In a Mysterious Way

"I'll tell you who's got time," said Mrs. Dunstall as soon as she reappeared; "it's those Lathbuns down at Nellie's. How long are they going to stay around here, do you suppose?"

"I don't know; I don't know anything about them. They don't get any mail, so I've no way of knowing a thing. My own opinion is that if I was Nellie I'd keep a sharp eye on my shawls, for folks who come walking along without baggage, can go walking off without baggage, too. Those are her shawls they're wearing, you know; they haven't got so much as a jacket between them of their own."

"Nellie says they're very nice people," said Mrs. Dunstall; "and the girl has got a love affair. She don't mind their wearing her shawls."

"Why don't he write her, then," said Mrs. Ray; "that's the time even the poorest letter-writer writes letters. Mr. Ray wrote me the first Thursday after he was in love. I've got the letter yet."

"What did he write you for, when you was keeping house for him, anyway?" asked Mrs. Dunstall.

"He was gone to Ledge Centre for the license."

"I never see why you married him," said Mrs. Dunstall; "he paid you for keeping house for him before that, didn't he?"

"Yes, but he had his mind set on marrying some one, and I thought I'd better marry him than any one else. And I was fond of the children, and I didn't know nothing about the mortgages. I always say we was real fashionable. I didn't know nothing about the mortgages, and he thought I had some money in the bank. Well, it was an even thing when it all came out. I guess marriage generally is. Everything else, too."

"I don't see why the mail don't come, if it's in," said Mrs. Dunstall.

Mrs. Ray went to the window and looked out.

"It'll come soon now," she declared, hopefully.

"But I can't wait any longer," said Mrs. Dunstall, rising, "I wasn't expecting anything, anyway. Come, Pinkie."

They both rose and started to go out together.

But just at the door they met one of the surveyors.

"Oh, that reminds me why I come," said Mrs. Dunstall, stopping; "young man, do you know Sallie Busby?"

The young surveyor looked startled.

"Chestnuts in a blue and white sunbonnet, mainly?" said Mrs. Dunstall.

"I don't recollect."

"Well, you might not have noticed, or she might not have had it on, but either way she's been most amused watching your young men pegging those little flags all through her meadow, but she says that when you got through last night you forgot seven, and she saw 'em when she went out to pick the two trees up the cow-path this morning, and run down and got 'em, and has 'em all laid by for you whenever you want to send for 'em."

The young man stood speechless.

Finally he said: "But they were meant to be left there."

"Were – were they?" said Mrs. Dunstall, in great surprise; "well, you ought to have told her so then. She saw you pull some up, so she thought you meant to pull them all up. Too bad! Now you'll have to get your machine and go peeking all over her land again, won't you?"

"We will if she's pulled up the flags, certainly."

"Well, she's pulled up the flags. If Sallie set out to pull them up, they'd up, you can count on that! How's the dam coming on, anyway?"

The young man laughed. "Why, there's no question of the dam yet. You all seem to think that we're here to build it. We have to make a report to the commission first, and the commission will lay the report before the legislature. That's how it is."

Mrs. Ray folded her arms and joined in suddenly, "So – that's how it is, is it? Well, I don't wonder it's difficult to run a post-office, when anything as plain as a dam has to be fussed over like that. By the way, you're one of the surveyors and you ought to know, – is it true that if they do build the dam, it may get a little too full and run over into our valley or burst altogether and drown Rochester? I'm interested to know."

"That's what we want to know, too," said Ingram's assistant; "that's what we're surveying for."

"How long will it take you to tell? I've got a friend – maybe you know him, Sammy Adams? – and he owns most of the valley back here. He's the worrying kind, and he's worried. Yes, indeed."

"It wouldn't make so much difference about Rochester," said Mrs. Dunstall; "it's a deal easier to go for our shopping to Buffalo from here; but wouldn't it be awful for Sammy Adams! Why, his house is right in the valley."

"Yes," said Mrs. Ray, "and as a general thing Sammy's right in his house. It's bad enough now, with the freshets scooping sand all over the farm every other spring, but if the dam goes and scoops Sammy Adams, the legislature'll have something else to settle besides the Capitol at Albany. Sammy Adams looks meek, but he'd never take being drowned quietly; he's got too much spirit for that. Yes, indeed!"

"We're going to do away with the freshets, Mrs. Ray," the young man said; "the dam – if it comes – will be the biggest blessing that ever came this way, let me tell you. In the summer you'll have a beautiful lake to sail on, and no end of excursions."

"Why, I thought they were going to store up the water in spring, and draw it off in the summer," said Mrs. Dunstall. "A man told my husband that that was what they wanted the dam for, – to save the high water in the spring so as to use it in the summer. Wasn't that what Ebenezer said, Pinkie?"

"Yes, it was," said Pinkie.

"How do you explain that?" asked Mrs. Ray, turning an inquisitorial eye sternly on the surveyor. "Where's your beautiful lake going to be by July? Marsh and mosquitoes, that's what we'll have left. Don't tell me; I've seen too many kind thoughts about making folks happy end that way, and I've seen one or two reservoirs, too. The dam'll drown Sammy Adams, that's what it'll do, and Ledge'll be left high and dry with a lot of dead fish lying all over the fields. I know!"

"Well, we'll see!" said the young man, laughing.

"But I thought you was all for the dam, Mrs. Ray," said Mrs. Dunstall, a little surprised. "Whatever has changed you so?"

Mrs. Ray shut her mouth tightly and then opened it with a snap. "I've been thinking," she said abruptly; "and I don't mind changing my opinion when I must. Any one who wants to hold a position under the United States Government has got to have brains and use 'em freely in changing their opinion."

"But you said – " began Mrs. Dunstall.

"What if I did? Like enough I'll say it again. I will, if I feel like it. Yes, indeed. 'He moves in a mysterious way,' you know, and I'm one of His ways, and I've got a right to keep my own counsel about my own work. But – speaking of work – the mail-train was in before you come up. I wonder what's become of the bag!" She went to the window and looked down towards the station. "I do have such trouble to get hold of that bag. That's one of the hardest things about keeping a post-office, is the getting hold of the bag. They don't have any sort of understanding of what a United States Government position means, down at our station; they kick the mail-bag around like it was a crate of hens. Once they asked me if they couldn't have the key at the station, and open the mail because there's always more inhabitants in the station than in the post-office. They seemed to think that was a glory to the station, and a reflection on me. But I don't want to have men sitting around here. I won't have it. The only man who has any legal right to sit around me is in heaven, and just because I'm the postmistress is no reason why I should take chances. If you don't want men sitting around, you can easily keep 'em from doing it by having no chairs for them to sit on. I never have."

"Don't you want me to go down and get the mail?" suggested the young surveyor, somewhat uneasily.

Mrs. Ray turned a severe eye his way. "Have you go down and get the mail! Well, young man, I guess you don't know that it's a penitentiary offence to lay hands on a mail-sack, unauthorized by the United States Government! Yes, indeed. It is, though, and I've had such hard work getting it into people's heads that it is, that I wouldn't authorize no one. No one! Why, when we first was a post-office, I had the most awful time. Everybody coming this way brought the bag with 'em. It's a penitentiary offence to touch the bag, and here Sammy Adams forgot he had it in his buggy one night, and drove home with it. It was when Mrs. Allen's cousin Eliza was dying, and she was so anxious, and no mail-bag at all that night. I tell you I took a firm stand after that; I made the rule and made it for keeps, that no matter if there wasn't but one postal, and all the men in the station had felt the bag to see that there wasn't, the bag must come up to me just the same. You'll find, young man, that if you hold a United States Government position, you'll be expected to uphold the United States Government, and if you're building the dam and employ the men around here, you'll find that to impress them you must keep a bold front. That's why I have my arms folded most of the time."

The young surveyor listened with reverent attention.

"Whose business is it to bring the bag, anyway?" asked Mrs. Dunstall. "I can't wait much longer."

"It isn't anybody's business, – that's what's the trouble. The United States Government don't provide nothing but penalties for touching the mail-bag. That's another hard thing about holding a government position when your hands are as full as mine. At first I couldn't get the mail-bag respected, in fact they used it to keep the door to the station open windy days; and then, when I got it respected by explaining what we was liable to if we didn't respect it, I couldn't get no one to touch it any more. I had to wheel it up and down in the baby-carriage for a while, and then I looked up the law and found I could delegate my authority; so since then Mr. Hopkins has delegated for me except when he goes to Ledge Lake, and when he does that I take it in a wheelbarrow. I give the baby-carriage to Lucy. She had that baby, you know. Well, of course a baby needs a carriage, so I give her ours."

"A baby's lots of trouble," said Mrs. Dunstall, thoughtfully.

"Yes, but we're here for trouble," said Mrs. Ray, cheerfully. "I've got the post-office, Lucy's got the baby, and poor Clay Wright Benton's got his mother and the parrot. Everybody's got something!"

"Well, I can't wait any longer," said Mrs. Dunstall; "good-bye. Come, Pinkie."

They went out.

"Who is Pinkie?" the young man asked, when he was alone with Mrs. Ray. "I d'n know," said Mrs. Ray, "she don't, either. They adopted her when she weighed six pounds and named her Pinkie, and that's what come of it."

"I see." Just then the mail-bag was brought in.

CHAPTER VI
WHEN DIFFERENCES LEAD TO WHAT IS EVER THE SAME

Lassie fled down the path. Not even that primeval river which once rushed wildly across the old Devonian rocks just here was more thoughtless as to whither it was going. All that she was conscious of in that instant was irresistible revolt against the horror of what she had just heard, and which bred in her a sudden and utter rebellion. A vivid imagination will have already pictured the possible effect of Alva's story upon her friend, and that vast majority whose imaginations are not vivid will be happy to be spared such details. It is sufficient to say that tears, pain, groans, and a coffin suspended, like Damocles' sword, above all the rest, was Lassie's background to her friend's romance; and the picture thus held in her mind was so benumbing to her other senses that as she ran she tripped, stumbled, almost fell, down the hill, so blind and careless of all else had she become. The restraint of Alva's presence was now removed; nothing stood between the young girl and her sensation of appalling wretchedness. As she ran she shook, she shuddered; the path was steep, and her knees seemed to crumble beneath her; twice she almost went headlong, and at the minute she felt that a broken neck was but a trifle in comparison to coming face to face with anything like what she had just been told. "Of course he was a great man," she gasped half aloud; "but he'll never be able to even feed himself again – it said so in the paper. Why, at first it said his back was broken. Oh, oh, if Alva can be so crazy as that, who is sane, and what can one believe? Oh, dear – oh, dear – oh, dear! And she calls it love, too!"

The village of Ledgeville lay below, and a few more minutes of precipitous flight brought Lassie in sight of its houses. Still a few more minutes, and she was in the middle of the village – a very small village, consisting of two streets composing the usual American town cross, and half a dozen stores. Every one whom she met knew just who she was (for had she not arrived upon the evening previous?), and they all regarded her with earnest scrutiny. The inhabitants of Ledgeville themselves were never in the habit of coming down from the Long Bridge with tear-stained faces, heaving bosoms and a catch in their breath, but that Lassie did so, caused them no surprise. Was she not of that unaccountable multitude called "city folks?"

Lassie herself neither thought nor cared how she appeared to the ruminative gaze of Ledgeville at first, but as soon as she did notice the attention which she was attracting, she wanted to get away from it as quickly as possible, eyes being quite unbearable in her present distress. She stopped and asked a kindly looking old man where the bridge – the lower bridge – might be, knowing that it would take her to solitude again. The kindly old man pointed to where the bridge could be seen, a block or so beyond, and she thanked him and hurried on. It was a wooden bridge, very long; and the river here glided in wonderful contrast to that other aspect of itself which plunged so furiously from cataract to cataract, a quarter of a mile further down the course. How curious to think that all smooth-flowing rivers have it in them to foam and rage and gnaw and rend away the backbone of the globe itself, if driven in among narrow and hard environment. Is there ever any simile to those conditions in human lives, I wonder! And then to consider on the other hand that there is no volume of watery menace which, if spread between banks of green with space to flow untrammeled, will not become the greatest and most beneficial of all the helpers of need and seed! That is also a simile – one more cheerful and happy than the former, praise be to God.

The river by Ledgeville is one of those flowing smoothly and broadly between banks of green. So smoothly and sweetly does it flow just there that it might well have brought some quieting mood, some gracious, even current of gently rippling peace, into poor Lassie's throbbing heart, had she but been able to receive any comfort at that moment. But meditation was as far from her at this juncture as her mental attitude was from Alva's, and more than that cannot be said for either proposition.

So the river carried its lesson unread, while the girlish figure traversed the bridge as quickly as it had flown through the town, and, hurriedly turning at the forking of the road beyond, started up the hill. She knew that that way must lead to Ledge, and eventually her own little hotel bedroom, that longed for haven where she would be able to sit down quietly, away from the sunlight and omnipresent people, away from everything and everybody. Oh, but it was freshly awful to think of Alva, her beautiful Alva, and of what Alva was going to do! Marry that man! Why, he would never even sit up again; he could hardly see, the paper had said – the newspapers had said – everybody had said.

She stopped suddenly and stood perfectly still. A choking pain gripped her in the throat and side. Her spiritual torment had suddenly yielded to her physical lack of breath.

Beyond a doubt there is nothing that will curb any sentiment of any description so quickly as walking up hill. Without in the slightest degree intending to be flippant, I must say that in all my experience, personal and observed, I have never yet felt or seen the emotion which does not have to give way somewhat under that particular form of exercise. In Lassie's case she found herself to be so suddenly and completely exhausted that she could hardly stand. Her knees, which had seemed on the verge of giving out as she hurried down the opposite bank, now really did fail her and, looking despairingly about and feeling tears to be again perilously near, she turned off of the road into the woods that stretched down the bank and, treading rapidly over soft turf and softer moss, came in a minute to a solitude sufficiently removed to allow of her sinking upon the ground and there giving out completely.

Oh, how she cried then! Cried in the unrestrained, childish way that gasps for breath, and chokes and then sobs afresh and aloud. She thought herself so safely alone in the depths of the wood that she could gasp and choke and sob to her heart's uttermost content, not at all knowing that Fate, who does indeed weave a mesh of the most intricate patterning, had even now begun to interweave her destiny with that of – well, let us say – of the dam at Ledgeville.

Alva's talk about the dam had gone in one ear and out the other; Alva's words regarding Ingram had been driven into the background of Lassie's brain by the later surprises; but now things were to begin to alter. We never can tell, when we weep over the frightful love affair of a friend, what delightful plans that same little Cupid may have for our own immediate comforting, or how deftly he and the dark-veiled goddess may have combined in future projects.

Sorrow is sorrow, but sometimes it comes with the comforter close upon its heels, and when the sorrow is really another's, and the comforter is unattached and therefore may quite easily become one's own! —

Ah, but all this is anticipating. It is true that disinterested parties (like Joey Beall) always know everything before those most interested have the slightest suspicion of what is going on; but still it seems to me unfair to take any advantage of two innocent people as early in the game as the Sixth Chapter.

Therefore it shall only be said here that the party of surveyors had employed that morning in sighting and flagging up and down the banks beneath the Long Bridge, and Ingram, having spent two hours in their company, was now climbing the hillside for pure athletic joy, being one of those who prefer a scramble to a smooth road any day. As he came lightly up the last long swing that measured the bank for him, he surely was looking for nothing less in life than that which he found at the top, – and yet that which he found at the top was not so disagreeable a surprise, after all. 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. For he at once exclaimed, "Surely you remember me." And she saw who it was, stared at him dazedly for an instant, and then dropped her face in her hands again, realizing that he was the first of the big world that "hadn't been told," and that he would ask what was the matter, and that she must not tell him. And so – and so – there was nothing to do but hide her face – and collect her wits – and listen.

"What is it?" he said, and as she felt for her handkerchief she could but think how hard it was to resist sympathy when one's dearest friend was doing such unheard-of things, and one had just learned about them. Not that she would tell him why she was crying, of course.

"What is it?" he asked again then – he was very near now. "You know who I am. I used to know you when you were a little girl. You remember?"

She was still feeling for her handkerchief, and he put a great white one into her seeking hand. She wiped her eyes with it and thought again that he must not be told, and so said, with quivering lips:

"Oh, please leave me, please go away. Nothing is the matter, but I must be alone. I want to be alone. Please go away and leave me."

Ingram looked down upon her and, laying his hand on her arm with a grasp that was so firm as to feel brotherly (to one not yet a débutante), said in a tone of fascinating authority (to one not yet a débutante):

"What is it? What is the trouble? You've had a letter with bad news?" In his own mind he set it down that she and Alva had had a misunderstanding of some sort, but that opinion he would not voice.

"Oh, no," sobbed Lassie; "it isn't a letter – it is Alva!" She paused and Ingram had just time enough to reflect how quickly a man could see straight through any woman, when Lassie could bear the burden of reserve no longer, and with a wild burst of accelerated woe cried: "She has told me her secret, and I listened 'way through to the end and then – then when I really understood and realized what it all meant, then I could not bear it, and so – and so – I ran away from her and down the hill and across the bridge and came here to be alone. And I wish you would go away and leave me alone; oh, I want to be alone so very, very much, for I cannot keep still unless I am alone; I am too unhappy over it all. Too unhappy. And I have promised her not to tell."

Ingram looked his startled sympathy. "What is the trouble?" he asked. "Tell me; perhaps I can help you. Why should you keep 'it' a secret? I'm her friend, too, you know."

"But it isn't my secret, it's hers," Lassie sobbed; "and I've promised; and, anyway, nobody or nothing can help her. Nothing! Nobody!"

"Is it really as bad as that?" said the man, looking very serious.

Lassie was wringing her hands. "Oh, it's ever so much worse than that; it's the very worst thing I ever heard of. And that shows how bad I am; for Alva is good, and it makes her happy!"

Naturally Ingram could not follow the reasoning which caused her terminal phrase to serve as a sort of mental apology for her way of looking at the affair, but he was not alarmed by the breadth of her confession of guilt, only unspeakably distressed by her distress, and its mysterious cause.

"But what is it?" he asked. "What has Alva done?"

"I musn't tell."

"Alva's not in any difficulty across the river there, is she?" he hazarded.

"Oh, no; she isn't in any difficulty; she is very, very happy. That's what seems so awful about it."

"What? I can't understand."

"I can't explain, either. And I musn't tell you. It's going to drive me crazy to keep still, but I must not tell."

"You can tell me;" his tone was suddenly authoritative again (quite thrilling its young listener).

"No, I can't. I can't tell any one," but her tone was wavering, with a catch in its note.

Ingram became instantly imperious.

"Yes, you can tell me! You must tell me! It will relieve your mind, and perhaps I can help Alva."

"No, you can't help her; she doesn't want to be helped."

"Well, I can help you, anyway. Just telling me will help you."

Lassie choked.

"Tell me at once," said Ingram, sternly; "I insist upon knowing."

She looked up at him.

"Don't stop to think," he commanded; "tell me."

Oh, the intense relief of having a burdensome secret torn from your keeping! Lassie felt that when in trouble, a man was the friend to find – even before one's début.

"You won't ever let her know that I told?" she faltered.

"Of course not."

"She didn't ask me really to promise; she only said that I should be the only one to ever know."

"Never mind, I don't count. Go on."

"Well, she is going to marry – " and then she told him, with many halts and gasps, who; and then she told him further, when.

Ingram listened, silent, turning white all about his mouth. "She can't do it," he said, after a minute. "That man may die any hour. It said so in last night's paper."

"She is going to do it," Lassie said; "she doesn't mind his dying – that is, she doesn't mind his dying as most people do."

"Oh, but that's horrible," he said then; "you were right – it is awful. No wonder you were frightened and ran away. She must be insane. I never heard of such a thing." He went to the edge of the bank and looked off for a little, standing there still, and then, after a while, "Oh, my God!" he said; and then again "Oh, my God!" and came back beside her. His action, his evident emotion, quieted her own strangely.

"Isn't it terrible?" she asked, almost timidly, when he was close again; "it seems to me the most terrible thing that I ever knew about."

"Very terrible," said the man, briefly. "We will walk on up the hill," he added, after a little; "it's near dinner time." She did as he said.

"You won't tell Alva that I told you?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No, indeed," and then both were silent.

Towards the top, he asked: "How long shall you be with her?"

"A week."

"That means until she leaves to marry him?"

"Yes."

"That's good; I am glad that you can stay."

She tried to say something then, and her voice died in one of those same strange gasps, but she tried a second time and succeeded. "I suppose that nothing could be done?" she questioned.

"What would you do?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said.

He smiled a little oddly. "I am afraid that we should be fools," he said; "those fools that rush in, you know. It is beginning to come back to me how Alva looked and how she spoke when I took her to see the house. It all had no meaning to me then, but it has meaning now. It comes back to me more and more. Perhaps you and I are – are – not up to seeing it quite as she does. Perhaps. It's possible."

"That is what she says over and over – that I cannot understand," Lassie said, faintly.

"I can't understand either, but – perhaps she does. I can understand that."

"I am glad that you know, anyway;" her tone was sweet and confiding. He looked down into her pretty eyes.

"I am, too," he said, heartily.

"But I hope that it wasn't very wrong for me to tell you; it seemed as if I could not bear it alone!"

"Don't worry about that; Alva shall never know. And now, if you cannot bear it (as you say) again, you know that you can come to me and say what you like. We shall have that comfort."

She smiled a little. "You don't seem like a stranger; you seem like an old, old friend."

"I'm glad. Because I am an old, old friend in reality, you know."

"But, if – if I – when I want – " she hesitated.

"Oh, you don't know where to find me if you want me?" He laughed. "It's true that I am an uncertain quantity, but I take supper at the hotel every evening, and sometimes I go to the post-office afterwards." He smiled roundly at that, and she smiled, too. "We must go to the post-office together, sometimes," he added; "it's the great social diversion of Ledge." He was glad to see her face and manner getting easier. That was what he was trying for – to lift the weight from her.

"Alva took me there this morning," she said.

They came now to the Soldiers' Monument and the tracks.

"I hope that she isn't going to mind the way that I left her!" the young girl exclaimed suddenly, smitten with anxiety. "I ran away, you know; I couldn't bear it another minute."

"She won't mind that," said Ingram; "all the little things of life won't cut any figure with her any more, if she's the kind that has made up her mind to do such a thing. That's what I've been thinking all the time that we were coming along; a woman who has decided to marry in the way that Alva has, must of course look at everything in life by a different light from that of the rest of us; I don't know really that we have the right even to criticize her. We don't understand her at all; that's all it is."

Lassie looked astonished. "You don't mean to say that you think that she isn't crazy?" she said.

Ingram smiled again, "I mean that I hardly think it possible to judge what one cannot measure; savages reverence the Unknown, you know, and I'm not sure that reverence is not a fitter attitude towards mystery than condemnation or ridicule, although of course it isn't the civilized or popular standpoint."

"But do you think it's – it's – it's the thing, to do – " Lassie could not get on further.

"I think it's just as awful as you do," he said quietly; "but I've had time since you told me to see that just because it seems awful to me, it's very plain to me that I see it differently from the way in which she does. She isn't a girl, she's a woman; and she's a very good and sweet and true woman at that. If she is making this marriage, the really awful part isn't the part that you or I or the world are going to think about, it's something else."

Lassie's glance rose doubtfully upward. "You think that it's all right for her to do it, then?" she asked miserably.

"I think that we aren't wise enough to talk about it at all," said Ingram with determined cheerfulness. "Let's change the subject. I am going to be here on and off for a year, likely, and digging holes to hold little flags, and drilling to keep track of what one drills through isn't the liveliest fun in the world to look forward to; so when Alva doesn't need you, do give me some of your time and make me some jolly memories to live on later, when I'm alone – will you?"

"You won't ever be able to go and see Alva in her house afterwards, will you?" said Lassie, her mind apparently unequal to changing the subject on short notice; "because no one is ever to go there, she says."

"I shall never go unless she asks me, surely."

They were now quite near the little hotel.

"Before we part, let us be a little conventional and say that we are glad to have met one another," Ingram suggested; "will you?"

"I'm glad that I met you," she said; "it will be a great comfort – as you said."

Ingram was looking at her and that turned his face towards the gorge. "I see Alva coming across the bridge," he exclaimed; "go and meet her. Go to her quite frankly, openly, – as if nothing had happened. That will be easiest – and kindest – and best all around."