George Washington Cable

“ From her father's front gate they were passing toward the large grove garden of the young man's own home, on the side next the hill and the sunset. On the front porch, where the two had just left him, sat the war-crippled father of the girl, taking pride in the placidity of the face she once or twice turned to him in profile, and in the buoyancy of her movements and pose.
His fond, unspoken thought went after her, that she was hiding some care again,—her old, sweet trick, and her mother's before her.
He looked on to Godfrey. "There's endurance," he thought again. ”

“ I have had great happiness of Leonard's companionship, and I have been proud to be myself a proof that a man and a woman can be close, dear, daily friends without being lovers or kin, and earth be only more like heaven for it, to them and all theirs. If Leonard has confessed one word more than that for me,—or even for himself, Arthur, dearest,—he has lost his reason. ”

“ It's been always so unbelievable that he should utterly fail us. Ruth, if you could have seen his contrition the night I tore up that shameful, servile resignation! I don't need to see Isabel to know he is wearing the soul out of her. You needn't have answered one of my questions,—which I honor you for answering so unwillingly; Mrs. Morris gave me their answer in five minutes, though we talked only of investments. And Mrs. Morris needn't have given it; to see Arthur himself is enough. All the genuineness has gone out of the man,—out of his words, out of his face, out of his voice. ”

“ Leonard showed a glimmer of drollery. "Pursuit of the law, yes," he said; "but the pursuit of the lawbreaker"—
"Even that," replied Isabel, "has its frowning honors."
"But I'm much afraid it seems to you," he said, "a sort of blindman's buff played with a club. It often looks so to the pursued, they say."
Isabel gave her chin a little lift, and raised her tone for those behind her: "We shall try not to be among the pursued, Ruth and Arthur and I."
The young lawyer's smile broadened. "My mind is relieved," he said.
"Relieved!" exclaimed Isabel, with a rosy toss. ”

“ You can be fond of two or three persons at once, nowadays. My soul! I wish I were fond of Arthur Winslow in the old mad way the word meant when it was young!"
"Pshaw, dearie! you'll be fond enough of him, once you're his. He's brilliant, upright, loving and lovable. You see, and say, he is so, and I know your fondness will grow with every day and every experience, happy or bitter."
"Yes.... Yes, I could not endure not to give my love bountifully wherever it rightly belongs. But oh, I wish I had it ready to-day,—a fondness to match his!"
"Now, Isabel! ”

“ So standing, it drifted idly into his mind that yonder arbor must be very wet to-night, and the cinder sidewalk out here much drier. As the thought moved him to draw one step back, the glow from the cottage broadened. Its front door had opened, and Mrs. Morris's young maid came out with a lantern, followed by Isabel saying last fond words to her mother as the convalescent closed the door.
"Good-night!" she called back.
In one great wave the young man's passion rolled over its bounds and brought him to his knees with arms outstretched. "Oh, Isabel!" he murmured. "Oh, my God! Oh, Isabel! ”

“ He did not speak again, but, "Oh, Isabel! harder to strive against than all the world beside!" was the unuttered cry that wrote itself upon his tortured brow. "If your unfair winner would only hold you by fair means! Yet I too was to blame! I too was to blame, and you alone were blameless!"
Opposite his window Isabel ceased her light talk with the maid, halted, bent, and scanned something just off the firm path, in the clean wet sand.
The maid turned and flooded her with the light of the lantern just as she impulsively lifted an alarmed glance to Leonard's window and as quickly averted it. ”

“ Isabel! Destroyed herself,—that spotless soul? Oh no, no, no! But Oh merciful God! I am afraid she has been stolen!" He sank into a seat and dropped his face into his hands.
The maid's steps sounded overhead, and he started up. Mrs. Morris laid a hand on his arm. She was pale again, but her words were reassuring.
"It's Minnie," she murmured: "let me go and see her. She'll not be surprised; I'm always the first one up." She went, and was soon back again.
"There is no time to lose"—Arthur began. ”

“ In the upper blue rested a few peaceful clouds, changing from silver to pink, from pink to pearly gray, and on the skyline crouched in a purpling haze the round-backed mountains of another county.
To Mrs. Morris and the General the sight, from the old elm-tree seat, was even fairer than to the youthful group whose forms stood out against the sky, the floral colors of the girls' draperies heightened by the western light. ”

“ Out from behind the elm came the other two men, Arthur leading and talking briskly:—
"The sooner the better, Leonard. Now while my work is new and taking shape—Ah! here's Mrs. Morris."
Both men were handsome. Arthur, not much older than Ruth, was of medium height, slender, restless, dark, and eager of glance and speech. Leonard was nearer the age of Godfrey; fairer than Arthur, of a quieter eye, tall, broad-shouldered, powerful, lithe, and almost tamely placid. Mrs. Morris met them with animation.
"Have our churchwarden and our rector been having another of their long talks?" ”

“ Leonard leaned and fingered the needlework,—a worsted slipper, too small for most men, too large for most women. "Is that for him?"
"Yes," apologized Ruth; "it's the thing every clergyman has to incur. But I'm only doing it to help Isabel out; she has the other."
The evening went quickly. When Leonard let down the window sashes and lowered the shades, Ruth, standing by the lamp as if to put out its light, said, "I'll not go up for a moment or two yet."
She sent him an ardent smile across the room and turned to a desk. ”

“ Arthur, you have allowed a base jealousy to persuade you, in the face of every contrary evidence, that your fair young wife has lost her loyalty—and your nearest friend the commonest honesty—in a clandestine love. Under the goadings of that passion you have foully guessed, have heartlessly accused, have brazenly lied. ”

“ The response of the overjoyed lover was but one or two passionate words, and her sufficient reply, as they halted among their fellows, was to look across the valley with her meditative smile. Isabel took note, but kindly gave a long sigh of admiration, and with an exalted sweep of the hand drew the gaze of the five to the beauties of the scene below. The day was near its end. The long shadow of the great cliff behind Bylow Hill hung over the roofs of the town and over the hither meadows. ”

“ Ruth smiled sadly. "You will fail. I think the matter will have to go on as it is going. And if it does, you must remember, Godfrey, we do not really know but they may work out the happiest union. At any rate, we must help them to try."
"If they insist on trying, yes; and that will be the best for Leonard."
"The very best. One thing we do know, Godfrey: Arthur will always be a passionate lover, and dear Isabel is as honest and loyal as the day is long." ”

“ Isabel crept forth and darted to her babe. Yet as she leaned to take it in her arms her better judgment told her the child was safe. The husband too, and every one beside, were safer from his jealous wrath while the babe remained. With one anguished knitting of her hands over it she left it, and fled in her night-dress. Arthur's course was made plain by his moanings, and easily avoiding him, she glided down a back stair, out into the arbor, and across to her mother's cottage and bed-chamber. ”

“ Leonard was back in his own town, enriched with new esteem from the public and from the men of his profession. The noted case was won, a victory for the peace and dignity of the state, due wholly, it was said, to the energy and sagacity of the young district attorney. A murder had been so cunningly done that suspicion could fasten nowhere, until Byington laid his finger upon a man of so unspotted a name that no one else had had the mental courage to point to him. ”

“ The deeper we love, the deeper we live. The more selfishly or unselfishly, the higher, the broader, the purer, the wiser, we love, the more selfishly or unselfishly, the higher, the broader, the purer, the wiser, we live!" The rector's gentle wife was visibly and ever so prettily rejoiced.
True, but hardly the whole truth. In her mother's cottage her smiles were almost sad, and when she had crossed the garden and got into her own room she dropped upon her bed and wept. ”

“ Arthur burned red a moment, and then turned paler than Leonard.
"You fiend!" gasped the husband. "I am to exalt you, and abase myself, to her?"
"No. No, Arthur. Women are strange; every chance is that in her eyes I shall be abased." The speaker went whiter than ever.
"But be that as it may, you shall have lifted your soul out of the mire. You must do it, Arthur; don't you see you must?"
Arthur sank into the chair at his side. He seemed to have guessed what Leonard was keeping unsaid. A moisture of anguish stood on his brow. Yet—
"Arthur Winslow, I give you five minutes." ”

“ They moved on to the Winslow gate, and entered the garden by a path which brought them to a point midway between the old cottage and the larger house. There it crossed under an arch transecting an arbor that extended from a side door of the one dwelling to a like one of the other, and the brother and sister had just passed this embowered spot and were stepping down a winding descent by which the path sought the old mill-pond, when behind them they observed two women pass athwart their track by way of the arbor, and Ruth smiled and murmured again. ”

“ The note he had remotely heard was rare on Bylow Hill since the town had come in below, and one of the errands which oftenest brought the hill's dwellers to this nook in solitary pairs was to hearken for that voice of unearthly rapture,—a rapture above all melancholy and beyond all mirth,—the call of the hermit thrush.
Now the waiting seemed in vain. The brother's hand sank, the sister turned, and soon he saw her pass from view among the boughs as she wound up the rambling path toward the three homes. ”

“ Morris, he muttered to Ruth, while Leonard gravely looked out across the landscape, "I live and learn."
"So we learn to live," was Ruth's playful reply. To her it was painfully clear that Mrs. Morris, very sweetly no doubt, had eluded Godfrey's endeavors to inform her of anything not to his brother's unqualified praise. In the Bylow Hill group, Ruth had a way of smiling abstractedly, which was very dear to Godfrey even when it meant he had best say no more; and this smile had just said this to him when Isabel and Arthur came into view again. ”

“ Arthur went into his own house.
In the cottage, while being hurried into dry clothes, Minnie more coherently explained her mishap. Wishing to play a joke on Giles, she had slipped away from the fireside company of him and Sarah to put a match to his fagots on the pond, run back with word that they were burning, and laugh with Sarah while Giles should plunge out to find the incendiaries. But she had forgotten how frail good ice may be against a warm bank, and leaping down, had promptly broken through. ”

“ I must send her for mother—and Ruth—I promised Ruth; and you must send Giles for the doctor; my hour is come."
In the Byington house Ruth and her brother met at the foot of the stairs.
"Leonard," she whispered, "what is it? Is father ill? Leonard! Oh, what have you seen?"
"Let me pass! quick!" He would have pressed her aside, but she laid hands on him.
"What has Arthur done?" she asked. "What is he doing?"
"Ruth! Ruth! he is putting her out of his own gate!" The brother extended both hands to turn the sister from his path, but she twined her arms on his.
"Leonard! Leonard! ”

“ For reply Minnie covered her mouth and nose with her hand, sputtered, and shut the door in his face.
Another year went by, yet another followed, and still Ruth—daughter, sister, wife, and mother—remained the happy mistress of the house in which she was born, and Leonard remained one of her household. Mrs. Morris turned the cottage over to Mr. and Mrs. Giles—hem!—and dwelt in the Winslow house with Isabel; who, even the young said, grew more beautiful and lovable all the time. ”

“ On these occasions Isabel was wont to court Ruth's counsel concerning her wifely part in Arthur's work, thus often getting Leonard's as well. Sometimes she impeached his masculine view of things, in her old skirmishing way. Then she would turn rose-color once more and mirthfully sigh, while Ruth laughed and wished for Godfrey, and Mrs. Morris breathed soft ho-ho's from the cribbage board. ”

“ But the cousin's wedding was weeks away yet, and Isabel clung to her wee treasure, and temporized with the aunts and cousins in the South and with her mother and Ruth at home, until the doctor spoke again.
"Let's see," he said to Arthur. "This is November, baby's five months old. Send your wife away. Put her out! Something's killing her by inches, and I believe it's just care o' the nest. We must drive her off it, as I drove Leonard Byington off,—which, you remember, you, quietly, were the first to suggest to me to do.... ”

“ Such a man, to whom the least sin seemed black and bottomless, yet who appeared to know by experience the soul's every throe in the foulest crimes, was not going to show his joys on the surface in quips and smiles. ”

“ A horror of sleep, a horror of being awake and aware, remorse, phantoms, voices, sudden blazings of wrath as suddenly gone, sweating panics, that craven care of life which springs so rank as the soul decays, and a steady, cunning determination to keep whole the emptied shell of reputation and rank,—these were the things that filled his hours by day, by night ”