In a Mysterious Way

THERE never was the human tragedy, comedy, or melodrama, yet, which did not have one or more dispassionate observers. This is strictly true because, even if a man goes off into the wilderness to fight his fight out utterly alone, there are moments when one part of his own spirit will dissever itself from all the rest and, standing forth, tell him of his progress or retrogression with a pitiless, unbiassed truth. The wilderness is advisable for that very reason, but no one makes a greater mistake than when he or she goes to a small far-away village and pleasantly terms it "the wilderness," supposing soul-solitude an integral part thereof. It is very right, proper, and conventional to view life from one's own standpoint, but the real facts of the case are old and trite enough to warrant me in repeating the statement that all doings in this world have their dispassionate observer.

Mrs. Ray was the natural observer for the town of Ledge. The town was not quite aware that added to her keen powers of observation she was also the Voice of the community. People never expressed themselves fully, without first knowing what she said. Public opinion simmered all over the township, so to speak, and then finally boiled over in Mrs. Ray.

It will be quite impossible to impress upon the ordinary reader the importance of such Public Opinion, unless a few paragraphs are devoted to the town of Ledge and its history. If one fails to properly appreciate the town of Ledge, the tale might just as well have been located in North Ledge, South Ledge, Ledgeville, Ledge Centre, or any of the other Ledges.

Therefore on behalf of the lovely little hamlet of Ledge itself, I will state in as few words as possible that it lies upon a hill overlooking one of the most beautiful and picturesque scenes in all Northeastern America; that it took its name and being from a great and noble-hearted man, who, passing that way by chance, half a century since, paused near its site to sadly contemplate the denuded banks of the little river winding its way amidst the débris and desolation left by the lumber barons of the period. Time was when the same banks had been smiling terraces covered thick with primeval pines, but "civilization" had demanded their downfall and they fell. Fell without warning, and also without discretion. Fell forever, flinging the riches of all the future aside for the plenty of one man's day. Blackened stumps, great beds of unsightly chips, waste which would never have been called waste in any other land, ruthless destruction, – all this disfigured the landscape that stretched before that visitor of fifty years ago. His heart was heavy, for he was one who loved everything good, and trees and beauty are two of man's best gifts from above; but while he gazed over what to him and many others was almost as much desecration as desolation, he saw, forever flowing – however choked – the little river below. Like the thread of idealism which illuminates the most despairing situation, so flowed the silvery stream down through the scene before him. Its bed was clogged with drift, its banks covered with rotting rubbish, yet the promise of its beauty remained; and then and there the traveller formulated a plan for its redemption to the end that unborn generations might revel in the realization of that of which he alone seemed then conscious.

The town of Ledge was a part of what resulted. There had to be a town, and Ledge came into existence. Where there is work to be done, come the workers, and with them come towns. Ledge came and grew. To the call of prosperity many other Ledges gathered a little later; but they never enjoyed the dignity of the one and original. The first Ledge was tenacious of its priority. It held to its privileges as rigidly as any medieval knight held to his. Castled upon the hill above, it simulated power in more ways than one. For many years all the others had to go to Ledge for their mail. Ledge also owned the sheriff, the blacksmith, and the lawyer, and kept a monopoly on the summer excursionist; the express office was its natural perquisite; a bend of the canal took it in, and when the canal went the railroad came to console the losers. Mr. Ledge's plans, which had turned his private estate into a public park for the gently disposed, also held Ledge in high honor. To visit Ledge Park from any of the other Ledges was rendered well-nigh impossible. The little town stood like a sentinel at the end of the Long Bridge, and at the top of the First Fall. Every picnicker had to go through it, had to check such articles as could not conveniently be carried all day, in its hotel; had to get whatever he might feel disposed to drink in the same place. During the summer, visitors were so plenteous that it became the fashion in Ledge to despise them, and that right heartily, too. The people who brought the town most of its means of livelihood received much that species of sentiment with which an irritating husband and father is frequently viewed. It was the fashion in Ledge to despise city people and their ways in all things; even their coming to see the Falls was referred to as special proof of their singularly feeble minds, while the way in which the visitors climbed and walked was the favorite topic of mirthful criticism, all summer long. Criticism is a strange habit. It is contagious, thrives in any soil or no soil at all, and is far more destructive to him or her who gives it birth than it can possibly be to any other person. Not that it really is destructive, but that the weight of criticism rarely falls where it is supposed to be most needed.

The summer visitors evoked so much comment between May and November that a great longing to have something to talk about between November and May followed. It therefore became the fashion in Ledge to talk of everything and everybody, and as the summer visitors were rated low, the rest of the world was pretty freely given over to the same cataloguing. It was usual to rate Ledgeville and all the other Ledges particularly low, and this opinion held firm, until a biting edge was given it by a second railroad which came down the valley's bottom to the unspeakable wrath of the hills on either side and of Ledge in special. It took several years to assimilate the second railroad, and resume the even tenor of life. But the adjustment was finally made, and at the date of this story Ledge was a wee country idyll set like a pearl amidst the beautiful environment of that fairest of country counties. He who was responsible for town and environment lived on his own estate near by, and came in for his share of consideration from the tongues of his namesake. The great philanthropist was busily engaged in his battle to preserve intact, for the good of the many to come, that matchless picture with its open Bible of Nature's Own History. Of the picture and its practical value, Ledge had its own opinion. It had its own opinion of the dam, too. It had its own opinion of Alva. And of Lassie. And of Ingram. And all these opinions flowed freely forth through the medium of Mrs. Ray. As that lady herself put it: "Whether I'm picking chickens or digging fence-posts, or carting the United States mail down to the train in the wheelbarrow that I had to buy and the United States Government won't pay for, – I never am idle; I'm always taking in something."

And it was quite true. Whatever Mrs. Ray was working at, her brain was never idle; it was always absorbing something. It was not uncommon to see a neighbor walking with her while she ploughed, conversation going briskly on meanwhile. She swept the church with company, and she almost never sat alone between mail times. It was a full, busy life, and an interesting one. It was full of importance and responsibility, too. Mrs. Ray liked to be responsible and was naturally important. Her opinions were in the main correct, but sometimes she did draw wrong conclusions. For instance, when she looked down the road the morning after Lassie's arrival, and saw the two friends departing over the Long Bridge.

"Oh, dear," she said to whoever was near by at the minute, "I smell trouble for that oldest one if she's planning to keep that pretty girl here long. That man is going to fall in love with that pretty girl. He never has cared much for her, anyway. He don't even seem to like to go over to their house with her; she goes alone mostly. Yes, indeed."

The somebody sitting near by at the minute was Mrs. Dunstall. And Pinkie, of course. They had dropped in to see if they had any mail, and had found Mrs. Ray cutting the hair of the three youngest children left her, first by her predecessor and then by Mr. Ray himself.

"Sit down," she had said cordially; "the second train isn't in yet, and it's got to come in and go out and let the mail-train come in, even if the mail ain't late, on account of the wreck."

"Oh, is there a wreck?" Mrs. Dunstall asked anxiously.

"Yes. Forty-four run into a open switch up at Cornell. If the switch is open, I never see why the train don't just run on out the other end and keep right along; but all the accidents is as often open switches as anything, so I guess there's a reason. At any rate, the wrecking-train's gone up and the second mail's going to be late. Tip your head a little, Billy. Yes, indeed."

"I wonder if we'd better wait," said Mrs. Dunstall, unwrapping her shawl somewhat and taking a chair. "What do you say, Pinkie?"

Pinkie was already seated. She weighed two hundred pounds and never stood up when she could help it. "I say 'Wait,'" said Pinkie.

Mrs. Dunstall thereupon sat down, too, and after ten minutes of a most solemn silence Mrs. Ray finished her task and dismissed the children. She faced her callers, then, folding her little gray shoulder-wrap tightly across her bosom as she did so, and tucking the ends in close beneath her armpits. The little gray shawl was one of the first signs of winter in Ledge; Mrs. Ray always donned it at the beginning of October, and never took it off before the last day of May.

"Well!" she said now; "anything new come up?"

"Millicent come on the same train with that girl," Mrs. Dunstall began at once. "I wasn't really expecting any mail this morning, but I thought I might as well come down about now and tell you how Millicent come on the train with her. You know who I mean, of course?"

"She knows," said Pinkie.

"I s'posed you would. And so Millicent come on the same train with her. Seems too curious of Millicent coming on the same train with her, when Millicent hasn't been on a train but twice in her life before, and then to think that she would come back with that girl. Things do fall out queer in this world. She sit right in the seat behind her, too. That was awful curious, I think."

Mrs. Ray gave the ends of her shawl a fresh tuck, and drew in some extra breath.

"You never can tell," she began; "things do come about mighty strange in this world. Yes, indeed. It's the unexpected that has happened so much that it's got to be a proverb in the end. I always feel when a thing has been coming about till it gets to be proverb, it's no use me disputing it. Dig around in smoking ashes long enough, and I've never failed to find some sparks yet. And what you just said is all true as true can be. It's the unexpected as always happens. Look at me, for instance. Look at how the post-office fell out of a clear sky on me, and Mr. Ray much the same, too. I never had any idea of either of 'em beforehand, and now here I am stamping letters morning and night to keep up the payments on his tombstone. Things do work in circles so in this world. I always say if I hadn't been postmistress no one would have expected to see my husband have a fringed cloth hang on a pillar over his dead body, and if I hadn't been postmistress I never could have paid for such a thing. But where there's a will there's a way, which is another proverb as I've never found go wrong, unless your way is to stay in bed while you're willing."

"Oh, but you never could have put anything plain on Mr. Ray – not in your circumstances, and him passing the plate every Sunday and you the sexton yourself." Mrs. Dunstall looked almost shocked at the mere fancy.

"Couldn't I! Well, I guess I could if I'd had my own way. But I wasn't allowed my own way. Nobody is. That's what holds us back in this world; it's the being expected to live up to what we've got; and in this country, where the garden is open to the public, most of us has to live up to a good deal more'n we've got. If America ever takes to walls, it'll show it's going to begin to economize. It'll mean we're giving up tulips and going in for potatoes. And you'll see, Mrs. Dunstall, that just as soon as we really have to economize we'll begin to build walls. There's something about economy as likes walls around the house – high ones."

"You was raised with walls, wasn't you?" said Mrs. Dunstall.

"I should think I was. I'm English-born – I am."

"How old was you when you come to this country, Mrs. Ray?"

"I've lived here thirty-eight years; that's how old I was."

"You wasn't here before Mr. Ledge?"

"No, I wasn't, nor before the Falls, neither."

"Why, the Falls was here before Mr. Ledge," said Mrs. Dunstall, enlarging her eyes. "Oh, I see, you're making a joke, Mrs. Ray."

"I do occasionally make a joke," said Mrs. Ray, giving her shawl another tuck.

"Well, to go back to the girl," said Mrs. Dunstall, "she sit right behind Millicent too, and what makes it all the stranger, is, she asked Millicent the name of the next station. Millicent told her it was going to be Ledge, and asked her if she was for Ledge, because if she was for East Ledge she ought to stay on one station more. You know, Mrs. Ray, how folks are always getting off here for East Ledge, and having to stay all night or hire a buggy to drive over – two shillings either way; and Millicent asked her, too, if she was for Ledge's Crossing, because if she was for the Crossing the train don't stop there, and Millicent always was kind-hearted and wanted her to know it right off. You know how Millicent is, Pinkie; the last time she rode on a train she threw the two bags off to the old lady who forgot them, and they weren't the old lady's bags; they were the conductor's, and he had to run the train way back for them; he did feel so vexed about them, Millicent said."

"So vexed," said Pinkie.

"And so then Millicent asked her if maybe she was for Ledgeville, because if she was for Ledgeville she was on the wrong train, and had ought to have took the Pennsylvania, unless she telegraphed from Ledge Centre for the omnibus to come up, which nobody ever knows to do; and then it come into Millicent's head as maybe she was going to visit Mr. Ledge, in which case goodness knows what she would do, for although he gets his mail at Ledge, he gets his company at Castile, and here was that poor child five miles of bridge and walk out of her way, and Millicent's heart just bleeding for her, she looked so tired. But she said she was for Ledge."

"Yes, I could have told you she was for Ledge," said Mrs. Ray; "there was two letters for her here. When I have letters for people without having the people for the letters, it always means one or two things, – either the people are coming or the letters are addressed wrong. I learned that long ago. Yes, indeed."

"Millicent says she liked her looks from the first," pursued Mrs. Dunstall, "only her hat did amuse her. I must say the hats folks from town wear is about the most amusing things we ever see here. One year they pin 'em to their fronts and next year to their backs, and Millicent says this one was on hindside before with a feather duster upside down on top. She never saw anything like it; but she said the girl was so innocent of what a sight she was that she wouldn't have let her see her laughing behind her back for anything. What do you think of city people anyhow, Mrs. Ray?"

"City people are always mooney," responded Mrs. Ray; "such mooney ideas as come into their heads in the country always. Seems like they save all their mooney ideas for the country. Yes, indeed. They take off their hats and their shoes and carry stones around in their handkerchiefs; and when I see 'em slipping and scrambling up and down that steep bank all the hot summer long, and taking that walk to the Lower Falls that's enough to kill any Christian with brains, I most humbly thank our merciful Father in heaven that I've stayed in the country and kept my good senses. Yes, indeed. And then what they lug back to town with them! That's what uses me all up! Roots and stones! Why, I saw some one bring a root from the Lower Falls last year, yes, indeed."

"That walk to the Lower Falls is terrible," said Mrs. Dunstall, meditatively. "I took it once, – and you, too, – didn't you, Pinkie?"

"Twice," said Pinkie.

"I took it once, too," said Mrs. Ray, who was never loath to discuss that famous promenade. "Mr. Ray and me took it together. It was when we first met. He took me, and we walked to the Lower Falls. It was a awful walk; I never see a worse one, myself. They say it isn't so bad now. Of course, the time I went with Mr. Ray was while he was still alive. It was harder then. He asked me to marry him coming back. Oh, I'll never forget that awful walk!"

"It's bad enough yet," said Mrs. Dunstall. "Mr. Ledge has done all he could to build things to catch hold of where you'd go head over heels to heaven if he hadn't, but it's a awful walk still. And then the steps! Why, Nathan and Lizzie was there last summer, and Lizzie says all the way down she was thinking how she was ever going to be able to get back, and all the way back she was thinking just the same thing. Going, you go down steps till it seems like there never would come the bottom, and coming back you come up steps till you're ready to move to Ledgeville and live on the bottoms for life. You know how that is, Pinkie?"

"Yes," said Pinkie.

"It wouldn't do any good to move to Ledgeville to get rid of the Lower Falls," said Mrs. Ray, "because the dam is going to do away with the Lower Falls and drown Ledgeville entirely. That's the next little surprise the city folks will be giving us."

"I shall like to stand on the bridge the day they let the water in over the dam the first time," said Mrs. Dunstall. "It'll be a great sight to see the valley turn into a lake, and South Ledge and Ledgeville go under."

"I wouldn't look forward to it too much if I was you," said Mrs. Ray; "it's going to take three or four years to dig that dam, they tell me. You can't lay out a lake and break up three sets of falls in a minute."

"They haven't got to do something to all the Falls," said Mrs. Dunstall. "Josiah Bates was holding stakes for one of the surveyors yesterday, and he heard him say as the Lower Falls wouldn't need a thing, for it was a mill-race already."

"Well, it's a blessing if there's one thing ready to their hands," said Mrs. Ray, "for I must say the way the State has took hold of us, since Mr. Ledge set out to give it something for nothing, is a caution. If he'd offered to sell the Falls at cost price, we'd of had a petition and our taxes increased and been marked 'keep off the grass,' in all directions; but just because he offered to give it to 'em all cleared up and in order, they must tear around and build a dam and drown five villages and go cutting up monkey-shines generally. Yes, indeed."

"They do say that the dam will keep the Falls, instead of spoiling them," said Mrs. Dunstall; "they say the Falls is stratifying backward, and is most through being falls, anyway, and if the dam is built, we'll all have that to look at always."

"It'll be all one to me," said Mrs. Ray; "I never get time to look at nothing, anyway, unless it's folks waiting for their mail, and goodness knows they've long ceased to interest me."

Mrs. Dunstall looked a bit uncertain as to how to receive this outburst of confidence. "It does you good to take a little rest," she said at last; "you work too hard for a woman of your time of life, Mrs. Ray."