength of her frenzy, to the farther side of the bed, and writhing out +on the opposite side, crept under it and lay still. In a torture of +bewilderment and remorse Arthur buried his face in the bedside. Then, +helpless to distinguish what he had done from what he had dreamed, he +sprang back to the place where Isabel had lain sleeping, and lo, it was +empty. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, was it thou, was it thou?" he wailed, in a stifled voice. "Was it +not he?" +</p> +<p> +Whispering and moaning her name, hearkening and groping, he sought her +from corner to corner, first of her room and then of his own, and then +went to the hall and to other rooms in the same harrowing quest. +</p> +<p> +Isabel crept forth and darted to her babe. Yet as she leaned to take it +in her arms her better judgment told her the child was safe. The husband +too, and every one beside, were safer from his jealous wrath while the +babe remained. With one anguished knitting of her hands over it she left +it, and fled in her night-dress. Arthur's course was made plain by his +moanings, and easily avoiding him, she glided down a back stair, out +into the arbor, and across to her mother's cottage and bed-chamber. As +she did so he returned hurriedly to his room, with low cries of less +wretched conviction, and looked eagerly under his bed and then under +hers. Thereupon the last hope died, and he dropped to his face on the +floor in abject agony. +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0022" id="h2H_4_0022"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XVIII +</h2> +<h3> + MISSING +</h3> +<p> +After a time a new conjecture brought him to his feet. To solve it he +would go to the pond. If he had truly been there and done this appalling +thing, he would know it by the empty imprint of the boulder he had taken +from its resting place of years. If he had not, then Isabel had fled to +her mother and would be found with her in the morning, and the blot of +her murder, though it blackened his soul, was yet not on his hands. +</p> +<p> +He went to the water, and soon he came again with the step and face of +one called out of his grave. Slowly he counted the disordered coverings +of his wife's couch, stood a moment in desolate perplexity, and then +went quickly and counted those of his own. A sheet and a blanket were +gone. He turned to a closet and supplied the lack, and then paced the +floor until dawn. +</p> +<p> +Before the servants were fairly astir he laid away the clothing Isabel +had put off, and contrived to leave the house and pass through the arbor +unseen until he reached its farther end; but there Mrs. Morris, in a +dressing gown, opened to him before he could knock. She forced her usual +laugh, but he saw the white preparedness of her face. +</p> +<p> +"She knows my crime," he thought, and was in agony to guess how she had +got the knowledge and what she would do with it. +</p> +<p> +"Why, Arthur," she sweetly began, "what brings you"—But her throat +closed. +</p> +<p> +"Mother," he interrupted emotionally as they shut themselves in, "is +Isabel here?" +</p> +<p> +"Isabel?—No-o! Why—why, Arthur, she went home last night before ten +o'clock!" The little lady knew her acting was not good, but it was +better than she had hoped to make it. "Arthur Winslow! don't tell me my +child is not at home! Oh, my heavens!" +</p> +<p> +"Wait, mother; listen. I beseech you. Do you absolutely know she's not +here?" +</p> +<p> +"I know it! Oh, Arthur, are you only trying to break bad news to me by +littles? Has Isabel destroyed herself? Has she fled?" The inquirer +played well now; her pallor, that had seemed to accuse him, was gone, +and her question offered a cue which he greedily took. +</p> +<p> +"Fled? Isabel! Destroyed herself,—that spotless soul? Oh no, no, no! +But Oh merciful God! I am afraid she has been stolen!" He sank into a +seat and dropped his face into his hands. +</p> +<p> +The maid's steps sounded overhead, and he started up. Mrs. Morris laid a +hand on his arm. She was pale again, but her words were reassuring. +</p> +<p> +"It's Minnie," she murmured: "let me go and see her. She'll not be +surprised; I'm always the first one up." She went, and was soon back +again. +</p> +<p> +"There is no time to lose"—Arthur began. +</p> +<p> +"No, you must go. Go search for every clue that will tell us a word of +her; but, whatever you do, let no one, not even Sarah, know she is +missing, until we know enough ourselves to protect her from every shadow +of reproach!" +</p> +<p> +"True! true! right! right!" said Arthur, while with secret terror he +cried to himself: "This woman knows! She knows, she knows, and all this +is make-believe, put on to gain time!" +</p> +<p> +But he saw no safer course than to help on the sham. "Right," he said +again; "only, mother, dear, how shall we hide her absence?" +</p> +<p> +"We needn't hide it. You know she got another telegram last night, +begging her to come at once to the wedding. We can say she went on this +morning's train, before day; it makes such good Southern connections. +And now go! make your search with all your might! and after a while I'll +come over and pack a trunk full of her things, and express it South, +just as if she were there, and had gone so hurriedly that—Don't you +see?" +</p> +<p> +Arthur said he saw it all, but he did not; he saw much that was not, +and much that was he saw not. He did not see that the dust of the old +street, and of the new town as well, was on Mrs. Morris's shoes; and +that Isabel, in a gown which she had left at the cottage when she went +to be mistress of his home, was really on the train, bound South. +</p> +<p> +Dropping all pretence of having any search to make, he hurried back to +his own room, and by and by told the pleasantly astonished Sarah and +Giles the simple truth as Mrs. Morris had put it into his mouth, but +told it in the firm belief that he was covering a hideous crime with an +all but transparent lie. +</p> +<p> +After a false show of breakfasting he went into his study,—"to work on +his sermon," he said; but did nothing there but pace the floor, hold his +head, and whisper, "It will not last an hour after <i>he</i> has heard +it," and, "O God, have mercy! Oh, my wife, my wife! Oh, my brain, my +brain!" +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0023" id="h2H_4_0023"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XIX +</h2> +<h3> + A DOUBLE STILL HUNT +</h3> +<p> +Mrs. Morris's task was too large for her. She had always taken such +care of her innocence that her cultivation of the virtues had been only +incidental. Hence, morally, she had more fat than fibre; and hence +again, though to her mind guilt was horrible, publicity was so much +worse that her first and ruling impulse toward any evil doing not her +own was to conceal it. That was her form of worldliness, the only fault +she felt certain she was free from. And here she was, without a helping +hand or a word of counsel, laboring to hide from the servants and from +the dear Byingtons, from the church and from a scoffing world, the +hideous fact that Isabel was a fugitive from the murderous wrath of a +jealous husband, and that the rector of All Angels had crumbled into +moral ruin. +</p> +<p> +"And oh," she cried, "is it the worst of it, or is it the best of it, +that in this awful extremity he keeps so sane, so marvellously sane?" +She said this the oftener because every few hours some new sign to the +contrary forced itself upon her notice. Oblivion was her cure-all. +</p> +<p> +For a while after his conference with Mrs. Morris Arthur made some +feeble show—for her eye alone—of looking after clews, and then, as +much to her joy as to her amazement, told her it was a part of his +detective strategy to return into his study, and seemingly to his +ordinary work, until time would allow certain unfoldings for which he +looked with confidence. +</p> +<p> +"Have you found out anything?" she asked, with a glaringly false +eagerness that gave him a new panic of suspicion and whetted his +cunning. +</p> +<p> +He said he had, but must beg her not to ask yet what it was. Then he +inquired if any neighbor had left town that morning for Boston, and her +heart rose into her throat as she marked the subtlety he could not keep +out of his dark face. +</p> +<p> +"Why, ye—yes—n—no, no one that I know of ex—except Leonard +Byington," she replied, and thought, "If he should accuse Leonard, we +are undone!" +</p> +<p> +To avoid that risk she would have told him, then and there, all she +knew, had she not feared she might draw his rage upon herself for aiding +the wife's flight. She must, must, must keep on good terms with him till +she and Isabel could somehow get the child. So passed the awful hours, +mother and husband each marvelling in agony over the ghastly puzzle of +the other's apathy. +</p> +<p> +Later in the day she knocked timorously at his study door. She had come +with a silly little proposition that he let her take the infant and go +South as if to join Isabel. Thus the trunk would not lie in the express +office down there, unclaimed and breeding awkward inquiries, and she +from that point, with him at this, could keep up the illusion they had +invented until Isabel herself should—eh—return! +</p> +<p> +But when he let her in, he stood before her a silent embodiment of such +remorse and foreboding that she could have burst into sobs and cries. +</p> +<p> +Yet she broached her plan, trembling visibly, while he heard her through +with melancholy deference. +</p> +<p> +In reply he commended it, but called to her notice how much better it +would be for her to go alone. Then the babe, left behind, would be an +unspoken yet most eloquent guarantee that its mother would soon +reappear. +</p> +<p> +"Very true," responded the emboldened lady; "yet on the other hand"— +</p> +<p> +He put out an interrupting touch. "The child is as safe with me as if it +were in its mother's bosom." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, it isn't so much a question of safety as"— +</p> +<p> +The father interrupted again, with a gleam in his eyes like the +outflashing of a knife. "I hold the child against all comers, and would +if I had to slay its mother to do it." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Morris stifled an outcry and would have left him, but he would not +let her. +</p> +<p> +"Stay! Oh, listen to a soul in torment! The babe is already motherless. +Isabel can never return, mother; she is with the dead. I am not waiting +idly here for her; I am waiting busily—for her slayer. He has fled; but +when he sees he is not pursued he will come back to the spot,—to the +black, black hole. He cannot help it. I <i>know</i> that. Oh, how well I +know it! And the moment he comes he is caught,—caught in the web of +proofs I am weaving!" +</p> +<p> +He held her arm and gazed into her gazing eyes in ferocious fear of the +web she might be weaving for him; while she, reeling sick with fear of +him, tried with all her shaken wits to sham an impassioned accord. +</p> +<p> +"And you <i>will</i> wait?" she exclaimed approvingly. "You will not +stir till the thing is sure?" +</p> +<p> +He would not stir till the thing was sure. +</p> + +<a name="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a> + +<div class="figure"> +<a href="images/illust-05.jpg"> +<img src="images/illust-05.jpg" width="70%" +alt="'I am waiting busily for her slayer.'" /></a><br /> +<b>"I am waiting busily for her slayer."</b> +</div> + +<p> +As soon as it was dark enough to slip over to the Byingtons' unseen, she +went, bearing to Ruth Isabel's apologetic good-bys, trying her small +best to play at words with the General, and quickly getting away again, +grateful for a breath of their atmosphere, though distressfully +convinced that Ruth had divined the whole trouble, through the joy +betrayed by herself on hearing that Leonard would be away for a week. +</p> +<p> +She went home and slept like a weary child, and neither the next day nor +the next, nor the next, was so awful as this first had been; they lacked +the crackle and glare, and the crash, of the burning and falling temple. +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0024" id="h2H_4_0024"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XX +</h2> +<h3> + A DOUBLE RETURN +</h3> +<p> +Let us not attempt the picture of Isabel keeping the happy guise of a +wedding guest among her kindred and childhood playmates while her heart +burned with perpetual misery, yearning, and alarm. "My baby, my baby!" +cried her breast, while the babe slept sweetly under faultless care. +</p> +<p> +Nor need we draw a close portrait of her husband's mind, if mind it +could longer be called. A horror of sleep, a horror of being awake and +aware, remorse, phantoms, voices, sudden blazings of wrath as suddenly +gone, sweating panics, that craven care of life which springs so rank as +the soul decays, and a steady, cunning determination to keep whole the +emptied shell of reputation and rank,—these were the things that filled +his hours by day, by night; these, and a frightful expectance of one +accusing, child-claiming ghost that never came. The air softened to +Indian summer; the ice faded off the pool; a million leaves, crimson and +bronze, scarlet and gold, dropped tenderly upon its silvering breadth +and lay still; and both the joyless master of the larger house and the +merry maid of the cottage asked Heaven impatiently if the pond would +never freeze over again. +</p> +<p> +It was Saturday afternoon when Giles, asked by Sarah Stebbens where Mr. +Arthur was, told her he was again, as he had been so many times the last +three days, down by the water, sitting at the edge of the overhanging +bank; or, as the Englishman expressed it, "'dreamink the 'appy hours +aw'y.'" So the week passed out; a second came in, and the rector of All +Angels went to his sacred office. +</p> +<p> +He knew, before he appeared in the chancel, that Mrs. Morris was in her +accustomed place, and Ruth and her father in theirs, and that Leonard +was not yet reported back nor looked for; but exactly as he began to +read, "'Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us, in sundry +places, to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness, and +that we should not dissemble nor cloak them before the face of Almighty +God our heavenly Father'"—a sickness filled Mrs. Morris's frame, a +deathly hue overspread the minister's face, and Leonard came in and sat +beside his father and sister. +</p> +<p> +Yet the service went on. The people knelt. +</p> +<p> +"'Almighty and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy +ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires +of our own hearts'"— +</p> +<p> +Thus far the rector's voice had led, but here it sank, and the old +General's, in a measure, took its place. +</p> +<p> +Then it rose again, in the confession, "There is no health in us," and +in the supplication, "Have mercy upon us, miserable offenders." +</p> +<p> +There once more it failed, while the people, faltering with distress, +repeated, "That we may hereafter lead a godly, righteous, and sober +life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen." +</p> +<p> +At this the farmer with the spectacled daughter stepped nimbly over the +rail and caught Arthur as he rose and staggered. Leonard was hurrying +forward, and half the people kneeling, half standing, when Mrs. Morris +vacantly stopped his way with a face so aghast and words so confused +that he had to give her over to Ruth. Then he hastened on to where +Arthur was being led into the vestry by his physician and others. +</p> +<p> +But now he was turned back by the doctor, requesting him to dismiss the +congregation; which he did, with the physician's assurance that the +trouble was no more than vertigo, and that Arthur was even now quite +able to proceed home in the farmer vestryman's rockaway. The people +noticed that the physician went with him. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Morris followed on foot with the farmer's daughter, and with Ruth +and the General, and Leonard went into town to telegraph Isabel, in her +mother's name, to come home. As he was starting, Mrs. Morris drew Ruth +aside and whispered something about Godfrey. To which Ruth softly +replied, with an affectionate twist in her smile, "It couldn't hurry +him; he's already on the way." +</p> +<p> +In the room next that in which her son-in-law lay asleep under anodynes +the little mother's odd laugh was turned all to moan. "Oh!—ho—ho!" she +sighed in solitude, "if Arthur could have learned from Godfrey how to +wait, or even if Isabel could but have learned from Ruth how to keep one +waiting!" +</p> +<p> +She paused at a window that looked over the garden and into the street. +Leonard passed. She turned quickly away, only sighing again, +"Oh!—ho—ho!" Her thought might have been kinder had she known he was +stabbing himself at every step with blame of all this woe. +</p> +<p> +"I ought to have foreseen," was his constant silent cry. "I am the one +who ought to have foreseen." +</p> +<p> +Lack of Sunday trains and two failures to connect kept Isabel from +arriving until nightfall of the third day, Wednesday. Arthur knew Mrs. +Morris had telegraphed for her; but to him that was only part of the +play under which he thought he and she were hiding the frightful truth. +</p> +<p> +On this day he had so outwitted his village physician as to be given the +freedom for which he ravened; liberty to take the air in his garden, as +understood by the doctor, but by him liberty to stand guard down at the +edge of that dark pool which would not freeze over,—liberty to take an +air sweet with the odors of the parting year, but crowded also with +distended eyes and strangling groans. +</p> +<p> +He was down there in the early starlight when Ruth drove softly into the +garden, bringing Isabel. Warily the mother came out into the pillared +porch, and silently received the house's mistress into her arms. +</p> +<p> +"He doesn't know," she said. "I couldn't tell him till you should come, +for fear of disappointing him." +</p> +<p> +The argument seemed strained, but no one said so, and with a whispered +good-night Ruth drove away, and the two went in. As they stole upstairs +they debated how Isabel had best reveal herself. "I'm terribly afraid +that won't work, blessing," said Mrs. Morris; "you'd better let me break +it to him, first." +</p> +<p> +"No, dearie, I don't think so. I haven't the shadow of a fear"— +</p> +<p> +"Oh, my darling child, you never have!" +</p> +<p> +"But I know him so well, mother. We have only to come unexpectedly face +to face and—Oh, I've seen the effect so often!" They entered her room +whispering: "I'll change this dress for the one he last saw me in, and +stand over here by the crib where I stood then, and—Oh, sweet Heaven! +is this my little flower sleeping just as I left her?" With clasped +hands and tearful eyes she bent over the child. +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0025" id="h2H_4_0025"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXI +</h2> +<h3> + EVENING RED +</h3> +<p> +Then she began to unrobe, but stopped to throw her arms about her +mother's neck. +</p> +<p> +"Now, dearly beloved, you hurry away down the path and persuade him up +and send him in. I'm only afraid you'll find him chilled half to death, +it's growing cold so fast. And you can follow in after him, dearie, if +you wish,—only not too close." +</p> +<p> +The mother went, and had got no farther than the cross-path when she +came all at once upon the master of the house. +</p> +<p> +"Oh! ho, ho! here you are! I was just—Arthur, dear, where is your +overcoat? Do go right up to your room, my son, till I can get Sarah +to have a fire started in the library." She multiplied words in pure +affright, so drawn was his face with anguish, and so wild his eyes +with aimless consternation. +</p> +<p> +Without reply he passed in and went upstairs. Mrs. Morris remained +below. +</p> +<p> +Isabel's heart beat fast. She had made her change of dress, and in a far +corner of her room, with her face toward the open door that let into +his, was again leaning with a mother's ecstasy over the sleeping babe, +when she heard his step. +</p> +<p> +It came to his outer door, which from her place could not be seen. +</p> +<p> +Did he stop, and stand there? No, he had not stopped; he was only moving +softly, for the child's sake. +</p> +<p> +She stood motionless, listening and looking with her whole soul, and +wishing the light were less dim in this shadowy corner, but knowing +there was enough to show her to him when he should reach the nearer +door. The endless moment wore away, and there on the threshold he +stood—if that—Oh merciful God!—if that was Arthur Winslow. +</p> +<p> +His eyes fell instantly upon her, yet he made neither motion nor sound, +only stayed and stared, while an unearthly terror came into his face. +</p> +<p> +Care of the child kept her silent, but in solemn tenderness she lifted +her arms toward him. +</p> +<p> +He uttered a freezing shriek and fled. In an instant his tread was +resounding in the hall, then on two or three steps of the stair as she +hurried after, and then there came a long, tumbling fall, her mother's +wail in the hail below, and a hoarse cry of dismay from Giles as he +rushed out of the library. +</p> +<p> +"He's only stunned, mum," Giles was saying as Isabel reached the spot. +"He's no more nor just stunned, mum." +</p> +<p> +He had lifted the fallen man's head and shoulders, and Mrs. Stebbens +came, dropping to her knees and sprinkling water into the still, white +face. +</p> +<p> +Isabel threw herself between. +</p> +<a name="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a> + +<div class="figure"> +<a href="images/illust-06.jpg"> +<img src="images/illust-06.jpg" width="100%" +alt="'Arthur! Arthur! Can't you speak?'" /></a><br /> +<b>"Arthur! Arthur! Can't you speak?"</b> +</div> + +<p> +"Arthur! Arthur! can't you speak? Oh, let us move him into the library!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, um!" exclaimed Giles. "'E'll come to in there; you can see 'e's +only stunned." +</p> +<p> +He tried to raise him, and Isabel and Sarah moved to help; but the wife +turned on hearing Ruth's voice at her side, and Leonard Byington lifted +the limp man in his arms unaided, and bore him to the library lounge. +</p> +<p> +"Arthur," he pleaded, with arms still under him, "can't you speak to us, +dear boy? Say at least good-by, can't you, Arthur?" He parted the +clothing from neck and breast, and laid an ear to his heart. +</p> +<p> +"Do you hear it, Leonard?" cried the wife. "Oh, you do hear it, don't +you, Leonard?" +</p> +<p> +There was no answer. For a moment Leonard's own form relaxed, and he +turned his face and buried it in the unresponsive breast. Then he lifted +it again, and taking the other face between his hands he sank his brow +to the brow upturned and cried: "God rest your soul, Arthur! Oh, Arthur, +Arthur, God rest your soul!" +</p> +<a name="h2H_4_0026" id="h2H_4_0026"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXII +</h2> +<h3> + MORNING GRAY +</h3> +<p> +Mrs. Morris gave the physician her account of the accident, the +physician gave the reporters his, and no other ever got into the old +street or the town it looks down upon with such sweet superiority. +</p> +<p> +Said the rustic vestryman to another pall-bearer, as they turned toward +their homes, "Many's the time All Angels's been craowded, but I never +see it craowded as 'twas this time." +</p> +<p> +The new mound was white under January snows when Godfrey and Isabel +first stood beside it together; and when summer had come and gone again, +and at last the time drew near when, by the regular alternations of the +service, the ocean wanderer's three years afloat were to be followed by +three ashore, it was beside that mound that Ruth let him ask the +long-withheld question. +</p> +<p> +And once more the new year followed the old. +</p> +<p> +On one of its earliest days, "I cal'late," a certain somebody began to +say to General Byington, "th' never was a happier weddin' so quiet, nor +a qui—" But he caught the sheen of his daughter's spectacles and +forebore. +</p> +<p> +And still moved on the heavenly procession of the seasons; and as each +new one passed with smile and song, and strewed its flowers or fruits +on Bylow Hill, the memory of one who after life's fitful fever slept +soundly at last was ever a sweet forgetting of all that had once been +bitter, and a sweeter and sweeter remembrance of whatsoever things had +been pure, lovely, and of good report. +</p> +<p> +One day the travelling salesman of fruit trees came again. This time he +met Minnie, some of whose information puzzled him. +</p> +<p> +"But I thought you said the young Mrs. Winslow lived in the large house +on this side." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, but that's the other one; that's Mrs. Isabel Winslow, the widow. +Captain Winslow, he's so much o' the time to the navy yard that him and +his wife they just keep their home along with her father and Mr. +Leonard." +</p> +<p> +"And who is it that, I understand, a Mr. Giles over here is about to +marry?" +</p> +<p> +For reply Minnie covered her mouth and nose with her hand, sputtered, +and shut the door in his face. +</p> +<p> +Another year went by, yet another followed, and still Ruth—daughter, +sister, wife, and mother—remained the happy mistress of the house in +which she was born, and Leonard remained one of her household. Mrs. +Morris turned the cottage over to Mr. and Mrs. Giles—hem!—and dwelt in +the Winslow house with Isabel; who, even the young said, grew more +beautiful and lovable all the time. +</p> +<p> +But there came a day, after all,—year uncertain,—when Leonard, with +Mrs. Morris's little namesake on his knee, asked Isabel if she did not +think it would be well for him to go away for a while; and Isabel +murmured no. +</p> +<p> +So by and by the Winslow pair went to live in the Winslow house, and the +Byington pair in the Byington house; and if you listen well, you may +hear an aged voice, a voice with a brogue, saying:— +</p> +<p> +"Ay! there's a Linnard Winslow, now, and there's a Godfrey Boyington. +And there's still an Isable Winslow and a Ruth Boyington. But the mother +of Ruth Boyington is she that wor Isable Winslow, moy graciouz! and the +mother of Isable Winslow is she that wor Ruth Boyington. And so there +be's an Isable in the wan house and an Isable in th' other; and there +be's a Ruth in the wan house and a Ruth in th' other, moy graciouz! and +there's an Airthur in each, whatsomiver!" +</p> +<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BYLOW HILL***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 14575-h.txt or 14575-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/5/7/14575">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/5/7/14575</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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C. Yohn + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Bylow Hill + +Author: George Washington Cable + +Release Date: January 3, 2005 [eBook #14575] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BYLOW HILL*** + + +E-text prepared by David Garcia and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 14575-h.htm or 14575-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/5/7/14575/14575-h/14575-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/5/7/14575/14575-h.zip) + + + + + +BYLOW HILL + +by + +GEORGE W. CABLE + +With Illustrations by F. C. Yohn + +Charles Scribner's Sons +New York + +MCMII + + + + + + + +[Illustration: "Father," laughed the daughter, "isn't this rather +youngish?"] + + + + +CONTENTS + + + I. RUTH AND GODFREY + II. ISABEL + III. ARTHUR AND LEONARD + IV. AND BRING DOWN THE REMAINDER + V. SKY AND POOL + VI. IN THE PUBLIC EYE + VII. THE HOUR STRIKES + VIII. GIVE YOU FIVE MINUTES + IX. THE YOUNG YEAR SMILES + X. THE STORM REGATHERS + XI. HAS IT COME TO THIS? + XII. THE LANTERN QUENCHED + XIII. BABY + XIV. THE TALKATIVE LEONARD + XV. THE THIN ICE BREAKS + XVI. MUST GIVE YOU UP + XVII. SLEEP, OF A SORT + XVIII. MISSING + XIX. A DOUBLE STILL HUNT + XX. A DOUBLE RETURN + XXI. EVENING RED + XXII. MORNING GRAY + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + +"Father," laughed the daughter, "isn't this rather youngish?" +(Frontispiece) + +Indeed it was clear that to go away would be unfair. + +"Arthur Winslow, I give you five minutes." + +"But to know every day and hour that I'm watched." + +"I am waiting busily for her slayer." + +"Arthur! Arthur! can't you speak?" + + + + + +I + +RUTH AND GODFREY + + +The old street, keeping its New England Sabbath afternoon so decently +under its majestic elms, was as goodly an example of its sort as the +late seventies of the century just gone could show. It lay along a +north-and-south ridge, between a number of aged and unsmiling cottages, +fronting on cinder sidewalks, and alternating irregularly with about as +many larger homesteads that sat back in their well-shaded gardens with +kindlier dignity and not so grim a self-assertion. Behind, on the west, +these gardens dropped swiftly out of sight to a hidden brook, from the +farther shore of which rose the great wooded hill whose shelter from the +bitter northwest had invited the old Puritan founders to choose the spot +for their farming village of one street, with a Byington and a Winslow +for their first town officers. In front, eastward, the land declined +gently for a half mile or so, covered, by modern prosperity, with a +small, stanch town, and bordered by a pretty river winding among meadows +of hay and grain. At the northern end, instead of this gentle decline, +was a precipitous cliff side, close to whose brow a wooden bench, that +ran half-way round a vast sidewalk tree, commanded a view of the valley +embracing nearly three-quarters of the compass. + +In civilian's dress, and with only his sea-bronzed face and the polished +air of a pivot gun to tell that he was of the navy, Lieutenant Godfrey +Winslow was slowly crossing the rural way with Ruth Byington at his +side. He had the look of, say, twenty-eight, and she was some four years +his junior. From her father's front gate they were passing toward the +large grove garden of the young man's own home, on the side next the +hill and the sunset. On the front porch, where the two had just left +him, sat the war-crippled father of the girl, taking pride in the +placidity of the face she once or twice turned to him in profile, +and in the buoyancy of her movements and pose. + +His fond, unspoken thought went after her, that she was hiding some care +again,--her old, sweet trick, and her mother's before her. + +He looked on to Godfrey. "There's endurance," he thought again. "You +ought to have taken him long ago, my good girl, if you want him at all." +And here his reflections faded into the unworded belief that she would +have done so but for his, her own father's, being in the way. + +The pair stopped and turned half about to enjoy the green-arched vista +of the street, and Godfrey said, in a tone that left his companion no +room to overlook its personal intent, "How often, in my long absences, +I see this spot!" + +"You wouldn't dare confess you didn't," was her blithe reply. + +"Oh yes, I should. I've tried not to see it, many a time." + +"Why, Godfrey Winslow!" she laughed. "That was very wrong!" + +"It was very useless," said the wanderer, "for there was always the same +one girl in the midst of the picture; and that's the sort a man can +never shut out, you know. I don't try to shut it out any more, Ruth." + +The girl spoke more softly. "I wish I could know where Leonard is," she +mused aloud. + +"Did you hear me, Ruth? I say I don't try any more, now." + +"Well, that's right! I wonder where that brother of mine is?" + +The baffled lover had to call up his patience. "Well, that's right, +too," he laughed; "and I wonder where that brother of mine is? I wonder +if they're together?" + +They moved on, but at the stately entrance of the Winslow garden they +paused again. The girl gave her companion a look of distress, and the +young man's brow darkened. "Say it," he said. "I see what it is." + +"You speak of Arthur"--she began. + +"Well?" + +"What did you make out of his sermon this morning?" + +"Why, Ruth, I--What did you make out of it?" + +"I made out that the poor boy is very, very unhappy." + +"Did you? Well, he is; and in a certain way I'm to blame for it." + +The girl's smile was tender. "Was there ever anything the matter with +Arthur, and you didn't think you were in some way to blame for it?" + +"Oh, now, don't confuse me with Leonard. Anyhow, I'm to blame this time! +Has Isabel told you anything, Ruth?" + +"Yes, Isabel has told me!" + +"Told you they are engaged?" + +"Told me they are engaged!" + +"Well," said the young man, "Arthur told me last night; and I took an +elder brother's liberty to tell him he had played Leonard a vile trick." + +"Godfrey!" + +"That would make a much happier nature than Arthur's unhappy, wouldn't +it?" + +Ruth was too much pained to reply, but she turned and called cheerily, +"Father, do you know where Leonard is?" + +The father gathered his voice and answered huskily, laying one hand upon +his chest, and with the other gesturing up by the Winslow elm to the +grove behind it. + +She nodded. "Yes!... With Arthur, you say?... Yes!... Thank you!... +Yes!" She passed with Godfrey through the wide gate. + +"That's like Leonard," said the lover. "He'll tell Arthur he hasn't done +a thing he hadn't a perfect right to do." + +"And Arthur has not, Godfrey. He has only been less chivalrous than we +should have liked him to be. If he had been first in the field, and +Leonard had come in and carried her off, you would have counted it a +perfect mercy all round." + +"Ho-oh! it would have been! Leonard would have made her happy. Arthur +never can, and she can never make him so. But what he has done is not +all: look how he did it! Leonard was his beloved and best friend"-- + +"Except his brother Godfrey"-- + +"Except no one, Ruth, unless it's you. I'm neither persuasive nor kind, +nor often with him. Proud of him I was, and never prouder than when I +knew him to be furiously in love with her, while yet, for pure, sweet +friendship's sake, he kept standing off, standing off." + +"I wish you might have seen it, Godfrey. It was so beautiful--and so +pitiful!" + +"It was manly,--gentlemanly; and that was enough. Then all at once he's +taken aback! All control of himself gone, all self-suppression, all +conscience"-- + +"The conscience has returned," said the girl. + +"Oh, not to guide him! Only to goad him! Fifty consciences can't +honorably undo the mischief now!" + +"Did I not write you that there was already, then, a coolness between +her and Leonard?" + +"Yes; but the whole bigness and littleness of Arthur's small, bad deed +lies in the fact that, though he knew that coolness was but a momentary +tiff, with Isabel in the wrong, he took advantage of it to push his suit +in between and spoil as sweet a match as two hearts were ever making." + +"It was more than a tiff, Godfrey; it"-- + +"Not a bit more! not--a--bit!" + +"Yes!--yes--it was a problem! a problem how to harmonize two fine +natures keyed utterly unlike. Leonard saw that. That is why he moved so +slowly." + +"Hmm!" The lover stared away grimly. "I know something about slowness. +I suppose it's a virtue--sometimes." + +"I think so," said the girl, caressing a flower. + +"Ah, well!" responded the other. "She has chosen a nature now that--Oh +me!... Ruth, I shall speak to her mother! I am the only one who can. +I'll see Mrs. Morris some time this evening, and lay the whole thing out +to her as we four see it who have known one another almost from the one +cradle." + +Ruth smiled sadly. "You will fail. I think the matter will have to go on +as it is going. And if it does, you must remember, Godfrey, we do not +really know but they may work out the happiest union. At any rate, we +must help them to try." + +"If they insist on trying, yes; and that will be the best for Leonard." + +"The very best. One thing we do know, Godfrey: Arthur will always be a +passionate lover, and dear Isabel is as honest and loyal as the day is +long." + +"The day is not long; this one is not--to me. It's most lamentably +short, and to-morrow I must be gone again. I have something to say to +you, Ruth, that"-- + +The maiden gave him a look of sweet protest, which suddenly grew remote +as she murmured, "Isabel and her mother are coming out of their front +door." + + + + +II + +ISABEL + + +There were two dwellings in the Winslow garden,--one as far across at +the right of the Byington house as the other was at the left. The one on +the right may have contained six or eight bedchambers; the other had but +three. The larger stood withdrawn from the public way, a well-preserved +and very attractive example of colonial architecture, refined to the +point of delicacy in the grace and harmony of its details. Here dwelt +Arthur Winslow, barely six weeks a clergyman, alone but for two or three +domestics and the rare visits of Godfrey, his only living relation. The +other and older house, in the garden's southern front corner, was a gray +gambrel-roofed cottage, with its threshold at the edge of the sidewalk; +and it was from this cottage that Isabel and her mother stepped, +gratefully answering the affectionate wave of Ruth's hand,--Mrs. Morris +with the dignity of her forty-odd years, and Isabel with a sudden eager +fondness. The next moment the two couples were hidden from each other by +the umbrageous garden and by the tall white fence, in which was repeated +the architectural grace of the larger house. + +Mother and daughter conversed quietly, but very busily, as they came +along this enclosure; but presently they dropped their subject to bow +cordially across to the father of Ruth, and when he endeavored to say +something to them Mrs. Morris moved toward him. Isabel took a step or +two more in the direction of the Winslow elm and its inviting bench, but +then she also turned. She was of a moderate feminine stature and perfect +outline, her step elastic, her mien self-contained, and her face so +young that a certain mature tone in her mellow voice was often the cause +of Ruth's fond laughter. As winsome, too, she was, as she was beautiful, +and "as pink as a rose," said the old-time soldier to himself, as he +came down his short front walk, throwing half his glances forward to +her, quite unaware that he was equally the object of her admiration. + +Though white-haired and somewhat bent he was still slender and handsome, +a most worthy figure against the background of the red brick house, +whose weathered walls contrasted happily with the blossoming shrubs +about their base, and with the green of lawn and trees. + +"Good-afternoon, Isabel. I was saying to your mother, I hope such days +as this are some offset for the Southern weather and scenery you have +had to give up." + +"You shouldn't tempt our Southern boastfulness, General," Isabel +replied, with an air of meek chiding. She had a pretty way of +skirmishing with men which always brought an apologetic laugh from her +mother, but which the General had discovered she never used in a company +of less than three. + +"Oh! ho, ho!" laughed Mrs. Morris, who was just short, plump, and pretty +enough to laugh to advantage. "Why, General,"--she sobered abruptly, and +she was just pretty and plump and short enough to do this well, +also,--"my recovered health is offset enough for me." + +"For _us_, my dear," said the daughter. "My mother's restored +health is offset enough for us, General. Indeed, for me"--addressing the +distant view--"there is no call for off-set; any landscape or climate is +perfect that has such friends in it as--as this one has." + +"Oh! ho, ho!" laughed the mother again. Nobody ever told the Morrises +they had a delicious Southern accent, and their words are given here +exactly as they thought they spoke them. + +"My dear," persisted Isabel, rebukingly, "I mean such friends as Ruth +Byington." + +Mrs. Morris let go her little Southern laugh once more. "Don't you +believe her, General--don't you believe her. She means you every bit as +much as she means Ruth. She means everybody on Bylow Hill." + +"I'm at the mercy of my interpreter," said Isabel. "But I thought"--her +eyes went out upon the skyline again--"I thought that men--that men--I +thought that men--My dear, you've made me forget what I thought!" + +They laughed, all three. Isabel, with a playful sigh, clutched her +mother's hand, and the pair drew off and moved away to the bench. + +"He puts you in good spirits," said the mother, breaking a silence. + +"Good spirits! He puts me in pure heartache. Oh, why did you tell him?" + +"Tell him? My child! I have not told him!" + +"Oh, mother, do you not see you've told him point-blank that it's all +settled?" + +"No, dearie, no! I only see that your distress is making you fanciful. +But why should he not be told, Isabel?" + +"I'm not ready! Oh, I'm not ready! It may suit him well enough to hear +it, for he knows Leonard is too fine and great for me; but I'm not ready +to tell him." + +"My darling, he knows you are good enough for any Leonard he can bring." + +"Oh yes, on the plane of the Ten Commandments." The girl smiled +unhappily. + +"But precious, he loves Arthur deeply, and thinks the world of him." + +"Mother, what is it like, to love deeply?" + +The query was ignored. "And the old gentleman is fond of you, +sweetheart." + +"Oh, he likes me. What a tame old invalid that word 'fond' has grown to +be! You can be fond of two or three persons at once, nowadays. My soul! +I wish I were fond of Arthur Winslow in the old mad way the word meant +when it was young!" + +"Pshaw, dearie! you'll be fond enough of him, once you're his. He's +brilliant, upright, loving and lovable. You see, and say, he is so, and +I know your fondness will grow with every day and every experience, +happy or bitter." + +"Yes.... Yes, I could not endure not to give my love bountifully +wherever it rightly belongs. But oh, I wish I had it ready to-day,--a +fondness to match his!" + +"Now, Isabel! Why, pet, thousands of happy and loving wives will tell +you"-- + +"Oh, I know what they will tell me." + +"They'll not tell you they get along without love, dearie. But ten years +from now, my daughter, not how fond you were when you first joined +hands, but what you have"-- + +"Oh yes,--been to each other, done for each other, borne from each +other, will be the true measure. Oh, of course it will; but there's so +much in the right start!" + +"Beyond doubt! Understand me, precious: if you have the least ground to +fear"-- + +"Mother! mother! No! no! What! afraid I may love some one else? Never! +never! Oh, without boasting, and knowing what I am as well as Leonard +Byington knows"-- + +"Oh, pshaw! Leonard Byington!" + +"He knows me, mother,--as if he lived at a higher window that looked +down into my back yard." The speaker smiled. + +"Then he knows," exclaimed the mother, "you're true gold!" + +"Yes, but a light coin." + +"My pet! He knows you're the tenderest, gentlest dear he ever saw." + +"But neither brave nor strong." + +"Oh, you not brave! you not strong! You're the lovingest, truest"-- + +"Only inclined to be a bit too hungry after sympathy, dear." + +"You never bid for it, love, never." + +"Well, no matter; I shall never love any one but myself too much. I +think I shall some day love Arthur as I wish I could love him now. I +never did really love Leonard,--I couldn't; I haven't the stature. That +was my trouble, dearie: I hadn't the stature. I never shall have; and if +it's he you are thinking of, you are wasting your dear, sweet care. But +he's going to be our best and nearest friend, mother,--he and Ruth and +Godfrey, together and alike. We've so agreed, Arthur and I. Oh, I'm not +going to come in here and turn the sweet old nickname of this happy spot +into a sneer." + +"Then why are you not happy, precious?" + +"Happy? Why, my dear, I am happy!" + +"With touches of heartache?" + +"Oh, with big wrenches of heartache! Why not? Were you never so?" + +"I'm so right now, dearie. For after all is said"-- + +"And thought that can't be said"--murmured Isabel. + +"Yes," replied the mother, "after all is said and thought, I should +rather give you to Arthur than to any other man I know. Leonard will +have a shining career, but it will be in politics." + +"I tried to dissuade him," broke in the daughter, "till I was ashamed." + +"In politics," continued Mrs. Morris,--"and Northern politics, Isabel. +Arthur's will be in the church!" + +"Yes," said the other, but her whole attention was within the fence at +their side, where a rough stile, made in boyhood days by the two +brothers and Leonard, led over into the garden. She sprang up. "Let's +go, mother; he's coming!" + +"Who, my child?" + +"Both! Come, dear, come quickly! Oh, I don't know why we ever came out +at all!" + +"My dear, it was you proposed it, lest some one should come in!" + +The daughter had moved some steps down the road, but now turned again; +for Ruth and Godfrey, returning, came out through the garden's high +gateway. However, they were giving all their smiles to the greetings +which the General sent them from his piazza. + +"Come over, mother!" called Isabel, in a stifled voice. "Cross to the +hill path!" But before they could reach it Arthur and Leonard came into +full view on the stile. Isabel motioned her mother despairingly toward +them, wheeled once more, and with a gay call for Ruth's notice hurried +to meet her in the middle of the way. + + + + +III + +ARTHUR AND LEONARD + + +Godfrey passed over to the General, who had walked down to his gate on +his way to the great elm. Out from behind the elm came the other two +men, Arthur leading and talking briskly:-- + +"The sooner the better, Leonard. Now while my work is new and taking +shape--Ah! here's Mrs. Morris." + +Both men were handsome. Arthur, not much older than Ruth, was of medium +height, slender, restless, dark, and eager of glance and speech. Leonard +was nearer the age of Godfrey; fairer than Arthur, of a quieter eye, +tall, broad-shouldered, powerful, lithe, and almost tamely placid. Mrs. +Morris met them with animation. + +"Have our churchwarden and our rector been having another of their long +talks?" + +The joint reply was cut short by Godfrey's imperative hail: "Leonard!" + +As Byington turned that way, Arthur said quietly to Mrs. Morris, "He's +promised to retain charge"--and nodded toward Isabel. The nod meant +Isabel's financial investments. + +"And mine?" murmured the well-pleased lady. + +"Both." + +The two gave heed again to Godfrey, who was loudly asking Leonard, "Why +didn't you tell us the news?" + +"Oh," drawled Leonard smilingly, "I knew father would." + +"I haven't talked with Godfrey since he came," said Mrs. Morris; and as +she left Arthur she asked his brother: "What news? Has the governor +truly made him"-- + +"District attorney, yes," said Godfrey. "Ruth, I think you might have +told me." + +"Godfrey, I think you might have asked me," laughed the girl, drawing +Isabel toward Arthur and Leonard, in order to leave Mrs. Morris to +Godfrey. + +Arthur moved to meet them, but Ruth engaged him with a question, and +Isabel turned to Leonard, offering her felicitations with a sweetness +that gave Arthur tearing pangs to overhear. + +"But when people speak to us of your high office," he could hear her +saying, "we will speak to them of your high fitness for it. And still, +Leonard, you must let us offer you our congratulations, for it is a high +office." + +"Thank you," replied Leonard: "let me save the congratulations for the +day I lay the office down. Do you, then, really think it high and +honorable?" + +"Ah," she rejoined, in a tone of reproach and defense that tortured +Arthur, "you know I honor the pursuit of the law." + +Leonard showed a glimmer of drollery. "Pursuit of the law, yes," he +said; "but the pursuit of the lawbreaker"-- + +"Even that," replied Isabel, "has its frowning honors." + +"But I'm much afraid it seems to you," he said, "a sort of blindman's +buff played with a club. It often looks so to the pursued, they say." + +Isabel gave her chin a little lift, and raised her tone for those behind +her: "We shall try not to be among the pursued, Ruth and Arthur and I." + +The young lawyer's smile broadened. "My mind is relieved," he said. + +"Relieved!" exclaimed Isabel, with a rosy toss. "Ruth, dear, here is +your brother in distress lest Arthur or we should embarrass him in his +new office by breaking the laws! Mr. Byington, you should not confess +such anxieties, even if you are justified in them!" + +His response came with meditative slowness and with playful eyes: +"Whenever I am justified in having such anxieties, they shall go +unconfessed." + +"That relieves _my_ fears," laughed Isabel, and caught a quick hint +of trouble on Arthur's brow, though he too managed to laugh. Whereupon, +half sighing, half singing, she twined an arm in one of Ruth's, swung +round her, waved to the General as he took a seat on the elm-tree bench, +and so, passing to Arthur, changed partners. + +"Let us go in," whispered Leonard to his sister, with a sudden pained +look, and instantly resumed his genial air. + +But the uneasy Arthur saw his moving lips and both changes of +countenance. He saw also the look which Ruth threw toward Mrs. Morris, +where that lady and Godfrey moved slowly in conversation,--he ever so +sedate, she ever so sprightly. And he saw Isabel glance as anxiously in +the same direction. But then her eyes came to his, and under her voice, +though with a brow all sunshine, she said, "Don't look so perplexed." + +"Perplexed!" he gasped. "Isabel, you're giving me anguish!" + +She gleamed an injured amazement, but promptly threw it off, and when +she turned to see if Leonard or Ruth had observed it they were moving to +meet Godfrey. Mrs. Morris was joining the General under the elm. + +"How have I given you pain, dear heart?" asked Isabel, as she and Arthur +took two or three slow steps apart from the rest, so turning her face +that they should see its tender kindness. + +"Ah! don't ask me, my beloved!" he warily exclaimed. "It is all gone! +Oh, the heavenly wonder to hear you, Isabel Morris, you--give me loving +names! You might have answered me so differently; but your voice, your +eyes, work miracles of healing, and I am whole again." + +Isabel gave again the laugh whose blithe, final sigh was always its most +winning note. Then, with tremendous gravity, she said, "You are very +indiscreet, dear, to let me know my power." + +His face clouded an instant, as if the thought startled him with its +truth and value. But when she added, with yet deeper seriousness of +brow, "That's no way to tame a shrew, my love," he laughed aloud, and +peace came again with Isabel's smile. + +Then--because a woman must always insist on seeing the wrong side of the +goods--she murmured, "Tell me, Arthur, what disturbed you." + +"Words, Isabel, mere words of yours, which I see now were meant in +purest play. You told Leonard"-- + +"Leonard! What did I tell Leonard, dear?" + +"You told him not to confess certain anxieties, even if they were +justified." + +"Oh, Arthur!" + +"I see my folly, dearest. But Isabel, he ought not to have answered that +the more they were justified, the more they should go unconfessed!" + +"Oh, Arthur! the merest, idlest prattle! What meaning could you"-- + +"None, Isabel, none! Only, my good angel, I so ill deserve you that with +every breath I draw I have a desperate fright of losing you, and a +hideous resentment against whoever could so much as think to rob me of +you." + +"Why, dear heart, don't you know that couldn't be done?" + +"Oh, I know it, you being what you are, even though I am only what I am. +But, Isabel, you know he loves you. No human soul is strong enough to +blow out the flame of the love you kindle, Isabel Morris, as one would +blow out his bedroom candle and go to sleep at the stroke of a clock." + +"Arthur, I believe Leonard--and I do not say it in his praise--I believe +Leonard can do that!" + +"No, not so, not so! Leonard is strong, but the fire of a strong man's +love, however smothered, burns on without mercy, my beautiful, and you +cannot go in and out of that burning house as though it were not on +fire." + +"And shall Leonard, then, not be our nearest and best friend, as we had +planned?" + +"He shall, Isabel. Ah yes; not one smallest part of your sweet +friendship will I take from him, nor of his from you. For, Isabel, +though he were as weak as I"-- + +"As weak as _I_, you should say, dear. You are not weak, Arthur, +are you?" + +"Weak as the bending grass, Isabel, under this load of love. But though +he, I say, were as weak as I, you--ah, you!--are as wise as you are +bewitching; and if I should speak to you from my most craven fear, I +could find but one word of warning." + +"Oh, you dear, blind flatterer! And what word would that be?" + +"That you are most bewitching when you are wisest." + +As Isabel softly laughed she cast a dreaming glance behind, and noticed +that she and Arthur were quite hidden in the flowery undergrowth of the +hill path. They kissed. + +"Beloved," said her worshipper, with a clouded smile, as he let her down +from her tiptoes, "do you know you took that as though you were thinking +of something else?" + +"Did I? Oh, I didn't mean to." + +Such a reply only darkened the cloud. "Of whom were you thinking, +Isabel?" + +She blushed. "I was think--thinking--why, I was--I--I was +think--thinking"--she went redder and redder as he went pale--"thinking +of everybody on Bylow Hill. Why--why, dear heart, don't you see? When +you"-- + +"Oh, enough, enough, my angel! I take the question back!" + +"You _made_ me think of everybody, Arthur, you were so sudden. Just +suppose I had done so to you!" They both thought that worthy of a good +laugh. "Next time, dear," added Isabel,--"no, no, no, but--next time, +you mustn't be so sudden. There's no need, you know,"--she blushed +again,--"and I promise you I'll give my whole mind to it! Get me some of +that hawthorn bloom yonder, and let's go back." + + + + +IV + +AND BRING DOWN THE REMAINDER + + +This "hill path" was a narrowed continuance of the street, that led +gradually down along the hill's steep face to reach the town and the +river meadows. Godfrey, halting before Ruth and her brother, watched the +blooming hawthorn, over there, bend and shake and straighten and bend +again, above Arthur's unseen hands. Then, glancing furtively back toward +Mrs. Morris, he muttered to Ruth, while Leonard gravely looked out +across the landscape, "I live and learn." + +"So we learn to live," was Ruth's playful reply. To her it was painfully +clear that Mrs. Morris, very sweetly no doubt, had eluded Godfrey's +endeavors to inform her of anything not to his brother's unqualified +praise. In the Bylow Hill group, Ruth had a way of smiling abstractedly, +which was very dear to Godfrey even when it meant he had best say no +more; and this smile had just said this to him when Isabel and Arthur +came into view again. As the two and the three drifted toward each +other, Ruth let Leonard outstep her, and joined Godfrey with a light in +her face that quickened his pulse. + +After a word or two of slight import she said, as they slowly walked, +"Godfrey." + +"Yes," eagerly responded the lover. + +"Down in the garden, awhile ago--did I--promise something?" + +"You most certainly did!" She had promised that if he would let a +certain subject drop she would bring it up again, herself, before he +must take his leave. + +"And must you go very soon, now?" she asked. + +"I've only a few minutes left," said the lover, with a lover's license. + +"Well, I'm ready to speak. Of course, Godfrey, I know my heart." + +The young man smiled ruefully. "I've known mine till I'm dead tired of +the acquaintance." + +Other words passed, her eyes on the ground as they loitered, and after a +pause she murmured:--"But I've known my heart as long as you've known +yours." + +"You've known--What do you--Oh, Ruth, look at me!" + +She looked, very tenderly, although she said, "You forget we are +observed." + +"Oh, observed! Do you mean hope--for me--after all?" + +"I mean that if you will only wait until we can get a clear light on +this matter of Isabel's--which will most likely be by the next time you +come"-- + +"Oh, Ruth, Ruth, my own Ruth at last!" + +"Please don't speak so. I'm not engaging myself to you now." + +"Oh yes, you are! Yes, you are! Yes--you--are!" + +"No--no--no--listen! Listen to me, Godfrey. I think that now, among us +all, we shall manage Isabel's affair well enough, and that the very next +time--you--come"--She began absently to pick her steps. + +"What--what then?" + +"Then you may ask me." + +The response of the overjoyed lover was but one or two passionate words, +and her sufficient reply, as they halted among their fellows, was to +look across the valley with her meditative smile. Isabel took note, but +kindly gave a long sigh of admiration, and with an exalted sweep of the +hand drew the gaze of the five to the beauties of the scene below. The +day was near its end. The long shadow of the great cliff behind Bylow +Hill hung over the roofs of the town and over the hither meadows. The +sun's rays were laying their last touches upon the winding river, and +upon the grainfields that extended from its farther shore. In the upper +blue rested a few peaceful clouds, changing from silver to pink, from +pink to pearly gray, and on the skyline crouched in a purpling haze the +round-backed mountains of another county. + +To Mrs. Morris and the General the sight, from the old elm-tree seat, +was even fairer than to the youthful group whose forms stood out against +the sky, the floral colors of the girls' draperies heightened by the +western light. For a while the two sitters gave the perfect scene the +tribute of a perfect silence, and then the General asked, as he +cautiously straightened his impaired frame, "Has not Isabel been making +some--eh--news for herself--and us?" + +The lady's lips parted for their peculiar laugh of embarrassment, but +the questioner's smile was so serious that she forced her sweetest +gravity. "Why, General, according to our Southern ways," she +said,--every word mellowed by her Southern way of saying it,--"that's +for Isabel to tell you." + +"Then why does she not do it, Mrs. Morris?" asked the veteran, who had +been district attorney himself once upon a time, and was clever with +witnesses. + +"Why, really, General, Isabel hasn't had a cha--Oh! ho, ho! I oughtn't +to have said that!" Mrs. Morris had a killing dimple, but never used it. + +"I suppose--of course"--said the General, "she will say +it's--eh--Arthur?" + +"Now you're making me tell," she laughed, "and I mustn't! General, +Godfrey seems to be going." + +In fact, Godfrey was shaking hands with Ruth and Leonard. Now he took +the hands of Arthur and Isabel together, and Mrs. Morris laughed more +sweetly and with more oh's and ho's than ever; for Isabel sedately +kissed Arthur's brother. + +Ruth made signs to her father, who answered them in kind. "What does she +say, Mrs. Morris? Can you hear?" + +"She says they're singing 'your hymn' down in a church under the hill." + +"Ah yes." He beamed and nodded to Ruth; but when Mrs. Morris once more +laughed, his brow clouded a trifle. "Your daughter, Mrs. Morris"-- + +The lady broke in with a note of bright surprise, rose, and took an +unconscious step forward. The five young friends were advancing in a +compact cluster, with measured pace. Ruth and Isabel, in front abreast, +and making happy show of the hawthorn sprays, were just enough apart to +conceal, except for their superior height, the three lovers, and in +lowered tones, but with kindling eyes, the five, incited by Ruth, were +singing the song they had caught up from the valley,--the old man's +favorite from the days of his own song-time. The General got himself +hurriedly to his feet; the shade passed from his brow. The group came +close; he stepped out, and Isabel, meeting him, laid her two hands in +his, while the halting cluster ceased their song suspensively on a line +that pledged loves and friendships too ethereal to clash. + +"Isabel,"--he turned up a broadened palm,--"here's my amen to that line; +where's yours?" + +With blushing alacrity she laid her hand on his. + +"Arthur!" he called, and the lively lover added his to the two. "Now, +Ruth!" + +"Father!" laughed the daughter, "isn't this rather youngish?" But she +laid her hand promptly upon Arthur's, and the lines of the General's +face deepened playfully, and Mrs. Morris's dimple did the same, as +Godfrey thrust his hand in upon Ruth's, unasked. The matron laughed very +tenderly on the key of O while she added her hand, and received +Leonard's heavy palm above it. Then Arthur clapped a second hand upon +Leonard's, and Leonard was about to lay a second quietly upon Arthur's, +when Isabel, rose-red from brow to throat, gayly broke the heap and +embraced Ruth. + +"Well, honey-girlie," said Mrs. Morris, as she and Isabel reentered +their cottage, "wasn't it sweet of them all, that 'laying on of hands,' +as Arthur called it?" + +"Yes," replied the Southern girl, starting up the cramped old New +England stairway to her room. "It was child's play, but it was very +sweet of them, and especially of the General." + +The mother detained her fondly. "And still, my child, you're not +satisfied?" + +"Ah, mother, are you blind, stone blind, or do you only hope I am?" + +"My dearie!" + +"Why, mother, excepting Leonard, we haven't had one word of true consent +from one of them." + +"Oh, now, Isabel! They'll all be glad enough by and by." + +"Yes," said the daughter, from the landing above, "I've no doubt of +that." + +She passed into her room, closed the door, and standing in the middle of +the floor, with her temples in her palms, said, "O merciful God! Oh, +Leonard Byington, if only that second hand of yours had hung back!" + + + + +V + +SKY AND POOL + + +Arthur and Isabel were married in their own little church of All Angels, +at the far end of the old street. + +"I cal'late," said a rustic member of his vestry, "th' never was as +pretty a weddin' so simple, nor as simple a weddin' so pretty!" + +Because he said it to Leonard Byington he ended with a manly laugh, for +by the anxious glance of his spectacled daughter he knew he had slipped +somewhere in his English. But when he heard Leonard and Ruth, in +greeting the bride's mother, jointly repeat the sentiment as their own, +he was, for a moment, nearly as happy as Mrs. Morris. + +"Such a pity Godfrey had to be away!" said Mrs. Morris. It was the only +pity she chose to emphasize. + +Godfrey was on distant seas. The north-bound mid-afternoon express bore +away the bridal pair for a week's absence. + +"Too short," said a friend or so whom Leonard fell in with as he came +from the railway station, and Leonard admitted that Arthur was badly in +need of rest. + +At sunset Ruth came out of her gate and stood to welcome her brother's +tardy return. Both brightly smiled; neither spoke. + +When he gave her a letter with a foreign stamp her face lighted +gratefully, but still without words she put it under her belt. Then they +joined hands, and he asked, "Where's father?" + +"Inside on the lounge," she replied. Her lips fell into their faraway +smile, to which she added this time a murmur as of reverie, and Leonard +said almost as musingly, "Come, take a short turn." + +They moved on to the Winslow gate, and entered the garden by a path +which brought them to a point midway between the old cottage and the +larger house. There it crossed under an arch transecting an arbor that +extended from a side door of the one dwelling to a like one of the +other, and the brother and sister had just passed this embowered spot +and were stepping down a winding descent by which the path sought the +old mill-pond, when behind them they observed two women pass athwart +their track by way of the arbor, and Ruth smiled and murmured again. +The crossing pair were Mrs. Morris and Sarah Stebbens, the Winslows' +life-long housekeeper, deeply immersed in arranging for Isabel to +become lady of the larger house, while her mother, with a single +young maidservant, was to remain mistress of the cottage. + +The deep pond to whose edge Leonard and Ruth presently came was a narrow +piece of clear water held in between Bylow Hill and the loftier cliff +beyond by an old stone dam long unused. Rude ledges of sombre rock +underlay its depths and lined and shelved its sides. Broad beeches and +dark hemlocks overhung it. At every turn it mirrored back the slanting +forms of the white and the yellow birch, or slept under green mantles +of lily pads. It bore a haunted air even in the floweriest days of the +year, when every bird of the wood thrilled it with his songs, and it +gave to the entire region the gravest as well as richest note among all +its harmonies. Down the whole way to it some one long gone had gardened +with so wise a hand that later negligence had only made the wild +loveliness of this inmost refuge more affluent and impassioned. + +At one point, where the hemlocks hung farthest and lowest over the pool, +and the foot sank deep in a velvet of green mosses, a solid ledge of +dark rock shelved inward from the top of the bank and down through the +flood to a depth cavernous and black. Here, brought from time to time by +the Byington and Winslow playmates, lay a number of mossy stones rounded +by primeval floods, some large enough for seats, some small; and here, +where Ruth had last sat with Godfrey, she now came with her brother. + +The habitual fewness of Leonard's words was a thing she prized beyond +count. It made Mrs. Morris nervous, drained her mind's treasury, and +sent her conversational powers borrowing and begging; Isabel it awed; +Arthur it tantalized; to Godfrey it was an appetizing drollery; but to +Ruth it was dearer and clearer than all spoken eloquence. + +The same trait in her, only less marked, was as satisfying to him, and +from one rare utterance to another their thoughts moved like consorted +ships from light to light along a home coast. A motion, a glance, a +gleam, a shade, told its tale, as across leagues of silence a shred of +smoke may tell one dweller in the wilderness the way or want of another. +Such converse may have been a mere phase of the New Englander's passion +for economy, or only the survival of a primitive spiritual commerce +which most of us have lost through the easier use of speech and print; +but the sister took calm delight in it, and it bound the two to each +other as though it were itself a sort of goodness or greatness. + +"They have it of their mother," the old General sometimes said to +himself. + +There were moments, too, when their intercourse was still more subtle, +and now they sat without exchange of glance or gesture, silent as chess +players, looking up the narrow water into a sunset exquisite in the +delicacy of its silvery plumes, fleeces pink and dusk, and illimitable +distances of palest green seen through fan-rays of white light shot down +from one dark, unthreatening cloud. + +"Leonard," at length said the sister, as if she had studied every +possibility on the board before touching the chosen piece, "couldn't you +go away for a time?" + +And with deliberate readiness the other gentle voice replied, "I don't +think I'd better." + +While they spoke their gaze rested on the changing beauties of pool and +sky, and after the brief inquiry and response it still remained, though +the inner glow of their mutual love and worship deepened and warmed as +did the colors of the heavens and of the glassing waters. The brother +knew full well Ruth's poignant sense of his distresses; and to her his +mute tongue and unbent head were a sister's convincement that he would +endure them in a manner wholly faithful to every one of the loved hands +that had lain under his the evening Godfrey had said good-by. + +[Illustration: Indeed it was clear that to go away would be unfair.] + +Indeed, it was clear that to go away--unless he honestly felt too weak +to remain--would be unfair to almost every person, every interest, +concerned; and such a step was but second choice in Ruth's mind, +conditioned solely on any unreadiness he might have uprightly to bear +the burden brought upon him by--well, after all, by his own too +confident miscalculations in the game of hearts. + +To him such flight signified the indeterminate continuance of his +sister's maiden singleness and a like prolongation of her lover's +galling suspense. To Ruth it stood not only for the loss of her brother, +but for the narrowing of their father's already narrowed life,--a +narrowing which might come to mean a shortening as well; and it meant +also the leaving of Isabel and Arthur to their mistake and to their +unskilfulness slowly and patiently to work out its cure. To go away +were, for him, to consent to be the one unbroken string on a noble but +difficult instrument. These thoughts and many more like them passed to +and fro, out through the abstracted eyes of the one, across to the +fading clouds, and back through the abstracted eyes and into the +responding heart of the other. + +At length the sister rose. "I must go to father," she said. + +The brother stood up. Their eyes exchanged a gentle gaze and tenderly +contracted. + +"I will come presently," he replied, and was turning toward the water, +when he paused, threw a hand toward the steep wood across the pool, and +silently bade her listen. + +The note he had remotely heard was rare on Bylow Hill since the town had +come in below, and one of the errands which oftenest brought the hill's +dwellers to this nook in solitary pairs was to hearken for that voice of +unearthly rapture,--a rapture above all melancholy and beyond all +mirth,--the call of the hermit thrush. + +Now the waiting seemed in vain. The brother's hand sank, the sister +turned, and soon he saw her pass from view among the boughs as she wound +up the rambling path toward the three homes. + +At the top she halted, still longing to hear at his side that marvellous +wood-note, and was just starting on once more, when from the same +quarter as before it came again, with new and fervent clearness. With +noiseless foot she sprang back down the bendings of the path, having no +other thought but to find her brother standing as she had left him, a +rapt hearer of the heavenly strain. + +She reached the spot, but found no hearkening or standing form. The +young man's stalwart frame lay prone on the green bank, where he had +thrown himself the moment she had left his sight, and his face was +buried in the deep moss. + +The stir of her swift coming reached his ear barely in time for him, +as she choked down a cry that had all but escaped her, to turn upon +his back, meet her glance, and drive the agony from his face with a +languorous smile. The melting song pervaded the air, but neither of +them lifted a noting finger. + +Leonard rose to his feet. Ruth gave him a hand and then its fellow, and +as he pressed them together she said, "I wish you _would_ go away +for a time." + +He dropped one of her hands, and keeping the other, started slowly +homeward; and it was not until they had climbed half the ascent that, +with his most remote yet boyish smile, he replied, "I don't think I'd +better." + + + + +VI + +IN THE PUBLIC EYE + + +August, September, October, November,--so passed the year in gorgeous +recession over Bylow Hill. Among their dismantled trees the three homes +stood unveiled to the town on the meadows and to travellers who looked +from train windows while crossing the river bridge. To those who +inquired whose they were there was always some one more than ready to +give names and details, and to tell how perfect a bond ever had +been--how beautiful a fellowship was yet, now--up there. + +Sevenfold they called it, although one of the seven was away; namely, +Lieutenant Godfrey Winslow, of the navy, famed for his splendid behavior +in the late so-and-so affair. That stately house at the right, they +said, was his home what brief times the sea was not. + +There lived, it would be added, his younger brother, so rapidly coming +into note,--the eccentric but gifted rector of All Angels; whose great +success in the heart of a Congregational community was due hardly more +to his high talents than to the combined winsomeness and practical +sympathies of his beautiful bride, or to the resourceful wisdom and zeal +of his churchwarden, Leonard Byington. + +"Any relation to Byington, your new political leader in these parts?" + +"Same man," the answer would be, and there the narrator was sure to fall +into a glowing tribute to the ideal companionship existing between the +rector, his bride, the young district attorney, and Ruth Byington. + +What made this intimacy the more interesting was, in the eyes of a +growing number of observers, that, as they said, "Arthur Winslow was not +always an affable man, and was much more rarely a happy one." + +Behind and above this popular verdict was that of the old street behind +and above the town,--a sort of revised version, a higher criticism. If +the young rector, this old street explained, oftener looked anxious than +complacent, so in their time, most likely, did St. Paul and St. Peter. +If he was not always affable, why, neither are volcanoes; the man was +all molten metal within. Anyhow, he filled his church to the doors. + +Coaching parties of the vastly rich made the town their Sunday stopping +place purely to hear him; not so much because the boldness of his +speculations kept his bishop frightened as because he always fused those +speculations on, white-hot, to the daily issues of private and public +life, in a way to make pampered ladies hold their breath, and men of the +world their brows. Such a man, to whom the least sin seemed black and +bottomless, yet who appeared to know by experience the soul's every +throe in the foulest crimes, was not going to show his joys on the +surface in quips and smiles. + +"You should have heard," said the old street, "his sermon to husbands +and wives! His own bride turned pale. He turned pale himself." + +It was wonder enough that even the bride could be happy, at such an +altitude, so to speak; immersing herself utterly, as she did, in the +interests that devoured him. All Angels forgot his gloom in the radiance +of her charms,--the sweet genuineness of her formal pieties, the tender +glow and universality of her sympathies, the witchery of her ever ready, +never too ready playfulness. It was captivating to see how instantly and +entirely she had fitted herself into a partnership so exacting; though +it was pitiful to note, on second glance, how the tint and contour of +her cheek were losing their perfection, and her eyes were showing those +rapid alternations of languor and vivacity which story-tellers call a +"hunted look." Yet, oh, yes, she was happy; the pair were happy. It was +as a pair that they were happiest. Else, said the old street, they could +not keep up the old Winslow-Byington alliance so beautifully. + +To the truth of this general outline the three homes' domestics, +dominated by Sarah Stebbens, certified with cordial and loyal brevity. +Yet when Ruth wrote Godfrey how well things were going, there lurked +between her bright lines one or two irrepressible meanings that locked +his jaws till they creaked. + +In fact, both his brother and hers were "ailing." Both carried a jaded, +almost a broken look, and Arthur was taking things to make him eat and +sleep; while Leonard had daily accepted more and more of the young +rector's complicating cares, until he was really the parish's chief +burden-bearer. + +"No," he said to his father, "Arthur carries his whole work manfully on +his own shoulders." + +"But, my son," replied the old General, "don't you see you're carrying +Arthur?" + +"No, I sha'n't do that," dryly responded the son; but Ruth saw a change +on his brow as on that of a guide who fears he has missed the path. + +The four young friends spent many delightful evenings together in the +Winslow house, with Mrs. Morris and the General on one side at cribbage. +Ruth had frequent happy laughs, observing Isabel's gift for making +Leonard talk. It gave her a new joy in both of them to have the lovely +hostess draw him out, out, out, on every matter in the wide arena to +which he so vitally belonged; eliciting a flow of speech so animated +that only afterward did one notice how dumb as any tree on Bylow Hill +he had been in regard to himself. + +"They are bow and violin," said Arthur to Ruth, with his dark, unsmiling +face so free from resentment that she gratefully wondered at him, and +was presently ashamed to find herself asking her own mind if he was +growing too subtle for her. + +On these occasions Isabel was wont to court Ruth's counsel concerning +her wifely part in Arthur's work, thus often getting Leonard's as well. +Sometimes she impeached his masculine view of things, in her old +skirmishing way. Then she would turn rose-color once more and mirthfully +sigh, while Ruth laughed and wished for Godfrey, and Mrs. Morris +breathed soft ho-ho's from the cribbage board. + +So came the Thanksgiving season, with strong, black ice on the mill +pond, where the four skated hand in hand. Then the piling snows stopped +the skating with a white Christmas, the old year sank to rest, the new +rose up, and Bylow Hill, under its bare elms and with the pine-crested +ridge at its back, sat in the cold sunshine like a white sea bird with +its head in its down. And when the nights were frigid and clear its +ruddy lights of lamp and hearth seemed to answer the downward gaze of +the stars in silent gratitude for conditions of happiness strangely +perfect for this imperfect world, and the town marvelled at the young +rector's grasp of his subject when his text was, "The heart knoweth his +own bitterness." + + + + +VII + +THE HOUR STRIKES + + +But on a day in the very last of winter, when every one was in the thick +of all the year's tasks and cares, there came to Leonard this letter:-- + + + LEONARD BYINGTON, ESQUIRE: + + SIR,--I find myself compelled to ask that you consider your + acquaintanceship with my wife at an end. Doubtless this request will + give you more relief than surprise. The visible waste of your frame + and the loss of her exquisite bloom are proof enough that both you + and she have long been in daily dread of a far worse visitation. + It is not worse, because I know how sentimental your impotent and + conscience-plagued interchanges of affection have been. I shall permit + and assist you to keep this matter a secret. To let it be known would + instantly wreck your own career, and would blast at a breath the + fortunes of our church and of every one of both our kindreds. I will + therefore not at this time require you to resign your church office or + to break off those business intimacies with me which, though no longer + founded in personal esteem, are vital to interests that common decency + must move you to shield from new peril. + + I ask for no repair of the inextinguishable wrong you have done me. + I only ask you not to fancy that I am to be beguiled by arguments or + denials or moved by threats, or that one word I here write is founded + on conjecture or inference. Grovelling at my feet, in sobs of shame + and with prayers for pardon, Isabel has told me all. Has told me all, + Leonard Byington, my once trusted friend. Now, though prostrated on + her bed, she rejoices in the double forgiveness of her husband and + her priest, blessing him for deliverance from the misleadings of one + who--great God! must I write it?--might at last have dragged her into + crime. It is her request, as it is my command, that you darken our + threshold no more, and that as far as practicable you keep yourself + from her sight. + + Faithfully, + + ARTHUR WINSLOW. + + +With his swivel-chair overturned behind him the young lawyer stood at +the desk of his inner office, read this letter through at headlong +speed, turned it again, and re-read it slowly, searchingly, from his own +name to its writer's. + +Then readjusting his chair he stepped to a door, asked a clerk in the +outer office to order his cutter, turned back, and was closing his desk, +when his partner came to him. + +"Byington, are you ill?" asked the fatherly man. + +"No; I'm only going out on some business. I'll be back about--" He +looked at his watch. + +"Byington, don't go. You're ill. You don't realize how ill you are. If +you go at all, go home, and let me send some one with you. Why, your +hand is as cold"-- + +"I'm all right," said the young man, freeing his hand and smiling with +white lips. He took his hat and passed out. + +Meanwhile Isabel lay on her bed too overwhelmed to rise. In his room +adjoining, with doors locked, Arthur paced the floor. He had spent the +first half of the night in an agonizing interview with his wife, and the +second half in writing and rewriting the letter to Leonard. + +Now Isabel noticed the cessation of his steps. In the door between +them the key turned; then the door opened, and he stood, haggard and +dishevelled, gazing on her. She sat up in the bed, wan, tear-spent, +her glorious hair falling over the embroideries of her nightdress. + +"Arthur, dear, I am sorry for every angry word I have spoken. But the +things I have denied I must deny forever. + +"If you should wait till doomsday, I could confess no more. + +"I have never harbored one throb of unworthy or unsafe regard toward any +man in this wide world. + +"For me to say differently would be to lie in God's own face. + +"I have had great happiness of Leonard's companionship, and I have been +proud to be myself a proof that a man and a woman can be close, dear, +daily friends without being lovers or kin, and earth be only more like +heaven for it, to them and all theirs. If Leonard has confessed one word +more than that for me,--or even for himself, Arthur, dearest,--he has +lost his reason. It's a frightful explanation, but I find no other. + +"Leonard Byington is not wicked, and if he were he wouldn't be so in a +dastard's way. + +"Never since the day I first plighted my faith to you, dear heart, has +he given me one sign of a lover's love. + +"Oh, Arthur, I do love my husband! This night has proved it to me as +I never knew it before; and if you will only believe me and go back to +Leonard, I believe he can tear the mask off this horrible mystery." + +Arthur turned and once more locked the door. His wife flamed red and +hearkened, and the light footfall which had tortured her for hours began +again. Suddenly she left the bed and hurried to dress. + +At the mirror, with her hair lifted on her hands, she paused and again +hearkened. Sleighbells stopped at the front door. + +Now some one was let in down there, and now, at her husband's room, +Giles, his English man of all work, announced Mr. Byington:-- + +"Yes, sir, but he says if you can't come down 'e will 'ave to come up, +sir." + + + + +VIII + +GIVE YOU FIVE MINUTES + + +As Arthur entered the library Leonard came from its farther end, and +they halted on opposite sides of a large table. Arthur was flushed and +looked fearfully spent. Leonard was pale. + +"I have your letter, Arthur." + +The rector bowed. He gave a start, but tried to conceal a gleam of +triumph. + +Leonard ignored it and spoke on:-- + +"A gentleman, Arthur,--I mean any one trying to be a whole +gentleman,--is a very helpless creature, nowadays, in matters of this +sort." + +He looked formidable, and as he lightly grasped a chair at his side it +seemed about to be turned into a weapon. + +"The old thing once called satisfaction," he continued, "is something +one can no longer either ask or offer, in any form. He can neither rail, +nor strike, nor spellbind, nor challenge, nor lampoon, nor prosecute." + +"Nearly as helpless as a clergyman," said Arthur. + +"Almost," replied the visitor. "No, there is no more satisfaction in any +of those things, for him, than if he were all a clergyman is supposed to +be. There is none even in saying this, to you, here, now, and I'm not +here to say it. Neither am I here to vindicate myself--no, nor yet +Isabel--with professions or arguments to you; I might as well argue with +a forest fire." + +"Quite as well. What are you here for?" + +"Be patient and I'll tell you; I'm trying to be so with you." + +"You--trying"-- + +"Stop that nonsense, Arthur. Ah me, Arthur Winslow, I have no wish to +humiliate you. Through the loyalty of your wife's pure heart, whatever +humiliates you must humiliate her. Oh, I could wish her in her shroud +and coffin rather than have her suffer the humiliation you have prepared +for yourself and for her through you." + +Arthur showed a thrill of alarm. "Do you propose to go down to public +shame and drag us all with you?" + +"No, nor to let you, if I can prevent you. Arthur, you have allowed a +base jealousy to persuade you, in the face of every contrary evidence, +that your fair young wife has lost her loyalty--and your nearest friend +the commonest honesty--in a clandestine love. Under the goadings of that +passion you have foully guessed, have heartlessly accused, have brazenly +lied. Isabel has confessed nothing to you, and I know by your lies to +me how pusillanimously you must have been lying to her. Had your guess +been right, I should not have known you were only guessing, and your +successful iniquity would have remained hidden from everybody but +yourself--I still do you the honor to believe you would have realized +it. Now the vital question is, do you realize it, and will you undo it?" + +Arthur was deadly pale; his pointing finger trembled. "Leave"--he +choked--"leave this house." + +Leonard turned scarlet, but his tone sank low. "Arthur, I don't believe +your soul is rotten. If I did, I should not be such a knave or such a +fool as to make any treaty with you that would leave you in your pulpit +one Sabbath Day." + +"What do you--what do you mean by that?" + +"I mean that such a treaty would be foul faith to everybody." + +"So, then, you do propose one common shipwreck for us all." + +"Quite the contrary. To trust the fortunes of our loved ones to any +treaty with a rotten soul would indeed be to launch them upon a stormy +sea in a rotten boat. But I do not believe your soul is so. I believe it +is sound,--still sound, though on fire; and so, to help you quench its +burning, I give you my pledge to be from this day a stranger to your +sweet wife. And now will you do something for me, to prove that your +soul is sound and is going to stay sound? It shall be the least I can +ask in good faith to the world we live in." + +"What is it?" asked Arthur. There was no capitulation in his face or his +voice. + +"I want you to make to Isabel a full retraction and explanation of every +falsehood you have uttered to her or to me in this matter." Leonard was +pale again; Arthur burned red a moment, and then turned paler than +Leonard. + +"You fiend!" gasped the husband. "I am to exalt you, and abase myself, +to her?" + +"No. No, Arthur. Women are strange; every chance is that in her eyes I +shall be abased." The speaker went whiter than ever. + +"But be that as it may, you shall have lifted your soul out of the mire. +You must do it, Arthur; don't you see you must?" + +Arthur sank into the chair at his side. He seemed to have guessed what +Leonard was keeping unsaid. A moisture of anguish stood on his brow. +Yet-- + +[Illustration: "Arthur Winslow, I give you five minutes."] + +"I will die before I will do it," he said. + +Leonard drew forth the letter, and then his watch. "Arthur Winslow, I +give you five minutes. If you don't make me that promise in that time, I +shall this day show this letter to your bishop." + +The rector sat clenching his fingers and spreading them again, and +staring at the table. + +A bead of sweat, then a second, and then a third started down his +forehead. + +Presently he clutched the board, drew himself to his feet, and turned to +leave the chair, but fell across its arms, slid heavily from them, and +with one rude thump and then another lay unconscious on the floor. + +Leonard sprang round the table, but when he would have lifted the fallen +head it was in the arms of Isabel, and her dilated eyes were on him in a +look of passionate aversion. + +"Ring!" she cried. "Ring for Sarah--and go! + +"No! stop! don't ring! he's coming to! Only go! go quickly and forever! +Say not a word,--oh, not a word! I heard it all! Despise me too, for I +listened at the door! + +"Oh, my husband! Arthur, look at me, Arthur. Look, Arthur; it's your +Isabel. Oh, Arthur, my husband, my husband!" + + + + +IX + +THE YOUNG YEAR SMILES + + +Martin Kelly, pious Irishman and out-door factotum of the Byington +place, paused from the last snow-shovelling of the season to reply to a +wandering salesman of fruit trees. + +"Mr. Airthur Winslow or Mr. Linnard Boyington,--naw, sor! ye can see +nayther the wan nor th' other, whatsomiver! How can ye see thim, moy +graciouz! whin 'tis two weeks since the two o' thim was tuck the same +noight wid the pneumonias, boy gorra! and the both of thim has thim on +the loongs!" + +The nursery agent asked how it had happened so. + +"Hawh! ask yer grandmother! All ye can say is they was roipe to catch +the maladee, whatsomiver! Ye cannot always tell how 'tis catched, and +whin ye cannot tell, moy graciouz! ye have got the wurrst koind!" + +The two sick men recovered very nearly at the same time. + +One day when Leonard had read all his accumulated mail and had seen +three or four men officially in his bedchamber, he told Ruth that a +certain criminal case, the trial of which had been waiting for his +recovery, would take him to the county-seat, and would keep him there +many days, probably weeks, except for brief visits to his office and yet +briefer moments at home. + +Ruth gave him a look of tender approval, laid a hand in his, and bent +into the evening fire her far-off smile. Thus, and only thus, he knew +she had divined what had befallen. + +A day or two afterward Mrs. Morris brought him a note from Arthur. He +wrote an answer while she stayed, and while Ruth listened elatedly to +her sprightly account of how well Isabel still bore the burden of +nursing a most loving but most nervous husband. + +The missive from Arthur was a short but complete and propitiative +acknowledgment of his error and fraility. It offered no change in the +agreement as to Isabel, but it professed a high yet humble resolve to +fall no more, and it ended with a manly offer to resign his pulpit, and +even to lay aside his sacred calling, if Leonard retained any belief in +the moral necessity of his so doing. + +Leonard's reply was a very brief exhortation to his friend to put away +all thought of resigning, and to take up his work again with the zeal +with which he had first entered upon it. + +Mrs. Morris went away refreshed, and left the Byingtons equally so. Her +buoyancy had been as prettily restrained, her sympathies as sweet, her +dimple as unconscious, her belief in everybody's wit and wisdom except +her own as genuine, and her timid dissimulations as kindly meant and as +transparent, as ever. Yet there was an unspoken compassion for her when +she was gone, for in the parting words with which she playfully vaunted +her ignorance of the correspondence she was bearing, it was clear, even +to the General, that behind that small ignorance she had a larger +knowledge,--a fact that made her dainty cheerfulness seem very brave. + + * * * * * + +The freshets swept down the valleys, the myriad yellow twigs of the +brookside willows turned green, a cheery piping rose from the ponds, the +last gleam of snow passed from the farthest hills, the bluebird sang, +the harrow followed the plough, Ruth's crocuses shone above the greening +sod, and down by the old mill-pool and on the steep hillside beyond it +she and Isabel gathered arbutus, anemones, and the yellow violet. Spring +had come. + +Then through the thickening greenery the dogwood shone like belated +drifts, the flashing warblers passed on into the north, the bobolink had +arrived, the robin was already overeating, the whole chorus of birds +that had come to nest and stay broke forth, and it was summer. + +Leonard was back in his own town, enriched with new esteem from the +public and from the men of his profession. The noted case was won, a +victory for the peace and dignity of the state, due wholly, it was said, +to the energy and sagacity of the young district attorney. A murder had +been so cunningly done that suspicion could fasten nowhere, until +Byington laid his finger upon a man of so unspotted a name that no one +else had had the mental courage to point to him. Through a long and +masterly untangling of contradictions the state's counsel had so +overwhelmingly proved him guilty that he had confessed without waiting +for the jury's verdict. + +"Yes," said many, "it was a great stroke, Leonard's management of that +thing." And not a few added that it had made him an older man--"that or +something." Those who were of his politics, and even some who were not, +stopped him in Main Street and State Street to "shake" and to say, +without too much care for logical sequence, how soon, in their opinion, +he would be the commonwealth's "favorite son." + +"My dear Mrs. Morris," said the General, "every town has at least one." +But even Mrs. Morris could see the father's faith and pride through the +old soldier's satire. + + + + +X + +THE STORM REGATHERS + + +On the other hand, things were going ill with the little church of All +Angels. Arthur kept his people as tensely strung as ever, but he no +longer drew from them the chords of aspiration and enterprise. It was a +sad disenchantment, and none the less so because no one seemed to know +what the matter was. One darkly guessed he was writing a book, and the +vestryman who had praised the lovely simplicity of the wedding lucidly +explained that the young rector had "lost his grip." + +At times there were flashes of recovery. One Sabbath the whole +congregation came out under his benediction uplifted by his word that +"loving is living." + +"The more we love," they quoted him on their various ways home, "the +more we live. The deeper we love, the deeper we live. The more selfishly +or unselfishly, the higher, the broader, the purer, the wiser, we love, +the more selfishly or unselfishly, the higher, the broader, the purer, +the wiser, we live!" The rector's gentle wife was visibly and ever so +prettily rejoiced. + +True, but hardly the whole truth. In her mother's cottage her smiles +were almost sad, and when she had crossed the garden and got into her +own room she dropped upon her bed and wept. Yet she quickly ceased, and +put on again a brave serenity, for a very tender reason which forbade +such risks. + +A bunch of the church's best men got together and agreed that all Arthur +needed was rest; that this bright moment was the right one in which to +offer him a vacation; that his physician should flatly order him to take +it; and that Byington should arrange the matter. + +Leonard accepted the task, the physician spoke with startling flatness, +and the whole kind plot worked well. Arthur consented to go away up into +the hills beyond all the jar of the busy world's unrest. + +Isabel was to go with him, and they were to sojourn at some point where +she would still be within prompt reach of medical skill, yet from which +he could make long jaunts into the absolute wilds. + +Mrs. Morris was far from well when they left, and the day afterward she +was seriously ill. That night Ruth sat up with her, and the next day she +was worse, yet begged that no telegram be sent to her daughter. + +At the close of the day there came a letter from Isabel. It said that +Arthur, "already a new man," would start the next morning at dawn for a +three days' trip into the wilderness. He went; and he had not been three +hours gone when Isabel received a dispatch calling her to her mother. +The only day train would leave in a few minutes, and she had the fortune +to catch it. + +Ruth met her at the station with the blessed word "better." They went up +from the town in Ruth's carriage, Martin Kelly driving, who let it be +known that though the doctor's name, "moy graciouz!" were signed to the +telegram seven times over, the actual painstaker and sender was "Linnard +Boyington, whatsomiver!" + +Still Ruth called it the doctor's telegram, and said it made no +difference who sent it; but she saw Isabel was disturbed. "Well, Martin, +Doctor will have to wait on himself to-morrow; Leonard will be out of +town." + +That evening, alone with her brother, she said, "But I thought you were +to be out of town to-morrow." + +"No," he replied, "I don't think I'd better." + +Another day passed, another came, and Mrs. Morris was still in danger. +Isabel wrote Arthur that she would be with him the moment the peril was +over, if he needed her; but if he did not, she would stay on for her +mother's fuller recovery. Her letter had barely gone when she received a +pencilled line brought in to the mountain hotel by a chance messenger +and sent on to her, saying he would be out on his tramp five days +instead of three. On the fifth day she telegraphed that her mother was +getting well so fast that she would come, now, at his word. + +The next morning she betrayed to Ruth a glad sense of relief as she +showed her a dispatch from Arthur, which read: "Going on another trip +to-morrow. Stay till I write." + +Ruth repeated it to her father and brother at their noonday meal. +Leonard made no comment, but the General asked pleasantly-- + +"Is she certain he won't come in on this evening's express?" He was +discerning more than any one wanted him to. + +However, at dusk came the train, took water at the tank, stopped at the +station, and passed on, and Arthur did not appear. + +"Well, I'll go to bed," blithely spoke the General. "I'm not so old as I +used to be, but I'm tired, after writing that letter this afternoon--to +Godfrey. Good-night." So he gave fair notice that he had moved in this +matter, himself. + +"I didn't know father had received a letter from Godfrey," said Ruth, +shading her face from the lamp, and lifting to Leonard a smile which +implied that it would have been but fair for him to have told her. + +"It came the day before Arthur went away," replied Leonard, and Ruth +reluctantly chose a new topic. + +They rarely had an evening together thus, and with a soft rain falling +at the open windows they sat and talked on many themes in what was to +them a very talkative way. When something brought up the subject of the +late noted trial, Ruth asked her brother how it had first come to him to +suspect so unsuspected a man. + +His reply was tardy. "Partly," he said, and mused while he spoke, +"because I am so unsuspected a man myself." + +He looked up with a smile, half play, half pain. "I know what the mind +of an unsuspected man is capable of--under pressure." + +The questioner looked on him with fond faith, and then, dropping her +eyes to her needlework, said, "That wasn't all that prompted you, was +it?" + +"No," replied the brother, again musing. "I had noticed the singular +value of wanton guesswork." + +"I thought so," said the sister. Her needle flagged and stopped, and +each knew the other's mind was on the implacable divinations of one +morbid soul. + +Leonard leaned and fingered the needlework,--a worsted slipper, too +small for most men, too large for most women. "Is that for him?" + +"Yes," apologized Ruth; "it's the thing every clergyman has to incur. +But I'm only doing it to help Isabel out; she has the other." + +The evening went quickly. When Leonard let down the window sashes and +lowered the shades, Ruth, standing by the lamp as if to put out its +light, said, "I'll not go up for a moment or two yet." + +She sent him an ardent smile across the room and turned to a desk. + + + + +XI + +HAS IT COME TO THIS? + + +Ruth wrote to her lover. Her father's keeping secret his receipt of +Godfrey's letter until he had mailed its answer, could mean only that +the answer was for Godfrey to come home. The General's talk of being +tired by the writing of it was a purely expletive irony, for he had +written with the brevity of an old soldier to a young sailor; but he had +written that trouble was impending, that its source was Arthur, and that +the last hope of removing it lay with him, Godfrey. + +A line from Ruth, pursuing after this message, would be one steamer +behind it all the way, but it would reach the far wanderer before any +leave would permit him to start homeward. + +So, now, what should she write? If her father had discerned so much more +than he had let any one know he had discerned, how about others? How +about the kind whose chief joy is ruthless guesswork? _That_ need +of haste was one she had overlooked. Wise father! + +And yet--haste itself is such a hazardous thing! Ah, if Arthur had come +in on that evening express, what to write were an easier question. The +minutes sped by; her pen overhung the paper with the opening sentence +unfinished, and every moment the thought she kept putting away came +back: "Leonard!--Leonard!--Godfrey's summons should go to him from +Leonard; and it should flash under the seas, not crawl across +them!"--Hark! + +She rose and glided to the door through which her brother had gone. +There she was startled by the sight of him speeding cautiously down +the stair. + + * * * * * + +On entering his unlighted room Leonard had moved across it to a front +window, where, veiled by the chamber's dusk, he stood looking out into a +night dimly illumined by the overclouded moon. The Winslow house widened +palely among its surrounding trees. The servants' rooms were remote as +well as on the farther side, and on the nearer side no lamplight shone. +A short way down the street a glow came from the Morris cottage. +Evidently Isabel was with her mother. + +He stood and mused, unconsciously lulled by the cool drip of myriad +leaves, and with his mind poised midway between emotion and thought. To +yield to emotion would have been to chafe against the bands that knitted +his life and hers to every life about them. To yield to thought would +have been to think of her as no more to be drawn from these surrounding +ties than some animate rainbow-fringed flower of the sea can be torn +from its shell without laceration and death. To give thought word would +have been to cry, "Oh, truest of womankind, where would this unsuspected +man, this Leonard Byington, be if you were other than you are?" Yet the +suspense between avoided feeling and avoided thought held him where he +stood. + +So standing, it drifted idly into his mind that yonder arbor must be +very wet to-night, and the cinder sidewalk out here much drier. As the +thought moved him to draw one step back, the glow from the cottage +broadened. Its front door had opened, and Mrs. Morris's young maid came +out with a lantern, followed by Isabel saying last fond words to her +mother as the convalescent closed the door. + +"Good-night!" she called back. + +In one great wave the young man's passion rolled over its bounds and +brought him to his knees with arms outstretched. "Oh, Isabel!" he +murmured. "Oh, my God! Oh, Isabel! Isabel! if I had but lost you +fairly!" + +The two slight figures came daintily along the wet path in single file, +the maid throwing the lantern's beams hither and yon as she looked back +to answer Isabel's kindly questions; Isabel one moment half lost in the +gloom of the trees, and then so lighted up again from foot to brow that +it was easy to see the very lines of her winsome mouth, ripe for +compassion or fortitude, yet wishful as a little child's. + +Her secret observer moaned as he stood erect. The fury of his soul +seemed to enhance his stature. He did not speak again, but, "Oh, Isabel! +harder to strive against than all the world beside!" was the unuttered +cry that wrote itself upon his tortured brow. "If your unfair winner +would only hold you by fair means! Yet I too was to blame! I too was to +blame, and you alone were blameless!" + +Opposite his window Isabel ceased her light talk with the maid, halted, +bent, and scanned something just off the firm path, in the clean wet +sand. + +The maid turned and flooded her with the light of the lantern just as +she impulsively lifted an alarmed glance to Leonard's window and as +quickly averted it. "Go on," said the mistress. "I can walk faster if +you can." + +The girl quickened her steps, but had not taken a dozen when Isabel +stopped again. "Wait, Minnie. Now you can run back, thank you." She +reached for the lantern. + +"I--I thought I was to go all the way, and--and bring the lantern back." + +"No, I'll keep the lantern; but I'll stay here and throw the light after +you till you get in. Run along." + +Minnie tripped away. As she came where they had first halted, a +purposely belated good-night softly overtook her; and when she looked +back, Isabel, as if by inadvertency, sent the lantern's beam into her +eyes. So too much light sent the maid by the spot unenlightened. + +Leonard drew aside lest the beam swing next into his window. But the +precaution was wasted; the glare followed Minnie. + +Isabel also followed, slowly, a few paces, and then moved obliquely into +the roadway and toward the window. Only for a moment the ray swept near +her unseen observer, and, lighting up the rain-packed sand close before +herself, revealed a line of footprints slanting toward her from +Leonard's own gate. + +As the cottage door shut Minnie in, Isabel, reassured by the brightness +of the Byingtons' lower windows, stopped for a furtive instant, and +holding in her hand the fellow of the slipper so lately in Ruth's +fingers, exactly fitted it to one of these footprints. Then, with the +lantern on her farther side, and every vein surging with fright and +shame, she made haste toward the open gateway of the Winslow house. + +A short space from it she recoiled with a gesture of dismay and +self-repression, and her light shone full upon a man. He stepped from +the garden, his form tensely lifted, his face aflame with anger. + +But her small figure straightened also, and swiftly muffling the lantern +in a fold of her skirt, she exclaimed, audibly only to him, though in +words clear-cut as musical notes, "Oh, Arthur Winslow, has it come to +this?" + +She arrested his resentful answer by the uplift of a hand, which left +the lantern again uncovered. "Inside! In the house!" she softly cried, +starting on. "Not here! Look!--those upper windows!--we're in full view +of them!" + +Quickly she remuffled the lantern, but not in time to hide his motion as +he threw out an arm and pushed her rudely back, while he exclaimed, "In +full view of them answer me one question!" + +It was then that Leonard went hurriedly downstairs. + + + + +XII + +THE LANTERN QUENCHED + + +"I will answer you nothing!" murmured Isabel, still facing her husband +as she moved round into the garden driveway. "Arthur Winslow, it is you +who are on trial, not I!" + +"I on trial! God, listen to that!" + +He sprang after her, gripped her shoulders, and hung over her, snarling, +"You two-faced runaway! what have I done but suffer?" + +She kept the lantern hid. "What have you done? Oh, my husband, will you +hear if I tell you? You have hung the fates of all of us, living or yet +to live, on one thread,--please, dear, don't bear so heavily on me,--on +one poor thread which the jar of another misstep will surely break. Oh, +let us not make it! Come, Arthur,--my husband,--into the house; maybe +we can yet save ourselves and our dear ones! Arthur, you're hurting me +dreadfully. If you press me down that way, you'll force me to my knees." + +Still she spoke in undertone, and still she muffled the light, while +steadily the weight of his arms increased. Suddenly he crowded her to +the earth. "Arthur," she murmured, "Arthur, what are you going to do? +Don't kill me here and now, Arthur; wait till to-morrow. I have that to +pass through to-night which may end my life peaceably in bed; and if it +should, then there will be no infamy on any of us,--on you or our child, +living, or on me, dead; and Godfrey, and Ruth, and mother, and all can +be"-- + +"Give me that lantern!" He held her with one hand, snatched the light +from cover, and thrust it into her face. "So this is what you signal him +with, is it?" + +"Oh no, no! Arthur, dear, no! Before God's throne, no!" + +He lifted it as high as his arm would go, and with all his force swung +it down, crashing and quenched, upon her head. + +She gave a gentle sigh and rolled at his feet. Groaning with horror and +fright, he lifted her in his arms and bore her to her room and bed. + +There she presently opened her eyes to find him laving her face and +head, moaning, covering them with kisses, and imploring her forgiveness +in a thousand hysterical repetitions. + +"Hush, dear," she whispered. "I see how it all happened. Does anybody +know? Oh, God be thanked! don't let any one find out! It was all a +misunderstanding. So many things crowded together to mislead you!" + +"Oh yes, so many, many things at once, my treasure! Oh yes, yes!" + +"Call Sarah, will you, dear?" + +"Oh, beloved, why should I? You don't need Sarah for anything." + +"Yes, I need her. I must send her for mother--and Ruth--I promised Ruth; +and you must send Giles for the doctor; my hour is come." + + * * * * * + +In the Byington house Ruth and her brother met at the foot of the +stairs. + +"Leonard," she whispered, "what is it? Is father ill? Leonard! Oh, what +have you seen?" + +"Let me pass! quick!" He would have pressed her aside, but she laid +hands on him. + +"What has Arthur done?" she asked. "What is he doing?" + +"Ruth! Ruth! he is putting her out of his own gate!" The brother +extended both hands to turn the sister from his path, but she twined her +arms on his. + +"Leonard! Leonard! for the love of heaven, let him do it! She has only +to go to her mother; let her go! It's the last hope. But she'd better be +dead, and she'd a hundred times rather be dead, than that Leonard +Byington should be her rescuer! Come in here a minute." + +Slipping both hands into his she drew him into the lighted room, adding +as they went, "In a few minutes I can make some errand to her and find +how matters stand"-- + +They stumbled over a disordered rug. She fell into a chair; he sank to +his knees, and with his face in her hands he moaned, "Oh, Ruth! Oh, +Ruth! it's my fault after all! I should have gone away at the +beginning!" + +Ruth and Arthur met face to face in the Winslow garden. "I was just +coming for you," he said, excitedly. + +"For Isabel?" + +"Yes, her mother is with her, and"--a sound of wheels--"here's Giles, +now, off for the doctor." + +The servant passed. "Yes, I got here by the sunset express. I couldn't +stay away--with this impending." + +"I didn't see you come." + +"No, of course you didn't see me, for I didn't go to the station, and so +I didn't pass anywhere near your house. I got off at the tank and came +up the hill path." + +"You must have got drenched; you _are_ drenched." + +"Oh no! I got in before the rain began. Let myself in without seeing any +one, and found Isabel was over at her mother's. So I waited here." + +"Didn't let her know you were home?" asked Ruth, with a penetrating +gaze. + +"No, I haven't been off the place since I came, but I stepped out so +many times into the garden to see if she was coming that I'm soaking +wet." + +They entered the lighted house, and he turned upon her a glance heavy +and wavering with falsehood. His tongue ran like a terrified horse. +"Oh--eh--before you go upstairs--Ruth--there's one thing I'm distressed +about. I've told Mrs. Morris, and she's promised to see that the doctor +understands it perfectly,--though I shall explain it to him myself the +moment he comes. And still I wish you'd see that he understands, will +you?" + +"What is it?" + +"Why, at last, as I was waiting for Isabel, and saw her coming, I went +to meet her. Unfortunately she took me for a stranger, turned to run, +and tripped and fell headlong! She somehow got her lantern between the +base of a tree and the crown of her head, smashed the lantern, and cut +and bruised her head pitifully!" + +To hide her start of distress Ruth moved up the stair; but after a step +or two she turned. "Arthur, why say anything about it, if nothing is +asked?" + +The husband stared at her and turned deadly pale. + +"Th--that's tr--true!" he said, with an eager gesture. "I'll not mention +it. And--Ruth!"--she was leaving him--"you might s--say the same to Mrs. +Morris!" + +She nodded, but would not trust her eyes to meet his. He was right; she +had divined his deed. + +He went loiteringly into the library and gently closed the door. Then he +turned the light low, paced once up and down the room, and all at once +slammed himself full length upon a lounge, and lay face up, face down, +by turns, writhing and tearing his hair. + +Soon again he was pacing the floor, and presently was prone once more, +and then once more up. + +Giles, his English man, brought the doctor, and Arthur heard him +discoursing as the vehicle drew up. + +"Yes, sir, quite so; quite so, sir. And yet I believe, sir, if h-all +money and lands was 'eld in common, the 'ole 'uman ryce would be as +'appy as the gentlemen and lydies on Bylow 'Ill!" + +The young husband met the physician cheerily, sent him up, and went back +to his solitude. + +An hour passed, and then Sarah Stebbens knocked and leaned in. "Mr. +Arthur!" + +"What, Sarah?" + +"Oh! I didn't see you. All's well, and it's a daughter." + + + + +XIII + +BABY + + +It was most pleasant, being asked by everyone, even by General Byington, +how it felt to be a grandmother. "Oh! ho, ho!" Mrs. Morris's unutilized +dimple kept itself busy to the point of positive fatigue. + +Even more delightful was it, when the time came round for the totality +of her sex--the only sex worth considering--to call and see the babe and +mother, to hear them all proclaim it the prettiest infant ever seen, and +covertly pronounce Isabel more beautiful than on her wedding day. + +In a way she was; and particularly when they fondly rallied her upon her +new accession of motherly practical manner, and she laughed with them, +and ended with that merry, mellow sigh which still gave Ruth new pride +in her and new hope. But another source of Ruth's new hope was that +Arthur, who had written to the bishop and resigned his calling the day +after Mrs. Morris's little namesake was born, had at length withdrawn +his letter. + +"It is to your brother we owe its withdrawal," said the bishop, +privately, to Ruth. + +She beamed gratefully, but did not tell him that, after the long, secret +conference between her brother and the rector, Leonard had come to her +and wept for Arthur the only tears he had ever shed in her presence. +Now Leonard had found occasion to go West for a time, though he still +held his office; and Arthur was filling the rectorate almost in the old +first way. On some small parish matter the rustic vestryman with the +spectacled daughter came to Arthur's library in better spirits than he +had shown for months, and by and by asked conjecturally, "I--eh--guess +you don't keep any babies here you're ashamed to show, do ye?" and held +his mouth very wide open. + +The infinitesimal was brought. + +"Well, I vum! Why, Miz. Winslow, I don't believe th' ever was a pretty +baby so puny, nor a puny baby so pretty! Now, if it's a fair question, I +hope y' ain't tryin' to push in between this baby and the keaow, be ye?" + +"No," laughed Isabel. "I'm not that conceited. I should only be in the +way." + +"Well," he said as they parted, shaking Arthur's hand to the end of his +speech, "I like to see a baby resemble its father, and that's what this +'n 's a-tryin' to do, jest 's hard 's she can." + +So went matters for a time, and then, while the babe began to fill out +and lengthen out, Isabel showed herself daily more and more overspent. +The physician reappeared, and spoke plainly:-- + +"And if your cousin down South is so determined to have you at her +wedding, why, go! Leave your baby with your mother; she's older in the +business than you are." + +But the cousin's wedding was weeks away yet, and Isabel clung to her wee +treasure, and temporized with the aunts and cousins in the South and +with her mother and Ruth at home, until the doctor spoke again. + +"Let's see," he said to Arthur. "This is November, baby's five months +old. Send your wife away. Put her out! Something's killing her by +inches, and I believe it's just care o' the nest. We must drive her off +it, as I drove Leonard Byington off,--which, you remember, you, quietly, +were the first to suggest to me to do.... Coming back, you +say,--Byington? Yes, but only for a day or two,--election time." + +It did not occur to the doctor that Arthur was secretly keeping his wife +from going anywhere. + +The night Leonard came home the old pond, for the first time in the +season, froze over, and through Giles's activities it was arranged next +day that Martin Kelly, Sarah Stebbens, Minnie, and he should go down +there after supper and skate by the light of fagot fires made out on the +ice. Giles piled the fagots; but at a late moment, to the disgust of +Giles and Minnie, the older pair pitilessly changed their minds, and +decided they were too old to make such nincompoops of themselves. Minnie +would not go without Sarah, for Minnie was up to her pretty eyebrows in +love with Giles, as well as immensely correct; and so there, as it +seemed, was the end of that. + +At tea Arthur told Isabel he was going for a long walk down through the +town and across the meadows, and would not be home before bedtime. +Isabel approved heartily, and said Sarah would stay near the sleeping +babe, and she would spend the evening with her mother. She and Arthur +went together as far as the cross-paths in the arbor, and there, in +parting, he clasped and kissed her with a sudden frenzy that only added +one more distressful misgiving to the many that now haunted her days. + +She found her mother alone. They sat down, hand in hand, before an open +fire, and had talked in sweet quietness but a short while, when a chance +word and the knowledge that this time they would not be interrupted made +it easy for Isabel to say things she had for weeks been trying to say. + + + + +XIV + +THE TALKATIVE LEONARD + + +Across the street the father of Leonard and Ruth, already abed, lay +thinking of their tribulation and casting about in his mind for some new +move that might help to end it happily. Godfrey had not come. He had not +looked for him to appear with a hop, skip, and a jump, "a man under +authority" as he was; but here were five months gone. + +"I can't clamor for him," thought he, and feared Ruth had written him +that the emergency was past. And so she had, in those days of new hope +and new suspense which had followed for a while Arthur's withdrawal of +his resignation. + +At the fireside below sat Leonard and Ruth, not hand in hand, like +Isabel and her mother, yet conversing on the same theme as they. + +Leonard had spent the day at the polls; his party had won an easy +victory; and, though not on the ticket, he was now awaiting a +telegraphic summons to the state capital. His fortunes were growing. +Yet that was not a thing to be wordy about, and now, when the murmur of +his voice continued so long and steadily that it found even the dulled +ear of the aged father in the upper room, that father knew what the +topic must be. On all other matters the son and brother had become more +silent than ever,--was being nicknamed far and near, flatteringly and +otherwise, for his reticence; but let Ruth sit down with him alone and +barely draw near this theme,--this wound,--and his speech bled from him +and would not be stanched. + +"I can admit I have made the mistake of my life," he said, "but I cannot +and will not, even now, give up and say there is nothing to be saved out +of it. It's a mistake that has bound me to her, to you, to Godfrey, to +him, to all, and demands of me, pinioned and blindfolded as I am, every +effort I can make, every device I can contrive, to compel him to free +her and you and all of us from this torture. + +"He shall not go on eating out our lives. I have dawdled with him +weakly, pitifully, but I did it in my hope to save him. I tried to save +him for his own sake, Ruth, truly,--as truly as for her sake and ours; +and I wanted to save his work with him,--his church, his and hers; so +much of it is hers. Oh, Ruth, I love that little bird-box, spite of all +its spunky beliefs and twittering complacencies. I wanted to save it and +him; and over and over there has seemed such good ground of hope in him. +It's been always so unbelievable that he should utterly fail us. +Ruth, if you could have seen his contrition the night I tore up that +shameful, servile resignation! I don't need to see Isabel to know he +is wearing the soul out of her. You needn't have answered one of my +questions,--which I honor you for answering so unwillingly; Mrs. Morris +gave me their answer in five minutes, though we talked only of +investments. And Mrs. Morris needn't have given it; to see Arthur +himself is enough. All the genuineness has gone out of the man,--out of +his words, out of his face, out of his voice. I wonder it hasn't gone +from all of us, driven out by this smirking masquerade into which he +has trapped us." + +"Have you determined what to do?" asked the sister, gazing into the +fire. + +"Not yet. But I sha'n't go back West. Flight doesn't avail. And, Ruth"-- + +"Yes, brother; you've cabled?" + +"I have. He'll come at once, this time." A step on the porch drew the +speaker to the door. + +The telegram from the capital had come. But until its bearer had gone +again and was out of hearing down the street the young man lingered in +the porch. His mind was wholly on that evening when Isabel had passed +with the lantern. Would she pass now? From the idle query he turned to +go in, when Ruth came out, and they stayed another moment together. +Presently their ear caught a stir at the side of the Morris cottage. + +"Hmm," murmured Ruth half consciously, and, with a playful shudder at +the cold, whispered, "Come in, come in!" + +But then quickly, lest this should carry a hint of distrust, she tripped +in alone, closed the door, and glided to the bright hearth. There a +moment of waiting changed her mind. She ran again to the door, and began +to say as she threw it open, "My brother! you'll catch your"-- + +But no brother was there. + + + + +XV + +THE THIN ICE BREAKS + + +Isabel, who had never confessed her trouble to her mother until now, had +this evening told all there was to tell. + +"No, no, my dear," she said as she moved to go, "I have no dread of his +blows. I don't suppose he will ever strike me again. Ah, there's the +worst of it; he's got away, away beyond blows. I wish sometimes he'd +brain me, if only that would stop his secretly watching me. + +"If he'd never gone beyond blows, I would have died before I would +have told; not for meekness, dearie, nor even for love,--of you, or my +child, or any one,--but just for pride and shame. But to know, every +day and hour, that I'm watched, and that every path I tread is full of +traps,--there's what's killing me. And I could let it kill me and never +tell, if being killed were all. But I tell you because--Oh, my poor +little mother dearie, do I wear you out, saying the same things over +and over? + +"This is all I ask you to remember: that my reason for telling you is to +save the honor of my husband himself, and of you, dear heart, and of--of +my child, you know. For, mother, every innocent thing I do is being +woven into a net of criminating evidence. Sooner or later it's certain +to catch me fast and give me over, you and me and--and baby, to public +shame." + +As they went toward the arbor door Isabel warily hushed, but her mother +said: "There's no one to overhear, honey-blossom; Minnie's at your house +with Sarah." + +But neither was there more to be said. The daughter shut herself out, +and stood alone on the doorstep pondering what she had done. For she had +acted as well as spoken, and, without knowledge of Leonard's move, was +calling Godfrey home herself. Her mother was to send the dispatch in the +morning. + +[Illustration: "But to know every day and hour that I'm watched."] + +So standing and distressfully musing, she heard the click of the +Byingtons' door as Ruth left Leonard on the porch. But her thought went +after Arthur. Where was he? That he had honestly gone where he had said +he was going she painfully doubted. She stirred to move on, but had not +taken a step when a feminine cry of terror set her blood leaping and +sent her flying down the arbor, and where the two paths crossed she and +Leonard met at such a speed that only by seizing her with both his hands +did he avoid trampling her down. The scream was repeated again and +again. + +"It's Minnie!" cried Isabel as they sprang down the path to the mill +pond; and Leonard, outrunning her, called back,-- + +"We'll get her out! She's not gone under!" + +The next moment he, and then she, were on the scene. Minnie stood on +the firmer ice away from the bank, moaning in continued agitation, but +already rescued. It was Arthur Winslow who had saved her. + +Now he gained the bank with the dripping girl, where he yielded her to +his wife, and without a word from him, from Isabel, or from Leonard to +any one but the incessantly talking maid, the four hurried up the path. +When they reached the arbor Ruth had joined them, and there the three +women turned to the cottage. Leonard passed on toward his home. Arthur +went into his own house. + +In the cottage, while being hurried into dry clothes, Minnie more +coherently explained her mishap. Wishing to play a joke on Giles, she +had slipped away from the fireside company of him and Sarah to put a +match to his fagots on the pond, run back with word that they were +burning, and laugh with Sarah while Giles should plunge out to find the +incendiaries. But she had forgotten how frail good ice may be against a +warm bank, and leaping down, had promptly broken through. She had had +the fortune to hold on by the ice's outer edge until Arthur, whom she +felt sure only Providence could have sent there, drew her out. She was +tearfully ashamed, yet not so broken in spirit but she fiercely vowed +she would get even with Giles for this yet. + +Leonard went to his room, Arthur to his, and each in his way shut +himself in to darkness, silence, and the fury of his own heart. + +One of the things most harrowing to Leonard was that, at every turn, +the active part fell to Arthur, while him fate held mercilessly to the +passive; and his soul writhed in unworded prayer for any conceivable +turn of events that would give him leave to act, to do! + +But all he could do was done. Godfrey was sent for: everything must +await his coming. Heaven hold Arthur's hand till Godfrey could come! + +Ruth returned home and began to lock up the house. When, presently, she +tapped at her brother's door and looked in, he had lighted the room and +was reading his telegram. + +"All right over the way," she said, and to hurry on over the grim +untruth repeated briefly Minnie's story. "Good-night. You go--to-morrow? +Well, you'll make haste back." + +She left him, but later returned. + +"Leonard." At the slightly opened door she thrust in her Bible, with a +finger on the line, "My soul, wait thou only upon God." + +"Thank you," said the brother. "Good-night. I'm afraid we've kept Him +waiting on us." + + + + +XVI + +MUST GIVE YOU UP + + +Over on the Winslow side of the way, Isabel, having tarried in the +cottage to explain to her frightened mother how perfectly natural it was +that Arthur, after his tramp across the meadows, should have made a +circuit to the upper side of the old mill pool, went pensively home. +Presently, holding a lamp, she stood in the door between her room and +Arthur's, lifted the light above her head, and, shading her brows, +called his name. Hidden in the gloom, silent and motionless, he stared +for a moment on the beautiful apparition, and then moved without a sound +into the beams of the lamp, a picture of misery and desperation. + +"Why in the dark?" amiably inquired the wife. + +With widening eyes and spectral motions he drew near. + +"In the dark?" he asked. "Why in the dark? The darkness is in me, and +all the lamps that light the world's ships into harbor could not dispel +it." + +All at once he went to his knees. "Oh, my wife, my wife! save me, save +me! Hell is in my soul!" + +She drew back, and with low vehemence urged him to his feet. "Up! up! My +husband shall not kneel to me!" + +Laying her hand reverently upon his shoulder she pressed him into his +room, set the lamp aside, and let him clasp her wildly in his arms. + +"Save me, Isabel," he moaned again. "Save me." + +"From what, dear heart,--from what can I save you?" She drew him to a +seat and knelt beside him. + +"From the green-eyed demon that has gnawed, gnawed, gnawed at my heart +till it is rent to shreds, and at my brain--my brain!--till it is almost +gone." His brow drooped to hers. "Almost gone, beloved; my brain is +almost gone." + +"No, Arthur, dearest, no, no, no; your heart is torn, but your mind, +thank God, is whole. This is only a mood. Come, it will pass with one +night's sleep." + +Still he held her brow beneath his. "Save me, Isabel; my soul is almost +gone. Oh, save me from the fiends that come before me and behind me, by +night and by day, eyes shut or eyes open." + +"My husband! my love! how can I save you? How can I help you? Tell me +how." + +"Hear me! hear me confess! That will save me, oh, so sweetly, so +sweetly! That will save me from the faces--the white, white faces that +float on that black pool down yonder, and move their accusing lips at +me: _his_ face--and mine--and thine. Oh, Isabel, until you stood +before me in the golden light of your lamp, transfigured into a +messenger from heaven, it was in my lost soul to do the deed this +night." + +The wife laid her palms upon her husband's temples, and putting forth +her strength lifted them and looked tenderly into his eyes. + +"Dear heart, you do not frighten me. You know how unaccountably fear +deserts me in fearful moments. But I know there's nothing for either of +us to fear now. This is all in your tortured imagination, and there, +though you had not seen me, it would have stayed; you never would have +come to the act. Arthur, your soul is not lost. You who have pointed the +way of escape and deliverance so clearly and savingly to so many, you +need not miss it now yourself." + +"Idle words, Isabel,--idle, idle words. The very words of Christ are +idle to me until I give you up." + +"Give me up, my husband? Dear love, you cannot! You shall not! I will +not be given up. You haven't the cause, and I haven't the cause." + +"Oh, Isabel, I stole you! And the curse of God has gone with the theft, +and with every step of the thief, from the first day till now. From the +first day until now God has lifted that other man up and brought me +down. And yet, before God who said, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's +wife, he loves you this moment--now!--with the love of a man for a +woman." + +"Arthur, no! If he did"-- + +"Isabel, if he did not--if he did not love you yet as before he lost +you--oh! if he did not love you infinitely more now than then--he would +not be Leonard Byington. That is all my evidence, all my argument, all +the ground of my hate; and I hate him with a hatred that has +finished--finished!--with my heart, and is devouring my brain." + +"Oh, my poor husband, listen to"-- + +"Listen to me!" he broke in. "Listen before I lose the blessed impulse +to say there is but one cure. I must give you up to Leonard Byington. +Oh, let me speak! I took you from him by law; by law I will give you +back." + +"Do you mean divorce, Arthur?" + +"I do." + +"On what ground?" + +"On the ground of ill treatment. You shall bring suit; I will plead +guilty." + +She rose, with his temples still in her hands. "Ah! whose words are idle +now?" + +She bent over him with eyes of passionate kindness. "You did not take me +from him. You asked me to take you, and for better for worse, till death +us do part, I took you, Arthur, knowing as much of any other man's love +for me as I know at this hour. You could not steal me; the shame would +be mine, to have let you. You are no thief! I am no stolen thing! You +shall be happy with me; you shall not give me up!" + +He leaped to his feet and snatched her into his arms. The babe cried +sleepily from its mother's room. She tenderly disengaged herself, left +him in the door, moved on to the child's crib, and in the dim light of +the bedside taper, facing him from beyond it, soothed the little one by +her silent touch. + +To Arthur, wan and frail though she was, the sight was heavenly fair, a +vision of ineffable peace to which it seemed a sacrilege to draw nearer; +but she beckoned, and he stole to the spot. With the quieted babe in its +crib between them, the pair knit arms about each other's neck and +kissed. + +"My own! my own at last!" murmured the husband. "I never had you until +now!" + +"The cure has worked, dear heart," breathed the wife,--"worked without +surgery, has it not?" + +"The cure has worked," he replied,--"worked without the sacrifice. Oh, +the sudden sweet ease of it!" + +Whispering a fervent good-night in response to hers, he covered her head +and brows with caresses; then stole away with eyes still fastened on +her, and at the dividing threshold waved a last parting and closed the +door. + + + + +XVII + +SLEEP, OF A SORT + + +Isabel went to her couch in great heaviness and agitation. Her sad +confidings to her mother, Minnie's adventure, Arthur's pitiful if not +alarming condition, she strove to reconsider duly and in their order; +but perpetually there interfered, with its every smallest detail +thrillingly clear and strong, that moment which had thrown her once more +into the company, tossed her into the very clutch, of Leonard Byington. +She turned her face into her pillow and prayed God for other thoughts +and visions, and at length, while charging herself to see her mother in +time to postpone the sending of her dispatch to Godfrey, she slept. + +Sleep, of a sort, came also to Arthur, though not before many an evil +imagination had come back to tease and sting his galled mind. + +What chafed oftenest was the fact that Isabel, had he allowed it, would +have sought to argue down his belief that Leonard loved her. Great +heaven! what must be her feeling toward him, that she should offer to +argue such a question? She might truly deny all knowledge of his +passion, but oh, where were her quick outcries of womanly abhorrence? +Where was the word that Leonard Byington was no more to her than any +other man,--that word which would have been the first to flash from her +if conscience had not stopped it? Twice he sprang up in his bed, +whispering: "They love! They love! Each knows it of the other! They +love!" + +The second time, as he stared, suddenly he saw them! They stood just +beyond the foot of his couch, wrapped in each other's arms. Choking with +wrath, freezing with horror, he slid to the floor; but at his first step +they floated apart. Isabel glided toward her own door, fading as she +went, and dissolved in a broad moonbeam. Leonard, as he receded, grew +every instant more real, until, at his pursuer's second step, he melted +through a window and was gone. Arthur sprang to the spot and stared out +and down; but all he saw was the moon, the frosty night, and the silent, +motionless garden. + +With a whisper of fierce purpose he turned and noiselessly threw on his +clothes, then clutched his head in his hands in a wild effort to recall +what the purpose was, and by and by lay quietly down again on his bed. +He could not recollect; but the inner tumult quieted more and more, and +after a time, without putting off any part of his dress, he drew the +bedcovers over himself, and in a few moments was partially asleep. So +for an hour or more he lay in half-waking dreams, ghastly with phantoms +and breathless with dismay of his own ferocious strivings. Then he rose +once more, and, with the noiselessness which habit had perfected, left +his room, moved down the upper hall and the stair, and let himself out +into the garden. Wadded in his arms he bore one or two of the coverings +from his bed. He took his way to the pond. + +He was walking in his sleep. + +At an earlier day Isabel would have been awakened by her husband's +softest movement; but now, used to his stirrings, weary in body and +mind, and in some degree reassured, she slept on unstartled until +Arthur's return. + +He came as silently as he had gone, and was empty-handed. He had tied a +great stone in the two bed-coverings, and through the thin new ice of +the hole where Minnie had broken in had sunk them in the black depth +under the shelving rock. He was still asleep. + +The door between the two chambers gave a faint sound as he opened it, +yet neither mother nor child moved. A moment passed, and he had reached +the bed. Another went by, and Isabel was awake, wildly but vainly trying +to scream, to rise. A knee was on her bosom, two hands grappled her +throat, and two out-starting eyes were close to hers. Her husband was +strangling her. + +Then he too awoke. With a horrified cry he recoiled, and she, for the +first time in her life in a transport of terror, hurled him, in the +strength of her frenzy, to the farther side of the bed, and writhing out +on the opposite side, crept under it and lay still. In a torture of +bewilderment and remorse Arthur buried his face in the bedside. Then, +helpless to distinguish what he had done from what he had dreamed, he +sprang back to the place where Isabel had lain sleeping, and lo, it was +empty. + +"Oh, was it thou, was it thou?" he wailed, in a stifled voice. "Was it +not he?" + +Whispering and moaning her name, hearkening and groping, he sought her +from corner to corner, first of her room and then of his own, and then +went to the hall and to other rooms in the same harrowing quest. + +Isabel crept forth and darted to her babe. Yet as she leaned to take it +in her arms her better judgment told her the child was safe. The husband +too, and every one beside, were safer from his jealous wrath while the +babe remained. With one anguished knitting of her hands over it she left +it, and fled in her night-dress. Arthur's course was made plain by his +moanings, and easily avoiding him, she glided down a back stair, out +into the arbor, and across to her mother's cottage and bed-chamber. As +she did so he returned hurriedly to his room, with low cries of less +wretched conviction, and looked eagerly under his bed and then under +hers. Thereupon the last hope died, and he dropped to his face on the +floor in abject agony. + + + + +XVIII + +MISSING + + +After a time a new conjecture brought him to his feet. To solve it he +would go to the pond. If he had truly been there and done this appalling +thing, he would know it by the empty imprint of the boulder he had taken +from its resting place of years. If he had not, then Isabel had fled to +her mother and would be found with her in the morning, and the blot of +her murder, though it blackened his soul, was yet not on his hands. + +He went to the water, and soon he came again with the step and face of +one called out of his grave. Slowly he counted the disordered coverings +of his wife's couch, stood a moment in desolate perplexity, and then +went quickly and counted those of his own. A sheet and a blanket were +gone. He turned to a closet and supplied the lack, and then paced the +floor until dawn. + +Before the servants were fairly astir he laid away the clothing Isabel +had put off, and contrived to leave the house and pass through the arbor +unseen until he reached its farther end; but there Mrs. Morris, in a +dressing gown, opened to him before he could knock. She forced her usual +laugh, but he saw the white preparedness of her face. + +"She knows my crime," he thought, and was in agony to guess how she had +got the knowledge and what she would do with it. + +"Why, Arthur," she sweetly began, "what brings you"--But her throat +closed. + +"Mother," he interrupted emotionally as they shut themselves in, "is +Isabel here?" + +"Isabel?--No-o! Why--why, Arthur, she went home last night before ten +o'clock!" The little lady knew her acting was not good, but it was +better than she had hoped to make it. "Arthur Winslow! don't tell me my +child is not at home! Oh, my heavens!" + +"Wait, mother; listen. I beseech you. Do you absolutely know she's not +here?" + +"I know it! Oh, Arthur, are you only trying to break bad news to me by +littles? Has Isabel destroyed herself? Has she fled?" The inquirer +played well now; her pallor, that had seemed to accuse him, was gone, +and her question offered a cue which he greedily took. + +"Fled? Isabel! Destroyed herself,--that spotless soul? Oh no, no, no! +But Oh merciful God! I am afraid she has been stolen!" He sank into a +seat and dropped his face into his hands. + +The maid's steps sounded overhead, and he started up. Mrs. Morris laid a +hand on his arm. She was pale again, but her words were reassuring. + +"It's Minnie," she murmured: "let me go and see her. She'll not be +surprised; I'm always the first one up." She went, and was soon back +again. + +"There is no time to lose"--Arthur began. + +"No, you must go. Go search for every clue that will tell us a word of +her; but, whatever you do, let no one, not even Sarah, know she is +missing, until we know enough ourselves to protect her from every shadow +of reproach!" + +"True! true! right! right!" said Arthur, while with secret terror he +cried to himself: "This woman knows! She knows, she knows, and all this +is make-believe, put on to gain time!" + +But he saw no safer course than to help on the sham. "Right," he said +again; "only, mother, dear, how shall we hide her absence?" + +"We needn't hide it. You know she got another telegram last night, +begging her to come at once to the wedding. We can say she went on this +morning's train, before day; it makes such good Southern connections. +And now go! make your search with all your might! and after a while I'll +come over and pack a trunk full of her things, and express it South, +just as if she were there, and had gone so hurriedly that--Don't you +see?" + +Arthur said he saw it all, but he did not; he saw much that was not, +and much that was he saw not. He did not see that the dust of the old +street, and of the new town as well, was on Mrs. Morris's shoes; and +that Isabel, in a gown which she had left at the cottage when she went +to be mistress of his home, was really on the train, bound South. + +Dropping all pretence of having any search to make, he hurried back to +his own room, and by and by told the pleasantly astonished Sarah and +Giles the simple truth as Mrs. Morris had put it into his mouth, but +told it in the firm belief that he was covering a hideous crime with an +all but transparent lie. + +After a false show of breakfasting he went into his study,--"to work on +his sermon," he said; but did nothing there but pace the floor, hold his +head, and whisper, "It will not last an hour after _he_ has heard +it," and, "O God, have mercy! Oh, my wife, my wife! Oh, my brain, my +brain!" + + + + +XIX + +A DOUBLE STILL HUNT + + +Mrs. Morris's task was too large for her. She had always taken such +care of her innocence that her cultivation of the virtues had been only +incidental. Hence, morally, she had more fat than fibre; and hence +again, though to her mind guilt was horrible, publicity was so much +worse that her first and ruling impulse toward any evil doing not her +own was to conceal it. That was her form of worldliness, the only fault +she felt certain she was free from. And here she was, without a helping +hand or a word of counsel, laboring to hide from the servants and from +the dear Byingtons, from the church and from a scoffing world, the +hideous fact that Isabel was a fugitive from the murderous wrath of a +jealous husband, and that the rector of All Angels had crumbled into +moral ruin. + +"And oh," she cried, "is it the worst of it, or is it the best of it, +that in this awful extremity he keeps so sane, so marvellously sane?" +She said this the oftener because every few hours some new sign to the +contrary forced itself upon her notice. Oblivion was her cure-all. + +For a while after his conference with Mrs. Morris Arthur made some +feeble show--for her eye alone--of looking after clews, and then, as +much to her joy as to her amazement, told her it was a part of his +detective strategy to return into his study, and seemingly to his +ordinary work, until time would allow certain unfoldings for which he +looked with confidence. + +"Have you found out anything?" she asked, with a glaringly false +eagerness that gave him a new panic of suspicion and whetted his +cunning. + +He said he had, but must beg her not to ask yet what it was. Then he +inquired if any neighbor had left town that morning for Boston, and her +heart rose into her throat as she marked the subtlety he could not keep +out of his dark face. + +"Why, ye--yes--n--no, no one that I know of ex--except Leonard +Byington," she replied, and thought, "If he should accuse Leonard, we +are undone!" + +To avoid that risk she would have told him, then and there, all she +knew, had she not feared she might draw his rage upon herself for aiding +the wife's flight. She must, must, must keep on good terms with him till +she and Isabel could somehow get the child. So passed the awful hours, +mother and husband each marvelling in agony over the ghastly puzzle of +the other's apathy. + +Later in the day she knocked timorously at his study door. She had come +with a silly little proposition that he let her take the infant and go +South as if to join Isabel. Thus the trunk would not lie in the express +office down there, unclaimed and breeding awkward inquiries, and she +from that point, with him at this, could keep up the illusion they had +invented until Isabel herself should--eh--return! + +But when he let her in, he stood before her a silent embodiment of such +remorse and foreboding that she could have burst into sobs and cries. + +Yet she broached her plan, trembling visibly, while he heard her through +with melancholy deference. + +In reply he commended it, but called to her notice how much better it +would be for her to go alone. Then the babe, left behind, would be an +unspoken yet most eloquent guarantee that its mother would soon +reappear. + +"Very true," responded the emboldened lady; "yet on the other hand"-- + +He put out an interrupting touch. "The child is as safe with me as if it +were in its mother's bosom." + +"Oh, it isn't so much a question of safety as"-- + +The father interrupted again, with a gleam in his eyes like the +outflashing of a knife. "I hold the child against all comers, and would +if I had to slay its mother to do it." + +Mrs. Morris stifled an outcry and would have left him, but he would not +let her. + +"Stay! Oh, listen to a soul in torment! The babe is already motherless. +Isabel can never return, mother; she is with the dead. I am not waiting +idly here for her; I am waiting busily--for her slayer. He has fled; but +when he sees he is not pursued he will come back to the spot,--to the +black, black hole. He cannot help it. I _know_ that. Oh, how well I +know it! And the moment he comes he is caught,--caught in the web of +proofs I am weaving!" + +He held her arm and gazed into her gazing eyes in ferocious fear of the +web she might be weaving for him; while she, reeling sick with fear of +him, tried with all her shaken wits to sham an impassioned accord. + +"And you _will_ wait?" she exclaimed approvingly. "You will not +stir till the thing is sure?" + +He would not stir till the thing was sure. + +[Illustration: "I am waiting busily for her slayer."] + +As soon as it was dark enough to slip over to the Byingtons' unseen, she +went, bearing to Ruth Isabel's apologetic good-bys, trying her small +best to play at words with the General, and quickly getting away again, +grateful for a breath of their atmosphere, though distressfully +convinced that Ruth had divined the whole trouble, through the joy +betrayed by herself on hearing that Leonard would be away for a week. + +She went home and slept like a weary child, and neither the next day nor +the next, nor the next, was so awful as this first had been; they lacked +the crackle and glare, and the crash, of the burning and falling temple. + + + + +XX + +A DOUBLE RETURN + + +Let us not attempt the picture of Isabel keeping the happy guise of a +wedding guest among her kindred and childhood playmates while her heart +burned with perpetual misery, yearning, and alarm. "My baby, my baby!" +cried her breast, while the babe slept sweetly under faultless care. + +Nor need we draw a close portrait of her husband's mind, if mind it +could longer be called. A horror of sleep, a horror of being awake and +aware, remorse, phantoms, voices, sudden blazings of wrath as suddenly +gone, sweating panics, that craven care of life which springs so rank as +the soul decays, and a steady, cunning determination to keep whole the +emptied shell of reputation and rank,--these were the things that filled +his hours by day, by night; these, and a frightful expectance of one +accusing, child-claiming ghost that never came. The air softened to +Indian summer; the ice faded off the pool; a million leaves, crimson and +bronze, scarlet and gold, dropped tenderly upon its silvering breadth +and lay still; and both the joyless master of the larger house and the +merry maid of the cottage asked Heaven impatiently if the pond would +never freeze over again. + +It was Saturday afternoon when Giles, asked by Sarah Stebbens where Mr. +Arthur was, told her he was again, as he had been so many times the last +three days, down by the water, sitting at the edge of the overhanging +bank; or, as the Englishman expressed it, "'dreamink the 'appy hours +aw'y.'" So the week passed out; a second came in, and the rector of All +Angels went to his sacred office. + +He knew, before he appeared in the chancel, that Mrs. Morris was in her +accustomed place, and Ruth and her father in theirs, and that Leonard +was not yet reported back nor looked for; but exactly as he began to +read, "'Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us, in sundry +places, to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness, and +that we should not dissemble nor cloak them before the face of Almighty +God our heavenly Father'"--a sickness filled Mrs. Morris's frame, a +deathly hue overspread the minister's face, and Leonard came in and sat +beside his father and sister. + +Yet the service went on. The people knelt. + +"'Almighty and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy +ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires +of our own hearts'"-- + +Thus far the rector's voice had led, but here it sank, and the old +General's, in a measure, took its place. + +Then it rose again, in the confession, "There is no health in us," and +in the supplication, "Have mercy upon us, miserable offenders." + +There once more it failed, while the people, faltering with distress, +repeated, "That we may hereafter lead a godly, righteous, and sober +life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen." + +At this the farmer with the spectacled daughter stepped nimbly over the +rail and caught Arthur as he rose and staggered. Leonard was hurrying +forward, and half the people kneeling, half standing, when Mrs. Morris +vacantly stopped his way with a face so aghast and words so confused +that he had to give her over to Ruth. Then he hastened on to where +Arthur was being led into the vestry by his physician and others. + +But now he was turned back by the doctor, requesting him to dismiss the +congregation; which he did, with the physician's assurance that the +trouble was no more than vertigo, and that Arthur was even now quite +able to proceed home in the farmer vestryman's rockaway. The people +noticed that the physician went with him. + +Mrs. Morris followed on foot with the farmer's daughter, and with Ruth +and the General, and Leonard went into town to telegraph Isabel, in her +mother's name, to come home. As he was starting, Mrs. Morris drew Ruth +aside and whispered something about Godfrey. To which Ruth softly +replied, with an affectionate twist in her smile, "It couldn't hurry +him; he's already on the way." + +In the room next that in which her son-in-law lay asleep under anodynes +the little mother's odd laugh was turned all to moan. "Oh!--ho--ho!" she +sighed in solitude, "if Arthur could have learned from Godfrey how to +wait, or even if Isabel could but have learned from Ruth how to keep one +waiting!" + +She paused at a window that looked over the garden and into the street. +Leonard passed. She turned quickly away, only sighing again, +"Oh!--ho--ho!" Her thought might have been kinder had she known he was +stabbing himself at every step with blame of all this woe. + +"I ought to have foreseen," was his constant silent cry. "I am the one +who ought to have foreseen." + +Lack of Sunday trains and two failures to connect kept Isabel from +arriving until nightfall of the third day, Wednesday. Arthur knew Mrs. +Morris had telegraphed for her; but to him that was only part of the +play under which he thought he and she were hiding the frightful truth. + +On this day he had so outwitted his village physician as to be given the +freedom for which he ravened; liberty to take the air in his garden, as +understood by the doctor, but by him liberty to stand guard down at the +edge of that dark pool which would not freeze over,--liberty to take an +air sweet with the odors of the parting year, but crowded also with +distended eyes and strangling groans. + +He was down there in the early starlight when Ruth drove softly into the +garden, bringing Isabel. Warily the mother came out into the pillared +porch, and silently received the house's mistress into her arms. + +"He doesn't know," she said. "I couldn't tell him till you should come, +for fear of disappointing him." + +The argument seemed strained, but no one said so, and with a whispered +good-night Ruth drove away, and the two went in. As they stole upstairs +they debated how Isabel had best reveal herself. "I'm terribly afraid +that won't work, blessing," said Mrs. Morris; "you'd better let me break +it to him, first." + +"No, dearie, I don't think so. I haven't the shadow of a fear"-- + +"Oh, my darling child, you never have!" + +"But I know him so well, mother. We have only to come unexpectedly face +to face and--Oh, I've seen the effect so often!" They entered her room +whispering: "I'll change this dress for the one he last saw me in, and +stand over here by the crib where I stood then, and--Oh, sweet Heaven! +is this my little flower sleeping just as I left her?" With clasped +hands and tearful eyes she bent over the child. + + + + +XXI + +EVENING RED + + +Then she began to unrobe, but stopped to throw her arms about her +mother's neck. + +"Now, dearly beloved, you hurry away down the path and persuade him up +and send him in. I'm only afraid you'll find him chilled half to death, +it's growing cold so fast. And you can follow in after him, dearie, if +you wish,--only not too close." + +The mother went, and had got no farther than the cross-path when she +came all at once upon the master of the house. + +"Oh! ho, ho! here you are! I was just--Arthur, dear, where is your +overcoat? Do go right up to your room, my son, till I can get Sarah +to have a fire started in the library." She multiplied words in pure +affright, so drawn was his face with anguish, and so wild his eyes +with aimless consternation. + +Without reply he passed in and went upstairs. Mrs. Morris remained +below. + +Isabel's heart beat fast. She had made her change of dress, and in a far +corner of her room, with her face toward the open door that let into +his, was again leaning with a mother's ecstasy over the sleeping babe, +when she heard his step. + +It came to his outer door, which from her place could not be seen. + +Did he stop, and stand there? No, he had not stopped; he was only moving +softly, for the child's sake. + +She stood motionless, listening and looking with her whole soul, and +wishing the light were less dim in this shadowy corner, but knowing +there was enough to show her to him when he should reach the nearer +door. The endless moment wore away, and there on the threshold he +stood--if that--Oh merciful God!--if that was Arthur Winslow. + +His eyes fell instantly upon her, yet he made neither motion nor sound, +only stayed and stared, while an unearthly terror came into his face. + +Care of the child kept her silent, but in solemn tenderness she lifted +her arms toward him. + + + +He uttered a freezing shriek and fled. In an instant his tread was +resounding in the hall, then on two or three steps of the stair as she +hurried after, and then there came a long, tumbling fall, her mother's +wail in the hail below, and a hoarse cry of dismay from Giles as he +rushed out of the library. + +"He's only stunned, mum," Giles was saying as Isabel reached the spot. +"He's no more nor just stunned, mum." + +He had lifted the fallen man's head and shoulders, and Mrs. Stebbens +came, dropping to her knees and sprinkling water into the still, white +face. + +Isabel threw herself between. + +[Illustration: "Arthur! Arthur! can't you speak?"] + +"Arthur! Arthur! can't you speak? Oh, let us move him into the library!" + +"Yes, um!" exclaimed Giles. "'E'll come to in there; you can see 'e's +only stunned." + +He tried to raise him, and Isabel and Sarah moved to help; but the wife +turned on hearing Ruth's voice at her side, and Leonard Byington lifted +the limp man in his arms unaided, and bore him to the library lounge. + +"Arthur," he pleaded, with arms still under him, "can't you speak to us, +dear boy? Say at least good-by, can't you, Arthur?" He parted the +clothing from neck and breast, and laid an ear to his heart. + +"Do you hear it, Leonard?" cried the wife. "Oh, you do hear it, don't +you, Leonard?" + +There was no answer. For a moment Leonard's own form relaxed, and he +turned his face and buried it in the unresponsive breast. Then he lifted +it again, and taking the other face between his hands he sank his brow +to the brow upturned and cried: "God rest your soul, Arthur! Oh, Arthur, +Arthur, God rest your soul!" + + + + +XXII + +MORNING GRAY + + +Mrs. Morris gave the physician her account of the accident, the +physician gave the reporters his, and no other ever got into the old +street or the town it looks down upon with such sweet superiority. + +Said the rustic vestryman to another pall-bearer, as they turned toward +their homes, "Many's the time All Angels's been craowded, but I never +see it craowded as 'twas this time." + +The new mound was white under January snows when Godfrey and Isabel +first stood beside it together; and when summer had come and gone again, +and at last the time drew near when, by the regular alternations of the +service, the ocean wanderer's three years afloat were to be followed by +three ashore, it was beside that mound that Ruth let him ask the +long-withheld question. + +And once more the new year followed the old. + +On one of its earliest days, "I cal'late," a certain somebody began to +say to General Byington, "th' never was a happier weddin' so quiet, nor +a qui--" But he caught the sheen of his daughter's spectacles and +forebore. + +And still moved on the heavenly procession of the seasons; and as each +new one passed with smile and song, and strewed its flowers or fruits +on Bylow Hill, the memory of one who after life's fitful fever slept +soundly at last was ever a sweet forgetting of all that had once been +bitter, and a sweeter and sweeter remembrance of whatsoever things had +been pure, lovely, and of good report. + +One day the travelling salesman of fruit trees came again. This time he +met Minnie, some of whose information puzzled him. + +"But I thought you said the young Mrs. Winslow lived in the large house +on this side." + +"Yes, but that's the other one; that's Mrs. Isabel Winslow, the widow. +Captain Winslow, he's so much o' the time to the navy yard that him and +his wife they just keep their home along with her father and Mr. +Leonard." + +"And who is it that, I understand, a Mr. Giles over here is about to +marry?" + +For reply Minnie covered her mouth and nose with her hand, sputtered, +and shut the door in his face. + +Another year went by, yet another followed, and still Ruth--daughter, +sister, wife, and mother--remained the happy mistress of the house in +which she was born, and Leonard remained one of her household. Mrs. +Morris turned the cottage over to Mr. and Mrs. Giles--hem!--and dwelt in +the Winslow house with Isabel; who, even the young said, grew more +beautiful and lovable all the time. + +But there came a day, after all,--year uncertain,--when Leonard, with +Mrs. Morris's little namesake on his knee, asked Isabel if she did not +think it would be well for him to go away for a while; and Isabel +murmured no. + +So by and by the Winslow pair went to live in the Winslow house, and the +Byington pair in the Byington house; and if you listen well, you may +hear an aged voice, a voice with a brogue, saying:-- + +"Ay! there's a Linnard Winslow, now, and there's a Godfrey Boyington. +And there's still an Isable Winslow and a Ruth Boyington. But the mother +of Ruth Boyington is she that wor Isable Winslow, moy graciouz! and the +mother of Isable Winslow is she that wor Ruth Boyington. And so there +be's an Isable in the wan house and an Isable in th' other; and there +be's a Ruth in the wan house and a Ruth in th' other, moy graciouz! and +there's an Airthur in each, whatsomiver!" + + + + + +By GEORGE W. CABLE + + Bylow Hill. Illustrated in color by F.C. Yohn. $1.25. + + The Cavalier. Illustrated by H.C. Christy. $1.50. + + John March, Southerner. $1.50. + + Bonaventure. $1.50. + + Dr. Sevier. $1.50. + + The Grandissimes. $1.50. + + Old Creole Days. $1.50. + + Strong Hearts. $1.25. + + Strange True Stories of Louisiana. Illustrated. $1.25. + + The Creoles of Louisiana. Illustrated. $2.50. + + The Silent South. With Portrait. $1.00. + + The Negro Question. 75 cents. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BYLOW HILL*** + + +******* This file should be named 14575.txt or 14575.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/5/7/14575 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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