In a Mysterious Way

"Would it hurt?"

"Hurt! My dear, it would be another Johnstown Flood."

"Oh, dear! Do many know that?"

"Yes, dear; but it wouldn't drown the men who will own the water-power, so what does it matter to this world of yours."

"But is that right – to look at anything in that horribly selfish way?"

"In what other way do rich financiers look at anything? But there will come a time when a change will dawn. Look, dear, down there; see the rainbow dancing on the spray. Well, that's the way that public opinion is going to come in among us soon – in a rainbow of truth."

"It will be beautiful everywhere then?" Lassie asked, smiling.

"Very beautiful!" Alva stared down upon the writhing, leaping waters below; "and I shall have given my all towards the dream's fulfilment. And I shall have learned from him how to devote my life to the same great ends that he served. Lassie, when one comprehends that not happiness but usefulness is the end to be worked towards, then one begins to see what living really means."

"How much it is all going to mean to you!"

"How much? Ah, only he and I can guess at that! There will be something quite different from all the imaginings, in our sweet, sad days of work and suffering and comforting. I dare not try to picture it to myself. I only think often of how I shall pause here in my walks to come, and steal a long look over this scene, so as to go home and describe it. He loves beauty and he loves wood and water."

"You'll go back and forth across the bridge often then, won't you?"

"When I'm married, you mean?"

"Yes, when you're married."

"My dear, fancy what a joy Mrs. Ray will be to us. I shall go for the mail expressly so as to tell all that Mrs. Ray said to me when I went for the mail." She paused and smiled and sighed. "Lassie, I wish I were strong enough not to mind one thing. I know so well – so very well – just how it will look to every one, – above all to my parents, who are to be driven half mad, even though I shall only ask a few months' freedom, in return for all my life before and after. 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. Any one would feel that, would understand that view. I never could have done that, because my life was too heavily loaded with burdens and responsibilities; and his was the same. It was because we were so hopeless of happiness for so long that we do not cavil over the wonder of what is offered us. Because if it had come in the form that it comes to others, we must have refused it. It did come to us in that form, and we did refuse it. It was only when it returned in a guise that the world calls tragic, that we could accept it for our own."

"Yes, Alva, I understand," her tone was a cry, almost.

"Lassie, remember one thing, and don't forget it during any of these hours that we shall spend together. If I read life by another light than yours, it isn't because it was natural to my eyes. Once I might have recoiled even more than you did, when I first told you. God's best purposes for humanity require that we recoil from what seems unnatural. But there are exceptions to all rules, and in return for two human lives freely offered up on the altar of His world, He gives, sometimes, a few days of unutterable happiness to their spirits. Lassie, he was big, he was splendid; you know all that he was as every one else does. If I had been young, if I had been ignorant enough to dare to be selfish, and if he had been young and ignorant enough not to know how necessary he was to thousands, – why, then, we might have been happy in the way that two people out of a million sometimes are. But we had gone beyond all that, or else we passed beyond it the instant we realized; at any rate, we knew too well that I was bound hand and foot on the wheel of my life and he was bound on his. We had to set our faces in opposite directions and go on. Straight ahead. The world for which we sacrificed ourselves will never even be grateful. The world could not have understood why we should make any sacrifice; the world generally disdains those who do the most for it. Isn't that so? If you tell any one in these days that your first duty is to do right by your own soul, and that that means doing what is best for all other souls, they stare. If I say to you that I could bear to live alone and he could bear to live alone, because we both knew absolutely that we had had centuries of one another and should win eternity united, you'd stare, too."

"I wouldn't quite – " faltered Lassie.

"Don't try to, dear; only think how it is to him and to me now, when we are to have this short, this pitifully short space of time together – to have to take it in the face of such an outcry as will be made. When I creep back into life again, with my heart broken and my dress black always from then on, I shall be so notorious, such an object of curiosity for all time to come, that my friends will prefer not to be seen in public with me. When I think of my home-going to tell them, my very soul faints. My father abhors any form of physical deformity; what he is going to say to my marrying one who is so maimed and crushed that he can not use his right hand, I can't think. And then there is my mother, to whom sentiment and religion are alike quixotic. What will she say?"

She was silent, and then she suddenly left the rail and moved on.

"Ah, well, if it could only stay bright like this until we came back together! But that is impossible. What we shall see together will be the snow lying softly over all, and the brown, curving line of the tree-tops and the pink sunset glow in the west. He will lie in his chair and I shall sit on a cushion thrown close beside him, and with that one hand that they have left him pressed to my face, we shall look out over all the wide, still world and talk of that future which no one can bar us out of, except our own two selves. God can say 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant,' but He proves in the saying that the doing and the goodness and the faith all emanated from the one who served. Religion is such a grand thing, Lassie; I can't understand any one with intelligence choosing to be an atheist. And lately, since I have realized that the real trinity is two who love and their God, I have been overcome at the mysticism of what life really means. Oh, I'm truly very, very happy. As I look over these hills and valleys, I think how all my life long I shall be coming back here – not to weep, but to remember. I shall be left lonely to a degree that hardly any one can comprehend, because for me there will be no possible chance of any earthly consolation; but in another sense I shall never know grief at all, for I know, with the absolute knowledge that I have attained to, that grief like all other finite things is unreal, and that my happiness is eternal."

They were now on the tracks quite near the hotel.

"I wonder if Mrs. Lathbun got a letter from her lawyer to-day," Lassie said, changing the subject suddenly.

They went up the steps and opened the door, and there in the hall, on her hurried way out to meet them, was Mrs. O'Neil, her face quite pale with excitement.

"Oh, what do you think?" she cried, opening the door into the dining-room; "come right in here. What do you think?"

"What is it?" both asked together.

"The biggest surprise you ever got in your life. They're swindlers!"

Alva stepped in quickly and shut the door. "What?" she stammered; "who?"

"They're swindlers, both of them! It's all in the Kinnecot paper." She held out a paper which she had in her hand to Alva. "You can read it; it isn't a bit of doubt but what it's them."

Alva, turning quite pale, took the paper and read:

A PRETTY FOXY PAIR

Two women, claiming to be mother and daughter, came to the Walker House in this village a few nights ago and inquired for supper and a night's lodging, claiming they were very tired, as they had walked over from Warsaw. Landlord Walker thought it a little strange that they should have walked over when there were two railroads that run from that village through here, but said nothing and gave them supper and furnished them a room. They remained in their room until about noon the next day, when they paid their bill and left, taking the overland route for Ledge, or in that direction. They registered at the Walker House as Mrs. Ida M. Lathbun and Miss H. A. Lathbun, which are the same names given by a pair who had been spending the summer in the vicinity of Silver Lake and Perry. As stated above, they came here from Warsaw, and our esteemed brother editor in that place paid them the following compliment in a recent issue:

'A woman and daughter who are going from town to town, boarding in one place until compelled to seek another because of their inability to pay their board, have been found to be in this town, coming here from Perry and Silver Lake, where their record is one of unpaid bills. They are smart, clever, female tramps, who have no income and no visible means of support.'

It is said at Silver Lake they stated they were expecting some money, and would stay at one boarding-place as long as they could, and when fired out would settle at another. They finally went to Perry, and, when compelled to leave there, walked across the country to Warsaw, stopping at Mr. Samuel Adams's overnight, while en route.

The older Mrs. Lathbun is said to be an own cousin of Arthur Rehman, who has been before the public for one escapade or another for many years. She is said to have been well-to-do at one time, and is living in expectations of more money from some relative. The couple were fairly well dressed and intelligent looking women.

Alva's hand holding the paper fell limply at her side. She looked at Mrs. O'Neil and Mrs. O'Neil looked at her; while Mary Cody, who had come in from the kitchen, and Lassie looked at them both.

"Well, what do you think of it?" Mrs. O'Neil said, finally.

"I can't believe it," Alva gasped; "it can't be true!"

"Just what I said! You know I said that right off, Mary Cody? But Jack believes it. He's gone to Ledge Centre to see Mr. Pollock."

"Who is Mr. Pollock?"

"The lawyer."

"And where are they now?"

"Up-stairs. They never get up till noon, you know."

"How long have they been here?"

"Two weeks and a little over."

"Haven't they paid you anything?"

"Not a cent."

Alva became more distressed. "And the girl is so delicate, too," she said.

"Delicate! I should think that she was. Every third day the old lady has all my flat-irons wrapped in towels to put around her. And then, think of it! October, and not a coat or a flannel have either of them got."

A slight shiver ran over Alva.

"You're cold," said Mrs. O'Neil; "come into the kitchen. Mary Cody, you stand at the door and listen, for that old lady is a sly one."

Mary Cody stood at the door, and the other three went into the kitchen.

"Won't Mrs. Ray be pleased," said Mrs. O'Neil. "She was down at the church, or I'd have gone right up to her with the paper. It was she that set every one after 'em, because she was so crazy over their staying at the Adams farm that night. She's so jealous of Sammy."

"Ow!" exclaimed Mary Cody, interrupting; "I hear the stairs creaking!"

Mrs. O'Neil grabbed the newspaper and thrust it back of a clothes basket. The next instant Mrs. Lathbun, with an empty pitcher in her hand, came in through the dining-room door.

The large, heavily-built woman, not stout but very robust in appearance, had on her usual dress, and smiled pleasantly at them all in greeting.

"Was there any mail?" she asked, going to the stove and beginning to fill her pitcher from the reservoir as she spoke.

"No," said Mary Cody; "I went myself."

"Dear me, how annoying," said Mrs. Lathbun; and then, having finished filling her pitcher, she quietly retired again.

"To think maybe she'll be in the jail at Geneseo to-morrow!" Mary Cody exclaimed, in an awestruck whisper.

Alva turned interrogative eyes towards Mrs. O'Neil.

"Yes, Jack is going to have them arrested," she said.

"Merciful heavens!"

"Isn't it awful? I'm sorry for them, myself."

"But – but suppose there's some mistake?"

"There can't be, Jack says."

Alva shut her eyes and stood still for a few seconds. "The poor creatures," she said, softly and pitifully, – then: "How did you say you came to find out about it?"

"A man from Kinnecot had the paper in the station, and Josiah Bates brought him over to our bar this morning and asked Jack if he could see how folks like that could get trusted. Jack said yes, he could see, and then he told the man from Kinnecot that just at present he was trusting the same people, himself."

"Oh, dear," Alva passed her hand wearily across her forehead; "it's awful."

"Yes, isn't it? The man gave him the paper then. And Jack's first idea was to take it right up-stairs to them, but then he thought they might skip before he could have them arrested, so he decided to drive over and see Mr. Pollock first."

"I can't make it seem true."

"No, I can't, either. Of course they never paid anything, but they're nice people. I've liked them."

"Then they won't know anything about all this until they are really arrested?"

"No," said Mrs. O'Neil; "they'll eat dinner just as calm as they've eaten all their other dinners."

"Come, Lassie," said Alva; "that reminds me that we must get ready for dinner, ourselves."

"Do you want to take the paper up-stairs with you?" Mrs. O'Neil asked; "right after dinner I want to take it up to Mrs. Ray, but you can keep it till then if you like."

"No, thank you," said Alva, with her strange, white smile; "I read it all through."

When they were up-stairs Lassie exclaimed:

"There, now you see – "

But her friend stopped her with a gesture. "It's too terrible to talk about," she said, simply. "I must think earnestly what ought to come next."

Lassie became silent.

CHAPTER XVI

THE WALK TO THE LOWER FALLS

"I certainly am going with Mrs. O'Neil when she carries that paper to the post-office after dinner," Lassie exclaimed, as soon as they reached their rooms. "Oh, Alva, this is the most interesting experience I ever had. I'm just wild. It's such fun!"

Alva came straight to her, laid her two hands on the girl's shoulders and looked into her face.

"Lassie!" she said, in a tone of appalled meaning, "Lassie!"

Lassie laughed a little, just a very little. "I didn't make them bad," she said; "it's just that I enjoy the fun of the developments."

"The fun!" said Alva, "the fun! When there isn't anything except tragedy, misery, and shame!"

"But, Alva, if they are that kind of women, isn't it right that they should be found out?"

Her friend dropped her hands and turned away.

"Oh, dear – oh, dear," she said, with a sigh that was almost a moan.

Later they went down to the dining-room. Ingram had not come that noon, and Mrs. Lathbun and her daughter were sitting placidly at their table. Alva and Lassie took their own seats as usual.

There are not many sensations so complexly curious as to be obliged to eat your dinner within five feet of two ladies who perhaps are to be arrested as soon as a man who drives a fast horse can get back from Ledge Centre with the sheriff.

Mrs. O'Neil's criminal code, reinforced by such stray bits of procedure as she could recollect on short notice, led to a supposition on her part that the case would go almost in a bee-line from Mr. Pollock the attorney to the Geneseo jail. Therefore Mary Cody's eyes were full of rounded curiosity as she waited at table, and Lassie could not forbear to glance often at the quiet and simple-looking pair, – the mother in her dark blue print, with its bands of stitched silk, and the daughter with the red silk front that had so impressed her from the beginning. Alva could not look at them, – her mind was full of devious wondering. Mrs. O'Neil glanced in from time to time, her pretty face darkened by vague distress, mixed with some righteous indignation.

The door opened and Ronald Ingram entered. It was a surprise and a great relief, for of course he knew nothing and was consequently under no constraint.

Mary Cody rushed to lay a place for him.

"This would be a grand day to walk to the Lower Falls," he said, as he sat down; "why don't you do it? You haven't been yet, have you?"

"No," Alva said; "there hasn't ever been time."

"Why don't you go this afternoon, then? I'll go with you, if you like. I'm free."

"I can't go this afternoon; take Lassie. That will take care of you both at once."

"I think that would be fine," said Ingram, heartily, "if Lassie will like to go."

Lassie looked helplessly from Alva to the Lathbun family. "I couldn't go right after dinner," she said, hesitatingly, and stopped short to meet Alva's eyes.

"Why not?" the latter asked; "wouldn't you like the walk?"

"Oh, I should like it very much," Lassie declared, her face flushing. It seemed to her very cruel that no such delightful plan had ever been broached before, when it was only just to-day that she wanted to stay at home. She looked at Ingram, and the wistful expression on his face was weighed in the balance against the thrill to come at the post-office when Mrs. Ray should read the Kinnecot paper. Such was the effect of the past week in Ledge upon a very human young girl.

"Why can't you come, too?" Ingram asked Alva.

Alva lifted her eyes to his, and in the same second Miss Lathbun at the other table lifted hers, and fixed them on the other's face.

"I can't this afternoon," she said, very stilly but decidedly; "I have something that keeps me here."

Lassie looked at her reproachfully. She was going to stay and hear Mrs. Ray! For the minute Lassie felt that she could not go herself.

"I think I'll stay with Alva," she said, suddenly.

"Lassie!" Alva exclaimed.

"Oh, come," urged Ingram; "it's such a grand day. You both ought to go. Come, do."

Alva shook her head. "I've a letter to write," she said; "I – " she stopped. There was a noise outside. It was Mr. O'Neil, driving up the hill towards the house! Mary Cody gave an exclamation in spite of herself, and darted into the kitchen. Mrs. Lathbun, who faced the window, said calmly:

"Why, there's Mr. O'Neil, just in time for his dinner."

Alva turned her head, feeling cold, and saw there was no sheriff with him. Mrs. Ray could be seen standing out on her back porch, shading her eyes to make out anything visible. Of course Mrs. Ray did not know full particulars, but Josiah Bates had been to Ledge Centre on horseback and had seen the O'Neil mare hitched in front of Mr. Pollock's. The postmistress knew that something was up.

Alva drew a breath of relief. The sheriff had not come back, so they could not be arrested at once. Or else they could not be arrested at all. There seemed to be a hush of suspense in the room, but Mr. O'Neil did not enter to relieve it. Only Mary Cody entered, and Mary Cody's face was as easy to read as a blank book.

"Then you'll go?" Ingram asked again.

Mrs. Lathbun and her daughter rose and went up-stairs, leaving the other three alone.

"Of course she'll go," Alva answered; "go, dear, and get your wraps."

Lassie cast one last appealing look towards her, and then she also left the room.

"Ronald," Alva then said, hurriedly, "Lassie will tell you what has happened here. I feel confident that there is some error in it all, but whatever you think, try to be charitable, merciful. Don't be narrow in your judgment."

"Are you referring to your own affairs?" he asked in surprise.

"I am not the only one who craves mercy," she said, smiling; "there are many others."

"Sharing your views?" he asked, smiling in his turn.

"Lassie will tell you," she repeated.

"Alva," the man said suddenly, earnestly, "don't teach her too many ideals. We are mortal, and life is a real thing."

"I understood that perfectly," she replied; "but the world is not immortal and immortality is a real thing, too. A desirable thing, too."

"To be achieved by working on the mortal plane, remember."

"I have worked all my life upon the mortal plane; I shall be back there next summer, you know. Yet Lassie has learned to see only beauty in my immortal winter to be between."

"Ah, there is your error," said Ingram; "you expect to live this winter and return to your old life in the summer. But that's something that you never will be able to do."

"What do you mean?"

"You won't be able to go back next summer."

She looked at him sadly. "But I shall have to go back next summer," she said; "do not deceive yourself as to that. And now excuse me, I want to speak to her before she goes."

She left him and ran up-stairs. Lassie was putting on the hat that looked to the eyes of Ledge like a feather duster upside down.

"You're going to stay here and have all the fun," she protested; "oh, I'd give anything to see Mrs. Ray read that paper."

"But I shall not see her."

"You won't see her!"

"No, dear;" then she went and stood at the window in her favorite posture. "Oh, Lassie," she said, "I like to hear Mrs. Ray talk and I enjoy the funny things she says, but do you think that to look on at the hunting down of these two women is any pleasure for me? When I know why they are destitute – why they are in hiding."

"Alva," cried Lassie, "you don't mean you still believe that story?"

"Yes, I do."

"You're crazy!"

"I expect so. But I still believe the story."

Lassie stood still, staring at her friend's back. Then she went hastily forward, seized her impetuously in her arms and kissed her.

"Oh, little girl," Alva said, turning, "don't you see that it's charity, and if they really are not what they pretend to be and if it all really is a lie, it may be long before charity will cross their path again?"

"Alva," Lassie said, with her little whimsical smile, "you've taken all that nice, agreeable, aching desire to go to the post-office and see the paper read, completely out of me."

"Well, are you sorry for that?"

Lassie lifted her pretty brown eyes. "No," she said, frankly; "I'm not."

Then she ran down to Ingram and they set forth at once, for it is a long walk to the Lower Falls.

The day was magnificent. 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 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. Ingram, looking ahead towards the trees that hid the little Colonial house, wondered and wondered, but was recalled by Lassie's bursting forth with the whole story of the fresh developments which they had left behind them.

"Oh, by George," Ingram exclaimed; "I'd like to have seen Mrs. Ray get the news myself."

Lassie felt herself fall with a crash back into the pit of ordinary views.

"Would you?" she asked eagerly; "oh, but we couldn't go back now; Alva would be too disgusted."

"Of course we can't go back now, but we've missed a lot of fun."

"Yes, I thought it would be fun."

Quite a little pall of gloom fell over both, in the consideration of what they had missed, and both stared absent-mindedly up and down the valley, seeing nothing except the vision of Mrs. Ray perusing the Kinnecot paper.

"Alva is so serious over everything," Lassie said presently, with a mournful note in her voice.

"She's too serious," declared Ingram.

"She's looking forward to so much happiness that she says she can't bear to add even a breath to any one's misery."

"And she isn't going to have any happiness at all."

"Don't you think there's any hope?"

"Of course there isn't any hope."

"What will become of that house?"