In a Mysterious Way

This had been the original form of the statement which Mrs. Ray had later repeated to Mrs. Wiley.

It was true that they seemed very far apart, but were nevertheless apparently happy together. The week had been a pleasant week to both. Not, perhaps, as the town supposed, but pleasant anyway.

"I'm selfish enough to wish that it wasn't at an end to-night," Ingram said, as he took his piece of blackberry pie from Mary Cody; "you're a godsend in this place, Alva."

"But you'll like Lassie," his companion replied; "she's a charming little girl, – and I love her so. I always have loved the child, and just now it seemed to me as if it would do both her and me good to be together. Life for me is so wonderful – I don't like to be selfish with these days. My thoughts are too happy to keep to myself. I want some one to share my joy."

Ingram looked at her quizzically. "And I won't do at all?" he asked.

"You, – oh, you're away all day. And then, besides, you're still so material, so awfully material. You can't deny it, Ronald, you're frightfully material – practical – commonplace. Of the world so very worldly."

He laughed lightly. "Just because I don't agree with you about the dam," he said; "there, that's it, you know. Why, my dear girl, suppose all America had been reserved for its beauty, set aside for the perpetual preservation of the buffaloes and the scenery, – where would you and I be now?"

She looked away from him in her curious, contemplative way. "If you knew," she said, after a minute, "how silly and petty and trivial such arguments sound to thinking people, you'd positively blush with shame to use them. It's like arguing with a baby to try to talk Heaven's reason with the ordinary man; he just sees his own little, narrow, earthly standpoint. I wonder whether it's worth while to ever try to be serious with you. You know very well that the most of your brethren would be willing to wreck the Yellowstone from end to end, if they could make their own private and personal fortunes building railways through it."

Ingram laughed again. "Where would the country be without railroads?" he asked.

She withdrew the meaning in her gaze out of the infinite beyond, where it seemed to float easily, and centred it on him.

"Just to think," she said, with deep meaning, "that ten years ago I might have married you, and had to face your system of logic for life!"

"Is it as bad as that?"

"It might have been. We might have made it so before we knew better. That's the rub in marriage. Every one does it before he or she has settled his or her own views. I wasn't much of an idealist ten years ago, and you were not much of anything. But if I could have married any one then, I should have married you."

A shadow fell upon his face. He turned his chair a little from the table. "If I was not the right one, I wish that you had married some other man then, – I wish it with all my heart. You would have been so much happier. You're not happy now – you know that. It would have been so much better for you if you had married."

She smiled and shook her head. "Oh, no. It is much better as it is. Infinitely better. It's like coming up against a great granite wall to try and talk to you, Ronald, because you simply cannot understand what I mean when I say words, but nevertheless, believe me, I'm on my knees day and night, figuratively speaking, thanking God that I didn't marry then. I wasn't meant to marry then. I've been needed single."

He took out his cigarette case. "What were you meant for, then, do you think?" he queried; "nothing except as a convenience for others?"

"I was meant to learn, and then later, perhaps, to teach."

"To learn?" He looked his question with a quick intensity. "To teach? – " the question deepened sharply.

She smiled. "Yes. To learn so that I could teach. I feel some days that I was born to teach, and of course no one may hope to teach until he has learned first."

He shrugged his shoulders and laughed a little. She smiled again. "You great, granite wall, you don't understand a bit, do you? Never mind, light your cigarette, and then tell me what time it is. We must not forget Lassie, you know."

He looked at his watch. "Ten minutes yet."

"Dear child, how tired she'll be. Never mind, she'll have a good rest during the next ten days."

"Will she stay ten days? She'll be here as long as you will then, won't she?"

"Yes; I'm going when she does."

"You think that the house will be done by that time?"

"I know that it will be done. It must be done."

He took his cigarette up in his fingers, turned it about a little, and then looked suddenly straight at her. "Alva, tell me the mystery, tell me the story, please. What is the house for?"

She looked at him and was silent.

"Why won't you tell me?"

Still silence. Still she looked at him.

"You'll tell her when she comes. Why not me?"

She spoke then: "She'll be able to understand, perhaps. You couldn't."

Ingram compressed his lips. "And am I so awfully dense?" he asked, half hurt.

"Not so dense, but, as yet, too ignorant. Or else it is that I am still too little myself to be able to rise above some human sentiments. And there is one point where endurance of the world's opinion is such refinement of torture, that only the very strongest and greatest can go willingly forward to meet and suffer the inevitable. The inevitable is close to me these days; it is approaching closer hourly, and there is no possible way for me to make you or the world understand how I feel in regard to it all. And I shrink from facing the kind of thing that I shall soon have to face any sooner than is absolutely necessary. And so I won't tell you."

She stopped. Although her voice was firm, her eyes had again become far away in their expression, and she seemed almost to have forgotten him even while making this explanation for his sake. He was watching her with deepest interest, and the curiosity in his eyes burned more brightly than ever.

"But if it is all as terrible as you make out," he said, "how can you make that young girl understand what you suppose to be so far beyond me?"

"Because I can teach her."

"How?"

"She'll be with me night and day for ten days. We'll have a good deal of time together. And then, too, she is a woman. Women learn some lessons easily. Easier far than men."

"Is it right to teach her such a lesson as this?"

"Why do you ask that, when you do not know what my lesson will be? How can you dare fancy that it could possibly be wrong?"

Ingram paused for a minute, a little staggered. Then he said, bluntly: "The world is made up of reasonable men and women, and it seems to me best that all men and women should be reasonable. What isn't reasonable is wrong. Forgive me, Alva, but you don't sound reasonable."

"You think that I am not reasonable? Therefore I must be wrong. That's your logic?"

He hesitated. "Perhaps I think you wrong. I must confess that to me you often seem so."

She thought a minute, considering his standpoint.

"Ronald," she said then, "'reasonable' is a term that is given its meaning by those in power, isn't that so? 'Reasonable' is what best serves the ends of those who generally seek to serve no ends except their own. It's true that I don't at all care what a few selfish and near-sighted individuals think of me. I have thrown in my lot with the unreasonable majority, the poor, the suffering, and those yet to be born who are being robbed of their birthright. To leave my mystery and go back to our familiar difference, there's the dam to illustrate my exact meaning. The 'reasonable' use of the river out there is to build a dam, and so make a few more millionaires and give employment for a few years to a few thousands of Italians. The 'unreasonable' use to make of the river is to preserve it intact for tired, weary souls to flee to through all the future, so that their bodies may breathe God and life into their being again, and go forth strong. You know you don't agree with me as to that view of that case, so how can I expect you to disagree with the general opinion that the 'reasonable' thing for me to do personally is to take my life and get all the pleasure that I can from it? The 'unreasonable' view, the one I hold myself, is that I have elected to take it and give – not get – all the pleasure that I can with it. Of course you don't understand that unreasonableness, and so you don't agree with me; but I can tell you one thing, Ronald," she leaned forward and suddenly threw intense meaning into her words, "and that is this. My story – my mystery as you call it so often – is at once a very old mystery and a very new one. I have suffered, and I am to suffer, most terribly. The happiness to which I am looking forward is going to be an ordeal for which all that I have undergone until now will be none too much preparation. But in the hour of my keenest agony I shall be happier and more hopeful than you will ever be able to realize in your life. Unless you change completely. Take my word for that."

She rose as she spoke, and he rose, too, looking towards her with eyes that plainly subscribed to Mrs. Ray's opinion as expressed in the simple vernacular.

"Oh, no, I can't understand, and I don't believe," he said: "but I am able to meet trains, anyhow."

A large cape lay on an empty chair near by, and she took it up now.

"But I'm going alone," she said, as she slipped into it.