Chapter III: Part 3

One day the captain of the boat sat down by her side on the deck. He was a middle-aged man of slow, soft speech and gentle manner--as far removed from the typical bluff, gruff, profane, aggressive river man of literature as possible. He had already won Mrs. Davis’s confidence by his deferential courtesy and attentions to which she was a stranger at home. There no one was unkind, but certainly no one was noticeably considerate of the comfort of women, especially those of no particular importance. He narrated to her bits of history about the places along the river, with every foot of which he was familiar, and told anecdotes of the people, half of whom he seemed to know by their Christian names.

“How can you speak so kindly of them, an’ you a soldier, too?” she broke out at last. “Rebels I reckon they were, most of ’em, an’ killed our men, an’ would do it again if they had a chance.”

He turned to her slowly and without a sign of surprise; she was not a new type to him.

“Madam, these people along heah were mostly Union sympathizers during the wah. I was a soldier in the Confede’at ahmy.”

It was a shock. Ex-rebels had found their way to her little village since the war, but a good many sons had gone out from there to fight for the Union, and never to return, and those wanderers from the South were not made welcome, but had mostly drifted on to regions elsewhere in Indiana where were friends and sympathizers. She had never so much as talked with one before.

Then he told her, in a quiet, reminiscent way, some stories of his youth and his far Southern home; of how the South was then all the country he knew, and the North a far-off, cold region, whose people, he was taught, cared only to buy and sell, and to subjugate and rob the South; of how the war broke out and one by one his neighbors joined the army, then his brothers, and then himself, a boy of sixteen--all filled with fierce patriotism and the blind belief that they were fighting for the right; of how his brothers had been slain, and how he had gone home, when at last the conflict was over, to find that home dismantled, the mother who had been its center forever gone, and he, yet a boy in years, lonely, disheartened and forlorn.

It was a revelation to the woman of few ideas that rebels--rebels!--were creatures with loves and sorrows like her own.

And they went on up the shining river, and a little of the peace and beauty of it entered into her soul. It was May, and the fields and forests were in freshest array. The gray-green willows, the rank water maples and the glossy oaks that crowded the river bank were fringed with undergrowth, and their trunks lost in a tangle of honey-suckles, grape-vines and ivy. It was primitive wilderness, such as the Indian must have looked at in his day.

Then came Fort Henry. The boat, which stopped accommodatingly wherever a would-be traveler waived a handkerchief, obligingly made fast while passengers climbed the hill and wandered over the old earthworks that made the walls of that famous fort. In the glamour of the moonlight and the softness of the shadows could almost be seen the soldiers who had once crowded the place--but trees had grown up within the walls since that day, and the soldiers--where were they?

Then Pittsburg Landing and Shiloh, and the woman from the little Indiana town had reached her Mecca.

They wandered over the battlefield, those tourists; they saw it almost as it looked on the fatal Sunday so long ago, only to-day the sun shone, and then the very heavens had wept at the sight below. They saw the place where the fight was fiercest and most furious--the “Hornet’s Nest,” where Union men and Confederates met hand to hand and the slaughter was so great that the dead lay in heaps. They saw the pool whose margin had been red with the blood of wounded men who had dragged themselves there to quench their raging thirst. To-day cattle drank from it undisturbed.

There were houses here and there--primitive structures, hardly more than cabins. Mrs. Davis stopped at the door of one to ask for water. An old woman came out, a woman with a scant calico gown and clumsy shoes, and eyes blurred perhaps with age, possibly with tears, but kindly still. She grew garrulous in response to a timid question.

“Yes, she had lived hereabouts evah since befo’ the wah. She an’ her ole man was Union, but their six boys couldn’t no ways agree, an’ three j’ined the Union ahmy an’ three the Confede’at. An’, yes--yes, it’s all done ended long ago, but some days the time seems yistiddy, an’ it all comes back. Her ole man couldn’t keep out no ways when the boys was gone, an’ he jined, too, when General Sherman come along. An’--yes, the boys was all killed; three at Donelson, two here at Shiloh Church, an’ one at Chattanooga. Their pap didn’t live long after; sort o’ broke down like. An’ if it wasn’t that the boys who died here were buried in a Confede’at trench (did the visitor see the ridge over thataway?) she reckoned she’d disremembah which was Union an’ which wasn’t. Such things didn’t seem to make no difference, nohow, when they alls was gone to rest twel jedgment day.”

The woman who had lost one and the woman who had lost seven looked in each other’s eyes and knew the kinship of grief, and somehow the visitor from the North felt no longer a personal resentment for her loss. Though it might have been a son of this woman who shot her Martin, he had thought he was right and meant no evil.

Then she entered the gates of the National Cemetery, where the Union dead are laid in long lines, with a granite block marking each resting place. The captain of the boat joined her at the gate, and as he passed in he plucked a sprig of cedar. The sun shining through the branches of the great forest trees flecked the grass upon the graves; a soft May breeze scattered the leaves of the early blooming roses. Down between the rows of stones they walked, and the captain, pausing at one bearing the number 1607, lifted his hat reverently and laid the bit of cedar upon it.

“I put a little posy there every time I come,” he said gently; “I reckoned that may be the wife or mother of the boy lying there might like it.”

The man lying there might be her Martin, thought the little widow, and from that moment her heart ceased to cherish animosity toward any man who had fought on the other side.

She stood on the bluff and looked down on the sparkling, glinting river. The panorama of water and sky and hill stretching for miles before her was a vision fair to see. The flag of her country floated from the great staff above; the only sound was the singing of the birds, and the peace of God was over all.

* * * * *

More years went by, and the Widow Davis plodded patiently through them, getting a little more weary as they passed and finding the burden of loneliness none the easier to bear as age crept on. That visit to Shiloh had taught her some things, toleration among the rest, but it had also taken away one thing that had been a secret source of comfort to her. Until that time she had pictured to herself the return of her husband. She was a woman with but scant imaginative power, but where even the dullest mind dwells much upon one subject it weaves about it a network of fancy far different from reality. She had not seen her husband dead; a battle was a vague thing to her; he had simply gone away and had not come back. Perhaps he had been wounded, had lost a leg or an arm, and a prisoner in rebel hands was long in recovering. Then, perhaps--here her fancy took a wild leap--perhaps he was told by some one that she was dead, or that she, thinking him dead, had married again, though she didn’t quite see how he could believe she could marry another man. But such things had happened--she had read of them; and supposing he had believed it, he would wander away and never care to revisit his old home until, at last, he somehow learned the truth and hastened to her with joy. Or it might be that he had escaped from his rebel prison, had reached the sea-coast, had crept on board some foreign vessel, and had been carried to far-off lands, whence he would some day return.

Vain imaginings, but lonely women dream strange things while they go half mechanically about their monotonous daily tasks. Even the happiness of happy women is half in this unreal inner life. After this visit to Shiloh these comforting pictures were conjured up no more in Lizzie’s mind. It was all real now, the battle and the slaughter, and she had seen the graves where the soldiers lay; her thoughts centered about “1607,” where the captain’s tribute rested, and she felt more and more convinced that Martin slept beneath that stone. It was nearly thirty years, a lifetime, since he went, and he would come to her now only after heaven’s gate had opened to let her in. She had mourned her lost love for thirty years. She, a little, commonplace woman of whom no one would have thought as a heroine of romance. She would not have known what the term “grand passion” meant; she had been simply faithful to a memory in a quiet, undemonstrative way; her life had been bound up in a sentiment, that was all.

One day in April--it was the 30th Shiloh anniversary--she was at her little cottage, no neighbor needing her services as nurse or seamstress. It had been an early spring, and she went out in the garden to look at the signs of life among her few cherished flowers. In a sunny corner wild violets grew and had pushed green leaves above the mold, but no buds were yet in sight.

“I remember,” she said, speaking to a neighbor who had paused in passing, “I remember seeing violet flowers as early as this.”

She was thinking of those stuck in the band of Martin’s hat that day so long ago when he came from the field, and as she spoke she looked down the village street, wondering at the unusual boisterousness of the school children. They followed after and jeered at a man who came slowly and hesitatingly along, as if uncertain of his way. His clothing was rough, his shoulders bent and his gait shambling. On his head was a military cap, such as some old soldiers still insist upon wearing, and on its side was something like a decoration on a woman’s bonnet. It was this that made the children jeer. Mrs. Davis put her hand over her eyes and looked at it intently. Hardly knowing what she did, she went out upon the walk and down the street to meet him. When she came closer she saw that the decoration was a bunch of yellow violets. She stopped before the man and looked at him. She had never thought of her husband as other than erect, and strong, and young; this man was feeble, and dim-eyed, and old, but--she knew him.

“Martin!” she said; “Martin!” and reached out her hands, forgetful of watching neighbors and wondering children.

Something like a miracle happened in that moment. The years fell away from her as a garment; the flush in her cheek, the love light in her eyes transfigured her.

“Lizzie!” said the man, the dull, dazed expression clearing from his face. “Lizzie,” and he fumbled at his cap, “I--I thought ye’d like some posies, and came round by the holler and got them.”

She took him by the hand and led him into the house, her face still illumined.

* * * * *

The woman who wrote stories and the other who read them met again on the street of Mullins. Toward them came Lizzie Davis. She was the woman who had been at the station weeks before, but she was like one born again. Her hair was faded, it is true; her complexion gray, her dress old-fashioned and rusty, but her eyes were bright, her bearing erect and proud, her face smiling. She stopped a moment to speak to the woman who wrote.

“Just think, Miss,” she said; “Martin lived over in Jonesboro, just beyond the Ohio line, and not fifty miles from here, for twenty years. I’ve just seen a man from there. Where he had been before that time the Lord knows. The man says that they all knowed something was the matter with his head. Seemed to do his work well on the farm, but every now an’ then he’d get uneasy an’ talk an’ talk about some place he’d ought to go if he could only just think of the name; an’ when he heard any one call ‘Lizzie’ he always got worried and fidgety. Come spring, too, every year, he’d pick flowers an’ wear ’em in his hat. Then at last one day his recollection seemed to come to him sudden, and he up an’ started off, the man said, acting like a crazy lunatic. He found his way here, an’ he’s getting to be more like himself every day, an’ it almost seems as if he’d never been away.”

A glow was on her cheek like the blush of a bride; the thirty years of loneliness were as naught; the children that might have been hers, the happiness and peace she had missed were forgotten. The mother heart in her went out to the broken-down man and was satisfied. He came shuffling down the walk.

“See how well he looks,” she said, as she hastened toward him, with a face through which love shone as it must shine on the faces of the angels in heaven.

“You were wrong, you see,” softly said the woman who wrote, to her friend; “you were wrong when you declared there was no romance here; that the people merely vegetated. That woman has lived.”

“Yes,” said the other, “she has loved.”

A FARMHOUSE DRAMA

“It was an exceptional case, that of the Marshalls, Brother Johnson, or I never should have advised them to the course they took.”

The speaker, familiarly known as Father Allen to all the region round about, was a minister of the Methodist denomination, who, after an itinerant life of forty years, had, as his professional brethren put it, “assumed the superannuated relation.” This being interpreted, meant that he had retired from regular duty and occupied himself, as age and strength would permit, in rendering such service to neighboring members of his old flock as occasion called for. An old minister comes to be identified with a family as no newcomer can. He has comforted its members in their sorrows and participated in their pleasures; he has been with them at their funerals and their marriage feasts, and in the emergencies of life they turn to him.

To-day, Father Allen had accompanied the Reverend Mr. Johnson, the young preacher lately stationed at Amber Center, the little Indiana town whose roofs were visible far across the prairie, on his first round of pastoral calls. They had just taken their departure from the white farm-house of the Marshalls, bearing with them the look of ineffable content that comes to mankind only after the consumption of a bountiful meal, and were discussing the affairs of their entertainers, as is the ancient custom of guests of all degree, regardless of canons of etiquette.

Acting on the principle that a pastor should be thoroughly acquainted with the history of his flock in order to meet its spiritual needs, as a physician is better fitted to prescribe for a patient’s ills when he understands his physical constitution, the old minister gave, with somewhat garrulous, not to say gossipy, detail, particulars of each individual’s life to the new shepherd.

“Yes, it was an exceptional case. It is hardly necessary to say, I hope, Brother Johnson, that I am opposed to divorce. The ease with which legal separations are to be had is one of the greatest evils of our time; I need not enlarge on that. Still--Brother Johnson, one must use judgment, and it is difficult to make an iron-clad rule for all cases. ‘A rule already made,’ do you say? Well, yes, yes--of course. As a general thing it is best to abide by the literal scriptural injunction, and I am the last person to countenance any other course. Nevertheless, my son, you will find, as your experience with the realities of the world broadens, that it is sometimes inexpedient to insist upon too rigid an application of the letter of the law.

“Now, in the case of the Marshalls, John was very deeply attached to his first wife, whom he married on the day of his enlistment in the army, twenty years ago; very deeply attached, no doubt of it. His wife, pretty Rose Lytle, was fond of him in her way, too, but she was of a clinging, dependent nature, and would, perhaps, have been equally happy had it chanced to be another than John, who had so devoted himself to her. The woman who loved him most deeply on the day of his marriage was Rose’s cousin and adopted sister, Mary; but that was her secret. Many a woman has such. Rose was a pretty creature. It was twenty years ago, but I remember her well. She reminded me--my wife’s name was Rose, too.”

The old man’s voice faltered. It was not upon the prospect near that his dim eyes were wistfully fixed, but upon something far beyond. Before them the western sky was gorgeous with crimson and purple and gold--fit reminder of the gates of the New Jerusalem--but Mr. Johnson removed his gaze from the glory of the sunset to glance curiously at his aged companion, knowing as he did, that the name of the present Mrs. Allen was Sarah, and that the neatly framed portrait of her immediate predecessor was carefully labeled, “My beloved consort, Matilda.”

“A week later,” resumed the elder gentleman, “John was on his way with his regiment to the South, and the women were left to each other’s company. The months following went by slowly enough, no doubt, to the girl in the lonely prairie home and to the man toiling in Virginia trenches, or marching over sodden hills; time moves slowly, you know, when one is young and impatient.”

“When the ‘body is in Segovia’ and the ‘soul is in Madrid,’” softly interpolated the listener, who was yet young enough to permit sentiment to come to the surface now and then.

“But time goes for all,” continued the old minister, “and before the year’s close it had ended to the consciousness of one of the pair. A report that John had been killed in battle came suddenly to the ears of the waiting wife--a false report, as later appeared, like so many that came from ‘the front’ in those days. Next day their son was born, but the mother had no smile at the sight of the baby face. The shock of the news had deprived her of reason. Physical strength came back in time, but with its return the insanity increased until she raved with madness and became dangerously violent. The husband, who had been wounded only, came home on furlough, but his presence excited her to fierce outbursts.

“It was a long time before John or the cousin Mary, patiently devoted to mother and child, would consent to send the cherished and petted girl away from their own care to an institution for the insane; but finally the safety of all demanded it. She was taken to an asylum and is there to-day.

“John rejoined his regiment, and when the war was over came back to find his home and child well cared for by the faithful Mary. Matters went on in this way for a while, with the addition of himself as head of the household. Left to himself, he would perhaps have discovered no reason why the agreeable conditions should not continue, but when Mary, the center of this home life, suddenly resumed her old occupation of teaching, and would give no explanation of her course to the bewildered man save that she preferred the change, there were neighbors willing to enlighten him. In the matter of social conventionalities and proprieties people in country communities are very exacting, Brother Johnson, and it was not considered proper that Mary should remain as housekeeper for a man who was her brother-in-law only by courtesy.

“Naturally, this was the beginning of the end. They soon discovered each other’s sentiments and came to me for advice, separately and together. The physicians had assured them that Rose was hopelessly insane; that while no one could say with absolute certainty that she would not recover, the tendencies in her case gave no encouragement for such hope. Insanity was not specified as legal cause for divorce, but in those days, Indiana courts were allowed by the statutes far greater liberty and discretion than now, and, under the circumstances, there was no difficulty in the way of securing a decree of separation. The only question with these two, Mary and John, was whether it was right for John to be divorced even with conditions as they were. They were conscientious and argued for and against themselves.”

“To me it seemed one of the exceptional cases. Marshall needed some one at the head of his establishment; he had not so warm an affection for this woman, perhaps, as for Rose, but he would make her a good husband. Mary cared for him as she never could for another. It is best for women to marry. It seemed to me expedient that these two should be united, and so I advised the divorce. I am still of the opinion that the course was wise.”

“Mrs. Marshall’s expression did not strike me as that of a particularly happy woman,” said Mr. Johnson. “She looked sad, I thought, and anxious.”

“Women, as a class, are foolish,” hastily exclaimed the old man. “The best of them have imaginary troubles. Mrs. Marshall allows herself to be tormented by the fear that Rose will yet be cured, and reproaches herself at the same time for dreading what ought, under other circumstances, to be a blessing. However, as I said, women will find something to worry over, and if it were not for this fanciful notion, Mrs. Marshall, good, sensible woman that she is, would have some other. I believe she did well.”

As they drove up the village street in the haze of the late Indian summer twilight the young minister breathed a sigh. He had been impressed by what the poet calls the large, sweet calmness of the prairie; but peace, after all, did not, it seemed, abide with the people. He wondered what would be the end if, at last, the innocent, but cast-off wife should be restored to the realities of life.

* * * * *

Back in the white house on the prairie the first chapter of the sequel to the old minister’s story had even then begun.

After the visitors had driven away, John Marshall and his wife stood on the steps, his eyes fixed absently on the purple line of the horizon far across the level plain, she, with her face turned toward his. A question was on her lips, but she did not speak, only touched his arm softly while the look of vague apprehension in her eyes deepened into what was almost terror. At last he moved until his glance met hers.

“What you have always dreaded has happened,” he said. “Rose has recovered her mind.”

The woman at his side did not cry out nor moan--she was not of the demonstrative sort; but a change come over her while she stood there as if she had suddenly grown old and feeble. Her face looked pinched and gray. She took her hand from his arm and moved back a pace--a movement that told its own story. After a moment he went on steadily:

“The doctor writes that it is a very unexpected recovery; quite remarkable in the history of such cases. She is well as ever, mentally, but oddly enough her bodily strength has as suddenly failed, and, according to what he says, she is not likely to be better. It is not probable at the best that she will live many months--perhaps not even weeks; but in order to prolong her life, as well as to retain her mental balance, she must be carefully guarded from a shock of any sort. This, above all things, must be the care of those about her, he says, and explains that he has said nothing to her concerning our family affairs. And,” after a pause in which he glanced uneasily at his wife, “Rose wants to come home.”

She looked at him with calm, tearless eyes.

“Do you wish her to come?” she asked.

“Well,” he answered, hesitatingly, “it’s a queer fix. We’re all she’s got, you know, you and I, and to send her among strangers now--it doesn’t seem just right. She was our little Rose, you remember, and----. If she were well it would be different, of course. Still, if you think it won’t do--if you can’t have it so, let it be as you please, Mary.”

“I only wanted to know what you wished. Do you think I would say to you, I who took her place, that our doors must be shut against her? We will go to-morrow and bring her home, and I will do what I can to make her last days happy.”

John Marshall breathed a sigh of relief as if a weight were lifted from his mind. He looked at his wife approvingly.

“You are a good woman, Mary,” he said.

Many a man addressing such words to his wife would have followed them with a caress, but John Marshall turned away and went about his evening tasks while Mary passed slowly and wearily into the house. A coat belonging to her husband hung in the hall. She caught the sleeve in her hand and kissed it. A girl or a gay young matron might have been thus childishly demonstrative without suspicion of any deeper feeling than an impulsive outburst of affection toward the owner of the garment. Discerning eyes like those of Father Allen, grown keen with a half century’s study of human weaknesses, would have seen in the act of this middle-aged woman the betrayal of a heart’s hunger.

Mechanically she went about her household duties and preparations for the guest, the dread of whose possible coming had hung over her like a shadow for fifteen years. No detail was overlooked in arranging for the comfort of “John’s wife,” as Mary caught herself calling in her thoughts the woman who had dropped out of conscious existence so long ago. She had come back to life as from the dead. If a wrong had been done to her in her helpless state those who had committed it must, as they hoped for mercy hereafter, do what they could to save her from its consequences; there was no other way. They, the wrong-doers, she and John, must suffer in the performance of their duty; but they had no right to complain. It was Rose, little Rose, whom they had loved and who had trusted them so completely, who was coming back, and she must find the doors open.

Like a dream that day and the next seemed to her afterwards. The journey to the city, the meeting with the one so miraculously restored to them, the return home, were events that fixed themselves but dimly on her memory. The central fact that the companion of her girlhood, the wife of John’s youth, was with them again absorbed her faculties to the exclusion of lesser matters. It was not until Rose was installed in the sunny upper room and the domestic routine had adjusted itself to the change in affairs that the second wife realized the nature of the task she had set herself to do--that had been imposed upon her she whispered in bitter protest sometimes.

Her married life had been haunted by the fear that Rose might regain her reason, but the picture formed in her fancy had been of a wan and haggard creature heaping reproaches on the husband who had been unfaithful in her absence, and on the woman who had promised a dying father to care for her and had then usurped her place. Never had she, in her wildest dreams, contemplated anything like the reality which she now faced.

It was no pallid, wild-eyed woman who sat in the upper chamber, but a smiling guest whose every wish was honored. Strangely enough, the change that had been wrought in Rose’s mental condition had its counterpart in a physical transformation. The deathly paleness, the hollow cheek, the look of age which had characterized the insane woman had given way to a color rivaling the peachy bloom of twenty years before; the blue eyes, dull for so long, shone with all their old vivid brilliancy beneath the long lashes; the face was rounded out, and its youthful outlines were emphasized by the babyish rings of fair hair that lay about the white forehead. The weakness and languor that accompanied this change and did not pass away only added to her attractiveness. As she leaned back upon the cushions of the chair that she seldom left it was difficult to believe that the face was that of one who had lived past her girlhood. To the lookers-on it seemed that nature had endeavored to compensate for the lost years by a veritable renewal of youth and beauty.

It was not the difficult task that had been feared to guard her against injurious shocks. She quietly assumed, without question, that the relations of her loved ones were as they had been of old; indeed she seemed not to realize the time that had passed since she left them. John was her husband; Mary, the dear sister who had kept his house and awaited her recovery and return. Rose asked for her son but showed little emotion when told with hesitant caution--this was one of the things that could not be concealed or denied--that he had been a feeble child who, after five years of baby life, had left them and gone to heaven. The infant had not formed a part of the life she remembered, and knowledge of his death did not move her deeply. In telling the story of the little one whom she had loved like her own, Mary thought, with almost a guilty feeling, of the sturdy boy who called her mother and whose existence must be so carefully hidden. The presence of a boy in the house might be easily enough accounted for, but he must not come where “Aunt Rose” was lest she ask fatal questions.

“It is enough that you and I must deceive her, but my boy shall not be taught to lie or to deny his birthright,” said Mary, with fierce decision, and John had agreed.

A negro and his wife who had followed John from “ole Kaintuck” to find a home in the North, and who had been faithful servants ever since, formed the rest of the household. Visitors were few. A prairie road after November rains is not a thoroughfare sought by any except those on journeys of necessity. The few old friends or curious neighbors drawn thither by the news of Rose’s return were quietly cautioned not to touch on personal matters in their conversation with the invalid. This caution and the chance allusions Rose made to her “husband” led the visitors, ignorant of the kindly deceit being practiced upon her, and doubtful, as the most intelligent people often are, of the entire recovery of those once insane, to believe that her mind was not yet sound. So it came about that the little drama being enacted in that prairie farm-house had few spectators.

Rose expressed little curiosity concerning events that had happened during her absence, and showed no interest in affairs outside their own little circle. She was content to live like a child, taking up life where she had left it, and thinking nothing of the morrow. One thing only she demanded as her right, and that the hardest of all for one member of the household to grant. “Her John’s” society she claimed in all of his leisure moments, and as a farmer in the position of this man is an independent being who orders his own goings-in and comings-out, the result was that John, “my dear John,” as Rose called him, was at her side many hours in the day. Mary might be there, too; Rose wanted Mary also at hand, or within call, but without John she fretted and was restless.

At first Mary quieted her misgivings with a sense of shame at their existence. John, she said, was, like herself, trying to do his duty. She could serve the invalid in other ways; he could only bear her company. But the days went on, and that upper room became a place of torture for the lawful wife so steadfastly doing that which seemed best.

John was good; he was a good man, she said over and over. Not to himself would the loyal soul willingly utter a complaint of the one she loved, but at last she could no longer close her eyes to the truth. In an agony which could find no expression, Mary acknowledged to herself that her husband sought the presence of that transfigured woman who had been the bride of his youth, because in that presence he found pleasure and delight. All through the fifteen years of her life with him she had been conscious of a lack of responsiveness to the cravings of her affection; but she had stilled the aching of her heart with the thought, not that he mourned the loss of Rose, but that a sentiment of self-reproach for having set her aside in her misfortune had raised a barrier in his nature between himself and the companion in the wrong which he could not overcome. And now she knew that this coldness was because he loved this other as he had not loved her.

During those long years she had never been quite happy because of the invisible barrier; sometimes she had fancied herself wretched. Looking back to that time now, she felt, in the sharpness of her suffering, that she had lived in paradise. Then, it was a vague, unsubstantial thing that held them apart; now, it was a beautiful woman who thought herself his wife.

That room had a fascination for Mrs. Marshall; she suffered when there, but after leaving it she hastened back. Neither occupant seemed to mind her presence. Rose did not;--conscious of no wrong, why should she? John did not, being apparently unaware, as he sat near, and often with Rose’s pretty hand in his, that he was exceeding the part of a courteous host.

One day, to Mary, going quietly about some task in an outer room, floated a voice in soft reproach:

“John, do you love me?”

“Why Rose, my dear Rose, don’t you know we all love you?”

“‘We!’ I am not talking of ‘we,’ but of you. Do you know, John, that you have never kissed me since the day I came home? Is that the way a man behaves who loves his wife?”

And Mary, her heart faint with pain and shame and outraged love, saw the man succumb to the pleading eyes and outstretched arms. A kiss like that, she knew, had never been given her. Alive with the quick instinct to possess her own she started forward, but in a moment turned and crept away like a wounded creature, even then excusing the one who had pierced her soul.

“Could any man do differently? Only a saint could resist that loveliness for the sake of a woman such as I, worn with care and on-coming years.”

She could not breathe under that roof. Out into the chill November day she hastened, not caring whither. Heavy gusts of rain swept across the sky, shrouding the prairie in a gray mist through which the scattered trees loomed dimly, their bare boughs tossing like the spars of a ship in a laboring sea. Conscious of little but her own thoughts, she hurried on until her footsteps were checked by the surprised voice of Father Allen hastening from the performance of some errand of mercy to gain shelter from the wintry storm.

“Are you crazy, daughter?”

“It would be better if I were; it would save trouble. If John could have left me at the asylum when he brought Rose away how much better it would have been. But this life is killing me--I shall die, I shall die and be out of their way. Rose will get well--do you hear me, Father Allen? When I married John I prayed that Rose, my little cousin Rose, might never recover her mind. I founded my happiness on her misfortune. Now, I can see no happiness while we both live. I am like a murderer, Father Allen! But my punishment has come. The Lord does not wait until the hereafter.”

The burst of passion ended in tears and sobs, and the old man, dismounting from his horse, led her unresistingly home and delivered her into the hands of the faithful black ’Liza, whose ire had long since been excited by what she described to her spouse, Tom, as the “scan’lous goings on ob dat crazy woman with Mistah John.”

“I will remonstrate with Brother Marshall,” thought the ministerial visitor. “It is a peculiar case, and he means no harm, I am sure; but, really, it is a very trying position for Sister Marshall, and he should be more considerate.”

Mr. Allen was old; the woes of women did not impress him as they might have done a younger man, or as they would have impressed him even now, perhaps, had not the many sorrowful tales poured into his ears during the forty years of his ministry somewhat dulled his sensibilities. So it happened that he was not stern and severe in his remonstrance with Mr. Marshall when he drew him aside that night after supper, at which Mary presided, pale but self-possessed once more.

“If Mary wishes to tell Rose the truth and kill her, she may do so, or you may do it; I will not,” said John. “While she is here I shall treat her kindly, whatever others may do. Come up and see her.”

The old minister followed his host. In that radiant presence he, too, forgot the aching heart below and thought only of Rose and the wife of his youth whose likeness he fancied he saw in the face before him.

That night Rose moaned in her sleep, and Mary, rising from her couch near by, found the white hands clasped over the heart and wondered if the pangs of actual disease could equal her own pain.

Next day the wild storm continued and the minister, who had remained over night, prolonged his stay. Mary wandered restlessly over the house, now in the kitchen with ’Liza, now talking lightly with Father Allen in the pleasant parlor, but never long absent from the spot upstairs where all interest centered.

“You look pale--are you not well?” said Rose once. “John, you must not let Mary work too hard for me. Dear Mary! How should we do without her?”

Mary’s answer was short and brusque as she hurried away, thinking bitterly that John had no thought to spare for any illness of hers. Repenting, presently, of her ungracious response to a kind inquiry, and returning, she saw repeated the loving scene of the day before. John was on his knees by Rose’s side, her arms about his neck.

“I dreamed of our baby last night, John. When I am well--I think I shall be well soon--I want you to take me down to see where you have laid him. If I should die I want my--there, there--hush! I know you love me; I know you do, and I won’t talk again of leaving you. Poor John; he has had no one to pet and care for him, and he wants his little Rose.”

Half an hour later ’Liza, intent on some household service, found Mrs. Marshall lying prostrate on the floor of an unused room. She was not unconscious--women out of books do not faint when their hearts break--but nature had reached a limit, and after the storm of tears and strong crying had come a dullness of feeling that was almost insensibility.

’Liza stooped to raise her, but suddenly changed her plan. “This is Mistah John’s business, an’ I’ll be boun’ he ’tends to it.”

No delicately conscientious scruples troubled her mind.

“Mistah John’s a mighty good man; nevah had nothin’ to say ’gainst him befo’, but it do look mighty cur’ous to see him hangin’ roun’ a crazy woman that he divorced hisself from, an’ thinkin’ no mo’ o’ this hyer po’ lamb than if the ole elder hadn’t done married ’em fas’ an’ tight. ’Taint gwine on no mo’, nohow, if this chile kin stop it. Bettah be the crazy woman than Mis’ Mary if somebody gwine die fo’ it.”

And ’Liza, muttering ominously, marched to the front room. There even she paused.

“Ole ’Liza’s a mighty mean niggah when the blessed Lawd’s grace done loose its hold on her, but the devil aint nevah gwine make her huht Mis’ Rose, who looks like a angel o’ the ’pocalypse, crazy or no crazy.”

And so, very quietly, she called Mr. Marshall out of the charmed presence. Father Allen, on his way upstairs, was summoned also. Once in that distant room over the half conscious “Mis’ Mary,” ’Liza’s wrath broke forth.

“Ole ’Liza’s done thought a heap o’ you, Mistah John. I nevah reckoned I’us trailin’ out o’ ole Kaintuck aftah a man who was gwine have two wives undah one roof. Is yo’ that stone bline an’ onfeelin’, Mistah John, that yo’ aint see this blessed lamb dyin’ foh the love o’ yo’ on ’count o’ the way yo’ carryin’ on? What yo’ reckon the Lawd thinkin’ o’ class-leadah Mahshall ’bout now?”

She was on the floor holding Mary’s head on her ample bosom, loosening her dress, chafing her hands.

“Yo’ an’ Eldah Allen, hyer, yo’ alls think its Mis’ Mary’s duty to make it easy foh you uns, an’ aint a carin’ if she done make a bu’nt offering o’ herself. Yo’ alls may be mighty good in yo’ minds, but yo’ ain’ got no kind o’ feelin’s. Ary man what wants his wife to stan’ back an’ be sweet an’ purty wiles he honeys up to a nurrer woman is boun’ to get all broke up in he cackleations. No woman, black or white, ain’ made thataway. Ole Mis’ Duncan, down in Kaintuck, used to ’low, ‘’Liza,’ she ’low, ‘ebery male man that was evah bohned would be a Mohmon or a heathen Tuhk if he wasn’t ’shamed to have folks know it.’ Ole Mis’ hadn’t had good luck with her husban’s an’ was down on the sect pow’ful ha’d, but the longah I live the mo’ I’s ’pressed with the ’pinion that a man what wants to get into the heabenly kingdom’s got to live mighty close in this worl’, mighty close.”

John made no attempt to check this impetuous tirade, but during its progress his eyes had become wide open to the situation. His cheeks burned with shame. He took Mary from ’Liza’s arms and laid her upon a bed. The sound of his voice brought her to herself. Half dazed she struggled to her feet.

“Father Allen,” said the man, “We,--I have made a mistake. One wrong can not be set right by another. Mary, here, is my wife. We will have done with this deception, and will go and tell Rose, let the consequences be what they may.”

Supporting his wife, he moved toward the room across the house, followed by the old minister, with ’Liza, alarmed now at the result of her temerity, bringing up the rear. Even at that moment, Mary, beginning to recover herself, forgot her own grief and pleaded brokenly for delay. Strong as had been John Marshall’s resolution of a moment before, his steps faltered as they approached the door. A moment more and all paused involuntarily--arrested by the words they heard and the sight before them.

Standing by Rose’s side was Mary’s son, the lad of twelve. Coming into the house he had heard the sharp alarm of Aunt Rose’s bell and, finding no one to answer the call, had gone up and peeped bashfully in.

Rose, gasping for breath in sudden faintness, motioned for water and air. She revived presently, the boy watching her, meanwhile, with wondering eyes.

“I have heard you about the house,” she said faintly but with a smile; “why have you never been to see me before?”

“I wanted to come, but they said you must not be worried,” stammered the lad.

“‘They’? Who are ‘they’?”

“Why, father and mother,” he answered in surprise.

“Well, your father and mother, whoever they may be, should have known that boys would not trouble me; I like them. And what is your name, child?”

The group at the door heard this and the boy’s quick answer:

“My name is Richard--Dick, for short--Richard Marshall, you know.”

Mary staggered forward as if to stop the words on the boy’s lips.

“Save her, Lord!” she whispered.

Father Allen held her arm. “Hush! it is too late. It is the will of God.”

John stood as one paralyzed.

“Richard Marshall,” she repeated wonderingly--“the same name. And are you related to Mr. John Marshall? He did not tell me--”

“Why, Mr. John Marshall is my father, didn’t you know? You must have forgotten, Aunt Rose. And, of course, Mrs. Mary Marshall is my mother.”

The revelation which they had so guarded against had been made; the shock so dreaded had been given.

Rose seemed to realize the truth slowly. Her startled eyes fell upon the terror-stricken group at the doorway. Gradually, as comprehension of the situation dawned upon her, a change came over the sweet face. It grew gray and sharp; the brightness vanished. She suddenly seemed no longer young.

“Is it true, John?”

“It is true,” he whispered.

“Why, then, when you had taken another in my place did you deceive me? Why was I allowed to think--”

“Rose, my darling, we did it for the best. We thought you would suffer; we had done you a wrong and were afraid--Rose, Rose, it was for your sake. Can you not forgive?”

John Marshall had drawn near to the woman on whom the shadow of death now plainly lay. Mary crept to the bedside and crouched there with head bowed low. For a long time, hours it seemed to the spell-bound watchers, the dying woman lay silent with her hands clenched over her heart. No sound was heard save the dash of rain upon the window and the crackling of the fire upon the hearth. At last she spoke:

“It would be better for us all if I had died long ago, or if I had never come to myself in the asylum. I have wanted to live, but it does not matter now. I will go to my baby; the Lord will let me have him for my own in heaven. I thought,”--the words came slowly and more faint--“I thought you were all mine, all mine, and you belonged to Mary. I had no one. But John,” triumphantly--it was the last flash of the woman nature regardless of human law for love’s sake--“John, you loved me best once; you love me now, don’t you, John?”

The man, with his head bent upon the pillow, sobbed aloud.

“Always, my darling.”

After a pause she spoke again:

“You did not mean to hurt. I have been happy--happy. Kiss me, John.”

The face brightened with a strange light.

“Mary, don’t cry. I--am--going--to--my--baby. Do--you--see? Mary, forgive----.”

Then the blue eyes looked on death.

A pale gleam of sunshine, the first for days, broke through the clouds and fell upon the still face. Father Allen, with uplifted hands, whispered softly, “Let us pray.”

* * * * *

Six months later, Father Allen and the young pastor, driving across the prairie, stopped again at the Marshall home. Only the wife was within. In answer to a whispered inquiry from the older man, as he departed, she said gently, but with an unconscious touch of defiance in her speech: “I am happy, of course. He is mine, now--all mine. One does not fear the dead.”

It was not quite a look of peace that filled her eyes as they left her gazing wistfully down the length of the level road.

A mile beyond, at the other side of the broad prairie farm, was the little cottage where the dead Rose had spent the first brief months of her married life. It had never been occupied since by strangers. A marble shaft gleamed through the trees near by. Against the fence surrounding this leaned John Marshall, absorbed in contemplation of the two flower-grown mounds within. His horse, in the road at a little distance, neighed impatiently, but the watcher gave no heed.

“It seemed to me expedient,” said Father Allen, half to himself, as they drove, unnoticed, by; “but I may have been wrong. The Lord knows.”

THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT

There is a conviction among certain educated people that with
increased intellectual culture comes a keener susceptibility to
pleasure and pain. Is it so? Turn anywhere among the “short and
simple annals of the poor,” and we can find passion, and romance, and
tragedy. They do not call these incidents of life by such names; they
only live them. When love or suffering--and what else is life?--comes
to us, we can analyze our emotions, and label them with high-sounding
words; we can tell of them in verse, or in language compared to which
theirs is but an inarticulate cry. Are our feelings, therefore,
deeper?

“Slave! Yassum, an’ sot free by de prockelmation. Hab I lib in dis yer house so long an’ yo’ nebah know I’se done been a slave?” And Aunty Smith, the African dame, who represented that domestic institution known as “our girl,” gave the fire a vigorous poke.

“Tell yo’ ’bout it? Dar ain’t nuffin’ to tell wuth the while for yo’ to listen. An’ ole niggah ain’t got no hist’ry--dat’s for white folkses. Didn’t I heah yo’ a readin’ ’bout de hist’ry ob Jawge Washin’ton--an’ den talkin’ to me? Sho!”

The black lips parted over broad white teeth in a quick laugh, but no smile touched the solemn eyes given to her race by generations of bondage.

“Time to be a-takin’ yo’ quinine, honey; bettah take it mighty reg’lah ef yo’ specks to get dem chills bruck. ‘Trouble?’ Yas, indeedy, I’s had heaps ob trouble, but I nebah did go roun’ talkin’ ’bout it. Makes mattahs wuss to be forebber a-talkin’ an’ a-talkin’ ob yer trials. An’ I’s allus noticed dis yer fac’, dat mos’ people likes to tell deir own ’sperience ’stiddy o’ hearin’ ’bout yours. Co’se I has to tell somebody an’ I tells de Lawd, but ’pears like de Lawd’s a long way off, sometimes. Ef I could be shore dat He allus heard a pore niggah I couldn’t nebah grieve no mo’.”

“Has doubt seized the believers?” I thought. “If the rest of us were sure of that one thing what burdens would be lifted!”