In a Mysterious Way

"And those case-knives, too," Mrs. Ray continued; "did they have 'em on, I wonder."

"Oh, the case-knives don't count," said Mrs. O'Neil; "they were left here by a travelling man. He was around to-day and asked if it was here that he left them. I meant to tell you, but dear, dear, I've had so much to do, seems like."

Mrs. Ray was much taken aback, but quickly recovered herself.

"Oh, well, they could have used a hat-pin just as well. Anyhow, they might have got up in the night and murdered him some way. Mrs. Lathbun could have held him while Hannah Adele just stuck anything handy into him in every direction. I never could see what they had the case-knives for, anyhow, if it wasn't on the chance of some such game. For two women to carry six case-knives instead of combs and tooth-brushes is very suspicious in itself, I think."

"But, they weren't carrying them," said Mrs. O'Neil. "Jack thought they had them for opening windows, but to think of them staying here three weeks and no baggage. It makes me wild."

"Well, you and Mr. O'Neil are easy," said Mrs. Ray; "you're very mooney, both of you. You can't deny that, Nellie, – you and your husband haven't got real good common sense, or you'd have nailed their windows on from the outside the day you first mistrusted them."

"Well, we won't be mooney any more, anyhow," said Mrs. O'Neil; "the drillers came to-day with two freight cars of machinery, but Jack had them pay a week in advance. He says he won't even trust the State after this."

"I don't trust the United States any further than I can see 'em," said Mrs. Ray; "but this has been a good lesson for you, Nellie. You won't be letting any sharper that comes along wear your gran'mother's Paisley shawl while he spies out the road he's going to skip out over next, again."

"Indeed and I won't," said Mrs. O'Neil feelingly.

"Sammy Adams was in to spend the afternoon," Mrs. Ray went on. "We talked the question of my marrying him all over again. He always asks me when he comes for the whole afternoon like that, and he had such a hard time getting it all out to-day with people running in to talk about the Lathbuns every second, that I just had to appreciate the way he stuck to it clear through to the end."

"What did you say?" asked Mrs. O'Neil.

"I didn't say much. I was too busy talking to the others, you know. Yes, indeed. But I was sorry for him. He's so scared sleeping alone in his house for fear of maybe being swindled in his bed before he knows it. And now he's worried for fear the dam is going to drown him unexpectedly, too. They say if that dam is built and does bu'st, the Johnstown Flood won't be in it with Rochester. The folks that want the Falls saved 'll get their chance to say, 'I told you so' then; but that won't help Sammy much."

"What did you say?" Mrs. O'Neil asked again.

"Well, when I got a chance, I told him I'd despise a man who'd let me keep on working as hard as I work now, but that if any man was to ask me to give up the church, or the post-office, or my chickens, that would show he didn't know me, right in the start."

"What did he say to that?" Mrs. O'Neil asked with interest.

"He didn't know what to say at first, but then he's the kind of man that never does know what to say. I declare, Nellie, I do think men that want to marry women act too foolish for words. Yes, indeed. If a man wants to do anything else in the world he gets to work and does it; but if he wants to marry a woman he just sits still and looks silly and leaves it to the woman to be done or not."

"Do you think so?" said Mrs. O'Neil.

"Think so," said Mrs. Ray; "I know so. I've had men acting foolish around where I was all my life. I've tripped over 'em while sweeping, cooking, washing, tending Mr. Ray's family by his second wife, sorting mail, – why, I've had men thinking what a good wife I'd make all my life, and looking so like idiots while they thought it that I wouldn't look at it like they did for any money. They stop by the fence when I'm ploughing, and just grin with thinking what a hired man I'd make. I was cleaning the long aisle carpet at the church last Wednesday, and that minister that's visiting our minister couldn't keep away from the window. When I take my eggs and chickens to market, the buyer down there looks at how I've got those eggs packed and pinches my chickens, and then he turns to me and goodness, but his glance is loving."

"Well, you're a very smart woman, you know," said Mrs. O'Neil.

"I know that; I know it just as well as you do. But I'm a woman, and I'd like to meet one man as was a man. I know men pretty well; I knew Mr. Ray better than he knew himself. Mr. Ray thought he was doing me an honor to marry me, and I knew he wasn't, and I lived with him fifteen years and never threw it in his face once. I let him talk about his ancestors and I never talked about mine. He thought I didn't have any; he never realized I kept still so as to keep from telling such stories as he did. His ancestors! I'd like to know what sort of ancestors he had! If he'd had any ancestors, he'd have been bound to be descended from them, I should think, in which case he wouldn't have been a Ray. The fact that he and his father called themselves Jared and spelt it Jarrod was enough for me; but to make a long story short I'm going to marry Sammy Adams, and I ran down to tell you that at the same time that I brought the letter."

There was an outbreak of exclamations and then a beginning at congratulations, but Mrs. Ray stopped those.

"I don't want congratulations," she said; "there isn't anything to congratulate me about, for I never tried to get him, so I haven't had a success or anything to be proud of. It's just that the dam is so likely to be going to drown him out that he wants to rent my second floor and pay the rent every first Monday in the month. I'm going to go straight on with my life, and continue to save my own money to finish educating Mr. Ray's children by his second wife. We shall go to church together, and he'll sit with me evenings when I ain't too tired, or when he's nervous over case-knives and swindling. He's going to pay me for all his tailoring and all his hair-cuts, but he's to say when he thinks he needs anything new or it's getting too long. He'll buy our potatoes and chickens of me at the regular price, but I'll furnish my own eggs, like I always have."

"It's settled, then?" said Mrs. O'Neil, with a slight smile.

"Yes, it's settled. I don't believe the dam will ever be dug, but I'll marry Sammy all the same."

"You're right about the dam, Mrs. Ray," Alva said, speaking for the first time. "I don't believe it will ever be built, either; the Falls have too many friends. Besides, there must come a time when the God of All will say to our American Mammon, 'So far and no further shalt thou go,' and I believe the time is now and that the place is here."

"Well, I don't know about all that," said Mrs. Ray; "but Josiah Bates drove the surveyors home yesterday, and he gathered from them that if they built that dam and made that lake, the lake was pretty sure to burst out around back of the Wiley place – that low place you know – and we'd have a new waterfall in through the Wiley cow-pasture, even if we didn't have nothing worse."

"Goodness me!" cried Mrs. O'Neil, "what would the Wileys say to that!"

"I don't know what the Wileys would say to that," said Mrs. Ray; "but it made me know what I'd say to Sammy. Yes, indeed. If there isn't going to be any dam, the summers here are going to go on exactly as they used to, and I've got to have a man to bring up my ice! You know my motto, 'He moves in a mysterious way,' and I can see now why the Lathbuns and the dam both come. I had a dreadful time last summer getting my ice up, and as long as everybody's been betting all along that I'd always marry Sammy some day, I might as well do it now as any time. Yes, indeed."

"You are very sensible," said Alva, rising, "and I'm sure that you will be very happy. I congratulate you." She held out her hand. "Good-bye."

"I'm sorry you're going so soon," said Mrs. Ray, clasping it warmly, "you've meant such a lot of cancellation, and then I've got very fond of you, too."

Alva smiled. "I'm only going out on the bridge just now for a little," she said, turning to Mrs. O'Neil. "I'll be back shortly."

Mrs. O'Neil glanced towards the window. "It's snowing harder and harder," she said; "wrap up warm."

Alva went quietly out. When they were alone, Mrs. Ray shook her head. "She looks bad," she said; "I'm not sure that she didn't care for him, after all. She's got that mooney look. I know just the look. I'd have looked just that way by spring, if I'd taken Gran'ma Benton and the parrot. I'm glad I've decided to marry Sammy, instead."

"You won't take them, then?" asked Mrs. O'Neil.

"No, I couldn't stand Sammy and a parrot at once, and then, too, he might quarrel with the parrot, or Gran'ma Benton might make trouble between Sammy and me. I never allowed any one to make trouble between Mr. Ray and me, and I won't allow trouble this time, either. If I'm going to be unhappy married, I won't marry. That's flat."

"I wonder if Jack knows they're arrested!" said Mrs. O'Neil, thoughtfully.

"I stopped in the bar on purpose," said Mrs. Ray, "I thought he ought to know right away."

"Was he there?" asked the wife.

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Ray, calmly, "but I did what I could, Nellie, and nobody can be expected to pass that, you know."

CHAPTER XXV

THE BREAKING OF ANOTHER DAY AND WAY

Alva slipped into her cape, and drawing some fur up round her throat, set swiftly forth upon the Long Bridge – for the last time, she told herself.

The snow was falling fast, but not thickly as yet, and she had it in her heart to steal under cover of the fast-approaching twilight to her house, and look upon that also for the last time. Her sorrow was too deep to leave any room to mourn the background of her dream, but the background was consecrated by the dream and she longed to stand once more close to those walls, even if only to sob her heart out alone under the rustle of dead leaves, amidst the fast deepening snow.

There was in her that awful strength that saves one's reason in the first shock of the otherwise unbearable. Years were ahead and yet her heart did not shrink; endless gray duties stretched between their mile-stones, but to her it mattered not. Nothing mattered, she told herself over and over. Life would go on, other lives in especial would go on; their demands would be hers to meet, their cares and troubles, their joys and sorrows would be hers to reflect, but to her personally nothing would – nothing could – matter more. Her unseeing eyes looked out over the gorge; the matchless beauty, for the preservation of which her dead love had fought so hard, came to a blind market now; she could not see, she could not feel, for her life and all that makes life worth living was over.

So she swept on, her dark cape fluttering wide like wings on either side of her steady swiftness. The snow crystals clung to the wool and quickly starred its night with stars, but she saw no night except her own, and noted no stars. "And yet I must not give way too much," she thought suddenly, with a quick stabbing sense of proving unworthy; "if I am what I have told Lassie that one should be – if I am what one who has truly loved should surely be – I shall be strong and live resolutely as he lived, even though I have been so crushed. Pain could not crush his spirit; shall sorrow crush mine? I will be strong."

The letter which she had brought out with her came to her mind then, and she paused and read it. It was from the surgeon and told her what she had lately mistrusted, – that there had never been the slightest chance of moving him, that she had been sent away as a child is banished from a painful scene, and that she had been beguiled as a child is beguiled. She did not resent the truth, she was too big to resent such a truth; but she felt freshly mournful, and the home that was to have been seemed to fade utterly out of her consciousness, leaving her with no desire to ever see it again.

But there was another sheet within the envelope. She took that out, too. It was printed – in a hand that trembled. Her heart contracted as she saw the crooked lines, – so much ran deep between them.

Alva: – I have struggled. I shall not give up. I believe sometimes God has given a new body to serve a needed end. I cannot go. I must come back. Not for your sake. But for theirs – for the sake of those who will never know. If I come, help me again. For you and for me help is the only bond. I am not sure that there is any other that endures. Not in this present world of ours.

She shook a little. Something especially cold and piercing struck to her heart. She raised her eyes quickly, and there, close beside her on the bridge, the dead man stood.

His bright dark eyes looked straight into hers.