Joanna E. Wood

“ But at the first sound of Andrew's footsteps, always eager, hasty, hopeful as they approached her, these shadows vanished, and in their place shone the dawn of a newer light.
She had never before been considered as a woman, but always as a singer; and her womanhood recognizing the tribute paid to it, stirred into life, responded to the feeling which evoked it, and demanded right of way.
There is something dominant in the woman-heart when roused. Judith's nature held deeper depths than she herself wot of—sweet springs for the lilies of love to grow in ”

“ No prayer more eloquent of human agony ever beat against deaf skies, yet it was but the repetition of one word—"My—My!"
An hour crept by. The flush had deepened on My's cheeks; his eyes were glazed. Once again, in surpassing pain, Myron Holder called aloud her child's name. There came no heavenly answer; but the true little heart, beating so faintly, responded once more to the beloved voice. Little My's eyes cleared a space and his fingers closed round his mother's.
"My's mama!" He uttered the alliterative little babble in strange, shackled tones. ”

“ He looked from its borders at his own far-off farm-house among its trees, at the gables of the village of Ovid clustering together, at the tin on the Baptist Church spire glistening in the midst, at the long low Morris homestead that nestled in a little hollow beyond his wood: but all was as usual, nothing new, nothing strange. No angel's glistening wing was to be seen anywhere.
Andrew's grain was spent, but the clearing was not yet all sown. So he went home leaving his task unfinished. From one thing to another was the rule of his busy life. ”

“ But Homer Wilson was not thinking of any generalizations; he was simply concerned with the debt he owed Myron Holder and how to pay it; for, and be it told with no thought of disparaging Homer Wilson, he felt he would bestow an inestimable benefit upon Myron Holder by making her his wife. He believed he would, at one blow, free her from the shackles of shame. He never thought of the woman-soul that strove to justify itself by rigid adherence to those vows that had seemed so sacred, uttered, as they were, by lips that were almost divine to the listening heart they had betrayed. ”

“ They passed under the apple-tree by the garden gate. Its petals seemed almost spent—the life of the apple blossom is short. But how much sweeter the spot, and the tree, when she stood beneath it, than ever it had been before in all its glory and bloom! They were in the garden; the old sun-dial with the linden tree beside it stood in the sunshine. Judith's eyes filled with happy tears, which Andrew did not see; he only thought her eyes were bright. It seemed to her that her spirit had found its natal place here on the hill. ”

“ Deans was wroth with herself that she had not said still less.
Ann Lemon went back to her own house, and Myron once more went back and forth to the village. The winter had changed her. She no longer shrank from before the gaze of those cold eyes that met hers daily. Instead, she met their glances with firm lips and unmoved eye, not boldly, not appealingly, but with an acceptance of rebuke and scorn that was stronger in its endurance than wrath, with a patience more pathetic than any appeal.
No smile ever moved her lips, no anger ever raised her voice. ”

“ Andrew had grown to be in very close touch with Nature during many solitary weeks spent in hunting: in long tramps through the Muskoka woods, shooting the fawn-coloured deers, and the wild fowl that nested in the tiny lakes; and in many a long night when he lay perdu watching for lynx, forgetting his quest in the marvel of the stars, or in wakeful watches, seeing the resinous camp-fire die down to embers and hearing the shrill laughing of the loon, the weird wail of the lynx, the cry of the great owl or the call of the coon. Andrew was past-master of all woodland lore. ”

“ There is no flower on earth more beautiful in delicate fragility of texture, in purity of tint, in shape and translucent color than a morning-glory with the dew upon it.
It was a morning to live and love in. And it seemed to Homer Wilson that the whole gracious aspect of the day was completed by the forms of Myron and her boy as they stood without the gate.
His heart yearned for her as he helped her into the wagon by his side. At Mrs. Deans' he lifted her down, holding her for an instant in his arms. The keen "possessive pang" that thrilled him shook his spirit with its sacred sweetness. ”

“ He did not know himself to be so different from his neighbours as he was, only he never seemed to contemplate marrying one of their women, and he pitied them. For they did not recognize the pathos of their own narrow lives. They did not see their surroundings as he did—the beauties of the skies above, and of the earth beneath, and the marvel and mystery of the water.
Andrew could not have said this was what made him pity them, for he was one of the inarticulate ones, whose speech is shackled; one of those, too, who know their own limitations in this way, and feel their fetters. ”

“ Slow resolutions began to stir in her heart: she would go through the world "spending and being spent" for others: she would be patient to her grandmother, always remembering she had shamed her: she would be true and faithful and self-sacrificing in every relation she assumed to others; she would be sympathetic to all and she would die soon, very soon, she thought, and the village would mourn her and at last speak of her with loving kindness. Poor Myron! Like "many mighty men," she did not realize the utter barrenness of a posthumous joy or understand how diffident Death can be when wooed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Warner came to the door just as Mrs. Deans entered the kitchen, hurrying in from the outer air, and bringing a new excitement with her to intensify the suspense. Mrs. Warner beckoned and whispered:
"She's speaking of hearing music and singing, now; they mostly don't last long after that."
"They," not "we"! Oh, strange race of dying people, that are set apart from all men by death's approach, that we never identify with ourselves! Oh, weird world to which they go, which doubtless we shall never enter! Oh, dreary passage they must tread, upon whose threshold we shall never stand! ”

“ There is something amiss with the man or woman whose heart is not touched by a bird's nest—the daintiest possible epitome of love, and home, and honest work, and self-sacrificing patience. Andrew had thrashed many a boy for robbing birds' nests, and had discharged a man in the stress of haying because he knocked down the clay nests of the swallows from beneath the granary eaves with a long pole. Now he bent above this nest with curious-tender eyes, touching the spotted eggs lightly whilst the bird, whose breast had left them warm, flitted to and fro upon the furrows. ”

“ He soon went to sleep again, and Myron Holder and Homer Wilson sat down together to drink the tea. Her eyes rested upon him, as if well content, and he noted this with delight. The truth was they dared not yet stray elsewhere, lest the spectres he had banished might jibber at her from the dusky corners of the room.
Love is served on strange altars, and the sacrifice of a heart was again proffered in that lonely cottage, whose atmosphere was chill with the dreadful influence of death, whose silence was broken by the soft breathing of a child of shame. ”

“ 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! ”

“ There was the young man, strong in the choice of will and heart; the old man, drawing the last coverlet over the last sleep; and, severed from these by only a short depth of kindred substance, she who had passed, her bed rapidly rounding to a grave.
At last, Clem began patting the mound with the back of his spade; his work was nearly done. Each echoless blow struck upon Myron's heart; and, thinking of the shame she had wrought the dead woman, she dealt herself those blows that she had been accustomed to endure from her grandmother's bitterness. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The springing hopvines seemed to twine their tendrils tight and tighter about her heart. All the scents and sounds of spring were ever after to her an exquisite torture. But her soul was of strong fibre.
Before all the scorn of the village, all the rebukes of Mrs. Deans, all the wrath of her grandmother, all the bitterness and misery and hopelessness of her own heart, Myron Holder was mute.
No murmur escaped her lips against the man who had forsaken her. The village knew her shame, but it could not fathom her secret. Myron Holder was deaf to all commands, entreaties, persuasions, sneers. ”

“ Andrew's heart was aching with inexplicable pain. Judith was singing an old theme, composed long since by some frocked and cowled musician, whose rigid vows and barren life could not quite suppress the dream of music within his soul. It was a simple and austere melody, yet endued with a peculiar pathos, the yearning of a defrauded life for the joy that should have crowned it, the regret of a barren present for a fruitful past, the wail of the must be for the might have been. ”