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A Modern Instance

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He turned aside to the little office, and opened the door without knocking,
and as he stood with the knob in his hand, trying to habituate his eyes,
full of the snow-glare, to the dimmer light within, he heard a rapturous
cry of "Why Bartley!" and he felt Marcia's arms flung around his neck. His
burdened heart yearned upon her with a tenderness he had not known before;
he realized the preciousness of an embrace that might be the last; but he
dared not put down his lips to hers. She pushed back her head in a little
wonder, and saw the haggardness of his face, while he discovered her father
looking at them. How strong and pure the fire in her must be when her
father's presence could not abash her from this betrayal of her love!
Bartley sickened, and he felt her arms slip from his neck. "Why--why--what
is the matter?"

In spite of some vaguely magnanimous intention to begin at the beginning,
and tell the whole affair just as it happened, Bartley found himself
wishing to put the best face on it at first, and trust to chances to make
it all appear well. He did not speak at once, and Marcia pressed him into
a chair, and then, like an eager child, who will not let its friend escape
till it has been told what it wishes to know, she set herself on his knee,
and put her hand on his shoulder. He looked at her father, not at her,
while he spoke hoarsely: "I have had trouble with Henry Bird, Squire
Gaylord, and I've come to tell you about it."

The old squire did not speak, but Marcia repeated in amazement, "With Henry
Bird?"

"He struck me--"

"Henry Bird _struck_ you!" cried the girl. "I should like to know why
Henry Bird struck _you_, when you've made so much of him, and he's always
pretended to be so grateful--"

Bartley still looked at her father. "And I struck him back."

"You did perfectly right, Bartley," exclaimed Marcia, "and I should have
despised you if you had let any one run over you. Struck you! I declare--"

He did not heed her, but continued to look at her father. "I didn't intend
to hurt him,--I hit him with my open hand,--but he fell and struck his head
on the floor. I'm afraid it hurt him pretty badly." He felt the pang that
thrilled through the girl at his words, and her hand trembled on his
shoulder; but she did not take it away.

The old man came forward from the pile of books which he and Marcia had
been dusting, and sat down in a chair on the other side of the stove. He
pushed back his hat from his forehead, and asked drily, "What commenced
it?"

Bartley hesitated. It was this part of the affair which he would rather
have imparted to Marcia after seeing it with her father's eyes, or
possibly, if her father viewed it favorably, have had him tell her. The old
man noticed his reluctance. "Hadn't you better go into the house, Marsh?"

She merely gave him a look of utter astonishment for answer, and did not
move. He laughed noiselessly, and said to Bartley, "Go on."

"It was that drunken old scoundrel of a Morrison who began it!" cried
Bartley, in angry desperation. Marcia dropped her hand from his shoulder,
while her father worked his jaws upon the bit of stick he had picked up
from the pile of wood, and put between his teeth. "You know that whenever
he gets on a spree he comes to the office and wants Hannah's wages raised."

Marcia sprang to her feet. "Oh, I knew it! I knew it! I told you she would
get you into trouble! I told you so!" She stood clinching her hands,
and her father bent his keen scrutiny first upon her, and then upon the
frowning face with which Bartley regarded her.

"Did he come to have her wages raised to-day?"

"No."

"What did he come for?" He involuntarily assumed the attitude of a lawyer
crossquestioning a slippery witness.

"He came for--He came--He accused me of--He said I had--made love to his
confounded girl."

Marcia gasped.

"What made him think you had?"

"It wasn't necessary for him to have any reason. He was drunk. I had been
kind to the girl, and favored her all I could, because she seemed to be
anxious to do her work well; and I praised her for trying."

"Um-umph," commented the Squire. "And that made Henry Bird jealous?"

"It seems that he was fond of her. I never dreamed of such a thing, and
when I put old Morrison out of the office, and came back, he called me a
liar, and struck me in the face." He did not lift his eyes to the level of
Marcia's, who in her gray dress stood there like a gray shadow, and did not
stir or speak.

"And you never had made up to the girl at all?"

"No."

"Kissed her, I suppose, now and then?" suggested the Squire.

Bartley did not reply.

"Flattered her up, and told how much you thought of her, occasionally?"

"I don't see what that has to do with it," said Bartley with a sulky
defiance.

"No, I suppose it's what you'd do with most any pretty girl," returned the
Squire. He was silent awhile. "And so you knocked Henry down. What happened
then?"

"I tried to bring him to, and then I went for the doctor. He revived, and
we got him home to his mother's. The doctor says he will get well; but he
advised me to come and see you."

"Any witnesses of the assault?"

"No; we were alone in my own room."

"Told any one else about it?"

"I told the doctor and Mrs. Bird. Henry couldn't remember it at all."

"Couldn't remember about Morrison, or what made him mad at you?"

"Nothing."

"And that's all about it?"

"Yes."

The two men had talked across the stove at each other, practically ignoring
the girl, who stood apart from them, gray in the face as her dress, and
suppressing a passion which had turned her as rigid as stone.

"Now, Marcia," said her father, kindly, "better go into the house. That's
all there is of it."

"No, that isn't all," she answered. "Give me my ring, Bartley. Here's
yours." She slipped it off her finger, and put it into his mechanically
extended hand.

"Marcia!" he implored, confronting her.

"Give me my ring, please."

He obeyed, and put it into her hand. She slipped it back on the finger from
which she had so fondly suffered him to take it yesterday, and replace it
with his own.

"I'll go into the house now, father. Good by, Bartley." Her eyes were
perfectly clear and dry, and her voice controlled; and as he stood passive
before her, she took him round the neck, and pressed against his face,
once, and twice, and thrice, her own gray face, in which all love, and
unrelenting, and despair, were painted. Once and again she held him, and
looked him in the eyes, as if to be sure it was he. Then, with a last
pressure of her face to his, she released him, and passed out of the door.

"She's been talking about you, here, all the morning," said the Squire,
with a sort of quiet absence, as if nothing in particular had happened, and
he were commenting on a little fact that might possibly interest Bartley.
He ruminated upon the fragment of wood in his mouth awhile before he added:
"I guess she won't want to talk about you any more. I drew you out a little
on that Hannah Morrison business, because I wanted her to understand just
what kind of fellow you were. You see it isn't the trouble you've got into
with Henry Bird that's killed her; it's the cause of the trouble. I guess
if it had been anything else, she'd have stood by you. But you see that's
the one thing she couldn't bear, and I'm glad it's happened now instead of
afterwards: I guess you're one of that _kind_, Mr. Hubbard."

"Squire Gaylord!" cried Bartley, "upon my sacred word of honor, there isn't
any more of this thing than I've told you. And I think it's pretty hard to
be thrown over for--for--"

"Fooling with a pretty girl, when you get a chance, and the girl seems to
like it? Yes, it _is_ rather hard. And I suppose you haven't even seen her
since you were engaged to Marcia?"

"Of course not! That is--"

"It's a kind of retroactive legislation on Marcia's part," said the Squire,
rubbing his chin, "and that's against one of the first principles of law.
But women don't seem to be able to grasp that idea. They're queer about
some things. They appear to think they marry a man's whole life,--his past
as well as his future,--and that makes 'em particular. And they distinguish
between different kinds of men. You'll find 'em pinning their faith to a
fellow who's been through pretty much everything, and swearing by him from
the word go; and another chap, who's never _done_ anything very bad, they
won't trust half a minute out of their sight. Well, I guess Marcia _is_ of
rather a jealous disposition," he concluded, as if Bartley had urged this
point.

"She's very unjust to me," Bartley began.

"Oh, yes,--she's _unjust_," said her father. "I don't deny that. But it
wouldn't be any use talking to her. She'd probably turn round with some
excuse about what she had suffered, and that would be the end of it. She
would say that she couldn't go through it again. Well, it ought to be a
comfort to you to think you don't care a great deal about it."

"But I _do_ care!" exclaimed Bartley. "I care all the world for it. I--"

"Since when?" interrupted the Squire. "Do you mean to say that you didn't
know till you asked her yesterday that Marcia was in love with you?"

Bartley was silent.

"I guess you knew it as much as a year ago, didn't you? Everybody else did.
But you'd just as soon it had been Hannah Morrison, or any other pretty
girl. _You_ didn't care! But Marcia did, you see. She wasn't one of the
kind that let any good-looking fellow make love to them. It was because
it was _you_; and you knew it. We're plain men, Mr. Hubbard; and I guess
you'll get over this, in time. I shouldn't wonder if you began to mend,
right away."

Bartley found himself helpless in the face of this passionless sarcasm. He
could have met stormy indignation or any sort of invective in kind; but
the contemptuous irony with which his pretensions were treated, the cold
scrutiny with which his motives were searched, was something he could not
meet. He tried to pull himself together for some sort of protest, but
he ended by hanging his head in silence. He always believed that Squire
Gaylord had liked him, and here he was treating him like his bitterest
enemy, and seeming to enjoy his misery. He could not understand it; he
thought it extremely unjust, and past all the measure of his offence. This
was true, perhaps: but it is doubtful if Bartley would have accepted
any suffering, no matter how nicely proportioned, in punishment of his
wrong-doing. He sat hanging his head, and taking his pain in rebellious
silence, with a gathering hate in his heart for the old man.

"M-well!" said the Squire, at last, rising from his chair, "I guess I must
be going."

Bartley sprang to his feet aghast. "You're not going to leave me in the
lurch, are you? You're not--"

"Oh, I shall take care of you, young man,--don't be afraid. I've stood your
friend too long, and your name's been mixed up too much with my girl's, for
me to let you come to shame openly, if I can help it. I'm going to see Dr.
Wills about you, and I'm going to see Mrs. Bird, and try to patch it up
somehow."

"And--and--where shall I go?" gasped Bartley.

"You might go to the Devil, for all I cared for you," said the old man,
with the contempt which he no longer cared to make ironical. "But I guess
you better go back to your office, and go to work as if nothing had
happened--till something does happen. I shall close the paper out as soon
as I can. I was thinking of doing that just before you came in. I was
thinking of taking you into the law business with me. Marcia and I were
talking about it here. But I guess you wouldn't like the idea now."

He seemed to get a bitter satisfaction out of these mockeries, from which,
indeed, he must have suffered quite as much as Bartley. But he ended, sadly
and almost compassionately, with, "Come, come! You must start some time."
And Bartley dragged his leaden weight out of the door. The Squire closed it
after him; but he did not accompany him down the street. It was plain that
he did not wish to be any longer alone with Bartley, and the young man
suspected, with a sting of shame, that he scorned to be seen with him.




VIII.


The more Bartley dwelt upon his hard case, during the week that followed,
the more it appeared to him that he was punished out of all proportion to
his offence. He was in no mood to consider such mercies as that he had been
spared from seriously hurting Bird; and that Squire Gaylord and Doctor
Wills had united with Henry's mother in saving him from open disgrace. The
physician, indeed, had perhaps indulged a professional passion for hushing
the matter up, rather than any pity for Bartley. He probably had the
scientific way of looking at such questions; and saw much physical cause
for moral effects. He refrained, with the physician's reticence, from
inquiring into the affair; but he would not have thought Bartley without
excuse under the circumstances. In regard to the relative culpability in
matters of the kind, his knowledge of women enabled him to take much the
view of the woman's share that other women take.

But Bartley was ignorant of the doctor's leniency, and associated him with
Squire Gaylord in the feeling that made his last week in Equity a period of
social outlawry. There were moments in which he could not himself escape
the same point of view. He could rebel against the severity of the
condemnation he had fallen under in the eyes of Marcia and her father; he
could, in the light of example and usage, laugh at the notion of harm in
his behavior to Hannah Morrison; yet he found himself looking at it as a
treachery to Marcia. Certainly, she had no right to question his conduct
before his engagement. Yet, if he knew that Marcia loved him, and was
waiting with life-and-death anxiety for some word of love from him, it was
cruelly false to play with another at the passion which was such a tragedy
to her. This was the point that, put aside however often, still presented
itself, and its recurrence, if he could have known it, was mercy and
reprieve from the only source out of which these could come.

Hannah Morrison did not return to the printing-office, and Bird was still
sick, though it was now only a question of time when he should be out
again. Bartley visited him some hours every day, and sat and suffered under
the quiet condemnation of his mother's eyes. She had kept Bartley's secret
with the same hardness with which she had refused him her forgiveness, and
the village had settled down into an ostensible acceptance of the theory of
a faint as the beginning of Bird's sickness, with such other conjectures
as the doctor freely permitted each to form. Bartley found his chief
consolation in the work which kept him out of the way of a great deal of
question. He worked far into the night, as he must, to make up for the
force that was withdrawn from the office. At the same time he wrote more
than ever in the paper, and he discovered in himself that dual life of
which every one who sins or sorrows is sooner or later aware: that strange
separation of the intellectual activity from the suffering of the soul, by
which the mind toils on in a sort of ironical indifference to the pangs
that wring the heart; the realization that, in some ways, his brain can get
on perfectly well without his conscience.

There was a great deal of sympathy felt for Bartley at this time, and his
popularity in Equity was never greater than now when his life there was
drawing to a close. The spectacle of his diligence was so impressive that
when, on the following Sunday, the young minister who had succeeded to the
pulpit of the orthodox church preached a sermon on the beauty of industry
from the text "Consider the lilies," there were many who said that they
thought of Bartley the whole while, and one--a lady--asked Mr. Savin if
he did not have Mr. Hubbard in mind in the picture he drew of the Heroic
Worker. They wished that Bartley could have heard that sermon.

Marcia had gone away early in the week to visit in the town where she used
to go to school, and Bartley took her going away as a sign that she wished
to put herself wholly beyond his reach, or any danger of relenting at sight
of him. He talked with no one about her; and going and coming irregularly
to his meals, and keeping himself shut up in his room when he was not
at work, he left people very little chance to talk with him. But they
conjectured that he and Marcia had an understanding; and some of the ladies
used such scant opportunity as he gave them to make sly allusions to her
absence and his desolate condition. They were confirmed in their surmise by
the fact, known from actual observation, that Bartley had not spoken a word
to any other young lady since Marcia went away.

"Look here, my friend," said the philosopher from, the logging-camp, when
he came in for his paper on the Tuesday afternoon following, "seems to me
from what I hear tell around here, you're tryin' to kill yourself on this
newspaper. Now, it won't do; I tell you it won't do."

Bartley was addressing for the mail the papers which one of the girls
was folding. "What are you going to do about it?" he demanded of his
sympathizer with whimsical sullenness, not troubling himself to look up at
him.

"Well, I haint exactly settled yet," replied the philosopher, who was of
a tall, lank figure, and of a mighty brown beard. "But I've been around
pretty much everywhere, and I find that about the poorest use you can put a
man to is to kill him."

"It depends a good deal on the man," said Bartley. "But that's stale,
Kinney. It's the old formula of the anti-capital-punishment fellows. Try
something else. They're not talking of hanging me yet." He kept on writing,
and the philosopher stood over him with a humorous twinkle of enjoyment at
Bartley's readiness.

"Well, I'll allow it's old," he admitted. "So's Homer."

"Yes; but you don't pretend that you wrote Homer."

Kinney laughed mightily; then he leaned forward, and slapped Bartley on the
shoulder with his newspaper. "Look here!" he exclaimed, "I _like_ you!"

"Oh, try some other tack! Lots of fellows like me." Bartley kept on
writing. "I gave you your paper, didn't I, Kinney?"

"You mean that you want me to get out?"

"Far be it from me to say so."

This delighted Kinney as much as the last refinement of hospitality would
have pleased another man. "Look here!" he said, "I want you should come out
and see our camp. I can't fool away any more time on you here; but I want
you should come out and see us. Give you something to write about. Hey?"

"The invitation comes at a time when circumstances over which I have no
control oblige me to decline it. I admire your prudence, Kinney."

"No, honest Injian, now," protested Kinney. "Take a day off, and fill up
with dead advertisements. That's the way they used to do out in Alkali City
when they got short of help on the Eagle, and we liked it just as well."

"Now you are talking sense," said Bartley, looking up at him. "How far is
it to your settlement?"

"Two miles, if you're goin'; three and a half, if you aint."

"When are you coming in?"

"I'm in, now."

"I can't go with you to-day."

"Well, how'll to-morrow morning suit?"

"To-morrow morning will suit," said Bartley.

"All right. If anybody comes to see the editor to-morrow morning, Marilla,"
said Kinney to the girl, "you tell 'em he's sick, and gone a-loggin', and
won't be back till Saturday. Say," he added, laying his hand on Bartley's
shoulder, "you aint foolin'?"

"If I am," replied Bartley, "just mention it."

"Good!" said Kinney. "To-morrow it is, then."

Bartley finished addressing the newspapers, and then he put them up in
wrappers and packages for the mail. "You can go, now, Marilla," he said to
the girl. "I'll leave some copy for you and Kitty; you'll find it on my
table in the morning."

"All right," answered the girl.

Bartley went to his supper, which he ate with more relish than he had
felt for his meals since his troubles began, and he took part in the
supper-table talk with something of his old audacity. The change interested
the lady boarders, and they agreed that he must have had a letter. He
returned to his office, and worked till nine o'clock, writing and selecting
matter out of his exchanges. He spent most of the time in preparing the
funny column, which was a favorite feature in the Free Press. Then he put
the copy where the girls would find it in the morning, and, leaving the
door unlocked, took his way up the street toward Squire Gaylord's.

He knew that he should find the lawyer in his office, and he opened the
office door without knocking, and went in. He had not met Squire Gaylord
since the morning of his dismissal, and the old man had left him for the
past eight days without any sign as to what he expected of Bartley, or of
what he intended to do in his affair.

They looked at each other, but exchanged no sort of greeting, as Bartley,
unbidden, took a chair on the opposite side of the stove; the Squire did
not put down the book he had been reading.

"I've come to see what you're going to do about the Free Press," said
Bartley.

The old man rubbed his bristling jaw, that seemed even lanker than when
Bartley saw it last. He waited almost a minute before he replied, "I don't
know as I've got any call to tell you."

"Then I'll tell you what _I'm_ going to do about it," retorted Bartley.
"I'm going to leave it. I've done my last day's work on that paper. Do you
think," he cried, angrily, "that I'm going to keep on in the dark, and let
you consult your pleasure as to my future? No, sir! You don't know your man
quite, Mr. Gaylord!"

"You've got over your scare," said the lawyer.

"I've got over my scare," Bartley retorted.

"And you think, because you're not afraid any longer, that you're out of
danger. I know my man as well as you do, I guess."

"If you think I care for the danger, I don't. You may do what you please.
Whatever you do, I shall know it isn't out of kindness for me. I didn't
believe from the first that the law could touch me, and I wasn't uneasy on
that account. But I didn't want to involve myself in a public scandal, for
Miss Gaylord's sake. Miss Gaylord has released me from any obligations to
her; and now you may go ahead and do what you like." Each of the men knew
how much truth there was in this; but for the moment in his anger, Bartley
believed himself sincere, and there is no question but his defiance was
so. Squire Gaylord made him no answer, and after a minute of expectation
Bartley added, "At any rate, I've done with the Free Press. I advise you to
stop the paper, and hand the office over to Henry Bird, when he gets about.
I'm going out to Willett's logging-camp tomorrow, and I'm coming back to
Equity on Saturday. You'll know where to find me till then, and after that
you may look me up if you want me."

He rose to go, but stopped with his hand on the door-knob, at a sound,
preliminary to speaking, which the old man made in his throat. Bartley
stopped, hoping for a further pretext of quarrel, but the lawyer merely
asked, "Where's the key?"

"It's in the office door."

The old man now looked at him as if he no longer saw him, and Bartley went
out, balked of his purpose in part, and in that degree so much the more
embittered.

Squire Gaylord remained an hour longer; then he blew out his lamp, and left
the little office for the night. A light was burning in the kitchen, and he
made his way round to the back door of the house, and let himself in. His
wife was there, sitting before the stove, in those last delicious moments
before going to bed, when all the house is mellowed to such a warmth that
it seems hard to leave it to the cold and dark. In this poor lady, who
had so long denied herself spiritual comfort, there was a certain obscure
luxury: she liked little dainties of the table; she liked soft warmth, an
easy cushion. It was doubtless in the disintegration of the finer qualities
of her nature, that, as they grew older together, she threw more and more
the burden of acute feeling upon her husband, to whose doctrine of life she
had submitted, but had never been reconciled. Marriage is, with all its
disparities, a much more equal thing than appears, and the meek little
wife, who has all the advantage of public sympathy, knows her power over
her oppressor, and at some tender spot in his affections or his nerves can
inflict an anguish that will avenge her for years of coarser aggression.
Thrown in upon herself in so vital a matter as her religion, Mrs. Gaylord
had involuntarily come to live largely for herself, though her talk was
always of her husband. She gave up for him, as she believed, her soul's
salvation, but she held him to account for the uttermost farthing of
the price. She padded herself round at every point where she could have
suffered through her sensibilities, and lived soft and snug in the shelter
of his iron will and indomitable courage. It was not apathy that she
had felt when their children died one after another, but an obscure and
formless exultation that Mr. Gaylord would suffer enough for both.

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