Between waiting for the starch and waiting for Bill, Kate was wroth when she opened the door to begin her search. By an unlucky chance, her first step took her over the ankles in icy slush, which, strange to say, instead of cooling her wrath, raised it to white heat. Therefore, when she, carefully picking her way up one side of the street, beheld Bill advancing down the other, regardless of mud and slush, she paused in disgust, until he was nearly opposite to her, and then ejaculated in a tone of deepest disbelief in her own vision—"Bill! is that you?"
"No," promptly replied Bill, "nor nobody like me either;" with which the valiant Bill had resumed his way, feeling proud that he had not only dismissed certainty but even suspicion of his identity from Kate's mind.
Before long he was a sadder and for the nonce, a wiser man, for Kate reached home as soon as he did, and thereupon gave him to understand in a very unmistakable way that he was her property and she knew it.
All Ovid remembered this, and indeed could not well forget it, for every wash-day, when starch naturally cropped up as one of the circumstances attendant upon the event of washing, Kate might have been heard by any passer-by giving Bill a full and dramatic account of the occurrence, with preface upon drunkenness in general, and appendix upon Bill's phases of the vice in particular, and copious addenda, of contempt, contumely and vituperation. Bill listened, marvelling and admiring, for her flow of language was a great source of pride to Bill, albeit directed at himself.
Indeed, he sacrificed his comfort willingly to enjoy the mental treat her angry eloquence afforded him. There had been times, however, when Kate's lessons had taken a more practical and infinitely less entertaining form. It was one of these which effected Bill's final reformation. The memory of it brought smiles to the lips of Ovidians, young or old, whenever they met Bill.
With all good managers in Ovid, it is the custom to salt down a small barrel of herrings in autumn. These they buy from their fisherman neighbours for a dollar per hundred. Now Kate, who was certainly, as even her enemies admitted, a forehanded woman, sent Bill with a silver dollar, to get her a hundred herrings, one day when the proper season came around. With this Bill duly proceeded to the fishermen, paid his dollar and got his herrings. As he turned to go, Sam Turner shouted an invitation to him to come down at night and have a share of the beer which was to be on tap at the Upper Fishing Station. Bill assented and went his way.
After his six o'clock supper, he told Kate he was going to get his saw sharpened at the blacksmith shop, and so set out. He left the saw at the blacksmith's, then smartened his pace along the street, down the steep incline to the river's edge, carefully along the river path until he disappeared into the fisherman's little hut.
The door was closed, then Bill, Sam Turner, and some half-dozen others gathered round the keg of smuggled beer, and all went merry as the traditional wedding bell.
About half-past eleven, Bill and the others emerged. The cask was empty—their condition the antithesis of the cask's. Lurching, stumbling, falling, sliding along the river path; scrambling, crawling, climbing up the banks to the level, then along the street to Bill's home. All this took time, and it was the hour when ghosts do walk ere they neared Bill's door. A dim light gleamed in the window. "Beacon tha' lights me home, boys," said Bill, who, having passed the transitory phases of moroseness and pugnaciousness, to the higher state of tears and courage, had now reached the acme of sentiment and drunkenness simultaneously, and was ready, as he expressed several times on the way up the bank in a voice which came from different attitudes, as the speaker stood upright, crept, or lay flat, "To kish Kate and fight for the country b'gosh." Bill and his friends approached the door. Bill gently tried it. It was locked, so Bill said. They each tried it in turn, and each pronounced it locked in a voice betokening a strange and new discovery. They each knocked in turn—silence. They each kicked in turn—silence. Then Bill said in a lordly way, "Kate, open the door!" adding in an aside to his fellows, "I'll forgive her, kish her, make her happy." Then again, "Kate, open the door!"
Kate did open the door, with such abrupt and unexpected suddenness that Bill, standing before it, balanced back on his heels and raised his outspread hands. His confreres were preparing to make back-stays of themselves to brace Bill up, when Kate's hand and arm reached forth, and, with one single movement, as Sam Turner afterwards graphically described her action, "yanked" Bill into the house and slammed the door.
There was silence for a moment, followed by a slow sliding sound. His late companions surrounded the two uncurtained windows and prepared to watch events.
Bill had slowly slid down, until he was now in a sitting posture on the floor, with his back against the door. Kate had vanished; she soon entered from the back of the house bringing two pails of water, with which she proceeded deliberately to give Bill a cold bath. Bill said several times in a weak voice, "Kish me, Kate," but Kate, preserving an admirable silence, continued the deluge until Bill, with some show of sobriety and nimbleness, arose. By this time the water was pouring out beneath the door, and the watchers outside were shivering sympathetically. As Bill rose, he certainly looked miserable enough to excite pity, even in Kate's heart; but the worst was not yet.
Disregarding the water streaming on the floor, Kate proceeded to arrange two chairs, with an accompaniment of cloths, knives, salt, and a small keg. Lastly, she produced two baskets of herrings. It was now evident to the horrified watchers that her dire purpose was to make Bill clean, wash, and salt down the hundred herrings then and there. And such was the case. The watchers stayed until eyes and limbs were weary, and then crept away awe-struck at the terrors of matrimony, and deeply impressed by Kate's moral supremacy.
And Bill worked and worked. His hand was unsteady, and his blood flowed freely from numerous cuts to mingle with the herrings. He scraped and scraped, and bedaubed himself with scales. He salted and salted, and the salt bit his many cuts. But Kate was inexorable. Every herring was cleaned, scaled, washed, salted and packed, and the débris thoroughly cleaned up before the miserable, white-faced, repentant Bill was allowed to rest, and during it all Kate talked and talked and talked. From that night Bill was a changed man, and his admiration for Kate became more than ever pronounced.
Every time one of those herring appeared on the table, Kate gave Bill a résumé of the whole affair, with variations upon her theme, which her vivid and fertile imagination suggested. After the herrings were finished, she revived the subject whenever the names of any of those with him that night, fish, the river, or the fishing station were mentioned. These were the regular cogent subjects. But any reference to salted meats, cold water, late hours, etc., was very apt to draw forth a like narration, so that a day rarely passed without Bill's memory being refreshed thus, which was indeed a work of supererogation, for Bill never forgot it.
Andrew and Miss Myers recited many such tales for Judith's edification as they walked up to the Cutler house, and whilst they sat at table.
But later on, when Miss Myers hastened off to count the eggs which had been brought in, to see if her chickens were properly fed, and to generally look after the ways of her household, the talk fell into other channels.
Andrew and Judith talked seriously, looking into each other's eyes with no veil upon their own, each drinking deeply of the peaceful rapture of the hour. The scents from the old garden filled their nostrils, the breath from the box diffused through the other odours a thread of fresh bitterness, savouring them from satiety.
A great clematis hung at one side of the porch, the deep green of its leaves set close with purple stars. Upon the other side a Tartarean honeysuckle was covered with coral-coloured buds. Far off in one corner they could see a blur of gold where the thorny Scotch roses were a mass of bloom.
They sat long talking, and presently Miss Myers came round the corner of the house with her dress tucked up about her and the servant girl following with water pails; and soon the scent of fresh moist earth was mingled with the fragrance of the flowers.
Rufus lay at their feet, looking up at them with wistful, hazel eyes. It was a simple scene, yet in it was being enacted a drama of delight.
There is no sweeter time in a woman's life than the first hours of a mutual love ere speech has profaned it. Judith was having her halcyon hour now, and she rejoiced in it with sweet natural happiness. The memory of her greatness had all but faded from her memory; now and then from sleep's horizon it pointed a threatening finger at her; now and then in morning dreams she recalled it vaguely, the wraith of a not unhappy season. But she had no fear of it. Her only apprehension was that she had misread the message in Andrew's ardent eyes, and that fear only lived when they were apart, for, as she welcomed him upon the old weather-beaten doorstep, where the spent petals of the loose-leaved climbing roses lay, blots of crimson on the grey, or bade him farewell at the gate where the white syringas surrounded them with the odour of orange blossoms, she found in his eyes the strength and blessing of a deep and perfect love.
CHAPTER IX.
"Now, if this earthly love has power to make
Men's being mortal, immortal; to shake
Ambitions from their memories, and brim
Their measure of content: what merest whim
Seems all this poor endeavour after fame."
One day Judith, who had been in the village, went up to see Miss Myers. It was intensely warm. To the eye the air seemed to quiver with heat; a brazen sun shone in a cloudless sky; the birds were still; nature was dumb; the only sounds which broke the stillness were echoes of enforced toil. As Judith walked along the lanes, now grown deep in grass, the fragrance of over-ripe clover came to her in waves of satiating sweetness. The birds she startled uttered no cry, but flew heavily to some near perch and sat there languidly, with feathers ruffled on their little heads, their tiny bills apart as if they gasped for breath, their wings drooping loosely with parted feathers at their sides.
When she reached the house on the hill, she went straight through the hall to the kitchen, for she had long ago been given the liberty of the house.
Miss Myers bustled up with grim kindness, took away her hat, made her sit by the window, and brought her a great cool goblet of raspberry syrup in water. It was very cool in this big kitchen. The windows were heavily hung with Virginian Creeper, and the stove was in the summer kitchen. Rufus lay stretched in one corner, his ears flapping as he snatched irascibly at a tormenting fly.
Miss Myers had been a little upset when Judith entered, and she proceeded to tell Judith her worries. She had come out to inspect the kitchen work, and found her milk pans set out without their bunches of grass.
"A silly notion of Sarah Myers," the Ovid women called it, but it was a dainty one nevertheless—one Miss Myers' mother and mother's mother had always observed, since ever the first Myers left the meadows of Devon. This notion was that all summer long Miss Myers insisted that the polished milk pans, when set out to sweeten in the sun, should each have a bunch of fresh grass or clover put in it, to wither in the pan. She declared it gave sweetness and flavour to the milk.
Miss Myers had many dainty ways in her house-keeping. The glossy linen sheets were laid away with clusters of sweet clover in their folds. Her snowy blankets were packed with cedar sprigs. Her table linen was fragrant all summer with the stolen perfume of violets or rose leaves strewn with them in the linen drawer. And in the winter there were twigs of lemon thyme and lemon verbena there, carefully dried for that purpose. "All notions," the villagers said contemptuously, adding something about old maids. Nevertheless, these notions savoured the whole household with sweetness, and seemed to add beauty to the more prosaic details of every-day work.
Since Judith had come so frequently to the house, there had always been flowers upon the dining table and in the parlour, and in the big dim bedroom.
Hot as it was, Miss Myers was ready to go out and patrol the garden, which, subdued beneath the sun's caresses, lay exhaling a hundred varied scents. The tall white lilies were in bloom at last, ineffably lovely, with golden hearts and petals whose edges were silvery in the sunshine.
When Andrew returned at night from his fields, his strong face a little weary, his eyes restless and eager, the first sight that met his vision was Judith Moore,—Judith, in a simple dark blue frock, standing in the doorway of his home, and looking—he dared hope—for him. She looked so consonant with the old house and the flowerful garden that Andrew felt no other presence in the world would have completed the picture so well.
How sweet to see a woman waiting there for him! Even as he had dreamed. He stood some time and watched her, himself unobserved. How sweet and calm her face was—yet anticipative, content—yet eager! He looked at her long across the narrow space from where he stood, and in after days recalled her untroubled beauty very clearly.
He tried to note in detail the form of her features, but he could only think of her faithful eyes, the beauty of her honest smile, the promise of her mouth, with the deep hollow between the lower lip and the dimpled hillock of her chin, which is, they say, the truest indication of a woman's capacity for real love, just as heavy eyelids denote modesty, and thin nostrils delicacy of the senses.
Some sympathy, some subtle mental influence, made Judith flush and look about her. Andrew slipped around the corner of the house, to come behind her in a few minutes rid of the day's dust. He touched her gently on the shoulder. She started, yet laughed. "I knew you were coming," she said; "I did not hear you, but I was certain of it."
After tea, they three (for Judith felt shy of Andrew to-night, and clung to Miss Myers, and gently compelled her to step forth with them) walked up and down the garden walks.
The flowers, their fragrance freshened by the dew, flung forth their odours royally. The birds, revived by the coolness, were singing their deferred songs. An oriole's liquid note was answered from the lindens; the robins were flying about from tree to tree with happy confidence; some Phoebe birds were fluttering about the porch; sparrows were wrangling in the box; a humming-bird was darting from bed to bed; emerald-throated, ruby-crested, it vibrated from flower to flower, itself like an animated vagrant blossom; the swallows were darting in long, graceful flights high in air, or soaring in slanting circles over the barns, where their nests were; now and then, flying slowly homeward, a crow crossed their vision, a shadow on the sky.
The heavy toads hopped lumberingly forth from their hiding-places to search for slugs; a tree toad gave its shrill call from a cedar tree. Andrew had once shown Judith one, clinging like a lichen to the bark, and of much the same greyish-green colour. The crickets sang shrilly and sweetly, like boy sopranos in a vestured choir; the frogs, in a far-off pond, added their unfinished notes to Nature's vespers; bats flew silently and weirdly overhead.
"Do you know what the frogs say?" asked Andrew of Judith.
"No; what?" she asked, looking up so eagerly, so trustingly, that a smile twitched the corners of his mouth, even as he longed to gather her in his arms.
"The little frogs with the shrill voices say, 'Cut across! cut across! cut across!' The wise old frogs, the big ones, with the bass voices, say, 'Go round! go round! go round!'"
Judith listened, her eyes big with interest. "Why, so they do," she said, and looked at him as at a wizard revealing a mystery.
Miss Myers laughed, her grimness tempered by a tear. "Tell her about the mill-pond frogs, Andrew," she said.
"Oh, well, the frogs in the mill-pond over beyond Ovid, used to say, 'Old Andy Anderson is a thief! Old Andy Anderson is a thief!' and no one paid any attention; but after a while people found out he was cheating them, not giving them the proper weight of flour, and so on, for their grists. Then they found the frogs were telling the truth."
"Mr. Cutler," said Judith, "did people know what the frogs said before they found out that the miller stole?"
"Well," admitted Andrew, laughing a little, "I don't believe they did."
In the instance of the mill-pond frogs the oracle was fitted to the event, as it has been in other cases.
Later the dusk fell, and the moon slowly soared aloft; a midsummer moon, indescribably lovely; such a moon as is seen once in a lifetime—pale, perfect, lustrous as frosted silver, white as unsmirched snow, seeming to be embossed upon the sky. Such a moon haunted Keats, inspired Shelley, whispered a suggestion of kinship to Philip Sidney, and long, long ago, shone upon the Avon.
And beneath this moon, intense as white flame, pure as a snow crystal, Judith Moore and Andrew Cutler began their walk to the farmhouse by the wood. Judith held her skirts gathered up about her from the dew; she was bareheaded, her broad hat hanging on her arm. They had to pass along a path deep shadowed in trees. Judith started nervously at some sound; that start vibrated to Andrew's heart. He drew her arm within his, and Judith walked dreamily on, feeling secure against the world and all its fears. They emerged into the moonlight, and stopped where Andrew had constructed a rude stile over the rail fence, for Judith's convenience. Their eyes met in the moonlight, each knew the hour had come, and the heart of each leaped to its destiny.
"Judith," said Andrew, very softly.
"Yes," she whispered.
"What is the sweetest time in all the world?"
She paused a moment; then, as a flower bends to the sun, as a flame follows the air, she swayed slowly towards him. "Now," she breathed, her heart in the word.
And the next moment she was in his arms; their lips had met.
From the shadows of the wood they had passed came the silvery call of the cat-bird that sings to the moon—and they two had drunk of "life's great cup of wonder;" only a sip perhaps, but their mouths had touched the golden brim, their lips had been dipped in its priceless nectar (the true nectar of the fabled gods!) and their nostrils had known the sweets of its ineffable perfume.
So they stood, heart to heart. All that the world comprehended for Andrew was now in the circle of his arms. And Judith? All her world throbbed in Andrew's breast.
And for both there was no other universe but the heaven of their mutual love,—a heaven shut in and hedged about by two strong tender arms; a heaven sustained by two hands that fluttered pleadingly upon Andrew's breast. Not strong hands these, but strong enough to hold in safe-keeping the treasure-trove of a good man's love!
And their talk? Well, there are some sacred old-fashioned words, tender words, such as our fathers whispered to our mothers long ago, such as their fathers, and their fathers' fathers, wooed and won their wives with, such as their wives whispered back with trembling lips—these words passed between Andrew and Judith. We all dream these words. Some few happy ones hear them; some brave true souls have spoken them; and from some of us even their echo has departed, to be merged in unending silence. So we will not write them here.
And at last they parted. Andrew strode slowly homeward, his face glorified, stopping now and then to fancy he held her once more against his breast, feeling again the fragrance of her hair, hearing in the happy throbs of his heart her trembling words saying that she loved him.
Loved him! The mystery and magic of its meaning wrought into his heart, until it seemed too small to hold its store of joy. He took off his cap in the moonlight, and looked to the heavens a voiceless aspiration to be worthy.
And well might Andrew Cutler bare his brow, for there had been given into his hands the holiest chalice man's lips know, the heart of a good woman! Well might Judith Moore, in a burst of happy tears, vow vows to be worthy, resolving to be better, stronger, nobler, for she had been given that great gift for which, we are told, thanks should be rendered, fasting—the gift of a good man's love!
* * * * * *
"MY DEAR MASTER,—After all, you see, I am the one to write first, and I am afraid you will be very angry when you read my letter. But I hope you will forgive me. I will tell you now, at once, what it is, and while you read my letter try to forget I am Judith Moore the opera singer, and remember only that I am a woman first and foremost. And a woman needs love, and I have found it, and cannot bear to give it up, as I must, if I come back to you—to the stage. So, will you set me free? Will you let me stay here? Will you let me stop singing and be forgotten? I know how dreadful this will seem to you, how ungrateful I will appear, how ignoble to give up my art for what you will call 'a passion'; but oh, dear master! you cannot know all this is to me, this love. It is everything, health, happiness, hope, all. And it is not that I have forgotten your gifts; indeed, indeed, no. It is that I am so sure of your great generosity, that I want you to be still more generous; to add one more gift, the supreme one. For in spite of what I've said it all rests in your hands. I know what you have spent on me, in money alone, besides your continual thought for me. I know how patient you have been, letting me save my voice till it was mature and strong. I know you will have horrible forfeits to pay on the lease of the opera house, and then all the chorus on your hands, and the terrible advertising for this American season. I know the horrible fiasco it will seem to the public, and how your jealous rivals will make capital out of the mythical prima donna who did not materialize. But all this is the price of a woman's whole life, the purchase money of a life's happiness. Will you help pay it? For I will do what I can. There is the money you gave me after the Continental season. It is untouched; take that. And there are my jewels—all these gifts, you know—in the vault. I send you the order for those. And the man I love may be richer yet, and I will say to him, 'I owe a dear friend a debt,' and you shall have, year by year, all we can send. Does it not seem that in time I might make it up? And the artistic disappointment you feel, oh, master! To lose my art seems indeed a crucifixion to me, but in that there is hope of resurrection. To lose my love would be unending death.
"I know myself well now. I am a woman full-grown within these last weeks, and even as I write I know that I will have many bitter regrets, many sad hours thinking of my music; but what are these hours compared with an unceasing pain such as will be mine if you say no to my dream? Of course, I know I am bound to you by no contract; but the confidence you have shown in me binds me with a firmer bond, and if you feel you cannot release me I will do my best, my very best to realize your hopes. You know I am honourable enough for that. But one thing, dear master, I lay upon you. If you come for me, taking me away from my happiness, remember never to speak to me of it, never refer to this letter, never tell me your reasons for refusing the boon I crave from you on my knees. If I see you I shall know I have asked too much, and that it has been denied me. There is but one thing more. The man, my man, is utterly ignorant of my money value. He sees in me only a woman to love, take care of, and work for. He does not know that I can earn more in a week than he in years. He realizes most keenly the beauty of music, but he does not know what it brings in the markets of the world. I would ask him to let me sing, but I know well that such singing as mine demands the consecration of all; when I sell my voice, the body, the heart, the soul goes with it, all subordinated to the voice. That would not do. He has given all, he must and shall have all in return, all I have to give, or nothing. He knows me only as a woman who came here for rest, quiet and health; he does not dream my name is billed about the city on coloured posters, talked of as a common possession by every one—does not know the papers are full of my doings or intentions. So you see it is myself he loves. And now, master, this is good-bye. Good-bye to you and the old life, which, before I knew any better, seemed the best of all. I hope I may some time see you again, but not till I can greet you without too great joy in my release, without too keen pain for my music.
"Send me a line and tell me I am free, and believe me, ever and ever, Judith Moore, your own grateful little girl.
"P.S.—I have said nothing of my gratitude to you, but this letter means that or nothing. Means that I am so sensible of what I owe to you that I will give up my very life showing you that I do not forget your long-continued kindness. J. M."
This was the letter the post took away from Ovid next morning, a letter written not without tears.
* * * * * *
After the music of the gods has once been breathed through a Pipe, it is never quite content to echo common sounds, not even if its heart be given back to it, and it be born again a growing reed among its fellows; even if it echoes back the soughing of the summer wind, and is never torn by the tempest; even if it grows continually in the sunshine, and never bends its head beneath the blast; even if it be crowned with brown tassels, and all men call it beautiful. It still has the hungry longing, the dissatisfied yearning, the pain that comes of remembered greatness, even if that greatness was bought at bitter cost. The true gods may well
"Sigh for the cost and pain,
For the reed which grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds in the river."
For that pain is poignant, and perhaps more of us endure it than is imagined. It may be, these inexplicable yearnings of our souls for some vague good, these bitter times when not even life seems sweet, these regrets for what we have not known, for what we think we have never been, for what is not, these may be dim memories from ages back, from the times when the voices of the gods spake through men, and men gave heed to them, and, unmindful of their own personal pain, proclaimed to man the messages of the gods. And though this birthright brings pain with it, yet we, growing like other reeds, and proud as they of our brown tassels, or sorrowing, like them, for our lack, are proud also to know that of our kind the gods chose their instruments for the making known of their music to men. The yearning for the divine breath may be better borne than the cruel afflatus it imparts, and yet we are glad that once we were not unworthy to be so tried, and not all rejoiced that the keener pain, the higher honour, is taken from us.
* * * * * *
Sometimes before a great storm an illusive hush holds sway, a perilous peace falls upon the face of nature. With it, a mysterious light irradiates the sky; a solemn sunshine, prophetic of after rains, the forerunner of tempest—a luminous warning of wrath to come. In some such fashion surely the face of the angel shone when he, as the writers of tales tell us, drove our parents out of Paradise.
It was this illusory illumination that gilded the lives of Judith Moore and Andrew Cutler at this time. How few of us read the rain behind the radiance!
They were both happy. As a parched plant vibrates in all its leaves, stirs and quickens when given water that means life to it, so Judith Moore's whole being trembled beneath its baptism of love. For she seems to have had no doubt that her manager—her "master," as she lovingly called him—would grant her request. Already her past life, with all its work, and waiting, and triumph, seemed but a dim dream, her present hope the only reality. She ran about the Morris house so lightly that it seemed to Mrs. Morris she heard the patter of children's feet, the sweetest sound that ever wove itself into this simple woman's dreams.
Judith's heart was ever across the fields with her lover, and she "sang his name instead of a song," and found it surpassing sweet. And Andrew's heart and head were both busy with loving plans for Judith.
The Muskoka woods might go, and their green mosses be torn for minerals! No more long, lonely hunts for him! He must reap golden harvests wherever he might for Judith, now. He knew all her insufficiencies as a housewife, which poor Judith felt very humble in confessing; and it gave Andrew great joy, in a modest way, that he would be able to let her be quite free of them.
And he had higher dreams. Politics offers a wide arena for ambition. Its sands may have been soiled by the blood of victims, trodden by the feet of hirelings, defiled by the struggles of mercenaries; but there are yet some godlike gladiators left, who war for right; there are yet noble strifes, and few to fight them; and Andrew, in whose heart patriotism was as a flaming fire, resolved to dedicate himself for the fray. To win glory for Judith, to do something to savour his life that it might be worthy of her acceptance, that it might leave some fragrance upon the tender hands that held it—that was his aim, and he felt he would not fail.
No inherent force can be very great and not give its possessor a thrill of power. Andrew felt within him that which meant mastery of men. And in spite of difficulties and obstacles, Andrew at last won the wreath to which he had aspired in the first flush of his hope and joy.
But that was after.
* * * * * *
One day, a week after Judith had sent the letter, a group of Ovidians were in Hiram Green's store. There was old Sam Symmons, Jack Mackinnon, Oscar Randall (who, together with his hopes of political preferment, aspired to the hand of Sam Symmons' Suse), and Bill Aikins. The latter would "catch it," as he well knew, when he got home, for loitering in the store, and therefore, with some vague thought of palliating his offence, forbore to make himself comfortable, but stood uneasily by the door, jostled by each person who came in, pushed by each who went out.
Jack Mackinnon was speaking, his thin dark face wreathed in smiles.
"How d'ye like the blind horse, Mr. Symmons? I tell ye blind horses are smart sometimes! There was one Frank Peters, wot I worked for in Essex, owned, and he never would eat black oats. Critters has their likes and dislikes same as people. I once knowed a dog—but that blind horse—well, he'd never eat black oats when he had his sight—went blind along of drawing heavy loads—doctored him all winter—t'wasn't any use, sight gone, gone complete—well, as I said, he wouldn't eat black oats when he had his sight, and when, the horse was blind, sir, he knowed the difference between black oats and white, yes, just the same as when he had his sight. You couldn't timpt that horse to eat black oats, then or no time, he wouldn't so much as nose at 'em, no sir. You couldn't fool that horse on oats. But pshaw! blind horses! why Henry Acres wot I worked for in Essex—"
"Oh, shut up, Jack!" said Hiram, and Jack accepted his quietus good-naturedly, quite unabashed.
The village arithmetician had once taken the trouble to calculate how long Jack Mackinnon must have worked in Essex, deducing the amount from Jack's account of the number of years he had worked for different people there. The result showed Jack must have spent some hundred and sixty years in Essex if all his tales were true; and Jack always repudiated with scorn any question of his veracity, hoping, with great fervour and solemnity, that he "drop down dead in his tracks" if he was lying, a judgment which never overtook him.
The talk turned upon politics, as it always did if Oscar Randall was there, and old Sam Symmons was soon holding forth.
"Yes," he said, "yes, the old elections were wont to be rare times. I do remember at one election, near the close of the polls, beguiling Ezra Thompson to a barn, and there two of us held him, by main strength and bodily force, till the polls were closed. Truly he was an angry and profane man when we set him free"—here came a reminiscent chuckle, cut short to answer Oscar Randall's tentative question.
"Trouble? Get us into trouble? Yes, of a private kind. Ezra Thompson and I fought that question with our fists some seventeen times, and the lad with me had much the same number of bouts over it. But we neither of us begrudged him satisfaction. In those days a man took satisfaction out of his enemy's skin; he didn't sneak away to lawyers to bleed him in his pocket. No, no.
"Yes, 'twere a great election that! Twas the time Mr. Brown ran against Mr. Salmon. Now, it was told of Mr. Salmon, that though of good presence, and very high and mighty towards his neighbours, yet he was ignorant; and when his election came on, it was told of him how he met an English gentleman on the train once, who, wishing to learn of Canada, spoke at length with Mr. Salmon, and in the course of the talk (during which Mr. Salmon was much puffed up), the English gentleman said to him: 'And have you many reptiles in Canada?' 'No,' said Mr. Salmon (and a pompous man he was, very)—'No, we have very few reptiles, only a few foxes.' It was Mr. Salmon, too, who once refused when he was J.P. to look into the case of a poor man whose horse's leg had been broken in a bad culvert. And the man cried in a gust of rage: 'What! did you not swear to see justice done? and now you won't consider this?' 'Swear,' said Mr. Salmon, 'I did no such thing. I only took my affidavit.'" Old Sam's voice died away.
Hiram spoke from behind the counter. "The roadmasters do bring the country into terrible expenses. Look at the bill of costs that's been run up in that case at Jamestown."
"Yes," said Oscar Randall, as one having authority, "the people's money is wasted in this country with an awful disregard of the public welfare."
"You're right there, Os." "Now you bet your head's level." "Don't you mistake yourself, it's level!" "I tell you, you just hit the nail on the head that time!"
When this chorus subsided, Mr. Horne, who had just entered, said:
"What do you think of that concession, Os, out back of Braddon's?"
"There is no doubt," said Oscar, promptly, "but that is a question which must be adjusted. It is such internal disputes as these which weaken and destroy the unity of the country, and lay us open to an unexpected attack from the States, which we, by reason of disunion and strife, would be unable to cope with."
The house, composed of Hiram on his sugar barrel, Sam in the one chair, Jack Mackinnon on a cracker box, and a row of men braced against the counters on each side, fairly rose at this. Clearly Oscar Randall had the makings of a great speaker in him!
But Mr. Horne was a man of slow mental methods, who always decided one point before he left it for another. He waited till the chorus of "That's so; that's the ticket," "Bet your life; that's the way to talk," "Let 'em try it; we'd be ready for 'em" (this last from Jack Mackinnon who was a volunteer) had died away, when he said:
"That's right, Os; you're right there, right enough; but what do you think—ought it to be closed or should it be opened?"
"I think," said Oscar, slowly, and with confidential emphasis—"I think, as every patriotic and honest man thinks, that the rights of the people must be preserved."
A diversion occurred here. A shout from the roadway took them all out. Before the door stood a carriage with a little black-a-vised man in it; and behind that, an express waggon, beside the driver of which sat a perky-looking woman, different from anything ever seen in Ovid, for French maids of the real Parisian stripe were not apt to visit this village often.
"The way to old man Morris'? yes," said Oscar Randall, and proceeded to give minute directions.
The little cavalcade started again, the gentleman leaning back in the carriage, murmuring to himself:
"Now, I wonder which of these specimens he was."
* * * * * *
And at that moment Andrew Cutler and Judith Moore were taking farewell, for a few hours as they thought, beneath the shadows of Andrew's chestnut trees.
"Darling," he whispered, holding her gently to him, "my arms seem always aching for you when we are parted; my heart cries for you continually. Judith, dear little girl, you won't make me wait too long?"
She clung to him silently, hiding her face on his arm. A tremour shook her; after all he was a man, the dominant creature of the world. True, he trembled at her voice and touch now—but then, after?
"Andrew," she whispered, "will you be good to me?"
"Trust me, dear, and see," he whispered back.
"You know I have no one but myself," she said, putting back her head and looking at him with pale cheeks and tear-rilled eyes. "If you are cruel to me or harsh to me: if you make love a burden, not a boon, I will have no one to turn to. I—" she stopped with quivering lips.
"My own girl," he said, "trust me. I know I am rough compared to you, but I will be tender. I know my man's ways frighten you, but it shall be all my thought to make you trust me. Give me your presence always, that's all I ask—to see you, feel you near, hear you about the house, have your farewells when I go away, your welcome when I return, your encouragement in what I undertake, your sympathy in what I do. That means heaven to me, but only when you are happy in it. Dearest, you don't think I would be bad to you?"
And Judith, in a storm of sobs that seemed to melt away all the icy doubts and fears that had assailed her, laid her head upon his breast, and promised that soon, very soon, she would go to the house on the hill never to leave it; and, when she had grown calmer with a deeper peace than she had yet known, he left her—there, in the shadow of the trees—to return in a few hours.
And Judith stole into the kitchen door and up to her room, to find her French maid packing her trunks and be told that "Monsieur awaited her in the salon."
* * * * * *
Her vow had been required of her—that was all she could think, and she prepared herself to keep it.
The manager was clever and adroit in his way. He kept Mrs. Morris busy with him, so that she did not see Judith till she entered to say she was ready; and then, as Mrs. Morris told afterward, she got a "turn." For the Judith who came to say "good-bye," was the same Judith who greeted her at first, gracefully languid, pale, self-composed, and somewhat artificially, if charmingly, courteous.
"There was some difference," Mrs. Morris said, "but I can't just say what."
The difference was that Judith had come a girl, and left a woman.
So for the last time Judith crossed the little garden, feeling strangely unfamiliar with the homely flowers she passed. In the meantime the drivers of the conveyances had conferred with Mr. Morris, and the shorter road they took to the railway station was directly away from the village, away from the house on the hill.
They caught a glimpse of it as they turned a corner, and suddenly Judith seemed to feel the scent of white lilies, and hear an evening chorus of nature's composition. Her hand held tightly a little envelope, in which she had hurriedly slipped something before she left her room.
She was thinking how she could drop it unobserved, when from the shadow of some wild plum trees there issued a disreputable dog—Nip—with Tommy Slick behind him, a basket of wild plums in his hand.
She interrupted the manager's flow of news to say—
"Do stop the man a minute, I want to speak to that boy."
"I'll call him."
"No, no; I'll get out," she said.
So without more ado he stopped the carriage; the whims of a prima donna must needs be respected.
She got out and ran back to Tommy, who greeted her with a grin.
"Tommy," she said, "you like me, don't you? And you like Andrew Cutler? Now, will you do something for me that no one else in the world can do?"
"I'll do it," said Tommy, with business-like brevity.
"And you will not breathe it to any living soul?"
"I kin keep my mouth shut," said Tommy. "Often had to."
"Then," said Judith, "I'll trust you. Give this to Andrew Cutler; if you run you will catch him in his chestnut woods. Try to get there quickly, and meet him before he gets near Morris'. Give him this, and say: 'She has gone away! she sends all her love and this.'"
Tommy's impish face had a look of concern beyond his years. Tears were running down Judith's face.
"Say, be you never coming back?"
"Never, never, Tommy!" said Judith. "Good-bye."
* * * * * *
So in due time Andrew Cutler received from Tommy Slick's fruit-stained hand an envelope containing one long bright lock of hair, and a message sent with it; and was told also of the few other words that passed, and of Judith's tears. And Tommy having delivered his message, and seen the look on Andrew's face, dug his knuckles into his eyes, and with a veritable howl of grief fled away back as he had come; and Andrew suddenly looked about and found life emptied of all joy.
Judith seemed so very calm as the weeks went by, that her manager told himself he had been a fool to worry so that night—after he returned her letter to the post-office, and decided to go and fetch her from Ovid. He had sent it back, so that if she had refused to come, or—yes! he had thought of that, being so imbued with stage ways—if she had hinted at killing herself, he might declare with clean hands that he was guiltless, that he had never had her letter, that some one else had got it and sent it back to the Dead Letter office. But, after all, how foolish he was, he thought, watching Judith smile, and reply prettily to the courtesies of some guests whom he had just introduced to her. But then, her letter had seemed full of meaning! Well, that letter was doubtless a manifestation of the stage-craft with which she was thoroughly saturated! So he comforted himself. And meanwhile, Judith was learning that "Face joy's a costly mask to wear," and asking wearily of each day that dawned, "Is not my destiny complete? Have I not lived? Have I not loved? What more?"
And the time for her American début drew on.
CHAPTER X.
"Glory itself can be, for a woman, only a loud and bitter cry for happiness."—Madame de Stael.
Judith Moore made a triumphant success of her first American season.
She was lauded to the skies. An ocean of praise was poured in libations before her; its ripples spread across the Atlantic, to break in an ominous wave at Patti's feet, and Patti seeing it, perhaps feeling the chill of its encroachment, determined immediately upon another American tour.
There is a picture of Judith Moore painted at this time by one of the deftest masters of facial portraiture. Sittings were given for this whilst past applause was echoing in her ears, with newer shouts awaiting her in an hour or two; but the woman pictured upon this canvas is neither hearkening to past applause, nor anticipating new honour. She is absorbed in the dream of some sweet past, silent in the face of some unachieved joy, the whole face illumined, by an after-glow from some light of other days—a first radiance of a morn that never breaks. It shows a woman with wide, wistful, grey eyes—eyes which had wept, and lips that denied and defied the tears, a brow whereon triumph and grief had warred for mastery and merged at length into patient endurance; but the head is proudly poised, as a head should be that bears a crown. Even a thorny one confers and demands honour. If this woman bore a cross, she did not flaunt it in the face of men; she bore it hidden in her heart, and drew it out in secret places to wash her heart's blood from it with her tears. Tears are the salt of love that savour it to time everlasting.
It was the fashion to say that Miss Moore dwelt upon the heights to which her genius of song raised her, that from the peaks of success she looked down contemptuously upon all beneath. Alas! They could not tell how icy these pinnacles were! The roseate glow cast upon the "eternal snows" may look very beautiful, but the humblest hearth where love lights the fire is warmer.
She felt, indeed, the exaltation of genius, but upon every side she looked forth into the void. She was possessed again by that agony of vertigo that had seized her among the apple blooms; now, as then, she stood among blossoms; now, as then, her heart sickened within her. But there was one deadly difference; there was no strong arm to take her down. Indeed, it seemed to her even the ladder was gone. Could any man forgive the perfidy of which she had been guilty? Many a hand was outstretched to her, some that would have soiled her own had she clasped them, others she might have met honestly, palm to palm. She brushed gently past them all; if some of them tugged at her skirts, it only gave her some discomfort and pity for their pleading, but no pain.
Her manager was most enthusiastic over her. He remembered guiltily a letter he had opened and read, a letter he sent back to the post-office with apologies—"he was sorry, the letter was not for him"—a letter which even now was slowly threading its way back through the Dead Letter office pigeon-holes to an undreamed destination.
He was working her too hard, though—so musical people whispered among themselves. She had always needed the curb and not the spur. Of course, it was a great thing to get such a hold upon the public in one's first season, with the sure knowledge that she would have to bid against Patti in her next one; still, all these encores, and Sunday concerts and extra musicales were felt to be too much. And one or two men, whose souls were sensitive, ceased going to hear Miss Moore. There was something of agony, personal agony, mingling with the passion of her voice. One of these men shuddered, when some one, using a hackneyed simile, spoke of her as a human nightingale. There came to his fanciful imagination the old myth of the nightingale that sings with her breast against a thorn. It seemed somehow to him that this woman had grown delirate with the pain, and pressed sorer and sorer upon her thorn. He thought, too, of the birds whose eyes they blind that they may sing better; of the dove that bears
... "thro' heaven a tale of woe,
Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings."
He thought of the swan's song of death, and of the reed that the "Great God Pan" wrenched from its river home to fashion forth a Pipe. The American papers laughed a good deal at this man, caricaturing him as the poet of soulful lilies and yearning souls, hinting that he would like to inaugurate a pre-Raphaelesque era in America à la Burne Jones. He read these things sometimes. They flushed his thin cheeks, but did not trouble his eyes—those eyes that mirrored forth the soul of the mystic. He was right about Judith Moore.
She bowed her head to accept the last accolade of Genius—grief. She had partaken of pain—that chrism which, laid upon poetic lips, sanctifies their words to immortality, but which savours the breath they breathe with the bitterness of death. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Rossetti (how many we might name!) have partaken of that sacrament. But what matter for the Pipe, so that the world, when it has time to listen, may hear sweet singing? The world, in its way, was very good to Judith Moore. It gave her the sweet smile of its approval right royally; it gave her all its luxuries, all its praise, and this Judith did not pretend not to enjoy. But she enjoyed it as one does who drinks what he knows will kill him, yet continues the draught, that in its intoxication he may forget the doom it brings.
Judith was seen everywhere, for she availed herself of all the privileges which her genius, her beauty, her untarnished fame won for her. She was pointed out wherever she went; sometimes when a crush of carriages held her own imprisoned, she would hear a whisper from lip to lip, "Look! look! There is Judith Moore." Nothing further was needed; every one knew Judith Moore. And Judith treated the world as it deserved of her. She dressed herself beautifully for it, and smiled and sang to it, and exhibited herself to it everywhere. Everywhere, for she was striving to so tire her spirit that when she was alone it might at least be numb, if not at rest. In vain! That ardent, tender spirit was yet indomitable. The body, the slender, beautiful body it animated, might be sore aweary, but so soon as Judith was alone her spirit fled far away, back to the place of its rejoicing; back to the village in the valley, where it was always spring or summertide; back to the old rail fences with the tangled weeds about them; back to the apple blooms; back to the brown furrows where the grey birds nested; back to the lindens and the chestnuts, and there, hour after hour, her spirit held voiceless commune with that other. Her spirit well might be comforted, but Judith strained listening ears to hear one tender word, wearied her eyes searching for the semblance of a face, stretched forth trembling hands for comfort, and, overcome at last, let them fall, empty.
The opera season closed, and an incident that made some talk put the period to Judith's first American season. Judith had sung as she never sang before. Her voice seemed to transcend the limits of human capability, and become something independent of her lips, something sentient, springing ever higher and higher.
The man in whose heart she was likened to the pierced nightingale, the blinded lark, the mourning dove, the dying swan, had come to listen to her. At her last appearance there was a roar of applause, a wave of laudation that seemed as if it might carry her off her feet. There is something thrilling, inspiring, almost weird in the union of human voices, something that stirs the imagination, something that never grows old to us, for it never becomes familiar. Usually they jar and jangle across each other as children babble, each fretting for his own toy, so that we almost forget what the power of union is. In praise or blame it makes the world tremble.
She made no pretence of retiring for the encore. She made no sign to the musicians. She did not assume the pose, familiar to them, for any of her songs. They sat silent, spellbound with the audience. She stepped slowly forward, stretched forth her arms, and sang unaccompanied, what seemed an invocation to the better Ego of every soul present, a song she had been wont to sing to Andrew:
"Out from yourself!
Out from the past with its wrecks and contrition,
Out from the dull discontentment of now,
Out from the future's false-speaking ambition,
Out from yourself!
For your broken heart's rest;
For the peace which you crave;
For the end of your quest;
For the love which can save;
Come! Come to me!"
Those who heard that song never forgot it. And one man, at least, never forgot the expression upon the woman's face as she sang. Rapt as of a sibyl who conjures away an evil spirit; winning as a woman who promises all things; informed with the intensity of one who bids her will go forth to accomplish her desire—she held her last pose a moment. The house "rose at her." Even as they cheered a change overspread her face. It grew glorified, exultant, tremulously eager, as of one who feels the pinions of his soul stirring for flight—for flight to longed-for shores. With that look upon her face she fell.
* * * * * *
Far away from New York, in the silent spaces of a virgin forest, a man was lying on the snow, his gun beneath his arm ready for use. But he was keeping no lookout for game. His eyes were fixed upon an open space amid the tree tops, where a solitary star twinkled desolately. His face was thin; his eyes burned; the snows, the silence, nor the solitude could calm that throbbing at his heart, could cool the fever in his veins. He thought of Judith, and, thinking of her, loved her. It was true she had left him, left him with his kisses warm upon her lips, but—he loved her. It was hard for him to imagine a force strong enough to constrain her to go. It was difficult, having no clue, to conceive of circumstances that would justify her silent desertion, but somehow Andrew, out of the depths of his steadfast heart, found excuses for her. Sometimes the fantastic thought that she was bound in loveless marriage came to him, but he put it by. He remembered her eyes, the misgivings that had assailed her, the tender abandon of her trust in him. No, she was not married. Where was she? It was not her wish that he should know. He hoped her little feet trod pleasant paths. Oh, Judith, Judith! Then, explain it as we may, or leave it still a mystery, there came to him, faint, aëry, bodilessly, the words of a song—a song that ended in a plea, "Come! Come to me," and when it died away, Andrew Cutler sprang to his feet with a cry that echoed far between the icy tree trunks of the forest, "I come, I come." And that same night, at the same hour, at the same pulse of the hour, Judith Moore, with a look of ineffable joy upon her face, fell fainting upon the stage.
"So may love, although 'tis understood
The mere commingling of passionate breath,
Produce more than our searching witnesseth."
Next day Andrew started back to Ovid, arriving in a state of feverish expectancy. No tidings of Judith there; and he knew not where to seek. That pleading voice still rang in his ears; by night, by day, it urged the message it had brought to him in the depths of far-off Muskoka, and by day and night he promised it peace, if he could only, only know where to go.
Time passed.
* * * * * *
The voice was dumb now. Only an acme of surpassing love can wing the will through space, and then only perhaps once in a lifetime does such a supreme moment come, and the will behind this love was shattered, for Judith Moore lay sick unto death, was tossing in the delirium of fever, or lying for days sunk in an apathy which words could not pierce. The papers were filled with accounts of her strange illness, daily bulletins of her condition appeared, her manager was showered with opprobrium for overworking her. She was dying. The best doctors said that the miracle was that she had lasted so long. Her little dark-faced manager went about feeling like a murderer, a Shylock, and a Judas, in one. The more so, as he felt he had given her the death-blow in one stroke—when he disregarded that letter. If he had only overworked her, he told himself he would have had no regrets. He would have made any reparation he could, but how on earth was he to find the yokel she was in love with? And what a battle she was having; and yet it was not such a very long one—from latest winter to spring.
Andrew was half crazed with love, which, since that winter night, had become almost unendurable through anxiety.
Now it was spring, and as he walked through his woods to the Morris house, he passed the crab-apple-trees in full bloom. He often went up to talk to garrulous Mrs. Morris. The little details she let fall about Judith were pearls of great price to him.
This day he was hardly within the door before Mrs. Morris said:
"Land sakes! but you're just the very person I was wanting to see. There's a gov'iment letter come to Miss Moore yesterday, and I thought you'd maybe know where to send it."
"Yes," said Andrew, feeling that the sign had come at last. "Give it me, and I'll see she gets it."
He took it, and with scarce a word went away, leaving Mrs. Morris considerably upset by his abruptness.
He only waited to get within the shadow of his woods before he tore it open. One reading of her pleading letter to her manager sufficed. Judith was his again. He knew where to find her. New York!—that was not so very far off. He knew when the trains started, and rapidly made his plans. She was such a child! and she liked his old velveteen coat and the big, battered felt hat; he would wear them; she would be pleased; and as he came within sight of the crab-apple-trees a happy thought came to him. He took his knife and cut a huge bundle of flowers, taking off the branches where the flowers were only in bud.
Then he went home.
His aunt heard his hurried explanation, and bound a great roll of wet moss about the ends of the branches.
"They'll look queer, Andrew," she said.
"Never mind how they'll look," said Andrew, happily; "she'll like 'em."
He was soon on the train, a picturesque figure in tweed, with an old velveteen coat, a wide shabby felt hat, and an enormous bunch of pink flowers. Andrew was entirely oblivious of, and indifferent to, comment. He got hold of a train-man, gave him a dollar and got a pailful of water from him, arranged his flowers in it, put it in the baggage-car and sat by it all night. "A queer duck," the trainmen said.
As the Canadian trains reach New York, the morning papers come aboard. Andrew bought one of each, and sat down turning them over with tremulous hands to search for a sign. He had not far to seek—"JUDITH MOORE DYING, THE END APPROACHING." That was what he read in big "scare head" type; that, and its narrations in the other papers, with the usual platitudes telling of the "short but bright career," and so on. With the calm of despair he searched for definite information as to where she was. It seemed every one knew so well that definite detail was superfluous. But at last, in a different part of the paper, he found: "In the corridors of the Brittany Hotel last night, Miss Moore's manager, who had just left her bedside, said all hope was gone." The train was in New York, slowing up in the Grand Central station by the time he found this. He wrapped a couple of handkerchiefs round the stems of his flowers, got into the first carriage he came to, saying only "the Brittany Hotel." He thought the cabman might know where to go. The cabman, of course, did, and ere many minutes he was in the office of the magnificent hotel.
He knew nothing of conventional procedure, and if he had, it would not have mattered to him then. He went straight to the desk.
"Is Miss Moore alive?" he asked.
"Yes, I think so, but—"
"I want to go to her at once."
The clerk comprehended, and a bell-boy raced before Andrew to a door whose handle was muffled. He knocked very softly. "Go," said Andrew, and he stood alone waiting for the door to open. It would be impious to speak of the agony which knit his soul and heart to endurance, whilst he waited the word from within.
The door opened. A miserable little man stood there. When he saw Andrew, he said without astonishment:
"You're in time to speak to her. Go in."
Andrew advanced to an open door. The little man followed through the outer room. He beckoned to two others within the sick-room, a white-capped woman and a doctor. They saw, understood, and Andrew went up to the bed alone with the door closed behind him.
"Judith," he said, "my own little girl."
A long tremour shook the slight form under the coverlets, and then—then he was on his knees with the flowers flung all across the bed and his arms about her. And Judith? Poor Judith's eyes were wide and frightened, for she thought the change had come that she had waited for, expected, even longed for; she thought this was Death, and even although the crab blooms were there, and Andrew, still it was awesome. Yet Death should have brought white flowers, not apple blooms such as grew in Andrew's woods. And were Death's arms ever so sustaining, so tender, so warm as these? And surely Death did not come garbed in shabby, smoky velveteen, nor bend above his victims a brown passionate face wet with tears?
"Andrew, it's you, and you're crying," and then followed a faint whisper of delight—from her—for Andrew's courage and calm were gone at last. He could not speak. And once more she smiled at him the old womanly smile, from the old honest eyes, and stretched forth feeble fingers striving to reach about his neck.
CHAPTER XI.
L'ENVOI.
"Fair love that led home."
Judith Moore did not die. She had fallen asleep that day with her fingers trembling about Andrew's sunburnt hair. He held her tenderly till a deeper sleep weighted down those clinging hands, and they fell.
He watched by her, without movement, almost without breathing, with the look on his face as of one who battles with Death, pitting all the splendid vitality of his being against the enemy, casting the mantle of his brave soul, strong will and perfect love about the trembling will and failing heart that were so nearly vanquished.
Indeed, so completely did Andrew identify himself during those silent hours with the woman he loved, that ever after she had some fleeting touches of his courage, and he had always an intuitional tenderness towards a woman's illogical weakness.
The fusion of these two natures took place not in those sweet after hours of passion, lint in that silent room, into which now and then there peeped a white-capped nurse or a black-a-vised little man, who saw always a great mass of fading pink blooms, a pair of broad shoulders in shabby velveteen bent tenderly over the shadowy outline of a little head sunk deep in the pillow.
After this supreme crisis there came a week or two of slow convalescence, and then a wedding that no one thought much of, regarding it merely as one of the prescribed formalities, like the buying of the railroad tickets, necessary before Andrew could take her away—away back to the village in the valley, to the old stone farm-house, to the homely flowers, the lindens on the hill, to Rufus and Miss Myers, where, for a time, she was not a wife at all, only a poor little wind-tossed song-bird blown to their bosoms for a refuge.
But that all changed.
Andrew wooed again a charming, capricious woman, walking by her adoringly over the old bricked walks beneath the horse-chestnuts, his very soul trembling with the love her voice and touch awakened: and she was playfully proud of her power, until suddenly some quick sense of the dominance of the love she aroused frightened her, and she turned to hide from him in his arms, tremblingly afraid, no longer asking love, but pleading against it.
Time passes with them. The old farm-house has had some architectural additions—a tiny conservatory, a long dining-room, with quaint porches and latticed windows: for Andrew and his wife appreciate too keenly the beauties of their home to mar its character by modernizing it. Andrew has learned to wear evening clothes as easily as he does his old velveteens, and—O si sic omnia!—himself often buys the little high-heeled shoes in which Judith's heart delights, for Judith never put off the old Eve of her harmless vanities.
Every winter Andrew and his wife go to town for a while, and visitors come to the farm-house who fairly electrify the village with their "cranks."
The best known of these is a little black-a-vised man with big diamonds, a profane tongue and a guilty but "thankful 'eart." He cherishes, so he says, a hopeless passion for Miss Myers, and indeed Miss Myers likes the new régime very well, for she was never ousted from the house-keeping department, and if it was a glory and a credit to manage well for Andrew and herself, how much greater it is to cast honour over a board where such fine people as Judith's friends sit daily.
Andrew is secretly very proud that all these fine folk should come and see how happy Judith is. Only once did he have any difference with any of them. That was when Judith first regained her strength and her old manager came to see her. He had a brand-new scheme for Judith's benefit in his brain. She was to sing in grand concerts, and he had all her tour mapped out. He was good enough to say Andrew could come along. Andrew held brief and bitter speech with him, and then went to Judith. He could see how strong the old glamour yet was. He took her in his arms, and after a long, tender discussion she gave him the promise he was pleading for, never more to sing in public, a decision which made Andrew her slave forever, although it wrung his heart to see what this renunciation cost her. He felt it was right. Poor, high-strung Judith needed a steady hand upon the rein of her eager spirit, else it would have soon carried her beyond her strength. And so, ringing about an old farm-house, or through the chestnut woods, or below the lindens on the hill-side, there often sounds a voice once echoed by the bravos of the world. Perhaps the aspiration it awakens in one strong soul is better applause.
So Andrew and Judith live on, they two and Miss Myers, as nearly happy as mortals may be. Heaven would be entirely illogical if such as they two had no heartaches.
Sometimes Judith steals away from Miss Myers and Andrew and thinks of the old days, the first efforts, the hopes, the fears, the strife and the success—the glorious success that might have been many times repeated: that might, as base metals might be transmuted into gold, have become fame. A nasty heartache gnaws in her breast, her face pales, her eyes grow wide and eager. At such times Andrew knows well the struggle that rends her tender heart, and he soon searches her out: and upon his breast, beneath the spell of his worship her restless spirit quiets itself to peace. What might be a tragedy of distrust is made a bond of stronger union by perfect confidence. But Judith's face will always bear the traces of these times.
When a coal is carried from the Divine Fire and laid upon mortal lips, it must be blown into a flame to illumine the world, or it sears the lips it touches. The gods will not have their gifts disregarded. They care little that the mortal breath may be too weak to sustain the flame, though it perish in the effort. Indeed, the gods forgive that, and sometimes spare a little of their glory to gild a grave. But let the breath they demand be stolen for our own sighs or sobs, or stifled by dear-bought kisses, and they give swift recompense of pain. Judith had borne that smart.
Andrew, too, has unfulfilled dreams, as Judith knows when she sees his eyes grow wistful as they rest upon the faces of children. And Judith goes to him then, and lays her head upon his arm with an apology so poignant, a love so perfect in her grey eyes, that he forgets everything in the marvel that this woman is his. And thus with each of them, the little shadows only serve to enhance the sunshine. Their life is a glorious reality; their love a poem. Together they know no pain from the past, no regret for the present, no fear for the future. They sometimes even dare to dream that their love will bestow upon them its own immortality—that through eternity they will be as they are now, together and happy.