Mary E. Waller

“ He had not as yet spoken, save with his dark eyes, his loving earnestness of voice, and the readiness with which, ever since his appearance in Flamsted he ran and fetched and carried for her.
Aileen enjoyed this devotion. The legitimate pleasure of knowing she is loved—even when no response can be given—is a girl's normal emotional nourishment. Through it the narrows in her nature widen and the shallows deepen to the dimensions that enable the woman's heart to give, at last, even as she has received,—ay, even more than she can ever hope to receive. ”

“ I listened to their tales whene'er the camp-fire crackled and the snow, the feather-snow that melted from the pines, fell hissing on the glowing arch of logs."
How André loved that sound! How dear to him was that one time in all the year's full round, when freeze the nights, the sap grows chill and numb; when warms the rising sun at early dawn and that sweet ichor runs! It kept him young; within him stirred his youthful forest hopes and joys with that first mounting life. And loud he laughed, nor gave the secret of his youth, his woodsman's lasting joys. ”

“ Octavius waited for her weeping to spend itself. His heart was wrung with pity, but he was thankful for every tear she shed; his gratefulness, however, found a curious inner expression.
"Damn her—damn her—damn her—" he kept saying over and over to himself, and the mere repetition seemed to ease him of his over-powering surcharge of pity. But it was Almeda Champney he had in mind, and, after all, his unuttered inner curses were only a prayer for help, read backwards.
At last, Aurora Googe lifted her face from her hands and looked at Octavius Buzzby. He reddened and rose to go. ”

“ Love was claiming her wholly, possessing her soul and body—but no longer that idealizing love of her young girlhood and womanhood. Rather it was that love which is akin to the divine rapture of maternity—the love that gives all, that sacrifices all, which demands nothing of the loved one save to love, to shield, to comfort—the love that makes of a true woman's breast not only a rest whereon a man, as well as his babe, may pillow a weary head, but a round tower of strength within which there beats a heart of high courage for him who goes forth to the daily battlefield of Life. ”

“ The Doctor is mistaken; black and white can lie—even after twenty-seven years. The man I love—and I cannot help loving him—is not the man who is responsible for me in this world."
All my woman's nature cried out against this blasphemy of circumstances against my love—my love for Gordon Ewart, that was so true, so pure; pure in its depths of passion, true in its patience sanctified through endurance.
"I will go to Cale. He will know. He will tell me. He will see it cannot be true. This love Mr. Ewart feels for me is not, never has been, a father's love. ”

“ Why must he suffer such indignities from a man like Jim McCann! How dared a man, that was a man, taunt another like that! The hand holding her sun umbrella gripped the handle tightly, and through set teeth she said to herself: "I hate them all—hate them!"
The declining July sun was hot upon her; the road-bed, gleaming white with granite dust, blinded her. She looked about for some shelter where she could wait for the down car; there was none in sight, except the pines over by Father Honoré's and the sisterhood house an eighth of a mile beyond. ”

“ Cale, listen. For twenty-six years I was in this world, and four men—the one people call my father, you, my uncle-in-law who loved your wife, my mother's sister, Doctor Rugvie who brought me into this world and made but two attempts to find me, Mr. Ewart who as George Jackson brought me home in his arms, a baby three days old, and left me for good and all, worse than orphaned—all four of you, how much have you cared for me in reality? ”

“ In the darkening room the firelight leaped and showed to Father Honoré the woman's face transfigured under the powerful influence of his words. She smiled up at him—a smile so brave in its pathos, so winning in its true womanliness, that Father Honoré felt the tears bite his eyeballs.
"Perhaps I don't need to go then."
"This rejoices me, Aileen—it will rejoice us all," he answered heartily to cover his emotion.
"But it won't be easy to stay where I am."
"I know—I know; you speak as one who has suffered; but has not Champney suffered too? Think of his home-coming!" ”

“ But just my own, mine, Marcia Farrell's, here, from day to day in Lamoral; a life lived in thankfulness of spirit for a shelter that is a home; in thankfulness for the modicum of intellect—with its accompanying physical fitness—that enables me to earn my living; in thankfulness for friends; in thankfulness—yes, I dare say it, even in the shadow of Cale's story of my mother's short life—that I love, that I can love. ”

“ Do you, in your supreme egotism, suppose that you, Champney Googe, are the only man in this world who has sinned, suffered, gone under for a time? Are you going to lie down in the ditch like a craven, simply because you have failed to withstand the first assaults of the devil that is in you? Do you think, because you have sinned, there is no longer a place for you and your work in this world where all men are sinners at some time in their lives? I tell you, Champney Googe,—and mark well what I say,—your sin, as sin, is not so despicable as your attitude towards your own life. ”

“ In a way, what people are apt to consider a birthright depended on his answer.
Again and again during that hour of concentrated thought, there surged up into consciousness, like a repeating wave of undertone, the realization that all that belonged to a quarter of a century ago, all, all past; done with; their accounts settled. They were forgotten, mostly, by everyone; forgiven, perhaps, by the few, including Cale. Why should what my mother did, or did not do, figure as a factor in my present and future life? I determined to take my stand with Mr. Ewart on this, and this alone. ”

“ Van Ostend told him she had applied to him for some working position for Romanzo in the Flamsted office, and not in vain; he was about to be put in as pay-master.
As he drove slowly up the highroad towards The Gore, he saw the stone-cutters' sheds stretching dim and gray in the moonlight along the farther shore. A standing train of loaded flat-cars gleamed in the electric light like a long high-piled drift of new-fallen snow. Here and there, on approaching The Gore, an arc-light darkened the hills round about and sent its blinding glare into the traveller's eyes. ”

“ I was sitting beside as good a man, as fine a man, one more than that other's equal in achievement, as the world counts achievement. I was groping for a solution when the Doctor exclaimed: "There's the manor!"
The white walls and snow-covered roof stood out boldly against the black massed background of spruce, hemlock and pine. The yellow chintz curtains were drawn apart, showing us both the gleam of lamplight and the leaping firelight. At the windows in the living-room were Jamie and his mother; at those of the dining-room both Angélique and Marie were visible for a moment. ”

“ Count this life as yours to make the best of. Live, I say; live, work, make good; it is in any man's power who has received a reprieve like yours. I know whereof I am speaking. I'll go further: it would be in your power even if you had been judged and committed."
The man, to whom he was appealing, shuddered as he heard the word "committed."
"That would be death," he said under his breath; "last night was nothing, nothing to that—but you can't understand—"
"Better, perhaps, than you think. But what I want you to see is that there is something left to live for; Champney—your mother." ”

“ What do I care if, millions of years ago when things on this earth were stickier and hotter than the worst dog-day in New York, this thing that has, in the end, become Marcia Farrell, this half-perfected mechanism of body and mind, had gills like a fish? What do I care if it had?
This "I" of me is distinct from every other "I" on this inhabited globe. This "I" of me has its special work to do, not another's, not my ancestors'. Humble enough it is. It has to feed and clothe my body by labor, the brain regulating the handicraft. It has eyes to see all the beauty, all the ugliness of Life ”

“ At times, for instance when walking up the Avenue on a bracing October day, he felt as if he owned all in sight—a condition of mind which those who know from experience the powerful electro-magnetic current generated by the rushing life of the New York metropolis can well understand. He struck out into the stream with the rest, and with overweening confidence in himself—in himself as master of circumstances which he intended to control in his own interests, in himself as the pivotal point of Flamsted affairs. The rapidity of the current acted as a continual stimulus to exertion. ”

“ But in and through and above all, it opened to me the high heart of the Canadian, the undaunted faith in established principles, and the patriotism that is a veritable passion.
"O Canada, my Canada!" an old French Canadian once exclaimed to me as we sat by the box-stove in his little "cabin". "There is no land like it; no land where they live at peace as we do here; no land where they are so content by their own fireside." ”

“ Many a man coming in from the quarries or the sheds with a grievance, a burden, or a joy, felt the influence of this simple room. Many a woman brought here her heavy over-charged heart and was eased in its fire-lighted atmosphere of welcome. Many a child brought hither its spring offering of the first mitchella, or its autumn gift of checkerberries. Many a girl, many a boy had met here to rehearse a Christmas glee or an Easter anthem. Many a night these walls echoed to the strains of the priest's violin, when he sat alone by the fireside with only the Past for a guest. ”

“ I heard a heavy long-drawn sigh from the man standing in front of me.
"Does he know?" was my first rational question.
"Ewart know? Marcia, Marcia—think what you are saying! Ewart is a gentleman—the soul of honor—"
"No, of course, he does n't. I did n't think.— Why have n't you told him instead of me?"
"Why? I tell you because you are a woman; because it is your right to withdraw from a situation that is untenable; you must be the first to know." ”

“ When the soil is turned over carefully, enriched and prepared perfectly for the seed; when rain is abundant, sunshine plenteous and mother-earth's spring quickening is instinctive, is it to be wondered at that the rootlet delves, the plantlet lifts itself, the bud forms quickly, and unexpectedly spreads its petal-star to the sunlight which enhances its beauty and fructifies its work of reproduction? The natural laws, in this case, work to their prescribed end along lines of favoring circumstance—and Love is but the working out of the greatest of all Nature's laws. ”

“ The Doctor turned to him.
"How do you look at it, Boy, you, with your twenty-three years? The world where such things happen is n't much like that world of André's Odyssey, is it?"
Jamie answered brightly, but his voice was slightly unsteady:
"Yes, it's the same old world; it's a wilderness, you know, for all of us, only there are so many paths through it, across it, and up and down it—paths and trails and roads that cross and recross; so many that end in swamp and bog; so many that lead nowhither; so many that are lost on the mountain. ”

“ Mrs. Champney walked swiftly down the broad main hall, that ran through the house, to the door opening on the north terrace whence there was an unobstructed view up the three miles' length of Lake Mesantic to the Flamsted Hills; and just there, through a deep depression in their midst, the Rothel, a rushing brook, makes its way to the calm waters at their gates. At this point, where the hills separate like the opening sepals of a gigantic calyx, the rugged might of Katahdin heaves head and shoulder into the blue.
The irregular margin of the lake is fringed with pines of magnificent growth. ”

“ It was just the time in the evening when the men flock to the cabaret. As I drew near it, I heard the sound of the graphophone. I listened, not stopping in my walk.
"O Canada, pays de mon amour!"
I stopped then; and it seemed as if my heart stopped at the same time.
Oh, it had been "Canada, land of my love" in the deepest sense—and now!
I went on to the boat; crossed the trestle. At the sound of my footstep on the deck, the woman put her head up the companionway.
"Who 's there?"
"Some one who wishes to speak with you alone; I was here the other day." ”

“ All her rebellion at such thraldom, all her disgust at her weakness, as she termed it, all her hatred, engendered by the unpalatable method he had used to enthrall her, all her struggle to forget, to live again her life free of any entanglement with Champney Googe, all her endeavors to care for other men, had availed her naught. Love she must—and Champney Googe remained the object of that love. Father Honoré's words gave her courage to live on—loving. ”

“ It is long, narrow, winding at its southern extremity; at its northern, it is expanded pool-like among forest-covered heights the reflection of which darkens and apparently deepens it where its waters touch the marginal wilderness! In camp by the margin of the lake, beneath some ancient pines, rare in that region, and surrounded by the spicy fragrance of balsam, spruce and cedar, that came to us warm from the depths of the seemingly illimitable forest behind us! ”

“ Father Honoré had a vision at that moment of Champney Googe's face when he said, "But you loved her with your whole manhood." He made no reply, but waited for Aileen to say more if she should so choose.
"I believed he loved me—and so I told him my love—I shall never, never get over that!" she exclaimed passionately. "But I know now—I knew before he went away the last time, that I was mistaken; no man could say what he did and know even the first letter of love." ”

“ Nothing that Cale has said shall influence me in this. All that is past—a part of another generation. I have put it all out of my life, once and for all. I live now and here, in Lamoral. I am not my mother; I am Marcia Farrell. I have not her life to answer for, and her life—oh, what she must have suffered!—shall no longer influence mine. ”

“ And, in truth, the priest was illumining the dark and hidden places of her life and giving her courage to love on which, to her, meant courage to live on.—Such were the demands of a nature, loyal, impulsive, warmly affectionate, sincere, capable of an all-sacrificing love that could give without return if need be, but a nature which, without love developing in her of itself just for the sake of love, would shrivel, become embittered, and like withered fruit on a tree drop useless to the ground to be trodden under the careless foot of man. ”

“ I entered, and shut the door softly not to rouse Jamie and Mrs. Macleod. I heard the dog settle on the threshold. Somehow, the sound helped me to bear. It was something belonging to him that was near me in my trouble.
I sat down on the side of my bed—sat there, I think, all night. A round of thought kept turning like a mill-wheel in my head:—"The man I love is my father—Mr. Ewart, my father, is the man I love." ”

“ What boys wouldn't when their heart's desire was conveyed to them at the beginning of the sermon by a secret-service-under-the-pew process wholly delightful to the young human male? Who wouldn't be quiet for the sake of the peppermints, a keen three-bladed knife, or a few gelatine fishes that squirmed on his warm moist palm in as lively a manner as if just landed on the lake shore? Their father had been a boy, and at fifty had a boy's heart within him—this was the secret of his success.
Mrs. Caukins appeared at last, radiant in the consciousness of a new chip hat and silk blouse. ”

“ We understood each other. We were man and woman, not boy and girl. We recognized what each of us was becoming to the other in the daily intimate household ways of life—an enduring test; in the community of our human interests, in the common wealth of our friends, of our books. His best friends were mine; mine were his—all except Delia Beaseley; sometime I intended he should know her.
I thought at first that would come about through the farm project; but Mrs. Macleod, Jamie and I had to acknowledge, soon after the Doctor returned, that the development of this plan was at a standstill. ”

“ Aileen Armagh heard that call, and doubt, suspicion, anger dropped away from her. Instead, trust, devotion, anticipation clothed her thought of him; he was coming to speak the "word" that was to make her future fair and plain—the one "word" that should set him forever in her heart, enthrone him in her life. That word was not "love", but the sacrament of love; the word of four letters which a woman writes large with legitimate loving pride in the face of the world. ”

“ I was happy! If Cale had called me by that name at this time I would have welcomed it. It applied to me. It was good to be alive; good to be out in such a world of natural glory; good to have, in the night and the silence, such companionship that understood my own silence of enjoyment.
I was happy at the prospect of the Doctor's coming. The thought of the future removal to the farm no longer filled me with misgivings. "I shall still be near the manor, it will not be banishment in any sense." So I comforted myself.
I turned to get a look over the ridge of fur at the man beside me. ”

“ Her nature was so absorbingly tenacious of whatever held her narrow interests, that a child at Champ-au-Haut would have broken, in a measure, her domination of her weaker-willed husband, because it would have centred in itself his love and ambition to "keep up the name." That now, eleven years after Louis Champney's death, she should contemplate the introduction into her perfectly ordered household of a child, an alien, was a revelation of appalling moment to Octavius. ”