But, happily, it is not one's duty to make other people uncomfortable by perpetually tinkering at that trait in them which most offends our own nature; and I thought it more for my good and hers to learn patience myself than undertake to beat her into order; the result of which was peace and good-will that vindicated my wisdom to myself; and I found her, faults and all, sufficiently fascinating and lovable.
A year passed away serenely; and when spring came again, Josephine refused to let me leave her. Our life was quiet enough, but, with such beautiful Nature, and plenty to do, we were not lonely,less so because Jo's hands were as open as her heart, and to her all the sick and poor looked, not only for help, but for the rarer consolations of living sympathy and counsel. Her shrewd common sense, her practical capacity, her kindly, cheerful face, her power of appreciating a position of want and perplexity and seeing the best way out of it, and, above all, her deep and fervent religious feeling, made her an invaluable friend to just that class who most needed her.
In the course of this spring we gained an addition to our society, in the person of Mr. Waring, the son of the gentleman who had bought the mills at Mrs. Boyle's death, but who had hitherto conducted them by an overseer. He had recently bought a little island in the middle of the river, just below the dam, and proposed erecting a new mill upon it; but as the Tunxis (the Indian name of our river) was liable to rapid and destructive freshets, the mill required a deep and secure foundation and a lower story of stone.
This implied some skilful engineering, and Mr. Arthur Waring, having studied this subject fully abroad, came on from Boston, and took up his abode in Valley Mills village. Of course, we being his only hope of society in the place, he made our acquaintance early. I rather liked him; his manner was good, his perceptions acute, his tastes refined, and he had a certain strength of will that gave force to a character otherwise common-place. Josephine liked him at once; she laid his shyness and brusquerie, which were only the expression of a dominant self- consciousness, to genuine modesty. He was depressed and moody, because he was bored for want of acquaintance, and missed the adulation and caresses that he received at home as an only child; but Jo's swift imagination painted this as the trait of a reflective and melancholy nature disgusted with the world, and pitied him accordingly; a mild way of misanthropic speech, that is apt to infest young men, added to this delusion; and, with all the energy of her sweet, earnest disposition, Josephine undertook his education,undertook to teach him faith and hope and charity, to set right his wayward soul, to renovate his bitter opinions, to make him a better and a happier man.
It is a well-known fact in the philosophy of the human mind, that it is apt to gain more by imparting than by receiving; and since philosophy, where it becomes fact, does not mercifully adjust its results to circumstance, but rushes on in implacable grooves, and clears its own track of whatever lies thereon by the summary process of crushing it to dust, it did not pause now for the pure intentions and tender heart which, in teaching another love to men, taught herself love to a man, and learnt far better than her pupil.
Mr. Waring was but a man; he did not love Josephine,he admired her; he loved nothing but himself, his quiet, his pleasure; and while she ministered to either, he regarded her with a species of affection that put on the mask of a diviner passion and used its language. A thousand little things showed the man fully to me, a cool spectator; but she who needed most the discerning eye regarded this gay bubble as if it had been a jewel.
Perhaps I blame him too severely, for it was against the very heart of my heart that he sinned; possibly I do not allow for the temptation it was to a young man, quite alone in a country village, without resources, and accustomed to the flattery and caresses of a devoted mother, to find himself agreeable in the eyes of a noble and lovable woman. Possibly, in his place, a better man might have sought her society, drawn her out of her reserve for his own delectation, confided in her, worked upon her pity, claimed her care, played on her simplicity and ignorance of the world, crept into her heart and won its strength of emotion and its generous affection,in short, made love to her, without saying so, honestly and openly. Yet there are some men who would not have done it; and even yet, while I try to regard Arthur Waring with Christian charity, I feel that I cannot trust him, that I do not respect him,that, if I dared despise anything God has made, my first contempt would light on him.
In the autumn, while all this was going on, I received a painful and wretched letter from Letty Malden, begging me to come to her. I could not resist such an appeal; and one of Josephine's little nieces having come to spend the winter with her, I hurried to Slepington,not, I am sure, in the least regretted by Mr. Waring, who had begun to look at me with uneasy and sometimes defiant eyes.
I found a miserable household here. Mr. Malden had in no way reformed. When did marriage ever reform a bad man? On the contrary, he was more dissipated than ever; and whenever he came home, the welcome that waited for him was one little calculated to make home pleasant; for Letty's quick temper blazed up in reproach and reviling that drew out worse recrimination; and even the little, wailing, feeble baby, that filled Letty's arms and consoled her in his absence, was only further cause of strife between her and her husband. Often, as I came down the street and saw the pretty outside of the cottage, waving with creepers, and hedged about with thorns, whose gay berries decked it as if for a festival, I thought of what a good old preacher among the Friends once said to me: "Sarah, thee will live to find shows are often seems; thee sees many a quiet house, with gay windows, that is hell inside."
I soon found that I must stay all winter at Slepington. I had a hard task before me,to try and teach Letty that she had no right to neglect her own duties because her husband ignored his. But six months of continual dropping seemed to wear a tiny channel of perception; and my presence, as well as the efforts we made together to preserve order, if not serenity, in the house, restored a certain dim hope to Letty's mind, and I began to see that the "purification by fire" was doing its work, in slow pain, but to a sure end.
Selfish as it was, I cannot say that I felt sorry to return to Jo, who wrote for me in April, urging me to come as soon as I could, for Mr. Waring had fallen from the mill-wall and broken his leg, and the workmen, in their confusion, had carried him to her house, and she wanted me to help her. I learned, on reaching Valley Mills, that the new building on the island had not been completed far enough to resist a heavy freshet, that had swept away part of the first story, where the mortar was not yet hardened; and it was in traversing these wet stones to ascertain the extent of the damage that Mr. Waring had slipped, and, unable to recover his footing, fallen on a heap of stones and received his injury.
My first question to Josephine was, "Where is Mr. Waring's mother?"
"He would not send for her, Sally," said she, "because she is not well, and he feared to startle her."
"H'm!" said I, very curtly.
Josephine looked at me with innocent, grave eyes,dear, simple child! and yet, for anybody but herself she would have been sufficiently discerning. This love seemed to have remodelled her nature, to have taken from her all the serpent's wisdom, to have destroyed her common sense, and distorted her view of everything in which Arthur Waring was concerned. She had certainly got on very fast in my absence. I had returned too late.
My first question to Josephine was, "Where is Mr. Waring's mother?"
"He would not send for her, Sally," said she, "because she is not well, and he feared to startle her."
"H'm!" said I, very curtly.
Josephine looked at me with innocent, grave eyes,dear, simple child! and yet, for anybody but herself she would have been sufficiently discerning. This love seemed to have remodelled her nature, to have taken from her all the serpent's wisdom, to have destroyed her common sense, and distorted her view of everything in which Arthur Waring was concerned. She had certainly got on very fast in my absence. I had returned too late.
I had little to do with the care of the invalid; that devolved on Jo; my offers of service were kindly received, but always declined. Nobody could read to him so well as Miss Boyle. Nobody else understood his moods, his humors, his whims; she knew his tastes with ominous exactness. It was she who arranged his meals on the salver with such care and grace, nay, even cooked them at times; for Jo believed, like a rational woman, that intellect and cultivation increase one's capacity for every office,that a woman of intelligence should be able to excel an ignorant servant in every household duty, by just so much as she excels her in mind. In fact, this was a pleasant life to two persons, but harassing enough for me. Had I been confident of Arthur Waring's integrity, I should have regarded him with friendly and cordial interest; but I had every reason to distrust him. I perceived he had so far insinuated himself into Jo's confidence, that his whole artillery of expressive looks, broken sentences, even caresses, were received by her with entire good faith; but when I asked her seriously if I was to regard Mr. Waring as her lover, she burst into indignant denial, colored scarlet, and was half inclined to be angry with me,though a certain tremulous key, into which her usually sweet and steady voice broke while she declared he had never spoken to her of love, it was only friendship, witnessed against her that she was apprehensive, sad, perhaps visited with a tinge of that causeless shame which even in a pure and good woman conventionality constrains, when she has loved a man before he says in plain English, "I love you," though every act and look and tone of his may have carried that significance unmistakably for years. Thank God, there is a day of sure judgment coming, when conventions and shields of usage will save no man from the due vengeance of truth upon falsehood, justice upon smooth and plausible duplicity!
In due time Mr. Waring recovered. If there was any change in his manner to Jo, it was too slight to be seen, though it was felt, and was, after all, the carelessness of a person certain of his foothold in her good graces, rather than the evident withdrawal of attention,which I could have pardoned even then, had it been the result of honest regret for past carelessness, and stern resolution to repair that past. Whatever it was, Jo perceived that her ideal man was become a real man; but, with a tenacity of nature, for which in my fate-telling I had not given her credit, she was as constant to the substance as she had been to the dream; and while she lost both health and spirits in the contemplation of Arthur Waring's fitful and heedless manner toward her, and was evidently pained by the discovery of his selfish and politic traits,to call them by no harsher name,it was inexpressibly touching to hear the excuses she made for him, to see the all-shielding love with which she veiled his faults, and kept him as a mother would keep her graceless, yet dearest child from animadversion and reproach.
In the mean time I heard often from Letty,no good news of her husband, but that her child grew more and more a comfort, that her friends were very kind, and always in a tiny postscript some such phrase as this: "I try to be patient, Sarah," or "I don't scold Harry so much as I did, dear." I hoped for Letty, for she persevered.
That summer we saw less than ever of Mr. Waring; he was very busy at the mill in order that it might be far enough advanced to resist the inevitable spring freshets; and besides, we were absent from the Valley some weeks, endeavoring to recruit Jo's failing health at the sea-side. But this was a vain endeavor; that which sapped the springs of her life was past outward cure. She inherited her father's delicate and unreliable constitution, and a nervous organization, whose worst disease is ever the preying of doubt, anxiety, or regret. As winter drew on, she grew no better; a dim, dreamy abstraction brooded over her. She said to me often, with a vague alarm, "Sally, how far off you seem! Do come nearer!" She ceased to talk when we were alone, her step grew languid, her eye deeper, and its bright expression, when you roused her, was longer in shooting back into the clouded sphere than ever before. She sat for hours by the window, her lovely head resting on its casement, looking out, always out and away, beyond the hills, into the deep spaces of blue air, past cloud and vapor, to the stars. Sudden noises startled her to an extreme degree; a quick step flushed her cheek with fire and fluttered her breath. How I longed for spring! I hoped all from the delicate ministrations of Nature; though the physician we called gave me no hope of her final recovery. Mr. Waring himself seemed struck with her aspect, and many little signs of friendly interest came from him. As often as he could, he returned to his old haunts; and while the pleasure of his presence and the excitement of his undisguised anxiety wrought on her, Jo became almost her old self for the moment, gay, cheerful, blooming,alas! with the bloom of feverishness and vain hope.
So spring drew near. The mill was nearly finished. One day in March a warm south-wind "quieted the earth" after a long rain, the river began to stir, its mail of ice to crack and heave under the sun's rays. I persuaded Jo to take a little drive, and once in the carriage the air reanimated her; she rested against me and talked more than I had known her for weeks.
"What a lovely day!" said she; "how balmy the air is! there is such an expression of rest without despair, such calm expectation! I always think of heaven such days, Sally!they are like the long sob with which a child finishes weeping. Only to think of never more knowing tears!that is life indeed!"
A keen pang pierced me at the vibration of her voice as she spoke. I thought to soothe her a little, and said, "Heaven can be no more than love, Jo, and we have a great deal of that on earth."
"Do we?" answered she, in a tone of grief just tipped with irony,and then went on: "I believe you love me, Sally. I would trust you withmy heart, if need were. I think you love me better than any one on earth does."
"I love you enough, dear," said I; more words would have choked me in the utterance.
Soon we turned homeward.
"Tell John to drive down by the river," said Josephine,"I want to see the new mill."
"But you cannot see it from the road, Jo; the hemlocks stand between."
"Never mind, Sally; I shall just walk through them; don't deny me! I want to see it all again; and perhaps the arbutus is in bloom."
"Not yet, Jo."
"I can get some buds, then; I want to have some just once."
We left the carriage, and on my arm Jo strolled through the little thicket of hemlock-trees, green and fragrant. She seemed unusually strong. I began to hope. After much searching, we found the budded flowers; she loved most of all wild blossoms; no scent breathed from the closed petals; they were not yet kissed by the odor-giving south-wind into life and expression; but Jo looked at them with sad, far-reaching eyes. I think she silently said good-bye to them.
Presently we came out on the steep bank of the river, directly opposite the mill. A heavy timber was thrown across from the shore to the island, on which the workmen from the west side had passed and repassed; it was firm enough for its purpose, but now, wet with the morning's rain, and high above the grinding ice, it seemed a hazardous bridge. As we stood looking over at the new mill, listening to the slight stir within it, apparently the setting to rights by some lingering workman of such odds and ends as remain after finishing the great whole of such a building, suddenly the cool wind, which had shifted to the north, brought on its waft a most portentous roar. We stood still to listen. Nearer and nearer it swelled, crashing and hissing as it approached. Josephine grasped my arm with convulsive energy, and at that instant we perceived Mr. Waring's plaid cap pass an open casement. She turned upon me like a wild creature driven to bay. I looked up-stream;the ice had gathered in one high barrier mixed with flood-wood and timber, and, bearing above all the uprooted trunk of a huge sycamore, was coming down upon the dam like a battering-ram. Jo gasped. "The river is broken up and Arthur is on the island," said she, in a fearfully suppressed tone, and, swifter than I could think or guess her meaning, she had reached the timber, she was on it,and with light, untrembling steps half across, when both she and I simultaneously caught sight of Mr. Waring running for dear life to the other and stronger bridge. Jo turned to come back; but the excitement was past that had sustained her; she trembled, she tottered. I ran to meet and aid her. Just then the roots of the great sycamore thundered against the dam; the already heavily pressed structure gave way; with the freed roar of a hurricane, the barrier, the dam, the foot-bridge swept down toward us. She had all but reached the end of the timber,I stood there to grasp her hand,when the old tree, whirled down by the torrent, struck the other end of the beam and threw Josephine forward to the bank, dashing her throbbing, panting breast, with all the force of her fall, against the hard ground. I lifted her in my arms. She was white with pain. Presently she opened her eyes and looked up, a flush of rapture glowed all over her face, and then the awful mist of death, gray and rigid, veiled it. Her head dropped on my shoulder; a sharp cry and a rush of scarlet blood passed her lips together; the head lay more heavily,she was dead. But Arthur Waring never knew how or for what she died!