In a Mysterious Way

THE DIFFERENCE

On the further side of the Long Bridge the railway tracks swept off in a smooth curve to the right, and, as there was a high embankment to adapt the grade to the hillside, a long flight of steps ran down beside it into the glen below.

A pretty glen, dark with shadows, bright with dancing sun-rays. A glen which bore an odd likeness to some lives that we may meet (if we have that happiness), lives that lead their ways in peace and beauty, with the roar and smoke of the world but a stone's throw distant.

Lassie's eyes, looking down, were full of appreciation.

"Is it there that you are going to live?" she asked.

Alva shook her head. "Oh, no, not there; that is Ledge Park, the place that all the hue and cry is being raised over just now."

"Oh, yes," Lassie turned eagerly; "tell me about that. I read something in the papers, but I forgot that it was here."

"It is 'here,' as you say. But it concerns all the country about here, only it's much too big a subject for us to go into now. There are two sides, and then ever so many sides more. I try to see them all, I try to see every one's side of everything as far as I can, but there is one side that overbalances all else in my eyes, and that happens to be the unpopular one."

"That's too bad."

"Yes, dear," Alva spoke very simply; "but what makes you say so?"

"Why? Why, because then you won't get what you want."

Her friend laughed. "Don't say that in such a pitying tone, Lassie. Better to be defeated on the right side, than to win the most glorious of victories for the wrong. Who said that?"

Lassie looked doubtful.

Alva laughed again and touched her cheek with a finger-caress. "I'll tell you just this much now, dear;—all of both the river banks—above, below and surrounding the three falls—belong to Mr. Ledge, and he has always planned to give the whole to the State as a gift, so that there might be one bit of what this country once was like, preserved. He made all his arrangements to that end, and gave the first deeds last winter. What do you think followed? As soon as the State saw herself practically in possession, it appointed a commission to examine into the possibilities of the water power!" Alva paused and looked at her friend.

"But—" Lassie was clearly puzzled.

"The engineers are here surveying now. Ronald Ingram is at the head and the people of all the neighborhood are so excited over the prospect of selling their farms that no one stops to think what it would really mean."

"What would it really mean?"

"A manufacturing district with a huge reservoir above it."

"Where?"

"Back there," she turned and pointed; "they say that there was a great prehistoric lake there once, and they will utilize it again."

"But there's a town down there."

"Yes, my dear, Ledgeville. Ledgeville and six other towns will be submerged."

Lassie stopped short on the railroad track and stared. She had come to a calamity which she could realize now.

"Why, what ever will the people do then?"

"Get damages. They're so pleased over being drowned out. You must talk it over with Mrs. Ray. You must get Mrs. Ray's standpoint, and then get Ronald's standpoint. Theirs are the sensible, practical views, the world's views. My views are never practical. I'm not practical. I'm only heartbroken to think of anything coming in to ruin the valley. Mr. Ledge and I share the same opinions as to this valley; it seems to us too great a good to sell for cash."

"You speak bitterly."

"Yes, dear, I'm afraid that I do speak bitterly. On that subject. But we won't talk of it any more just now. See, here's the wood road that leads to my kingdom; come, take it with me."

They turned into a soft, pine-carpeted way on the left, and in the length of a bow-shot seemed buried in the forest.

"Lassie, wait!"

Turning her head, Lassie saw that Alva had stopped behind, and was standing still beside where a little pine-tree was growing out from under a big glacial boulder. She went back to her.

"Dear, look at this little tree. Here's my daily text."

"How?"

"Do you see how it has grown out and struggled up from under the rock?"

Lassie nodded.

"You know very little of what makes up life, dear. I've sent for you to teach you." She lifted her eyes earnestly to the face near hers, and her own eyes were full of appeal. "Lassie, try to understand all I say to you these days; try to believe that it's worth learning. See this little tree—" she touched her fingers caressingly to the pine branches as she spoke—"it's a very little tree, but it has taught me daily since I came, and I believe that you can learn of it, too."

Lassie's big eyes were very big indeed. "Learn of a tree!"

Alva lifted one of the little stunted uneven branches tenderly in her fingers. "This is its lesson," she said; "the pine-cone fell between the rocks; it didn't choose where it would fall, it just found itself alive and under the rocks; there wasn't much earth there, but it took root and grew. There was no room to give out branches, so it forced its way crookedly upward; crookedly because there was no room to grow straight, but always upward; there wasn't much sunlight, but it was as bravely green as any other tree; the big rock made it one-sided, but it put out thickly on the side where it had space. My life hasn't been altogether sunlit. I was born between rocks, and I have been forced to grow one-sided, too. But the tree's sermon came home to me the first day that I saw it. Courageous little tree, doing your best in the woods, where no one but God could take note of your efforts,—you'll be straight and have space and air and sunshine in plenty next time—next time! Oh, blessed 'next time' that is to surely right the woes of those who keep up courage and continue fighting. That's the reward of all. That's the lesson."

Lassie listened wonderingly. "Next time!" she repeated questioningly, "what next time? Do you believe in a heaven for trees?"

"I am not sure of a heaven for anything," said Alva, "not an orthodox heaven. But I believe in an endless existence for every atom existing in the universe, and I believe that each atom determines the successive steps of its own future, and so a brave little pine-tree fills me with just as sincere admiration as any other species of bravery. 'Next time'! It will have a beautiful 'next time' in the heaven which means something so different from what we are taught, or here again on earth, or wherever its little growing spirit takes form again. I'm not wise enough to understand much of that, but I'm wise enough to know that there is a next time of so much infinitely greater importance than this time, that this time is really only of any importance at all in comparison just according to how we use it in preparation. That's part of the lesson that the tree teaches. But you can't understand me, Lassie, unless you are able to grasp my belief—my fixed conviction—that this world is only an instant in eternity. I couldn't live at all unless I had this belief and hope, and it's the key to everything with me; so please—please—give me credit for sincerity, at least."

Lassie looked thoroughly awed. "I'll try to see everything just as you do," she said.

Alva pressed her hand. "Thank you, dear."

Then they went on up the road.

Presently the sound of hammer and saw was heard, and the smell of wet plaster and burning rubbish came through the trees.

"Is it from your house?" Lassie asked, with her usual visible relief at the approach of the understandable.

"Yes, from my house," Alva answered. "They are very much occupied with my house; fancy buying a dear, old, dilapidated dwelling in the wilderness, and having to make it new and warm and bright and cheerful in a fortnight! Why, the tale of these two weeks will go down through all the future history of the country, I know. Such a fairy tale was never before. I shall become the Legend of Ledge, I feel sure."

The road, turning here, ended sharply in a large, solid, wooden gate, set deep in a thick hedge of pine trees.

"It is like a fairy tale!" Lassie cried delightedly; "a regular Tourangean porte with a guichet!"

"It is better than any fairy tale," said Alva; "it is Paradise, the lovely, simple-minded, Bible-story Paradise, descending upon earth for a little while." She pushed one half of the great gate-door open, and they went through.

A small, old-fashioned, Colonial dwelling rose up before them in the midst of dire disorder. Shingling, painting, glass-setting, and the like were all going forward at once. Workmen were everywhere; wagons loading and unloading were drawn up at the side; mysterious boxes, bales and bundles lay about; confusion reigned rampant.

"Not exactly evolution, but rather revolution," laughed Alva, ceasing transcendentalism with great abruptness, and becoming blithely gay. "And oh, Lassie, the joy of it, the downright childish fun of it! Don't you see that I couldn't be alone through these days; they are too grand to be selfish over. I had to have some one to share my fun. We'll come here and help every day after this; the pantries will be ready soon, and you and I will do every bit of the putting them in order. Screw up the little hooks for the cups, you know, and arrange the shelves, and oh, won't we have a good time?"

Lassie's eyes danced. "I just love that kind of work," she said, fully conscious of the pleasant return to earth, "I can fit paper in drawers beautifully."

"Which proves that after all women stay women in spite of many modern encouragements to be men," Alva said. "You know really I'm considered to be most advanced, and people look upon me as quite intellectual; but I'm fairly wild over thinking how we'll scrub the pantries, and put in the china—and then there's a fine linen-closet, too. We'll set that in order afterwards, and put all the little piles straight on the shelves."

By this time they had gone up the plank that bridged over the present hiatus between ground and porch, and entered the living-room, which was being papered in red with a green dado and ceiling.

"How pretty and bright!" Lassie exclaimed.

"It's going to be furnished in the same red and green, with little book-shelves all around and the dining table in the middle," Alva explained. "Oh, I do love this room. It's my ideal sitting-room. It has to be the dining-room, too, but I don't mind that."

"Won't the table have to be very small?"

"Just big enough for two."

"But when you have company?"

"We shall never have any company."

"I mean when you have friends with you here."

"I shall never have any friends with me, dear."

"Alva! Why—I can come—can't I?—Sometime?"

Alva shook her head.

"That's part of the story, Lassie, part of the story that I am going to tell you in a few minutes now. But be a little patient, dear; give me a few minutes more. Come in here first; see—this was the dining-room, but it has been changed into—I don't know what. A sort of bedroom, I suppose one would call it. I've had it done in blue, with little green vines and birds and bees and butterflies painted around it. Birds and bees and butterflies are always so lively and bright, so busy and cheerful. All the pictures here are going to be of animals, either out in the wild, free forest or else in warm, sunshiny farmyards. I have a lovely print of Wouverman's 'Im Stall' to hang in the big space. You know the picture, don't you?—the shadowy barn-room with one whole side open, and the hay dripping from above, and the horses just ridden in, and the chickens scratching, and some little children playing in the corner by the well. It's such a sweet gemuthliche picture—so full of fresh country air—I felt that it was the picture of all others to hang in this room. There will be a big sofa-bed at one side, and my piano, and pots of blooming flowers. And you can't think, little Lassie, of all that I look forward to accomplishing in this room. I expect to learn to be a very different woman, every atom and fibre of my being will be altered here. All of my faults will be atoned for—" she stopped abruptly, and Lassie turned quickly with an odd impression that her voice had broken in tears.

"Alva!" she exclaimed.

"It's nothing, dear, only that side of me that keeps forgetting the lesson of the tree. Don't mind me,—I am so happy that you must not mind anything nor must I mind anything either; but—when I come into this room and think—" her tone suddenly turned dark, full of quivering emotion, and she put her hand to her eyes.

"Alva, tell me what you mean? I feel frightened,—I must know what's back of it all now. Tell me. Tell me!"

"I'm going to tell you in just a minute, as soon as I've shown you all over the house." She took her handkerchief, pressed it to her eyes, made a great, choking effort at self-control, and then managed to go on speaking. "See," pushing open a door, "this is a nice little dressing-room, isn't it? And then around and through this narrow back hall comes the kitchen. There is an up-stairs, but I've done nothing there except make a room comfortable and pleasant for the Japanese servant who will do the work, that is, all that I don't do myself."

"Won't you want but one servant?"

"I think so. A man from outside will take the extras, and really it's a very small house, dear. The laundry will be sent out. Dear me, how I do enjoy hearing that kind of speech from my own lips. 'The laundry will be sent out!' That sounds so delightfully commonplace, so sort of everyday and like other people. I can't express to you what the commonplaces, the little monotonies of ordinary lives, mean to me here. You'll divine later, perhaps. But fancy a married life where nothing is too trivial to be glorified! That is how things will be with us."

"Are you so sure?" Lassie tried to smile and speak archly. Tried very hard to do both, because an intangible atmosphere of sorrow was beginning to press heavily on her spirits.

"Very sure,—really, quite confident. You must not think that, because I sob suddenly as I did just now, I am ever weak or ever doubt myself or any one else. I never doubt or waver. It is only that no matter how hard one tries, one can hardly rise completely out of the thrall of one existence into the freedom of another at only a week's notice."

"Is that what you are trying to do?"

"Dear, I'm not only trying to do it, but the greater part of the time I do do it. It's only very seldom that my soul faints and the tears come. I am really happy! You are not going to be able to comprehend how happy I am. Every one who wants anything in this world always wants it in such a narrow, finite way,—no one can understand joy too limitless to be finite. The difficulty is that occasionally I get blind myself, or else in mercy God sometimes veils the splendor for a few minutes. When I faint or struggle, it is just that my soul is absent; you must not mind when you see me suffer, for the suffering has no meaning. It's just a sort of discipline,—it doesn't count." She smiled with wonderful brightness into Lassie's troubled face, and then, pushing open the outer door,—"You don't quite see how it is, but be patient with yourself, dearie; it will come. All things come to him who waits."

"Oh, but I don't understand, not one bit," Lassie cried, almost despairingly.

They were in the yard now; Alva looked at her and took her hand within her own. "Come," she said, "we'll go down through the woods to a certain lovely, bright spot where the view is big and wide, and there I'll tell you all about it."

"I so want to know!"

"I know you do, dear, and I want to tell you, too. I'm not purposely tormenting you, but there is no one else to whom I can speak. And that human, sobbing part of me needs companionship just as much these days, as the merry, house-loving spirit, or the beatifically blessed soul. Can't you see, dear, that with all my affection for you, I dread telling you my story, and the reason for that is that it will be too much for you to comprehend at first, and that I know perfectly well that it is going to shock and pain you." The last words burst forth like a storm repressed.

"Shock and pain me!" Lassie opened mouth and eyes.

"Yes, dear, of a certainty."

They were in the woods, quite alone.

Involuntarily Lassie drew a little away; a common, cruel suspicion flashed through her head. "Alva, is it—is it that you do not mean to marry the man?"

Alva laughed then, not very loudly, but clearly and sweetly. "No, Lassie, it isn't that. I am going to be married in the regular way and, besides, I will tell you in confidence that I fully believe that I have been married to the same man hundreds of times before, and shall be married to him countless times again. Does that help you?"

"Alva!"

"There! I told you that you wouldn't understand, and you don't."

"No, I certainly don't, when you talk like that."

"It's natural that you shouldn't, dear; but at the end of the week you will, perhaps. We'll hope so, any way. Oh, Lassie, how much we are both to live and learn in the next week."

Lassie turned her eyes to the eyes of the other.

"It's queer, Alva; you talk as if you were crazy, but I know you're not crazy, and yet I'm worried."

"You don't need to be worried,—"

"I'll try not to be." She raised her sweet eyes to her friend's face as she spoke, and her friend bent and kissed her. "Don't keep me waiting much longer," she pleaded.

They were passing through the little, tree-grown way which led out on the brow of the hill. All the wide, radiant wonder of that October morning unrolled before them there. For an instant Lassie stood entranced, forgetting all else; and then:

"Tell me now!" she cried.

"Let us sit down here," Alva said, pointing to a rough seat made out of a plank laid across two stumps. They sat down side by side.

"Alva, it seems as if I cannot wait another minute; I must know it all now. Tell me who he is, first; is it some one that I know?"

Alva's eyes rested on the wide radiance beyond.

"You know of him, dear," she replied quietly.

"Who is it?"

The woman laid her arm around the girl and drew her close and kissed her gently. Then she whispered two words in her ear.

With a scream, Lassie started to her feet. "Oh—no!—no!—no!"

Alva looked straight up at her where she stood there above her and smiled, steadily.

"No, no,—it can't be! I didn't hear right."

"Yes, you heard quite right."

The girl's hands shook violently; tears came fast pouring down her face. "But, Alva, he is—he can't—"

Tears filled the other's eyes, too, at that, and stole thickly out upon her cheeks. "I know, my dear child, but didn't I tell you how to me—to us—this life is only a small part of the whole?"

"Oh, but—but—oh, it's too horrible!" She sank down on the seat again and burst out sobbing.

"No, dear," Alva exclaimed, her voice suddenly firm, "not horrible, just that highest summit of life of which I spoke before—the point toward which I've lived, the point from which I shall live ever afterwards,—my point of infinite joy,—my all. For he is the man I love—have always loved—shall always love. Only, dear, don't you see?—he isn't a man as you understand the word; the love isn't even love as you understand love. It's all so different! So different!"

A long, keenly thrilling silence followed, broken only by the sound of the younger girl's repressed weeping.

It was one of those pauses during which men and women forget that they are men and women, that the world is the world, or that life is life. Every human consideration loses weight, and one is stunned into heaven or oblivion, according to his or her preparation for such an entry to either state.

The two friends remained seated side by side, facing the wonderful valley in all its rich beauty of varied colorings; but neither saw valley or color, neither remembered for a little what she was or where she was. Alva, with her hands linked around her knees, was out and away into another existence; Lassie, her eyes deadened and darkened with a horror too acute for any words to relieve, sat still beside her, and knew nothing for the time being but a fearful throbbing in her temples—a black cloud smothering her whole brain—and tears.

It was Lassie who broke the silence at last, trying hard to speak evenly. "But, Alva, I never knew ... when did you learn to love him ... why—" her voice died again just there, and she buried her face on the other's shoulder.

Alva laid her hand upon the little hand that shook under a fresh stress of emotion, and said gently, her tone one of deepest pity: "Shall I tell you all about it? Would you like to know the whole story?"

"Oh, yes, yes,—so much."

"You'll try to be patient and give yourself time to really see how things may be to one who is altogether outside of your way of thinking, won't you, dear? You won't pass judgment too quickly?"

"I'll try. Indeed, I will, as well as I can—"

Alva pressed the hand. "Dear little girl," she said, very tenderly, "you see I look at even you with quite different eyes from those with which the ordinary person sees you. If you could only see things as I do, you'd see everything so much more clearly. How can I put it all straight for you? When even my love for you is not at all what any other gives you."

Lassie lifted up her head. "How do you mean?"

"There are two Lassies to me, dear,—the pretty, sweet-looking girl, and the Lassie who loves me. Most people confuse the two, and think them one and the same; I don't. No matter what happened to you, the Lassie whom I love could never alter—she is unchangeable. She is not subject to change; she doesn't belong to this world; she cannot die. And just as I feel about you, I feel about everybody. What I can see and touch in those I love is what I love least in them."

"Oh, Alva!" it was like a little moan—the girl's voice.

"That is my earnest belief. Bodies and what they suffer don't count. That has come to me bit by bit under the pressure of these last years. But it has come in its completest form in the end. I am entirely satisfied as to the only truth in the universe being the fact that only Truth is eternal. Please try to remember all this, while you listen to my story; try not to forget it. You will, won't you?"

"I'll try, but it isn't clear to me."

"No, I don't suppose so—" Alva sighed—"but do your best, my dear;" she paused a moment, then drew the hand that she held close between her own two, and went on slowly; "I must tell you first of all that I have never seen him but three times in my life. Just think—only three times!"

"Only three—" Lassie looked up in surprise.

"Only three times. And hardly any one knows that I saw him even those times. No one knows to-day that we love one another, or that we are to be married, except the surgeons and nurses, who had to be told, of course. It's a very great secret."

"Tell me how it all began, Alva."

"I don't know when I first heard his name. It all began here, dear, five years ago. When I stopped off for a few days to visit the Falls. I've always loved this country, and from the time that I was born I've always been here for a few days now and then. I always had a queer feeling that something drew me here. I have those queer feelings about things and places and people, you know, and out there on the bridge has always seemed to me a sort of pivot in my life. Every time I go there, the clock seems to strike some hour for me—" she stopped.

Lassie opened and shut her free hand with a sensation of being very uneasy; the suspicion that Alva was not quite sane just lightly crossed her mind. It certainly was not sane to talk as she did.

"So I came here again, on my way home from New York, just five years ago now. And he was here then, staying at Ledge Park, and I saw him for the first time; we met out there on the bridge;" she stopped for just a second or so, then went steadily on. "I think I read about him in the papers. I had learned to admire him intensely—who could help it?—but of course I'd never for one instant thought of loving him. He was like a sort of a story-hero to me; he never seemed like a man; I never thought of any woman's loving him. He just seemed to be himself, all alone—always alone. He had seemed quite above and apart from all other men to me. He interested me; I wanted to learn all that I could about him and his work, and I did learn a great deal, but I'd never dreamed of meeting him face to face, of really speaking to him, of having his eyes really looking at me; he seemed altogether beyond and away from my existence. As if he lived on another world. And then I met him that evening on the bridge, in just the simplest sort of way. Oh, it was very wonderful."

"Did you know him right off?"

"Yes, he looked just like his picture; but then I knew him in another way, too. I can't describe it; it was all very—very strange. It doesn't seem strange to me now, but it would seem almost too strange to you."

"Won't you try to tell me?"

"I will some day, dear, perhaps. I can't tell you now, I couldn't explain it all to you; but, anyway, we met and I looked at him and he looked at me—" she pressed the hand within her own yet closer, adding simply, "I believe that love—real love—comes like that, first of all that one look, and then all the past rushes in and makes the bridge to all the future. Oh, Lassie," her voice sank to a whisper, "when I think of that meeting and of all that it brought me, I am so happy that I want to take the whole wide world into my confidence, and beg every one not to play at love or to take Love's name in vain; but to be patient, and wait, and starve, or beg, or endure anything, just so as to merit the joy which may perhaps be going to be. I never had thought of what love might be; at least I had never been conscious of such thinking. My life all these years had been bound so straitly and narrowly there at home. How could I think of anything that would take me from those duties! And yet I see now that it was all preparation, all the getting ready. If I had only known it, though,—if I had only known it then! It would all have been so much easier."

The whisper died away; she sat quite still looking out over the hills. Lassie's eyes gazed anxiously upon her; nothing in her own spirit tuned to this key; instead, flashes of recollection kept lighting up the present with forgotten paragraphs out of the newspaper accounts of the accident. She shivered suddenly.

Alva did not notice. After a while she went on again.

"Some day you'll learn to love some one, and then you'll know something of what I feel. I don't want you to suffer enough to know all that I feel. But, believe me, whatever one suffers, love is worth it. In that first instant I learned—that first look showed me—that it can mean all, everything, more even than happiness itself; oh, yes, a great, great deal more than happiness itself. In one way they're not synonymous at all, love and happiness. I have been happy without love all my life, and now I shall love without being what the world calls 'happy'; but I shall be happy—happy in my own way, just as I am happy now in something that makes you tremble only to think of."

She paused; her eyelids fell over her eyes and the lashes quivered where they lay on her cheeks, but her hand continued to hold Lassie's, warm and close. There was another long pause. And then another sigh.

"So in that first hour—it was only one hour—I learned the beginning of life's biggest lesson—what life may be, what love may be, and also what for me could never be. For just as soon as I really saw him, I saw why he had remained alone. It was perfectly plain to me. It was that he didn't live for himself; he lived to carry out his purpose. One reads of such people, but I never had met any one who was unable to see himself in his own life before. It was a tremendous lesson to me. It was like opening a door and looking suddenly out upon a new order of universe. Everything whirled for the first minutes, and then I saw that my own life had been sufficiently unselfish to have made me capable of comprehending his. It rose like a flood through my soul, that everything has a reason, and that my blind, stupid, hopeless years there at home had all been leading straight up to that minute. It was such a revelation, and such a new light on all things. I was born anew, myself; I have never been the same woman since. Never, never!"

Lassie's brows drew together; the revelation did not appeal to her personal reason as reasonable.

"We talked for quite a while—not about ourselves—we understood each other too well to need do that. It seems to me now that we were almost one then, but I didn't know it. All I knew was that I could measure a little of what he was, and that there was a bond between us of absolute content in working out God's will rather than our own. I believe now that that is really the only true love or the only true basis for any marriage, and that when that mutual bond is once accepted, nothing can alter, not even an ocean rolling between—not even ten oceans. He spoke of the Falls, and he spoke of his own work. I listened and thanked God that I knew what he meant, and comprehended what it meant to me. At the end of the hour we parted, and I came back to the hotel and started for home the morning after.... He went away, too, and it was later—when we began to write letters—that our life together, our beautiful ideal life together, began. You can't realize its happiness any more than you can measure all that my words really mean. I can't explain myself any better, either. After a while it will all come to you, I hope. I went on with the work at home, and he continued his labors which allowed him neither home nor family. Nobody knew and nobody would have known, even if he or she thought that they knew. The very best and loveliest things lie all around the most of us, and the best and loveliest of all treasures are within our own hearts—and yet very few of us know anything about them. Perhaps better that the world in general shouldn't understand the joy of my kind of love, anyhow; it isn't time for that yet."

"How, Alva?"

She smiled almost whimsically, "Dearest, as soon as the whole world understands that sort of life, its own mission will be fulfilled, and then there will be no more of this particular world. You see!"

"Oh!"

"So then, dear, time went on and on, and I was happy, very happy. And he was very happy, also. There was something truly childlike in his happiness; he had never expected love in his life, because he had never thought of meeting any one who would be able to adapt herself to his circumstances. We never met, because it didn't seem best or wise. We just loved, and I don't believe that any two people have ever been happier together than we were, apart, for these five years—these happy, happy five years."

Lassie felt a deepening misery; the last horrible part must be going to come now.

Alva passed her hand over her eyes and drew a long breath.

"It's so difficult to be different from other people, and then to bear their way of looking at things. It's so hopeless to try to translate one's feeling into their language all the time. How can I go on, when I know just how it all looks to you. It's fearfully hard for me."

"I won't say a word,"—the girl's cry was pitiful.

Alva threw both arms quickly about her and held her close. "Bless you, darling, I know it. But you'll suffer and I know that, too; and I feel your suffering more than you guess. I know just how it all seems to you. There is that within me which shudders too, sometimes, and would shrink and weep only for the strong, divine power that fills me with something better than I can describe, something big enough and high enough to fight down the coward. You have that same divinity within you, dear, and you can't tell when or where it will be called out, but once it is called out, you never will be weak in the face of this earth's woes."

Lassie was weeping softly again.

"One morning—you know when—I opened the paper to read it to papa after breakfast, and I saw on the first page, across the top in bright red letters, that he had been killed."

There was a little sharp cry—"But he wasn't?"—and then a great sob.

"No, dear, but that was the first report."

"And you thought—"

"Yes, of course I believed it. But, Lassie, try to calm yourself—because it wasn't to me what you think. I was calm; I had learned so much, he had taught me so much, during the five years, that I astonished myself with my strength; really, I did. I went about all that day just as usual, only thinking with a white sort of numbness how long the rest of life would seem; and then, in the evening, the paper said that he was still alive. Then I telegraphed and the next day I went to him. I knew that I must go to him and see him once more, so I arranged things and went. I was surprised all the journey at my own courage; it was like a miracle, my power over myself. It was a long journey, but I knew that I should see him again at the end. I knew that he would not leave me without saying good-bye, now that he was conscious that he was going. I was sure of that. So confident can love and strength be in love and strength.

"I arrived—I went to the hospital—they had the room darkened because—well, you can guess. I went to where the bed stood and knelt down beside him, and laid my hand on his bosom. I felt his heart beating—ever so faintly, but still beating,—and I heard his voice. Only think, I had not heard his voice for five years! To you or to any one else it might have all been frightful, because, of course, the reality was frightful. The man, as you understand men, was mangled and dying, and could not possibly be with me except for a few brief days. But, oh, my dearest,—with me it was so different; it was all so absolutely different. The man that I loved was unhurt, and the evil chance had only made us nearer and dearer forever. I don't say that I was not trembling, and that I was not almost unnerved by the shock; but I can say, too, and say truly, that the Something Divine which had filled me from the first day, filled and upheld me and made me know that all was good even then, even in that dark hour and in that dark room, where he whom I held dearest on earth was chained to pain beneath my hand. The nurses were very kind. They left me there beside him while he was conscious and unconscious for some hours. They saw very quickly that it was different with us from most people; and when I went out two of the surgeons took me into a room alone and told me the truth.

"I think that then was the greatest moment of my life—when I comprehended that one who was not killed outright by such a shock might live even months until—until—Well, if a man so injured has vitality enough to live at all, he may—live—"

"Don't go on, Alva, please,—I don't want to know how long he may live."

"No, dear, I won't go into that. Only you must think that to me it was such unexpected heaven. Instead of death, he was alive. Instead of separation for this life, we were to have some days of absolute companionship. It was something so much more than I had ever thought of hoping. A life—even for a day—together! Companionship! Not letters, but words. I to be his nurse, his solace, to have him for my own. I stayed awake all night thinking. I knew what being swept suddenly away meant to him. I knew of his life plans, and what made death hardest to him. It came to me that I might ease that bitterness. That his need could go forth through the medium of my love and interest. That his work would pass on into other hands through mine. That all the golden web of Fate had been woven directly to this end."

Lassie continued sobbing.

"I saw what we could do. In the morning I went to the surgeons, and they said that each day added a week of possible life, and that although it would be many days before anything could be done, after that, he could be moved and wait for the end—with me. I went to him then, and again I knelt there by the bed, and this time I told him how I was going to spend the weeks, and what he must look forward to. He was unable to talk, but he looked at me and—like the first time—we understood one another absolutely. He accepted the happiness that was to be as gratefully as I did myself. As I said before, it was so much more—so much more—than we had ever expected! He took up his burden of agony as cheerfully and courageously as he had taken everything in life, and I came away. There was no use in my remaining there, as he would be either unconscious or—I could not remain there; the surgeons forbade it.

"Then I had to find a place quickly, a place where no one would come or would see. A place where he and I could share life and God, who is Life, without any outsiders breaking in to stare and wonder."

Her voice suddenly became broken and hurried. "Of course I thought of Ledge, where we had first met, and I wrote to Ronald at once. He found me that dear little nest back there, and—" she stopped, for Lassie had suddenly started to her feet. "What is it, dear?"

"Oh, I can't bear it at all. To me it is horrible—horrible! Why, he can never stand up again—he—Oh, I want to be alone. I must be alone. I'll—I'll come back—in time—"

She did not wait to finish; she gave one low, bitter cry, and wrung her hands. Then she ran down the steep, little path that led to Ledgeville, leaving her friend on the hilltop, with the October sun pouring its splendor all about her.

THAT DISPASSIONATE OBSERVER, MRS. RAY

THERE never was the human tragedy, comedy, or melodrama, yet, which did not have one or more dispassionate observers. This is strictly true because, even if a man goes off into the wilderness to fight his fight out utterly alone, there are moments when one part of his own spirit will dissever itself from all the rest and, standing forth, tell him of his progress or retrogression with a pitiless, unbiassed truth. The wilderness is advisable for that very reason, but no one makes a greater mistake than when he or she goes to a small far-away village and pleasantly terms it "the wilderness," supposing soul-solitude an integral part thereof. It is very right, proper, and conventional to view life from one's own standpoint, but the real facts of the case are old and trite enough to warrant me in repeating the statement that all doings in this world have their dispassionate observer.

Mrs. Ray was the natural observer for the town of Ledge. The town was not quite aware that added to her keen powers of observation she was also the Voice of the community. People never expressed themselves fully, without first knowing what she said. Public opinion simmered all over the township, so to speak, and then finally boiled over in Mrs. Ray.

It will be quite impossible to impress upon the ordinary reader the importance of such Public Opinion, unless a few paragraphs are devoted to the town of Ledge and its history. If one fails to properly appreciate the town of Ledge, the tale might just as well have been located in North Ledge, South Ledge, Ledgeville, Ledge Centre, or any of the other Ledges.

Therefore on behalf of the lovely little hamlet of Ledge itself, I will state in as few words as possible that it lies upon a hill overlooking one of the most beautiful and picturesque scenes in all Northeastern America; that it took its name and being from a great and noble-hearted man, who, passing that way by chance, half a century since, paused near its site to sadly contemplate the denuded banks of the little river winding its way amidst the débris and desolation left by the lumber barons of the period. Time was when the same banks had been smiling terraces covered thick with primeval pines, but "civilization" had demanded their downfall and they fell. Fell without warning, and also without discretion. Fell forever, flinging the riches of all the future aside for the plenty of one man's day. Blackened stumps, great beds of unsightly chips, waste which would never have been called waste in any other land, ruthless destruction,—all this disfigured the landscape that stretched before that visitor of fifty years ago. His heart was heavy, for he was one who loved everything good, and trees and beauty are two of man's best gifts from above; but while he gazed over what to him and many others was almost as much desecration as desolation, he saw, forever flowing—however choked—the little river below. Like the thread of idealism which illuminates the most despairing situation, so flowed the silvery stream down through the scene before him. Its bed was clogged with drift, its banks covered with rotting rubbish, yet the promise of its beauty remained; and then and there the traveller formulated a plan for its redemption to the end that unborn generations might revel in the realization of that of which he alone seemed then conscious.

The town of Ledge was a part of what resulted. There had to be a town, and Ledge came into existence. Where there is work to be done, come the workers, and with them come towns. Ledge came and grew. To the call of prosperity many other Ledges gathered a little later; but they never enjoyed the dignity of the one and original. The first Ledge was tenacious of its priority. It held to its privileges as rigidly as any medieval knight held to his. Castled upon the hill above, it simulated power in more ways than one. For many years all the others had to go to Ledge for their mail. Ledge also owned the sheriff, the blacksmith, and the lawyer, and kept a monopoly on the summer excursionist; the express office was its natural perquisite; a bend of the canal took it in, and when the canal went the railroad came to console the losers. Mr. Ledge's plans, which had turned his private estate into a public park for the gently disposed, also held Ledge in high honor. To visit Ledge Park from any of the other Ledges was rendered well-nigh impossible. The little town stood like a sentinel at the end of the Long Bridge, and at the top of the First Fall. Every picnicker had to go through it, had to check such articles as could not conveniently be carried all day, in its hotel; had to get whatever he might feel disposed to drink in the same place. During the summer, visitors were so plenteous that it became the fashion in Ledge to despise them, and that right heartily, too. The people who brought the town most of its means of livelihood received much that species of sentiment with which an irritating husband and father is frequently viewed. It was the fashion in Ledge to despise city people and their ways in all things; even their coming to see the Falls was referred to as special proof of their singularly feeble minds, while the way in which the visitors climbed and walked was the favorite topic of mirthful criticism, all summer long. Criticism is a strange habit. It is contagious, thrives in any soil or no soil at all, and is far more destructive to him or her who gives it birth than it can possibly be to any other person. Not that it really is destructive, but that the weight of criticism rarely falls where it is supposed to be most needed.

The summer visitors evoked so much comment between May and November that a great longing to have something to talk about between November and May followed. It therefore became the fashion in Ledge to talk of everything and everybody, and as the summer visitors were rated low, the rest of the world was pretty freely given over to the same cataloguing. It was usual to rate Ledgeville and all the other Ledges particularly low, and this opinion held firm, until a biting edge was given it by a second railroad which came down the valley's bottom to the unspeakable wrath of the hills on either side and of Ledge in special. It took several years to assimilate the second railroad, and resume the even tenor of life. But the adjustment was finally made, and at the date of this story Ledge was a wee country idyll set like a pearl amidst the beautiful environment of that fairest of country counties. He who was responsible for town and environment lived on his own estate near by, and came in for his share of consideration from the tongues of his namesake. The great philanthropist was busily engaged in his battle to preserve intact, for the good of the many to come, that matchless picture with its open Bible of Nature's Own History. Of the picture and its practical value, Ledge had its own opinion. It had its own opinion of the dam, too. It had its own opinion of Alva. And of Lassie. And of Ingram. And all these opinions flowed freely forth through the medium of Mrs. Ray. As that lady herself put it: "Whether I'm picking chickens or digging fence-posts, or carting the United States mail down to the train in the wheelbarrow that I had to buy and the United States Government won't pay for,—I never am idle; I'm always taking in something."

And it was quite true. Whatever Mrs. Ray was working at, her brain was never idle; it was always absorbing something. It was not uncommon to see a neighbor walking with her while she ploughed, conversation going briskly on meanwhile. She swept the church with company, and she almost never sat alone between mail times. It was a full, busy life, and an interesting one. It was full of importance and responsibility, too. Mrs. Ray liked to be responsible and was naturally important. Her opinions were in the main correct, but sometimes she did draw wrong conclusions. For instance, when she looked down the road the morning after Lassie's arrival, and saw the two friends departing over the Long Bridge.

"Oh, dear," she said to whoever was near by at the minute, "I smell trouble for that oldest one if she's planning to keep that pretty girl here long. That man is going to fall in love with that pretty girl. He never has cared much for her, anyway. He don't even seem to like to go over to their house with her; she goes alone mostly. Yes, indeed."

The somebody sitting near by at the minute was Mrs. Dunstall. And Pinkie, of course. They had dropped in to see if they had any mail, and had found Mrs. Ray cutting the hair of the three youngest children left her, first by her predecessor and then by Mr. Ray himself.

"Sit down," she had said cordially; "the second train isn't in yet, and it's got to come in and go out and let the mail-train come in, even if the mail ain't late, on account of the wreck."

"Oh, is there a wreck?" Mrs. Dunstall asked anxiously.

"Yes. Forty-four run into a open switch up at Cornell. If the switch is open, I never see why the train don't just run on out the other end and keep right along; but all the accidents is as often open switches as anything, so I guess there's a reason. At any rate, the wrecking-train's gone up and the second mail's going to be late. Tip your head a little, Billy. Yes, indeed."

"I wonder if we'd better wait," said Mrs. Dunstall, unwrapping her shawl somewhat and taking a chair. "What do you say, Pinkie?"

Pinkie was already seated. She weighed two hundred pounds and never stood up when she could help it. "I say 'Wait,'" said Pinkie.

Mrs. Dunstall thereupon sat down, too, and after ten minutes of a most solemn silence Mrs. Ray finished her task and dismissed the children. She faced her callers, then, folding her little gray shoulder-wrap tightly across her bosom as she did so, and tucking the ends in close beneath her armpits. The little gray shawl was one of the first signs of winter in Ledge; Mrs. Ray always donned it at the beginning of October, and never took it off before the last day of May.

"Well!" she said now; "anything new come up?"

"Millicent come on the same train with that girl," Mrs. Dunstall began at once. "I wasn't really expecting any mail this morning, but I thought I might as well come down about now and tell you how Millicent come on the train with her. You know who I mean, of course?"

"She knows," said Pinkie.

"I s'posed you would. And so Millicent come on the same train with her. Seems too curious of Millicent coming on the same train with her, when Millicent hasn't been on a train but twice in her life before, and then to think that she would come back with that girl. Things do fall out queer in this world. She sit right in the seat behind her, too. That was awful curious, I think."

Mrs. Ray gave the ends of her shawl a fresh tuck, and drew in some extra breath.

"You never can tell," she began; "things do come about mighty strange in this world. Yes, indeed. It's the unexpected that has happened so much that it's got to be a proverb in the end. I always feel when a thing has been coming about till it gets to be proverb, it's no use me disputing it. Dig around in smoking ashes long enough, and I've never failed to find some sparks yet. And what you just said is all true as true can be. It's the unexpected as always happens. Look at me, for instance. Look at how the post-office fell out of a clear sky on me, and Mr. Ray much the same, too. I never had any idea of either of 'em beforehand, and now here I am stamping letters morning and night to keep up the payments on his tombstone. Things do work in circles so in this world. I always say if I hadn't been postmistress no one would have expected to see my husband have a fringed cloth hang on a pillar over his dead body, and if I hadn't been postmistress I never could have paid for such a thing. But where there's a will there's a way, which is another proverb as I've never found go wrong, unless your way is to stay in bed while you're willing."

"Oh, but you never could have put anything plain on Mr. Ray—not in your circumstances, and him passing the plate every Sunday and you the sexton yourself." Mrs. Dunstall looked almost shocked at the mere fancy.

"Couldn't I! Well, I guess I could if I'd had my own way. But I wasn't allowed my own way. Nobody is. That's what holds us back in this world; it's the being expected to live up to what we've got; and in this country, where the garden is open to the public, most of us has to live up to a good deal more'n we've got. If America ever takes to walls, it'll show it's going to begin to economize. It'll mean we're giving up tulips and going in for potatoes. And you'll see, Mrs. Dunstall, that just as soon as we really have to economize we'll begin to build walls. There's something about economy as likes walls around the house—high ones."

"You was raised with walls, wasn't you?" said Mrs. Dunstall.

"I should think I was. I'm English-born—I am."

"How old was you when you come to this country, Mrs. Ray?"

"I've lived here thirty-eight years; that's how old I was."

"You wasn't here before Mr. Ledge?"

"No, I wasn't, nor before the Falls, neither."

"Why, the Falls was here before Mr. Ledge," said Mrs. Dunstall, enlarging her eyes. "Oh, I see, you're making a joke, Mrs. Ray."

"I do occasionally make a joke," said Mrs. Ray, giving her shawl another tuck.

"Well, to go back to the girl," said Mrs. Dunstall, "she sit right behind Millicent too, and what makes it all the stranger, is, she asked Millicent the name of the next station. Millicent told her it was going to be Ledge, and asked her if she was for Ledge, because if she was for East Ledge she ought to stay on one station more. You know, Mrs. Ray, how folks are always getting off here for East Ledge, and having to stay all night or hire a buggy to drive over—two shillings either way; and Millicent asked her, too, if she was for Ledge's Crossing, because if she was for the Crossing the train don't stop there, and Millicent always was kind-hearted and wanted her to know it right off. You know how Millicent is, Pinkie; the last time she rode on a train she threw the two bags off to the old lady who forgot them, and they weren't the old lady's bags; they were the conductor's, and he had to run the train way back for them; he did feel so vexed about them, Millicent said."

"So vexed," said Pinkie.

"And so then Millicent asked her if maybe she was for Ledgeville, because if she was for Ledgeville she was on the wrong train, and had ought to have took the Pennsylvania, unless she telegraphed from Ledge Centre for the omnibus to come up, which nobody ever knows to do; and then it come into Millicent's head as maybe she was going to visit Mr. Ledge, in which case goodness knows what she would do, for although he gets his mail at Ledge, he gets his company at Castile, and here was that poor child five miles of bridge and walk out of her way, and Millicent's heart just bleeding for her, she looked so tired. But she said she was for Ledge."

"Yes, I could have told you she was for Ledge," said Mrs. Ray; "there was two letters for her here. When I have letters for people without having the people for the letters, it always means one or two things,—either the people are coming or the letters are addressed wrong. I learned that long ago. Yes, indeed."

"Millicent says she liked her looks from the first," pursued Mrs. Dunstall, "only her hat did amuse her. I must say the hats folks from town wear is about the most amusing things we ever see here. One year they pin 'em to their fronts and next year to their backs, and Millicent says this one was on hindside before with a feather duster upside down on top. She never saw anything like it; but she said the girl was so innocent of what a sight she was that she wouldn't have let her see her laughing behind her back for anything. What do you think of city people anyhow, Mrs. Ray?"

"City people are always mooney," responded Mrs. Ray; "such mooney ideas as come into their heads in the country always. Seems like they save all their mooney ideas for the country. Yes, indeed. They take off their hats and their shoes and carry stones around in their handkerchiefs; and when I see 'em slipping and scrambling up and down that steep bank all the hot summer long, and taking that walk to the Lower Falls that's enough to kill any Christian with brains, I most humbly thank our merciful Father in heaven that I've stayed in the country and kept my good senses. Yes, indeed. And then what they lug back to town with them! That's what uses me all up! Roots and stones! Why, I saw some one bring a root from the Lower Falls last year, yes, indeed."

"That walk to the Lower Falls is terrible," said Mrs. Dunstall, meditatively. "I took it once,—and you, too,—didn't you, Pinkie?"

"Twice," said Pinkie.

"I took it once, too," said Mrs. Ray, who was never loath to discuss that famous promenade. "Mr. Ray and me took it together. It was when we first met. He took me, and we walked to the Lower Falls. It was a awful walk; I never see a worse one, myself. They say it isn't so bad now. Of course, the time I went with Mr. Ray was while he was still alive. It was harder then. He asked me to marry him coming back. Oh, I'll never forget that awful walk!"

"It's bad enough yet," said Mrs. Dunstall. "Mr. Ledge has done all he could to build things to catch hold of where you'd go head over heels to heaven if he hadn't, but it's a awful walk still. And then the steps! Why, Nathan and Lizzie was there last summer, and Lizzie says all the way down she was thinking how she was ever going to be able to get back, and all the way back she was thinking just the same thing. Going, you go down steps till it seems like there never would come the bottom, and coming back you come up steps till you're ready to move to Ledgeville and live on the bottoms for life. You know how that is, Pinkie?"

"Yes," said Pinkie.

"It wouldn't do any good to move to Ledgeville to get rid of the Lower Falls," said Mrs. Ray, "because the dam is going to do away with the Lower Falls and drown Ledgeville entirely. That's the next little surprise the city folks will be giving us."

"I shall like to stand on the bridge the day they let the water in over the dam the first time," said Mrs. Dunstall. "It'll be a great sight to see the valley turn into a lake, and South Ledge and Ledgeville go under."

"I wouldn't look forward to it too much if I was you," said Mrs. Ray; "it's going to take three or four years to dig that dam, they tell me. You can't lay out a lake and break up three sets of falls in a minute."

"They haven't got to do something to all the Falls," said Mrs. Dunstall. "Josiah Bates was holding stakes for one of the surveyors yesterday, and he heard him say as the Lower Falls wouldn't need a thing, for it was a mill-race already."

"Well, it's a blessing if there's one thing ready to their hands," said Mrs. Ray, "for I must say the way the State has took hold of us, since Mr. Ledge set out to give it something for nothing, is a caution. If he'd offered to sell the Falls at cost price, we'd of had a petition and our taxes increased and been marked 'keep off the grass,' in all directions; but just because he offered to give it to 'em all cleared up and in order, they must tear around and build a dam and drown five villages and go cutting up monkey-shines generally. Yes, indeed."

"They do say that the dam will keep the Falls, instead of spoiling them," said Mrs. Dunstall; "they say the Falls is stratifying backward, and is most through being falls, anyway, and if the dam is built, we'll all have that to look at always."

"It'll be all one to me," said Mrs. Ray; "I never get time to look at nothing, anyway, unless it's folks waiting for their mail, and goodness knows they've long ceased to interest me."

Mrs. Dunstall looked a bit uncertain as to how to receive this outburst of confidence. "It does you good to take a little rest," she said at last; "you work too hard for a woman of your time of life, Mrs. Ray."

"Well, I'd like to know how I can help it, with my farm and my chickens and my grocery business, not to speak of the boarders and the children and the post-office. When one's a mother and a farmer and a sexton and an employee under bond to the United States Government one has to keep on the jump."

Mrs. Dunstall rearranged the set of her lips slightly. "The mail's very late, ain't it?" she asked.

"Late! I should think it was late. I guess that open switch has settled Forty-four for to-day. But that train's always late. It isn't in the block yet, and the mail-train follows it."

"If it don't come soon, I can't wait," said Mrs. Dunstall; "this is one of my awful days, and speaking of awful days, what do you think of the doings over at the old Whittaker house, Mrs. Ray?"

"I've heard she's wrecking it completely."

"Josiah Bates' been doing some carting there. He says it's enough to make old Grandma Whittaker shiver in her grave. He says they've turned the house just about inside out. That girl must be crazy."

"She is crazy," said Mrs. Ray with decision; "she's in love."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Dunstall, "with him, you mean?"

"Of course. But she's crazy two ways, I think, to go bringing that pretty girl here, and she so thin and white herself. You can't tell me that that man doesn't know a pretty girl when he sees her, even if he ain't seen her yet—which he hasn't, for he didn't see 'em this morning. I know that, for I was watching."

"That's the train now, isn't it?" said Mrs. Dunstall, listening.

Mrs. Ray pricked up her ears. "Yes, that's the train, rushing along and sprinkling soot over everything. Picking hops used to be such nice clean work, but now they're all over soot."

"The canal was better, I think," said Mrs. Dunstall.

Mrs. Ray made no answer; she was absorbed in looking out of the window.

"It was cleaner, anyhow," Mrs. Dunstall continued; "but they do say the men swore most awful locking boats through in the night. I never lived on the canal, myself, but you did, Pinkie; did they swear much or not?"

"They swore," said Pinkie.

"Well," said Mrs. Ray, now facing about and making certain active preparations for the reception of the mail, "it must be nice to spend your days ways that lets you lay awake nights listening to anything swear. I've never had time nor money to lay awake nights. I leave that for those who can, but I can't. Walking to the Lower Falls and laying awake nights is pleasant, I've no doubt, but I need my days other ways. Summer folks is always coming in here and saying, 'Oh, have you seen the gorge this morning, Mrs. Ray,' and me like enough out ploughing in the opposite direction since sun up. I haven't got any time to lay awake or to look at views. If the weeds grew up all around my fence-posts while I was hanging over the bridge looking at the gorge, I guess you'd hear of it, and since I've taken to raising chickens, there's hen-houses to spray and me busier than ever. If I was a hen, my day's work would be over when I'd laid my egg and I could run out with a free mind and look at the gorge, but as it stands now, I ain't got time to look at nothing,"—in testimony whereof she disappeared into the kitchen.

"I'll tell you who's got time," said Mrs. Dunstall as soon as she reappeared; "it's those Lathbuns down at Nellie's. How long are they going to stay around here, do you suppose?"

"I don't know; I don't know anything about them. They don't get any mail, so I've no way of knowing a thing. My own opinion is that if I was Nellie I'd keep a sharp eye on my shawls, for folks who come walking along without baggage, can go walking off without baggage, too. Those are her shawls they're wearing, you know; they haven't got so much as a jacket between them of their own."