Nancy Huston Banks

“ The doctor of the wilderness—the healer everywhere—can never march with other soldiers. He can never go shoulder to shoulder with cheering comrades at the roll of drums and the blare of trumpets under waving banners—to seek glory on the battle-field while all the world looks on and applauds. No—no—the doctor of the wilderness—the healer everywhere—is a solitary soldier, who must always go alone and silently to meet Death single-handed, and struggle with him, day after day, and night after night, so long as he may live, fighting ceaselessly for his own life as well as the lives of others. ”

“ The coming of spring was important to everybody in the Pennyroyal Region, where every man was a farmer—the merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, and even the minister; and where every woman had a garden, large and rich like old lady Gordon's, or small and poor as Miss Judy's was. And the buds of the japonica were the gay little heralds of the spring, coming clad all in scarlet satin, while the rest of nature wore dull and sombre robes. Flashing out from their dark hiding-places at the first touch of the sun, the sight of them stirred the ladies of Oldfield as nothing else ever did. ”

“ Hers was such a loving nature that it was as natural for her to love those about her as for a young vine to cling to everything that it touches. Every instinct of her heart was a tender, sensitive tendril of affection, and all these soft and growing tendrils reaching out in the loneliness of her life had clung even to William Pressley, as a fine young vine will twine round a hard cold rock when it can reach nothing softer or warmer or higher. Her own rich, warm, loving nature had indeed so wreathed his coldness and hardness that she could not see him as he really was. ”

“ She stood still for a moment, gazing wistfully, waiting and longing for the far-off glimpse of Doris, which nearly always sweetened the beginning of the day. On that wet March morning there was no flutter of a little white apron, no sign of a wafted kiss. Miss Judy sighed gently as her gaze came back to her own yard. There were two japonica bushes, one standing on either side of the front gate, and as Miss Judy now glanced at them she was startled to see what seemed to be a roseate mist floating among the bare, brown branches, still dripping and shining with the night's rain. ”

“ Dear uncle Philip! He is always happy over anything that makes me happy. Next to you, dear heart, there is no one in all the world that I love so much—not half so much. And there is no one whom he loves as he does me; he thinks only of my happiness."
Her eyes sought his with a wistful look. She felt that he did not like Philip Alston, and there was distress in the thought that these two, whom she loved most out of all on earth, should not be the warmest of friends. ”

“ Before a tragedy so overwhelming every earnest soul striving in Oldfield stood awed, although it was not given to many to comprehend that the greatest awe which even the simplest felt was for the awful Mystery of Life. Never in the history of the village had its simple people been so slow in taking up the petty burden of daily struggle and strife. It seemed as if the least imaginative must be feeling the littleness of all earthly things.
Even old lady Gordon's look and manner were almost gentle, certainly more gentle than her grandson had ever seen them. ”

“ He made one or two straightforward, friendly efforts to thaw the ice of William Pressley's manner. His own was naturally frank and cordial. He always wished to be liked, which is the natural wish of every truly kind nature. And then, above and beyond this, was the right-minded lover's instinctive desire to secure the good-will of all who are near the one whom he loves; for Paul Colbert had fallen in love with Ruth, and he knew it, as few do who have fallen in love at first sight. He could, indeed, have told the very instant at which love had come—like a bolt from the blue. ”

“ Miss Judy was now chirruping quite like herself, and Miss Sophia listening and nodding alternately in happy content. Nearly asleep, she did not hear the soft rustle of Miss Judy's bombazine skirt as it slipped off in the darkness.
"You don't mind, do you, sister Sophia?" said Miss Judy, feeling, nevertheless, bound to apologize in respect for her sister. "It's too dark for any one passing to see. And it does make the back breadths so shiny to sit on them, no matter how lightly you try to sit down," she added, as if she could sit any other way, dear little atom of humanity! ”

“ For in their strong simple hearts was the same love of country that bore England's flag to victory, and the same love of the fireside that made peace as welcome as conquest.
And as these old English fighters had danced with their sweethearts on the greensward in the intervals between wars, so these fighters of the wilderness now went on with the dance in the forest just as if there had been no fierce conflict at hand. They might be called to fight to-morrow and they would be ready, but they would dance to-day, just as their forefathers had done. ”

“ With this heavenly music in his ears and this seeming peace and happiness before his eyes, Lynn Gordon could hear no sound of the sorrow of living, nor could he see any sign of the pain of the world. An unconscious smile even lifted for a moment the weight from his heart as he idly watched a merry couple of nuthatches, those gay "clowns of the green tent of the woods," tumbling up and down a giant elm. He did not see the solitary butcher bird, nature's most cruel executioner, sitting in motionless, sinister silence in the dark depths of a great thorn tree, nature's cruelest scaffold. ”

“ It was the first time that a man had given David his hand as one frank, earnest, fearless man gives it to another—but never to a woman, and rarely to a boy. David did not know what it was that he felt as their hands met in the darkness, but he knew that the touch was like balm to his bruised pride, which had been aching so sorely throughout the lonely ride. Father Orin now rode nearer on the other side, and although no more than the dimmest outline of any object could be seen, the boy saw that the priest continued to turn his head and cast backward glances into the dark forest. ”

“ But the mourner was far afield, so that its sweet lament was but a soft and distant echo of the world-pain which forever follows the passing of the Reaper. The young man heeded it as little as we all heed it, till our own pass under the scythe. He stopped to lean on the fence, drinking in the beauty and fragrance, thus unwittingly disturbing the peace and happiness of a robin family which was dwelling in a near-by blackberry bush. The head of this flowering house now flew out, protesting with every indignant feather against this unmannerly intrusion of a mere mortal upon a lady-bird's bower. ”

“ And then, his displeasure turned to anger when Ruth, after standing still and gazing up the forest path, till he felt that he must go out to her and utter the reproof that was on his lips, did not come back to her seat by his side, but began instead to play with the swan.
He sat motionless and silent, calmly biding his time to express the disapproval which such childish behavior made incumbent upon him. Cold, hard anger like his can always wait; and waiting only makes it colder and harder; there is never heat enough in it to melt its merciless ice. ”

“ Looking at her, Lynn knew well enough that he had but to loose his firm hold upon himself ever so little, to love her as he might never be able to love another woman. He never had seen, and never expected to see, such beauty as this of Doris's, for the true lover of beauty knows its rarity. And nothing else in the world so appealed to him; no charm of mind, or heart, or spirit, could ever quite make up for the lack of it, notwithstanding that he valued these qualities also, and held them higher than thoughtless youth often holds them. ”

“ There was a quivering silence, filled only with the sighing of the wind-harp. The young doctor's hand had closed over hers. She went on in a lower tone:—
"And surely the man who risks his life to save is braver than he who risks it to slay."
Startled at her own boldness, she drew away when he tried, with the slight strength that he had, to draw her to him. They had not spoken to each other of love. He knew little of what had taken place that night at Anvil Rock when she had believed that his soul and her heart were parting with all earthly things. ”

“ Misfortune never comes singly to a community any more than to an individual. No life anywhere may ever stand or fall quite alone, so are the living all bound together. In a village where every door stands wide and all lives are in the open, and where no high, hard walls rise between the people,—as they do in a city,—the bond is closer than it can be elsewhere. So that the uneasiness which the judge communicated so unwillingly to Miss Judy on that quiet midsummer night was the beginning of the end of the peace of many of the good people of Oldfield, for a long time afterward. ”

“ But the aching of a true woman's own heart has nothing to do with the peace that she gives to those whom she loves. And then it may have been only the sweet sadness of the spirit harp's sighing that made Ruth's lips quiver under their bright smile.
"But they need me now," he groaned. "They are dying untended while I lie helpless here. The old doctor cannot take care of them. He has too many patients of his own. He is riding day and night. He tries to hide the truth, but I know it. The Cold Plague grows in violence every day." ”