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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of At Pinney's Ranch, by Edward Bellamy
+
+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: At Pinney's Ranch
+       1898
+
+Author: Edward Bellamy
+
+Release Date: September 21, 2007 [EBook #22709]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT PINNEY'S RANCH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+AT PINNEY'S RANCH
+
+By Edward Bellamy
+
+1898
+
+
+John Lansing first met Mary Hollister at the house of his friend Pinney,
+whose wife was her sister. She had soft gray eyes, a pretty color in her
+cheeks, rosy lips, and a charming figure. In the course of the evening
+somebody suggested mind-reading as a pastime, and Lansing, who had some
+powers, or supposed powers, in that direction, although he laughed
+at them himself, experimented in turn with the ladies. He failed with
+nearly every subject until it came Mary Hollister's turn. As she placed
+her soft palm in his, closed her eyes, and gave herself up to his
+influence, he knew that he should succeed with her, and so he did.
+She proved a remarkably sympathetic subject, and Lansing was himself
+surprised, and the spectators fairly thrilled, by the feats he was able
+to perform by her aid. After that evening he met her often, and there
+was more equally remarkable mind-reading; and then mind-reading was
+dropped for heart-reading, and the old, old story they read in each
+other's hearts had more fascination for them than the new science.
+Having once discovered that their hearts beat in unison, they took no
+more interest in the relation of their minds.
+
+The action proper of this story begins four years after their marriage,
+with a very shocking event,--nothing less than the murder of Austin
+Flint, who was found dead one morning in the house in which he lived
+alone. Lansing had no hand in the deed, but he might almost as well have
+had; for, while absolutely guiltless, he was caught in one of those nets
+of circumstance which no foresight can avoid, whereby innocent men are
+sometimes snared helplessly, and delivered over to a horrid death. There
+had been a misunderstanding between him and the dead man, and only
+a couple of days before the murder, they had exchanged blows on the
+street. When Flint was found dead, in the lack of any other clue, people
+thought of Lansing. He realized that this was so, and remained silent as
+to a fact which otherwise he would have testified to at the inquest,
+but which he feared might now imperil him. He had been at Austin Flint's
+house the night of the murder, and might have committed it, so far
+as opportunity was concerned. In reality, the motive of his visit was
+anything but murderous. Deeply chagrined by the scandal of the fight,
+he had gone to Flint to apologize, and to make up their quarrel. But he
+knew very well that nobody would believe that this was his true object
+in seeking his enemy secretly by night, while the admission of the visit
+would complete a circumstantial evidence against him stronger than had
+often hanged men. He believed that no one but the dead man knew of the
+call, and that it would never be found out. He had not told his wife of
+it at the time, and still less afterward, on account of the anxiety she
+would feel at his position.
+
+Two weeks passed, and he was beginning to breathe freely in the
+assurance of safety, when, like a thunderbolt from a cloud that seems to
+have passed over, the catastrophe came. A friend met him on the street
+one day, and warned him to escape while he could. It appeared that he
+had been seen to enter Flint's house that night. His concealment of the
+fact had been accepted as corroborating evidence of his guilt, and the
+police, who had shadowed him from the first, might arrest him at any
+moment. The conviction that he was guilty, which the friend who told him
+this evidently had, was a terrible comment on the desperateness of
+his position. He walked home as in a dream. His wife had gone out to
+a neighbor's. His little boy came to him, and clambered on his knee.
+"Papa, what makes your face so wet?" he asked, for there were great
+drops on his forehead. Then his wife came in, her face white, her eyes
+full of horror. "Oh, John!" she exclaimed. "They say you were at Mr.
+Flint's that night, and they are going to arrest you. Oh, John, what
+does it mean? Why don't you speak? I shall go mad, if you do not speak.
+You were not there! Tell me that you were not there!" The ghastly face
+he raised to hers might well have seemed to confess everything.
+
+At least she seemed to take it so, and in a fit of hysterical weeping
+sank to the floor, and buried her face in her hands upon a chair. The
+children, alarmed at the scene, began to cry. It was growing dark, and
+as he looked out of the window, Lansing saw an officer and a number of
+other persons approaching the house. They were coming to arrest him.
+Animal terror, the instinct of self-preservation, seized upon his
+faculties, stunned and demoralized as he was by the suddenness with
+which this calamity had come upon him. He opened the door and fled,
+with a score of men and boys yelling in pursuit. He ran wildly, blindly,
+making incredible leaps and bounds over obstacles. As men sometimes do
+in nightmares, he argued with himself, as he ran, whether this could
+possibly be a waking experience, and inclined to think that it could
+not. It must be a dream. It was too fantastically horrible to be
+anything else.
+
+Presently he saw just before him the eddying, swirling current of the
+river, swollen by a freshet. Still half convinced that he was in a
+nightmare, and, if he could but shake it off, should awake in his warm
+bed, he plunged headlong in, and was at once swirled out of sight of his
+pursuers beneath the darkening sky. A blow from a floating object caused
+him to throw up his arms, and, clutching something solid, he clambered
+upon a shed carried away by the freshet from an up-river farm. All night
+he drifted with the swift current, and in the morning landed in safety
+thirty miles below the village from which he had fled for life.
+
+So John Lansing, for no fault whatever except an error of judgment, if
+even it was that, was banished from home, and separated from his family
+almost as hopelessly as if he were dead. To return would be to meet an
+accusation of murder to which his flight had added overwhelming weight.
+To write to his wife might be to put the officers of the law, who
+doubtless watched her closely, upon his scent.
+
+Under an assumed name he made his way to the far West, and, joining the
+rush to the silver mines of Colorado, was among the lucky ones. At the
+end of three years he was a rich man. What he had made the money for, he
+could not tell, except that the engrossment of the struggle had helped
+him to forget his wretchedness. Not that he ever did forget it. His
+wife and babies, from whose embraces he had been so suddenly torn,
+were always in his thoughts. Above all, he could not forget the look of
+horror in his wife's eyes in that last terrible scene. To see her again,
+and convince her, if not others, that he was innocent, was a need which
+so grew upon him that, at the end of three years, he determined to take
+his life in his hand and return home openly. This life of exile was not
+worth living.
+
+One day, in the course of setting his affairs in order for his return,
+he was visiting a mining camp remote from the settlements, when a voice
+addressed him by his old name, and looking around he saw Pinney. The
+latter's first words, as soon as his astonishment and delight had found
+some expression, assured Lansing that he was no longer in danger. The
+murderer of Austin' Flint had been discovered, convicted, and hanged two
+years previous. As for Lansing, it had been taken for granted that he
+was drowned when he leaped into the river, and there had been no further
+search for him. His wife had been broken-hearted ever since, but she and
+the children were otherwise well, according to the last letters
+received by Pinney, who, with his wife, had moved out to Colorado a year
+previous.
+
+Of course Lansing's only idea now was to get home as fast as steam could
+carry him; but they were one hundred miles from the railroad, and the
+only communication was by stage. It would get up from the railroad the
+next day, and go back the following morning. Pinney took Lansing out to
+his ranch, some miles from the mining camp, to pass the interval. The
+first thing he asked Mrs. Pinney was if she had a photograph of his
+wife. When she brought him one, he durst not look at it before his
+hosts. Not till he had gone to his room and locked the door did he trust
+himself to see again the face of his beloved Mary.
+
+That evening Mrs. Pinney told him how his wife and children had fared
+in his absence. Her father had helped them at first, but after his death
+Mary had depended upon needlework for support, finding it hard to make
+the two ends meet.
+
+Lansing groaned at hearing this, but Mrs. Pinney comforted him. It was
+well worth while having troubles, she said, if they could be made up to
+one, as all Mary's would be to her when she saw her husband.
+
+The upcoming stage brought the mail, and next day Pinney rode into camp
+to get his weekly newspaper, and engage a passage down the next morning
+for Lansing. The day dragged terribly to the latter, who stayed at the
+ranch. He was quite unfit for any social purpose, as Mrs. Pinney, to
+whom a guest in that lonely place was a rare treat, found to her sorrow,
+though indeed she could not blame him for being poor company. He passed
+hours, locked in his room, brooding over Mary's picture. The rest of the
+day he spent wandering about the place, smiling and talking to himself
+like an imbecile, as he dreamed of the happiness so soon to crown his
+trials. If he could have put himself in communication with Mary by
+telegraph during this period of waiting, it would have been easier to
+get through, but the nearest telegraph station was at the railroad.
+In the afternoon he saddled a horse and rode about the country, thus
+disposing of a couple of hours.
+
+When he came back to the house, he saw that Pinney had returned, for his
+horse was tethered to a post of the front piazza. The doors and windows
+of the living-room were open, and as he reached the front door, he heard
+Pinney and his wife talking in agitated tones.
+
+"Oh, how could God let such an awful thing happen?" she was exclaiming,
+in a voice broken by hysterical sobbing. "I 'm sure there was never
+anything half so horrible before. Just as John was coming home to her,
+and she worshiping him so, and he her! Oh, it will kill him! Who is
+going to tell him? Who can tell him?"
+
+"He must not be told to-day," said Pinney's voice. "We must keep it from
+him at least for to-day."
+
+Lansing entered the room. "Is she dead?" he asked quietly. He could not
+doubt, from what he had overheard, that she was.
+
+"God help him! He 'll have to know it now," exclaimed Pinney.
+
+"Is she dead?" repeated Lansing.
+
+"No, she is n't dead."
+
+"Is she dying, then?"
+
+"No, she is well."
+
+"It's the children, then?"
+
+"No," answered Pinney. "They are all right."
+
+"Then, in God's name, what is it?" demanded Lansing, unable to conceive
+what serious evil could have happened to him, if nothing had befallen
+his wife and babies.
+
+"We can't keep it from him now," said Pinney to his wife. "You 'll have
+to give him her letter."
+
+"Can't you tell me what it is? Why do you keep me in suspense?" asked
+Lansing, in a voice husky with a dread he knew not of what.
+
+"I can't, man. Don't ask me!" groaned Finney. "It's better that you
+should read it."
+
+Mrs. Finney's face expressed an agony of compassion as, still half
+clutching it, she held out a letter to Lansing. "John, oh, John," she
+sobbed; "remember, she's not to blame! She doesn't know."
+
+The letter, was in his wife's handwriting, addressed to Mrs. Pinney, and
+read as follows:--
+
+     You will be surprised by what I am going to tell you. You,
+     who know how I loved John, must have taken it for granted
+     that I would never marry again. Not that it could matter to
+     him. Too well I feel the gulf between the dead and living to
+     fancy that his peace could be troubled by any of the
+     weaknesses of mortal hearts. Indeed, he often used to tell
+     me that, if he died, he wanted me to marry again, if ever I
+     felt like doing so; but in those happy days I was always
+     sure that I should be taken first. It was he who was to go
+     first, though, and now it is for the sake of his children
+     that I am going to do what I never thought I could. I am
+     going to marry again. As they grow older and need more, I
+     find it impossible for me to support them, though I do not
+     mind how hard I work, and would wear my fingers to the bone
+     rather than take any other man's name after being John's
+     wife. But I cannot care for them as they should be cared
+     for. Johnny is now six, and ought to go to school, but I
+     cannot dress him decently enough to send him. Mary has
+     outgrown all her clothes, and I cannot get her more. Her
+     feet are too tender to go bare, and I cannot buy her shoes.
+     I get less and less sewing since the new dressmaker came to
+     the village, and soon shall have none. We live, oh so
+     plainly! For myself I should not care, but the children are
+     growing and need better food. They are John's children, and
+     for their sake I have brought myself to do what I never
+     could have done but for them. I have promised to marry Mr.
+     Whitcomb. I have not deceived him as to why alone I marry
+     him. He has promised to care for the children as his own,
+     and to send Johnny to college, for I know his father would
+     have wanted him to go. It will be a very quiet wedding, of
+     course. Mr. Whitcomb has had some cards printed to send to a
+     few friends, and I inclose one to you. I cannot say that I
+     wish you could be present, for it will be anything but a
+     joyful day to me. But when I meet John in heaven, he will
+     hold me to account for the children he left me, and this is
+     the only way by which I can provide for them. So long as it
+     is well with them, I ought not to care for myself.
+
+
+     Your sister,
+
+     Maky Lansing.
+
+The card announced that the wedding would take place at the home of the
+bride, at six o'clock on the afternoon of the 27th of June.
+
+It was June 27 that day, and it was nearly five o'clock. "The Lord help
+you!" ejaculated Pinney, as he saw, by the ashen hue which overspread
+Lansing's face, that the full realization of his situation had come
+home to him. "We meant to keep it from you till to-morrow. It might be a
+little easier not to know it till it was over than now, when it is going
+on, and you not able to lift a finger to stop it."
+
+"Oh, John," cried Mrs. Pinney once more; "remember, she does n't know!"
+and, sobbing hysterically, she fled from the room, unable to endure the
+sight of Lansing's face.
+
+He had fallen into a chair, and was motionless, save for the slow and
+labored breathing which shook his body. As he sat there in Pinney's
+ranch this pleasant afternoon, the wife whom he worshiped never so
+passionately as now, at their home one thousand miles away, was holding
+another man by the hand, and promising to be his wife.
+
+It was five minutes to five by the clock on the wall before him. It
+therefore wanted but five minutes of six, the hour of the wedding, at
+home, the difference in time being just an hour. In the years of his
+exile, by way of enhancing the vividness of his dreams of home, he
+had calculated exactly the difference in time from various points in
+Colorado, so that he could say to himself, "Now Mary is putting the
+babies to bed;" "Now it is her own bedtime;" "Now she is waking up;" or
+"Now the church-bells are ringing, and she is walking to church." He
+was accustomed to carry these two standards of time always in his
+head, reading one by the other, and it was this habit, bred of doting
+fondness, which now would compel him to follow, as if he were a
+spectator, minute by minute, each step of the scene being enacted so far
+away.
+
+People were prompt at weddings. No doubt already the few guests were
+arriving, stared at by the neighbors from their windows. The complacent
+bridegroom was by this time on his way to the home of the bride,
+or perhaps knocking at the door. Lansing knew him well, an elderly,
+well-to-do furniture-maker, who had been used to express a fatherly
+admiration for Mary. The bride was upstairs in her chamber, putting the
+finishing touches to her toilet; or, at this very moment, it might be,
+was descending the stairs to take the bridegroom's arm and go in to be
+married.
+
+Lansing gasped. The mountain wind was blowing through the room, but he
+was suffocating.
+
+Pinney's voice, seeming to come from very far away, was in his ears.
+"Rouse yourself, for God's sake! Don't give it all up that way. I
+believe there's a chance yet. Remember the mind-reading you used to do
+with her. You could put almost anything into her mind by just willing
+it there. That's what I mean. Will her to stop what she is doing now.
+Perhaps you may save her yet. There's a chance you may do it. I don't
+say there's more than a chance, but there 's that There's a bare chance.
+That's better than giving up. I 've heard of such things being done. I
+'ve read of them. Try it, for God's sake I Don't give up."
+
+At any previous moment of his life the suggestion that he could, by mere
+will power, move the mind of a person a thousand miles away, so as to
+reverse a deliberate decision, would have appeared to Lansing as wholly
+preposterous as no doubt it does to any who read these lines. But a man,
+however logical he may be on land, will grasp at a straw when drowning,
+as if it were a log. Pinney had no need to use arguments or adjurations
+to induce Lansing to adopt his suggestion. The man before him was in
+no mood to balance probabilities against improbabilities. It was enough
+that the project offered a chance of success, albeit infinitesimal; for
+on the other hand there was nothing but an intolerable despair, and a
+fate that truly seemed more than flesh and blood could bear.
+
+Lansing had sprung to his feet while Pinney was speaking. "I 'm going to
+try it, and may God Almighty help me!" he cried, in a terrible voice.
+
+"Amen!" echoed Pinney.
+
+Lansing sank into his chair again, and sat leaning slightly forward, in
+a rigid attitude. The expression of his eyes at once became fixed. His
+features grew tense, and the muscles of his face stood out. As if to
+steady the mental strain by a physical one, he had taken from the table
+a horseshoe which had lain there, and held it in a convulsive grip.
+
+Pinney had made this extraordinary suggestion in the hope of diverting
+Lansing's mind for a moment from his terrible situation, and with not so
+much faith even as he feigned that it would be of any practical avail.
+But now, as he looked upon the ghastly face before him, and realized
+the tremendous concentration of purpose, the agony of will, which it
+expressed, he was impressed that it would not be marvelous if some
+marvel should be the issue. Certainly, if the will really had any such
+power as Lansing was trying to exert, as so many theorists maintained,
+there could never arise circumstances better calculated than these to
+call forth a supreme assertion of the faculty. He went out of the room
+on tiptoe, and left his friend alone to fight this strange and terrible
+battle with the powers of the air for the honor of his wife and his own.
+
+There was little enough need of any preliminary effort on Lansing's
+part to fix his thoughts upon Mary. It was only requisite that to the
+intensity of the mental vision, with which he had before imagined her,
+should be added the activity of the will, turning the former mood of
+despair into one of resistance. He knew in what room of their house the
+wedding party must now be gathered, and was able to represent to
+himself the scene there as vividly as if he had been present. He saw
+the relatives assembled; he saw Mr. Davenport, the minister, and, facing
+him, the bridal couple, in the only spot where they could well stand,
+before the fireplace. But from all the others, from the guests, from the
+minister, from the bridegroom, he turned his thoughts, to fix them on
+the bride alone. He saw her as if through the small end of an immensely
+long telescope, distinctly, but at an immeasurable distance. On this
+face his mental gaze was riveted, as by conclusive efforts his will
+strove to reach and move hers against the thing that she was doing.
+Although his former experiments in mental phenomena had in a measure
+familiarized him with the mode of addressing his powers to such an
+undertaking as this, yet the present effort was on a scale so much
+vaster that his will for a time seemed appalled, and refused to go out
+from him, as a bird put forth from a ship at sea returns again and again
+before daring to essay the distant flight to land. He felt that he was
+gaining nothing. He was as one who beats the air. It was all he could do
+to struggle against the influences that tended to deflect and dissipate
+his thoughts. Again and again a conviction of the uselessness of the
+attempt, of the madness of imagining that a mere man could send a wish,
+like a voice, across a continent, laid its paralyzing touch upon his
+will, and nothing but a sense of the black horror which failure meant
+enabled him to throw it off. If he but once admitted the idea of
+failing, all was lost. He must believe that he could do this thing,
+or he surely could not. To question it was to surrender his wife;
+to despair was to abandon her to her fate. So, as a wrestler strains
+against a mighty antagonist, his will strained and tugged in supreme
+stress against the impalpable obstruction of space, and, fighting
+despair with despair, doggedly held to its purpose, and sought to keep
+his faculties unremittingly streaming to one end. Finally, as this
+tremendous effort, which made minutes seem hours, went on, there came
+a sense of efficiency, the feeling of achieving something. From this
+consciousness was first born a faith, no longer desperate, but rational,
+that he might succeed, and with faith came an instantaneous tenfold
+multiplication of force. The overflow of energy lost the tendency to
+dissipation and became steady. The will appeared to be getting the
+mental faculties more perfectly in hand, if the expression may be used,
+not only concentrating but fairly fusing them together by the intensity
+with which it drove them to their object. It was time. Already, perhaps,
+Mary was about to utter the vows that would give her to another.
+Lansing's lips moved. As if he were standing at her side, he murmured
+with strained and labored utterance ejaculations of appeal and
+adjuration.
+
+Then came the climax of the stupendous struggle. He became aware of a
+sensation so amazing that I know not if it can be described at all,--a
+sensation comparable to that which comes up the mile-long sounding-line,
+telling that it touches bottom. Fainter far, as much finer as is mind
+than matter, yet not less unmistakable, was the thrill which told the
+man, agonizing on that lonely mountain of Colorado, that the will which
+he had sent forth to touch the mind of another, a thousand miles away,
+had found its resting-place, and the chain between them was complete.
+No longer projected at random into the void, but as if it sent along an
+established medium of communication, his will now seemed to work upon
+hers, not uncertainly and with difficulty, but as if in immediate
+contact. Simultaneously, also, its mood changed. No more appealing,
+agonizing, desperate, it became insistent, imperious, dominating. For
+only a few moments it remained at this pitch, and then, the mental
+tension suddenly relaxing, he aroused to a perception of his
+surroundings, of which toward the last he had become oblivious. He was
+drenched with perspiration and completely exhausted. The iron horseshoe
+which he had held in his hands was drawn halfway out.
+
+Thirty-six hours later, Lansing, accompanied by Pinney, climbed down
+from the stage at the railroad station. During the interval Lansing
+had neither eaten nor slept. If at moments in that time he was able to
+indulge the hope that his tremendous experiment had been successful, for
+the main part the overwhelming presumption of common sense and common
+experience against such a notion made it seem childish folly to
+entertain it.
+
+At the station was to be sent the dispatch, the reply to which would
+determine Mary's fate and his own. Pinney signed it, so that, if the
+worst were true, Lansing's existence might still remain a secret; for of
+going back to her in that case, to make her a sharer of his shame, there
+was no thought on his part. The dispatch was addressed to Mr. Davenport,
+Mary's minister, and merely asked if the wedding had taken place.
+
+They had to wait two hours for the answer. When it came, Lansing was
+without on the platform, and Pinney was in the office. The operator
+mercifully shortened his suspense by reading the purport of the message
+from the tape: "The dispatch in answer to yours says that the wedding
+did not take place."
+
+Pinney sprang out upon the platform. At sight of Lansing's look of
+ghastly questioning, the tears blinded him, and he could not speak, but
+the wild exultation of his face and gestures was speech enough.
+
+The second day following, Lansing clasped his wife to his breast,
+and this is the story she told him, interrupted with weepings and
+shudderings and ecstatic embraces of reassurance. The reasons which had
+determined her, in disregard of the dictates of her own heart, to marry
+again, have been sufficiently intimated in her letter to Mrs. Pinney.
+For the rest, Mr. Whitcomb was a highly respectable man, whom she
+esteemed and believed to be good and worthy. When the hour set for the
+marriage arrived, and she took her place by his side before the minister
+and the guests, her heart indeed was like lead, but her mind calm and
+resolved. The preliminary prayer was long, and it was natural, as it
+went on, that her thoughts should go back to the day when she had thus
+stood by another's side. She had ado to crowd back the scalding tears,
+as she contrasted her present mood of resignation with the mingling of
+virginal timidity and the abandon of love in her heart that other day.
+Suddenly, seeming to rise out of this painful contrast of the past
+and the present, a feeling of abhorrence for the act to which she was
+committed possessed her mind. She had all along shrunk from it, as any
+sensitive woman might from a marriage without love, but there had
+been nothing in that shrinking to compare in intensity with this
+uncontrollable aversion which now seized upon her to the idea of holding
+a wife's relation to the man by her side. It had all at once come
+oyer her that she could not do it. Nevertheless she was a sensible and
+rational woman as well as a sweet and lovely one. Whatever might be the
+origin of this sudden repugnance, she knew it had none in reason. She
+was fulfilling a promise which she had maturely considered, and neither
+in justice to herself nor the man to whom she had given it could she
+let a purely hysterical attack like this prevent its consummation. She
+called reason and common sense to her aid, and resolutely struggled to
+banish the distressing fancies that assailed her. The moisture stood out
+upon her forehead with the severity of the conflict, which momentarily
+increased. At last the minister ended his prayer, of which she had not
+heard a word. The bridal pair were bidden to take each other by the
+hand. As the bridegroom's fingers closed around hers, she could not
+avoid a shudder as at a loathsome contact. It was only by a supreme
+effort of self-control that she restrained from snatching her hand away
+with a scream. She did not hear what the minister went on to say. Every
+faculty was concentrated on the struggle, which had now become one of
+desperation, to repress an outbreak of the storm that was raging within.
+For, despite the shuddering protest of every instinct and the wild
+repulsion with which every nerve tingled, she was determined to go
+through the ceremony. But though the will in its citadel still held out,
+she knew that it could not be for long. Each wave of emotion that it
+withstood was higher, stronger, than the last. She felt that it was
+going, going. She prayed that the minister might be quick, while yet
+she retained a little self-command, and give her an opportunity to utter
+some binding vow which should make good her solemn engagement, and avert
+the scandal of the outbreak on the verge of which she was trembling. "Do
+you," said the minister to Mr. Whitcomb, "take this woman whom you
+hold by the hand to be your wife, to honor, protect, and love while
+you live?" "I do," replied the bridegroom promptly. "Do you," said the
+minister, looking at Mary, "take the man whom you hold by the hand to
+be your husband, to love and honor while you live?" Mary tried to say
+"Yes," but at the effort there surged up against it an opposition
+that was almost tangible in its overpowering force. No longer merely
+operating upon her sensibilities, the inexplicable influence that
+was conquering her now seized on her physical functions, and laid its
+interdict upon her tongue. Three times she strove to throw off the
+incubus, to speak, but in vain. Great drops were on her forehead;
+she was deadly pale, and her eyes were wild and staring; her features
+twitched as in a spasm, while she stood there struggling with the
+invisible power that sealed her lips. There was a sudden movement among
+the spectators; they were whispering together. They saw that something
+was wrong. "Do you thus promise?" repeated the minister, after a pause.
+"Nod, if you can't speak," murmured the bridegroom. His words were the
+hiss of a serpent in her ears. Her will resisted no longer; her soul
+was wholly possessed by unreasoning terror of the man and horror of the
+marriage. "No! no! no!" she screamed in piercing tones, and snatching
+her hand from the bridegroom, she threw herself upon the breast of the
+astonished minister, sobbing wildly as she clung to him, "Save me, save
+me! Take me away! I can't marry him,--I can't! Oh, I can't!"
+
+The wedding broke up in confusion, and that is the way, if you choose
+to think so, that John Lansing, one thousand miles away, saved his wife
+from marrying another man.
+
+"If you choose to think so," I say, for it is perfectly competent to
+argue that the influence to which Mary Lansing yielded was merely an
+hysterical attack, not wholly strange at such a moment in the case of a
+woman devoted to her first husband, and reluctantly consenting to second
+nuptials. On this theory, Lansing's simultaneous agony at Pinners
+ranch in Colorado was merely a coincidence; interesting, perhaps, but
+unnecessary to account for his wife's behavior. That John and Mary
+Lansing should reject with indignation this simple method of accounting
+for their great deliverance is not at all surprising in view of the
+common proclivity of people to be impressed with the extraordinary side
+of circumstances which affect themselves; nor is there any reason why
+their opinion of the true explanation of the facts should be given more
+weight than another's. The writer, who has merely endeavored to put
+this story into narrative form, has formed no opinion on it which is
+satisfactory to himself, and therefore abstains from any effort to
+influence the reader's judgment.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of At Pinney's Ranch, by Edward Bellamy
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