In a Mysterious Way

"The dam'll have to pay for the new cemeteries, won't it?" asked Lucia Cosby in some trepidation.

"The dam'll pay for everything. That's why every one wants it so bad," said Mrs. Ray.

"Yes, it is," said Pinkie.

"Which room have the Lathbuns got?" some one asked, looking down towards the O'Neil House.

"The end one," said Mrs. Dunstall.

"The curtains are down," said Nathan, elbowing his way to the window.

"They never get up till noon."

There was a hush, – sudden but intense. The train was approaching.

"Yes, that's the train," said Mrs. Ray; "well, we'll soon know now." She tucked her shawl tighter than ever, and got the key ready.

"Mrs. O'Neil'll be pretty lonesome to-night with them all gone at once," hazarded a bystander.

"She'll miss those girls," said Mrs. Dunstall; "they're real nice young ladies, she says. But she won't miss the Lathbuns."

"We'll miss the Lathbuns," said Mrs. Wiley; "they've been so interesting to talk about. We've even got Uncle Purchase to where he knows they live at Nellie's. I tell you that was work. He's so deaf now." She sighed.

"I guess it wasn't any worse than what the Bentons went through with Gran'ma Benton teaching the parrot when they lived at Nellie's," said Mrs. Ray. "Poor Clay Wright Benton was in here yesterday to see if I'd board Gran'ma Benton and the parrot again. He says Sarah says she won't come home till the parrot leaves, and he's most wild. Gran'ma Benton's been teaching the parrot to say something new. She says 'Where's the Lathbuns, Polly?' and the parrot says 'Out chestnutting,' only it won't say it days. It just says it nights. And nights it's wild over saying it. Last night no one in the house got one wink of sleep. Clay sit up till midnight to ask it where the Lathbuns was, and then Gran'ma Benton sit up and asked it where they was till morning. Poor Clay! He says it's too awful how she's spoiled that parrot. It's afraid of spiders, and it's so afraid of them at night that they have to keep a night-light burning so it can see all over whenever it wakes."

"Such doings!" said Mrs. Wiley, in disgust.

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Ray. "I'd like to see myself burning a night-light for a parrot. If it boards with me, it'll take its spiders just as they come."

"That's right," said Pinkie, with decision.

"Well, we don't need any parrot," said Mrs. Wiley. "We've got Uncle Purchase. Not but what I'm amused hearing about the parrot. But then, I've been amused hearing about the Lathbuns, too," she sighed heavily.

"Something else'll come up," said Mrs. Dunstall, cheerfully, "and you don't really need anything to talk about while you've got your Uncle Purchase, you know."

"Well, I suppose maybe not," said Mrs. Wiley, and sighed again.

"Well, thank Heaven," said Mrs. Ray, "I'm never short of two things, – work and talk." She began to finger the key as she spoke, and all ears were at once strained to listen for the sound of the feet of the bearer of the mail-bag.

Deathly silence reigned. In a few seconds the footsteps did approach, the gate creaked and then banged. Mrs. Ray stepped with majestic haste to the window and called out:

"Wipe your feet!"

The obedience that ensued whetted curiosity to more ravenous desire than ever. People had lost sight of the main issue and were all riveted to the single question – would Mrs. Lathbun get her letter?

The door opened and Clay Wright Benton came in with the bag.

"Lay it here," commanded Mrs. Ray, and Clay Wright Benton laid it there and fell back into the crowd behind. Mrs. Ray put on her spectacles and adjusted her shawl. In the intense excitement of the moment, nobody said a word. The room was as full as it would hold, and people who had apparently been secreted in other portions of the house now came pouring in through the doors connecting therewith. The one window facing the porch had turned into a mere honey-comb of faces.

Mrs. Ray took up the key. A thrill went around as she inserted it in the padlock and slowly turned it. Then she took it out of the padlock and the padlock out of the lock. She laid key and padlock carefully aside. "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note," as she slowly drew the lengthwise iron from the rings and laid that aside. A sort of fresh intenseness pervaded the atmosphere as she opened the mouth of the bag and inserted her arm. While her arm was in and her hand was feeling for the mail, a boy sneezed and every one turned and looked at him witheringly. This little incident was taken in the same light as the inter-mission between two numbers of a concert, for all who were at the doors at once took advantage of it to squeeze inside. The small room, which had been unpleasantly full before, was now packed to suffocation. Mrs. Ray drew out her arm. The interest was mounting each second. She laid two packages, tied each with United States Government twine, upon the counter, turned the bag upside down and shook it. If a pin had fallen out, any one could have heard it, but nothing fell out. Mrs. Ray folded the bag carefully and laid it on the floor behind her. The atmosphere was breathless in every sense of the word. Mrs. Ray untied the first package, taking a full minute to pick out the knot. She hung up the string. The string fell off from where she hung it, and she picked it up and hung it up a second time, this time more slowly and carefully. Then she took out the postmarking machine. A sudden sigh went around; every one had forgotten the necessity of the postmark. Mrs. Ray turned the package face down and post-marked every piece carefully without reading a single address. Then she turned them over, gave her shawl a fresh and most careful adjustment, and proceeded to sort the mail. When it was sorted, she called the roll of names amidst a hush that was awe-inspiring. The few who had letters crowded to the fore, received them and stayed there, greatly to the aggravation of those who had none, and got shoved to the rear accordingly.

Mrs. Ray now untied the second package, and hung up that string. Both strings fell off together. She took up both strings at once, smoothed them out and hung them up again. They stayed hung this time. Then she post-marked the second package. It was a never-to-be-forgotten scene, – the wrought-up faces, the fixed calm of Mrs. Ray herself. Then she called the roll for the second batch. Each time a name was read off, a wave of psychic emotion swept the room. One has to get into the real true life of the country to appreciate the tremendous tumulus which gossip had erected upon which to rear the monument of this moment. One by one the names were all called; one by one the pile of letters in Mrs. Ray's hand diminished. When it came to the last one, and the last one was for Joey Beall, Joey received it almost as if it were some species of sacrament.

"Is that all?" some one in the back asked.

"That's all," said Mrs. Ray.

All turned to go. The outburst of pent-up feelings was tremendous.

"I told you so," Mrs. Ray said over and over again. "I knew they'd got no letter." The babel all of a sudden rose into so much noise that it was evident that the heights to which popular feeling had risen were going a bit higher yet. The egress from the stifling room ceased. Nobody knew just what it was, but all became aware that something fresh had happened. Nobody knew what had happened, and nobody seemed able to find out. All that was known was that something held every one spellbound and motionless in spite of their individual desire to go on out.

After what seemed a deadlock of long duration but which was in fact a matter of but a few seconds, it developed that the trouble arose around the door leading on to the porch. Then it appeared that while every one in the post-office was trying to get out by that door, Mary Cody was trying to get in by the same way, and Mary Cody was young, strong, and determined.

For a few seconds the battle pressed wildly. Then Mary Cody won out and entered. She was out of breath and disheveled.

"Why, what is the matter?" Joey Beall, who was nearest, asked; "there's something new down your way, I'll bet a peanut."

Mary Cody gasped. "Oh, my," she said, "I run right up to tell you. We've just found out as their room is empty. They must of skipped in the night."

"Skipped in the night!" cried Mrs. Dunstall.

"Skipped!" cried Pinkie.

"Oh, Mrs. Ray," wailed Mrs. Wiley, "how'll we ever be able to tell Uncle Purchase!"

But Mrs. Ray stood forth like a modern Medusa in her rage.

"I've been expecting it all along," she exclaimed wrathfully. "I'm a great judge of character, and I never looked for nothing else. Now, how can they be arrested? We must catch 'em!"

"If we can catch 'em!" said Josiah Bates.

"If we can catch them!" said Mrs. Ray, – "if! Young man, they'll be caught. You wait and see!" She hastily threw her shawl over her head, and rushed wildly out with the excited crowd. It is proverbial that there are times when a common sentiment merges all classes into one.

CHAPTER XXII

AFTERMATH

The excitement broke up into wide-spreading waves. All divided at once into two distinct parties, – those who wanted to discuss the matter further, and those who were filled with the hunter instinct and so craved to set off at once in pursuit of "the foxy pair." Mrs. Ray justly remarked that "they couldn't possibly get more than twelve hours' start, in just one night," and as it was incredible to suppose that they would return in the direction from which they had originally come, it followed that there was only two-thirds of the horizon to scour in any case. Elmer Hoskins and his dog lost no time, but set forth at once.

Mary Cody walked back down the hill telling a deeply interested circle the story of how, etc. (and that for the fifth time in ten minutes); another group stood excitedly on Mrs. Ray's porch; another set off to break the news to Ledgeville, and still others spread here and there, after the manner of distracted bees into whose hive some great and disturbing force has suddenly penetrated.

"We won't be able to begin to get this in Uncle Purchase's head for two days, at least," mourned Mrs. Wiley; "and Uncle Purchase is so awful fond of knowing things, too."

"They'll never catch them," said Lucia Cosby; "they know all the roads too well. They know every road there is to know."

"I should think they did!" said Mrs. Dunstall. "They've not got out of practice walking in this locality, I can tell you. Josiah Bates was down at the bottom of the St. Helena hill the other day, and if he didn't see them there. Oh, they know the roads."

"I'm sorry for the girl," said Clay Wright Benton.

"I ain't a bit sorry for her," said Mrs. Ray; "as a woman who works from before dawn to far on into the night to make a honest living by eleven different kinds of sweat on her brow, I ain't a bit sorry for either of them. And Jack O'Neil ain't going to be sorry for them, either; he told me last night if they was men, he'd get hold of 'em and take 'em out behind the wood-pile and he knew what they'd get. To-day isn't going to alter his views."

"If I was Mrs. O'Neil, I'd wash that shawl Mrs. Lathbun wore all the time," said Sarah Catt, one of the party escorting Mary Cody back to the hotel.

"It's in the tub already," said Mary Cody.

Mrs. O'Neil came running forth to meet them, her brown eyes shining more than ever.

"Oh, but they were a 'foxy pair,'" she exclaimed; "haven't they gone and left that hair-brush done up in a paper so that it's 'baggage,' and shows they want the room held for them till they come back. Oh, they've got the law at their finger-tips – those two."

The whole crowd entered the house. Alva and Lassie, packing in their room, had heard the news ten minutes earlier from Mrs. O'Neil herself. Lassie had watched her friend's face curiously, but Alva had too much else pressing upon her to be more than simply saddened.

When Mrs. O'Neil had gone Lassie had said almost hesitatingly: "They were adventuresses, weren't they, and Miss Lathbun's romance wasn't true, was it?"

"Let us not judge, even now," said Alva, quietly; "let us try to hope in some way. After all, what little things they were in life – so little, and probably beset beyond their strength. And such great things are pressing on me to-day. What do they matter? God forgive me for saying it."

Lassie was silenced.

When the Eastern mail train arrived about noon, belated as usual, their packing was quite finished. Mary Cody brought up the letters. Alva took hers into her room and a minute later she came to the door.

"Lassie," she said, "there is something here that I must attend to at once. Go down and have dinner, and I'll come a little late."

So Lassie went down to dine alone, and found Ingram waiting for her. She told him that Alva would come in a little.

"Has she had bad news?" he asked, startled by a presentiment of immediate sorrow.

"No, I think not," Lassie said; "she didn't speak so."

But Ingram stayed, distressed. "She has had bad news," he said; "poor girl – her tragedy is closing in fast. I can feel its end, myself."

His eyes went to the window. "Couldn't you go out with me for just an hour after dinner?" he asked wistfully. Then he smiled a little. "We can talk about the dam," he said – "or help hunt the Lathbuns."

She looked at him and they both knew that she would go. It was a very simple, almost childish, romance, theirs – but its lack of stress made it all the more alluring to two who were living under the wings of so much tragedy.

"I'll get my hat," Lassie said, and ran up-stairs. Alva's door was closed. "I'm lying down, please let me sleep. It's nothing but my head," she called from behind it. Lassie slipped on her wraps quickly and ran down; and they went out towards the Falls.

Mrs. Ray saw them go from the post-office window. The excitement having somewhat subsided, she was now left alone with Joey Beall's fiancée, who was there to try on her wedding dress.

"Such is life," Mrs. Ray commented; "that woman's pulled her shades down for a nice nap, and off they skip for a good-by down by the Falls. Oh, my, but those Falls are a blessing to the young! It's too far between roots and rocks for children to get down there, and as soon as anybody's married they never want to have nothing to do with love-making any more; so steep romantic places is just made for the only kind of people that have any reason for wanting to get to them."

"The Falls is full of meaning for lovers," said Joey Beall's fiancée, sentimentally. "Joey and I never get tired of them."

"You wait till you're married," said Mrs. Ray; "you'll find no meaning in climbing up and down those banks and having Joey jerk your arms out of the sockets, then. Yes, indeed. They call it tempestuous affection beforehand, but it comes to a plain jerk in the end. Life is full of learning."

"Gran'ma Benton's learning the parrot a great deal," said Sarah Catt. "I come by there just now and she's beginning already to teach it a new sentence. She says: 'Where are the Lathbuns, now?' and the parrot's got to learn to say 'Skipped,' – she's just set her heart on it."

"I d'n know but what I'm going to end by being sorry for that parrot," remarked Mrs. Ray, thoughtfully. "I think Gran'ma Benton's overdoing it a little, if she means it to keep up with the Lathbuns. You can force even a parrot beyond its strength. She's made it nervous, already. She's got to hold its claw all through every thunderstorm all summer long, and if a fly gets in its milk, it won't touch either the fly or the milk, which I call spoiling the parrot – not to speak of the fly and the milk, for of course no one else in a house is going to eat a fly or drink milk that a parrot won't look at."

"Sarah told me they had to take away all the looking-glasses every spring, or it cried the whole time it was moulting – over its tail feathers, you know," said the caller, thoughtfully.

"Well, if they come to live here, I shan't spoil it, I know that," said Mrs. Ray. "I shall be pleasant to it and I shall be kind, and it can run after me all it likes and I'll be careful never to step on it for the very simple reason that I don't want to take the time to clean up any sort of smashed creature, but it won't have no night-light here, nor get its claw held when it thunders, nor have the looking-glasses took down to spare its feelings. No one ever took a looking-glass down to spare my feelings, and I can't begin to take them down to spare a parrot's. Well, Sarah, I guess you can try on now. Wait till I fill up on pins. Oh, my lands alive, I wish I knew where those foxy Lathbuns are this minute."

"I guess Mr. Adams'll be glad to know they're caught," said Sarah Catt; "he's so nervous for fear they'll stop with him to-night. Joey saw him just after dinner. He was more scared even than Gran'ma Benton's parrot in a thunderstorm."

Mrs. Ray was thoughtfully putting pins in her mouth. "There's a great difference between a man's hand and a parrot's claw," she said with some difficulty. "Yes, indeed. Even in a thunderstorm."

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DARKNESS BEFORE

When Lassie came back from that last walk to the Falls she went straight up to Alva's room, and found her lying on the bed, the faint light from the shaded window throwing a deep shadow upon her face and form. Her head and shoulders were a little propped up against the pillows, and her hands were clasped on her bosom instead of behind her head, as was her favorite position.

Lassie's eyes were shining and her heart was very full and happy with the bubbling joy of that bubbling joyous emotion which Youth in its ingenuous innocence, ignorance, and arrogance has elected to call "love." It had come very vividly to both herself and Ingram during their walk, and instead of discussing Alva's affairs, they had suddenly become more than ever keenly alive to their own. Ingram, conscious of good looks, good health, and a good income, had for some time faced the position very cheerfully and gratefully; but Lassie, conscious of no personal advantages at all equalling those pertaining to her demigod, was, of course, thrilled through and through. Certainly these be topsy-turvy days for chivalric standards, but perhaps a century later, people will quote with reverence from the stories of grandmother's experiences before grandpapa was finally secured.

Lassie was very happy. She felt sure that nothing so ideally beautiful and altogether remarkable as Ingram's speeches during the walk had ever been heard before. She was not engaged, but she was "as good as engaged." And before her début, too. Fancy the faces of the girls when she really announced it! She would be the first one of the whole set to be married! Life was nothing but vistas of joy. Ingram was absolutely going to take the same train that she did at six o'clock, and go two hours of the way with her. Oh!

And now she was back in Alva's room, standing at the bedside, looking down at her friend. Something in the other's lax position made her look more closely even in the semi-darkness.

"Your head is worse?" she asked, startled.

"No, dear," said Alva, and her voice rang strangely – like a low toned bell, chiming afar.

"Something has happened?"

"Yes, dear."

"Oh – " the young girl could not put the question.

Alva did not speak. Lassie felt her heart freezing harder every instant. It was always so, when one came within the circle of that greater existence. Part of the attraction of Ingram was that he was just so ordinarily human. Alva was never ordinary, and scarcely ever human. Oh, dear! Her lovely dream seemed suddenly slipping out to sea before this tremendous, quiet storm of resistless stress!

"You have had a letter?" she whispered timidly, at last.

"Yes, dear, and he is dead." Alva spoke quite steadily.

"Dead!"

"I had a letter from his friend – his doctor – the one who wrote for him. You were right in what you thought. He died last night, in the night, while I slept. He was unconscious when he died. He struggled first and suffered – while I was struggling and suffering, you remember – and then he grew still when I grew still, and then when I slept he slept and began to die, and while I still slept he died – that is – his body died."

Lassie sank down upon the bed beside her, took the clasped hands into her own, and burst into bitter tears, hiding her face in the four hands at once.

After a little Alva spoke again, still in the same low, ringing voice.

"It came so close that I did believe that it would be, but there are some dreams that may not be realized on earth. Mine was such a one."

Lassie lifted her head to look into her face; she was sufficiently accustomed to the dim light by this time to be able to see distinctly the pure and noble outlines, the large, tragic eyes. She felt herself crushed into speechlessness.

"He wrote me himself," Alva continued presently; "just the merest word. I read it. I read it twice. Then I sat still for a long, long time. Lassie," she pressed the girl's hands warmly, "it was good to think that I had shown my happiness to you, for no one will ever know that I was ever happy, now. Oh, it was so long that I sat here, thinking. I told you once, how, in the first day of my supreme joy, I went into the cathedral near the hospital and thanked God on my knees for all the past and made a vow to accept with courage all that might come to me, in return for that joy. I thought, as I prayed, that I'd go forth and gladly starve and freeze till I died, if it were the purchase price of such happiness. I am remembering that hour. I will not cry out, nor weep, nor say one word. I have had him; we shall be one again. My desire has always been only to be worthy him – to be worthy him – to be worthy him! And now I have the chance to prove myself so; and I will not fail, – though the heart in my body burst, my spirit will not fail."

Lassie was still, overawed.

"I had to search to be thankful at first," Alva went on, "but now I have found something to be very thankful for. I am so glad that it came before I had told my mother. She is spared. She will never know. Every one is spared except him and me, and we are strong – we can endure. We have endured. We can endure again."

"If you only could have gone and been with him!" wailed the girl, softly.

"Oh, how I have wished that! You don't know how I have wished that! It has been sweeping through me and rending me cruelly, but he did not wish it, or he would have sent for me. And I have tried never even to wish anything unless he wished it, too. You know how I have wished that I might have stayed there with him. But he begged me to go. They would not let me stay. I had to yield!"

"Shall you go as you planned, to-night?"

"No, dear, I want to stay here alone for three or four days, and then go home, – back to my duty to my parents, you know. I never meant to leave for long. Yes," she almost whispered, "I must hurry back home, forever."

"Never to return here?"

"I think, never. I cannot see how or why I should return."

Lassie's lips quivered. "And your house?" she whispered.

A long, sad breath passed over lips that did not quiver. "Ah, yes, my house," she answered softly; "I thought of going to it this afternoon, and then I could not. Dear little home nest, – there are nothing but happy thoughts there; all my best is there – unselfish dreams, devoted hopes, great aims, longings to make some one and every one glad."

She paused. Lassie leaned close.

"May I lie down beside you, Alva, and put my arms around you and hold you tightly, dear? It will be good-by, for you want me to go just the same, I know."

"Yes, dear, you must go. What time is it?"

"It's over an hour till the train. Let me hold you close, dear, I – I love you."

"Yes, Lassie, come; I'll be glad to have you. Your head will lie on my arm, and I shall like to draw you near as I might have drawn a little child, had life fallen out differently long ago."

Lassie crept up on the bed, clasped her arms about her and tried not to weep.

"You don't mind my talking of him, do you?" the woman asked, presently. "You know after you go I shall never have any one again;" her voice wailed desolate with the last words so that its very sound caused Lassie's sobs to renew their force.

"I don't mind anything that you want to do, Alva."

"It's storming in upon me what life was to have been. What does the world know of love? Love is something too great to comprehend. It costs blood and years and tears. It goes so deep that the very joy in it cuts like a knife. I knew that I was only to have had him a few weeks, that I should have to compress all that I felt for him into them. But what those few weeks would have meant! When to be quiet together was in itself all that we asked! When we should have had a library and a piano, and the gorge to look out over, and one another to talk to, – to be with!" She stopped – her breath failed her.