Anne Warner

“ I should not have sent for you, only that I knew that when you came to leave me and go back to the world to wear your white gown and make your début, you would have become a stronger, better, wiser, sweeter woman all your life through, for this experience. You see, dear child, the rarest thing in the world of to-day is sincerity—absolute truth. I am not especially gifted or very remarkable in any way, but I have learned the value of being sincere. It isn't a small thing to learn in life, Lassie, and it isn't a small privilege to live for a few days with one who has learned the lesson. ”

“ Alva exclaimed, her voice suddenly firm, "not horrible, just that highest summit of life of which I spoke before—the point toward which I've lived, the point from which I shall live ever afterwards,—my point of infinite joy,—my all. For he is the man I love—have always loved—shall always love. Only, dear, don't you see?—he isn't a man as you understand the word; the love isn't even love as you understand love. It's all so different! So different!"
A long, keenly thrilling silence followed, broken only by the sound of the younger girl's repressed weeping. ”

“ Lassie regarded her friend with amazement.
"I don't see how you can;" she said; "why, those two women would go almost wild for joy if any man wanted to marry either of them."
"No, dear," Alva said, smiling; "no, they wouldn't. The world isn't altogether worldly; there are simple, true, wholesome natures in it that look at life in a straightforward way without any illusions. And Mrs. Lathbun is one of those. Poor she may be, but she knows very well that no possible happiness can come to her child from marrying a bad man who has money." ”

“ The look of ecstasy that had opened to Lassie the gate of Medieval faith, flooded her face. "What a life I shall live in those few brief days," she said, softly; "how we shall enjoy our little oasis of bliss in the desert of loneliness. I shall learn so much—so much. And the best of the learning will be that I shall learn it from him."
Lassie watched the uplifted look. The enthusiasm of the novice was hers. As she had confessed to Ingram, envy dwelt at her heart. I wonder whether envy is a vice or a virtue when it stirs a longing to emulate one whom we recognize as better than ourselves? ”

“ Perhaps so, dear, but that room,—two weeks in that room with nothing, no comforts such as we think absolutely essential—oh, it makes me feel terribly. Life is such a puzzle. Ledge seemed such a simple-hearted, secluded little nook,—and first I ran into the big, soul-wringing problem of the dam, and now here are these two lives. Lassie, whatever else they may or may not be, they are human. It can't be joy to live like that. There must be some reason for their doing as they do, and I can see no reason except the one the girl told me. ”

“ Lassie made no reply for a little, then she said, slowly: "When we love, we look forward to life together generally; that is why people won't understand you." She hesitated again. "I mean-that seems to me to be the reason; perhaps I'm wrong."
Alva reflected, too, her eyes upon the autumn glory flaunting its color over the deep gray shadows before her. "Even if one puts it all on the material plan, I should think that the whole world would recognize by this time that it isn't the man that a woman loves that fills her soul with ringing joy; it's the way in which she loves the man. ”

“ Ingram said, as he took his piece of blackberry pie from Mary Cody; "you're a godsend in this place, Alva."
"But you'll like Lassie," his companion replied; "she's a charming little girl,—and I love her so. I always have loved the child, and just now it seemed to me as if it would do both her and me good to be together. Life for me is so wonderful—I don't like to be selfish with these days. My thoughts are too happy to keep to myself. I want some one to share my joy." ”

“ I feel in my heart that no stumbling or even ridicule for stumbling can ever again cause me to falter. I have found Truth. I will be strong."
Lassie looked at her in wonder. The white look of unearthly radiance which men once knew as "Ecstasy" was indeed on her face now—on her pale, sad, worn face, filling it with a glow of wondrous resolution.
"Oh, Alva!" the girl exclaimed, and then, even as the exclamation left her lips, she was conscious of an upleaping of warm, human joy to think of the six o'clock train and Ingram's companionship. The higher plane was very high above her yet. ”

“ For Lassie, even now when indubitably miserable, pink-eyed and wretched, was still a very pretty girl. A pretty girl is very much like a rose in the rain—a few drops of water only add to its charm; and so when Ingram came suddenly upon her, crying there under a tree, and caused her to look up with a little scream at the man crashing out of the bushes with such a force of interruption as made her jump to her feet and shrink quickly away—why, really it was all far less startling and alarming than it sounds to read about. ”

“ Alva patted the brown waves of hair. "That's the understanding of true friendship, dear," she said; "nothing ever can come between us. Once two people realize mutual truth, how can anything come between them again? All the trouble in the world arises out of falseness. Search in your mind, and see if it isn't so?"
Lassie reflected. "You're putting so many new ideas into my head," she said, "I suppose I'll go home with nothing of my old self left in me."
"Not quite that," said Alva. "Your old self wasn't so bad, Lassie, dear. ”

“ Alva paced up and down the little room. "I have been dragged—or I have managed to drag myself—up one step above the ordinary. I had accepted the loneliness that comes when one gets where no one else stands. I learned not to expect companionship. But we are not the less lonely because we go our way alone,—we are not the less lonely. And that same rule holds all through. Lassie, I tell you, that one does not crave companionship the less because one chooses to marry a dying man; one does not crave caresses the less when one loves as I do." ”

“ Lassie appeared dumbfounded.
"He looks like—" she stammered and halted.
"Yes, dear," Alva said, simply; "he looks exactly like him! Now you see why I am interested. Now you see why I find it easy to believe. A bad man—a thoroughly bad man—is a creature that for some reason has not come into his heavenly birthright. If that girl, plain and pale and unassuming as she looks, has the power to draw him from nights of dissipation to nights in the cold outside her window, she has the power to call a soul to him or waken his own that is but sleeping. ”

“ O'Neil in gentlest sympathy.
Alva caught her hand and pressed it hard in both her own. "Do you know, Mrs. O'Neil, if I were very happy I should love best to be happy here, and if more sorrow were to be, I would choose to have that here, too. I am so close to God when I live in His country."
She took the warm hand that she held and pressed it close against her heart.
"I wish that every one was so good as you are," Mrs. O'Neil said, impulsively.
"Every one is better than we give them credit for being." ”

“ I wish that I might be spared the sharp, keen realization of all that."
Lassie's eyes sought hers quickly. "But you have a right to do as you please, Alva."
"Have I, dear? It seems to me sometimes as if I were the one person who had no right to do as she pleases, not even in that which concerned her most. You know that every one thinks that if a woman marries with a prospect of years of happiness taken or given, she is justified in going her own way. ”

“ Women tell each other everything that they shouldn't, and virtues which would never be noticed in a city beget the deepest and sincerest admiration and affection. The dearth of conventionality and variety draw spirits easily together. Perhaps the purer air is a universal solvent for pride and prejudice. At any rate, to make a long story short, Lassie and Ingram were in love with each other before Alva had finished having the porch of her house painted, or before Mrs. Ray had succeeded in tracking the case-knives to their suspicious lair of crime. ”

“ The bright autumn sun shone on the lines of steel that glinted beside their way across the bridge, and there was a silvery glisten dancing in all the world of earth and heaven and in the rainbow of the mist, too,—a glisten that bespoke the approach [201] of the Frost King and the further glory soon to be. The glints of brown and yellow here and there amidst the red presaged that Nature's festival was daily drawing nearer to its white close. ”

“ All situations have their key—their clue—if one can get a little way outside of body and senses, and then study them thoughtfully."
"Well, but if the man is an exceptional man as yours is, what can interest him in such a girl?"
Alva shook her head. "You don't find her interesting, and you will never go near enough to her spirit to change your view; but she interests me, and some day you'll come to see that every human being is full of interest, if we will but take the trouble to hunt the interest out. ”

“ Alva put out her hand and stayed the words upon her friend's lips. "Look, dear, this is the Long Bridge. You've heard of it all your life; now we're going to walk across it. Look to the left; all that lovely scene of hill and valley and the little white town with green blinds is Ledgeville; and there to the right is the famous gorge, with its banks of gray and its chain of falls, each lovelier than the last. Stand still and just [42] look; you'll never see anything better worth looking at if you travel the wide world over." ”

“ I do not begrudge any one anything, God knows; but my heart winces when I think that his soul will go on and leave me alone, while a body that is the same as his will live and live for another. I am brave, I am strong; my higher self has courage and understanding to cope with any problem that may come, but it seems as if this one laid me on a rack, because—because—" she stopped, and then in a low cry: "Lassie, she doesn't seem to me to be worthy of even his body. ”

“ The girl looked down the cañon of gray, barren beauty, and then up towards the sunlit valley of sweet, sunshiny, farming country. "Perhaps you won't believe me," she said, her eyes for the minute almost as distant in their withdrawal as Alva's own; "but now, I—truly—I envy her. I would give anything to love as she does. I would almost give the world to see life as she sees it. You see, I have begun to understand what she means when she says things."
Ingram was deeply stirred by pathos of which Lassie herself was ignorant. The young desire to learn to drink of bitter waters! ”

“ You never have been like other women,—you've always been different from other women; you always will be."
"Have I? Shall I? Well, perhaps it's so. I'm rather glad of it. Most women are stupid, I think. Poor things!" she sighed.
He followed her as she moved towards the door, half-vexed, half-laughing:
"And men, Alva, and men. Are they all stupid in your eyes?"
She had her hand on the knob, and her great cape was gathered about her in heavy folds.
"Oh, Ronald," she said, looking into his look, "if you had any idea how fearfully stupid they seem to me. Often and often in the last three years. ”

“ Mrs. O'Neil looked at her in a sort of blind sympathy. She thought that the youth and sweetness of the young girl was what weighed so heavily on the young woman opposite. "But men will be men," she reflected, and tried to think of something to say, and couldn't.
The evening freight went roaring by.
"Why, I thought it went up before," Alva said.
"I did, too, but that must have been the wrecking-train; there must be a wreck on the road."
"Let's go out on the bridge!" Alva suggested. "I feel choked; I want fresh air, and there is a moon." ”

“ Ingram laughed again. "Where would the country be without railroads?" he asked.
She withdrew the meaning in her gaze out of the infinite beyond, where it seemed to float easily, and centred it on him.
"Just to think," she said, with deep meaning, "that ten years ago I might have married you, and had to face your system of logic for life!"
"Is it as bad as that?"
"It might have been. We might have made it so before we knew better. That's the rub in marriage. [12] Every one does it before he or she has settled his or her own views. ”

“ Of the picture and its practical value, Ledge had its own opinion. It had its own opinion of the dam, too. It had its own opinion of Alva. And of Lassie. And of Ingram. And all these opinions flowed freely forth through the medium of Mrs. Ray. As that lady herself put it: "Whether I'm picking chickens or digging fence-posts, or carting the United States mail down to the train in the wheelbarrow that I had to buy and the United States Government won't pay for,—I never am idle; I'm always taking in something." ”

“ The longing towards the crown of thorns stirs them, because they can appreciate the sublimity of martyrdom, and cannot measure the agony!
She had stopped and laid her hand upon the bridge-rail. [165] Involuntarily he laid his hand upon it, holding it within his strength and warmth.
"When she talks to me of him," Lassie went on, seeming unconscious of the hand and looking far ahead, "I forget myself, I forget Mamma, I forget my début; I live only in her and her hope. I never saw love like hers; she lives in him—in it—not in the world, and she's so sure of the next world and of their future. ”

“ Alva was hanging up her cloak, and now she came and began to undo the traveller's with a loving touch.
"Why, in one way I do mean to live here always, dear. I never am anywhere that I do not—in a certain sense—live there ever after. People and places never fade out of my life. Wherever I have once been is forever near and dear to me, so dear that I can't bear to remember anybody or anything there as ugly. The difference between a pretty room and an ugly one is only a little money and a few minutes, after all, and I'm beginning to learn to apply the same rule to people. ”