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A Modern Instance

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Marcia was the youngest, and her mother left her training almost wholly
to her father; she sometimes said that she never supposed the child would
live. She did not actually urge this in excuse, but she had the appearance
of doing so; and she held aloof from them both in their mutual relations,
with mildly critical reserves. They spoiled each other, as father and
daughter are apt to do when left to themselves. What was good in the child
certainly received no harm from his indulgence; and what was naughty was
after all not so very naughty. She was passionate, but she was generous;
and if she showed a jealous temperament that must hereafter make her
unhappy, for the time being it charmed and flattered her father to have her
so fond of him that she could not endure any rivalry in his affection.

Her education proceeded fitfully. He would not let her be forced to
household tasks that she disliked; and as a little girl she went to school
chiefly because she liked to go, and not because she would have been
obliged to it if she had not chosen. When she grew older, she wished to go
away to school, and her father allowed her; he had no great respect for
boarding-schools, but if Marcia wanted to try it, he was willing to humor
the joke.

What resulted was a great proficiency in the things that pleased her, and
ignorance of the other things. Her father bought her a piano, on which she
did not play much, and he bought her whatever dresses she fancied. He never
came home from a journey without bringing her something; and he liked to
take her with him when he went away to other places. She had been several
times at Portland, and once at Montreal; he was very proud of her; he could
not see that any one was better-looking, or dressed any better than his
girl.

He came into the kitchen, and sat down with his hat on, and, taking his
chin between his fingers, moved uneasily about on his chair.

"What's brought you in so early?" asked his wife.

"Well, I got through," he briefly explained. After a while he said,
"Bartley Hubbard's been out there."

"You don't mean 't he knew she--"

"No, he didn't know anything about that. He came to tell me he was going
away."

"Well, I don't know what you're going to do, Mr. Gaylord," said his wife,
shifting the responsibility wholly upon him. "'D he seem to want to make it
up?"

"M-no!" said the Squire, "he was on his high horse. He knows he aint in any
danger now."

"Aint you afraid she'll carry on dreadfully, when she finds out 't he's
gone for good?" asked Mrs. Gaylord, with a sort of implied satisfaction
that the carrying on was not to affect her.

"M-yes," said the Squire, "I suppose she'll carry on. But I don't know what
to do about it. Sometimes I almost wish I'd tried to make it up between 'em
that day; but I thought she'd better see, once for all, what sort of man
she was going in for, if she married him. It's too late now to do anything.
The fellow came in to-night for a quarrel, and nothing else; I could see
that; and I didn't give him any chance."

"You feel sure," asked Mrs. Gaylord, impartially, "that Marcia wa'n't too
particular?"

"No, Miranda, I don't feel sure of anything, except that it's past your
bed-time. You better go. I'll sit up awhile yet. I came in because I
couldn't settle my mind to anything out there."

He took off his hat in token of his intending to spend the rest of the
evening at home, and put it on the table at his elbow.

His wife sewed at the mending in her lap, without offering to act upon his
suggestion. "It's plain to be seen that she can't get along without him."

"She'll have to, now," replied the Squire.

"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Gaylord, softly, "that she'll be down sick. She
don't look as if she'd slept any great deal since she's been gone. I d'
know as I like very much to see her looking the way she does. I guess
you've got to take her off somewheres."

"Why, she's just been off, and couldn't stay!"

"That's because she thought he was here yet. But if he's gone, it won't be
the same thing."

"Well, we've got to fight it out, some way," said the Squire. "It wouldn't
do to give in to it now. It always _was_ too much of a one-sided thing,
at the best; and if we tried now to mend it up, it would be ridiculous. I
don't believe he would come back at all, now, and if he did, he wouldn't
come back on any equal terms. He'd want to have everything his own way.
M-no!" said the Squire, as if confirming himself in a conclusion often
reached already in his own mind, "I saw by the way he began to-night that
there wasn't anything to be done with him. It was fight from the word go."

"Well," said Mrs. Gaylord, with gentle, sceptical interest in the outcome,
"if you've made up your mind to that, I hope you'll be able to carry it
through."

"That's what I've made up my mind to," said her husband.

Mrs. Gaylord rolled up the sewing in her work-basket, and packed it away
against the side, bracing it with several pairs of newly darned socks and
stockings neatly folded one into the other. She took her time for this,
and when she rose at last to go out, with her basket in her hand, the door
opened in her face, and Marcia entered. Mrs. Gaylord shrank back, and then
slipped round behind her daughter and vanished. The girl took no notice of
her mother, but went and sat down on her father's knee, throwing her arms
round his neck, and dropping her haggard face on his shoulder. She had
arrived at home a few hours earlier, having driven over from a station ten
miles distant, on a road that did not pass near Equity. After giving as
much of a shock to her mother's mild nature as it was capable of receiving
by her unexpected return, she had gone to her own room, and remained ever
since without seeing her father. He put up his thin old hand and passed it
over her hair, but it was long before either of them spoke.

At last Marcia lifted her head, and looked her father in the face with a
smile so pitiful that he could not bear to meet it. "Well, father?" she
said.

"Well, Marsh," he answered huskily. "What do you think of me now?"

"I'm glad to have you back again," he replied.

"You know why I came?"

"Yes, I guess I know."

She put down her head again, and moaned and cried, "Father! Father!" with
dry sobs. When she looked up, confronting him with her tearless eyes, "What
shall I do? What shall I do?" she demanded desolately.

He tried to clear his throat to speak, but it required more than one effort
to bring the words. "I guess you better go along with me up to Boston. I'm
going up the first of the week."

"No," she said quietly.

"The change would do you good. It's a long while since you've been away
from home," her father urged.

She looked at him in sad reproach of his uncandor. "You know there's
nothing the matter with me, father. You know what the trouble is." He
was silent. He could not face the trouble. "I've heard people talk of a
heartache," she went on. "I never believed there was really such a thing.
But I know there is, now. There's a pain here." She pressed her hand
against her breast. "It's sore with aching. What shall I do? I shall have
to live through it somehow."

"If you don't feel exactly well," said her father "I guess you better see
the doctor."

"What shall I tell him is the matter with me? That I want Bartley Hubbard?"
He winced at the words, but she did not. "He knows that already. Everybody
in town does. It's never been any secret. I couldn't hide it, from the
first day I saw him. I'd just as lief as not they should say I was dying
for him. I shall not care what they say when I'm dead."

"You'd oughtn't,--you'd oughtn't to talk that way, Marcia," said her
father, gently.

"What difference?" she demanded, scornfully. There was truly no difference,
so far as concerned any creed of his, and he was too honest to make further
pretence. "What shall I do?" she went on again. "I've thought of praying;
but what would be the use?"

"I've never denied that there was a God, Marcia," said her father.

"Oh, I know. _That_ kind of God! Well, well! I know that I talk like a
crazy person! Do you suppose it was providential, my being with you in the
office that morning when Bartley came in?"

"No," said her father, "I don't. I think it was an accident."

"Mother said it was providential, my finding him out before it was too
late."

"I think it was a good thing. The fellow has the making of a first-class
scoundrel in him."

"Do you think he's a scoundrel now?" she asked quietly.

"He hasn't had any great opportunity yet," said the old man,
conscientiously sparing him.

"Well, then, I'm sorry I found him out. Yes! If I hadn't, I might have
married him, and perhaps if I had died soon I might never have found him
out. He could have been good to me a year or two, and then, if I died, I
should have been safe. Yes, I wish he could have deceived me till after we
were married. Then I _couldn't_ have borne to give him up, may be."

"You _would_ have given him up, even then. And that's the only thing that
reconciles me to it now. I'm sorry for you, my girl; but you'd have made me
sorrier then. Sooner or later he'd have broken your heart."

"He's broken it now," said the girl, calmly.

"Oh, no, he hasn't," replied her father, with a false cheerfulness that did
not deceive her. "You're young and you'll get over it. I mean to take you
away from here for a while. I mean to take you up to Boston, and on to
New York. I shouldn't care if we went as far as Washington. I guess, when
you've seen a little more of the world, you won't think Bartley Hubbard's
the only one in it."

She looked at him so intently that he thought she must be pleased at his
proposal. "Do you think I could get him back?" she asked.

Her father lost his patience; it was a relief to be angry. "No, I don't
think so. I know you couldn't. And you ought to be ashamed of mentioning
such a thing!"

"Oh, ashamed! No, I've got past that. I have no shame any more where he's
concerned. Oh, I'd give the world if I could call him back,--if I could
only undo what I did! I was wild; I wasn't reasonable; I wouldn't listen to
him. I drove him away without giving him a chance to say a word! Of course,
he must hate me now. What makes you think he wouldn't come back?" she
asked.

"I know he wouldn't," answered her father, with a sort of groan. "He's
going to leave Equity for one thing, and--"

"Going to leave Equity," she repeated, absently Then he felt her tremble.
"How do you know he's going?" She turned upon her father, and fixed him
sternly with her eyes.

"Do you suppose he would stay, after what's happened, any longer than he
could help?"

"How do you know he's going?" she repeated.

"He told me."

She stood up. "He told you? When?"

"To-night."

"Why, where--where did you see him?" she whispered.

"In the office."

"Since--since--I came? Bartley been here! And you didn't tell me,--you
didn't let me know?" They looked at each other in silence. At last, "When
is he going?" she asked.

"To-morrow morning."

She sat down in the chair which her mother had left, and clutched the back
of another, on which her fingers opened and closed convulsively, while she
caught her breath in irregular gasps. She broke into a low moaning, at
last, the expression of abject defeat in the struggle she had waged with
herself. Her father watched her with dumb compassion. "Better go to bed,
Marcia," he said, with the same dry calm as if he had been sending her away
after some pleasant evening which she had suffered to run too far into the
night.

"Don't you think--don't you think--he'll have to see you again before he
goes?" she made out to ask.

"No; he's finished up with me," said the old man.

"Well, then," she cried, desperately, "you'll have to go to him, father,
and get him to come! I can't help it! I can't give him up! You've got to go
to him, now, father,--yes, yes, you have! You've got to go and tell him. Go
and get him to come, for _mercy's_ sake! Tell him that I'm sorry,--that I
beg his pardon,--that I didn't think--I didn't understand,--that I knew he
didn't do anything wrong--" She rose, and, placing her hand on her father's
shoulder, accented each entreaty with a little push.

He looked up into her face with a haggard smile of sympathy. "You're crazy,
Marcia," he said, gently.

"Don't laugh!" she cried. "I'm not crazy now. But I was, then,--yes, stark,
staring crazy. Look here, father! I want to tell you,--I want to explain to
you!" She dropped upon his knee again, and tremblingly passed her arm round
his neck. "You see, I had just told him the day before that I shouldn't
care for anything that happened before we were engaged, and then at the
very first thing I went and threw him off! And I had no right to do it. He
knows that, and that's what makes him so hard towards me. But if you go and
tell him that I see now I was all wrong, and that I beg his pardon, and
then ask him to give me _one_ more trial, just one _more_--You can do as
much as that for me, can't you?"

"Oh, you poor, crazy girl!" groaned her father. "Don't you see that the
trouble is in what the fellow _is_, and not in any particular thing that
he's done? He's a scamp, through and through; and he's all the more a scamp
when he doesn't know it. He hasn't got the first idea of anything but
selfishness."

"No, no! Now, I'll tell you,--now, I'll prove it to you. That very Sunday
when we were out riding together; and we met her and her mother, and their
sleigh upset, and he had to lift her back; and it made me wild to see him,
and I wouldn't hardly touch him or speak to him afterwards, he didn't say
one angry word to me. He just pulled me up to him, and wouldn't let me be
mad; and he said that night he didn't mind it a bit because it showed how
much I liked him. Now, doesn't that prove he's good,--a good deal better
than I am, and that he'll forgive me, if you'll go and ask him? I know he
isn't in bed yet; he always sits up late,--he told me so; and you'll find
him there in his room. Go straight to his room, father; don't let anybody
see you down in the office; I couldn't bear it; and slip out with him as
quietly as you can. But, oh, do hurry now! Don't lose another minute!"

The wild joy sprang into her face, as her father rose; a joy that it was
terrible to him to see die out of it as he spoke: "I tell you it's no use,
Marcia! He wouldn't come if I went to him--"

"Oh, yes,--yes, he would! I know he would! If--"

"He wouldn't! You're mistaken! I should have to get down in the dust for
nothing. He's a bad fellow, I tell you; and you've got to give him up."

"You hate me!" cried the girl. The old man walked to and fro, clutching his
hands. Their lives had always been in such intimate sympathy, his life had
so long had her happiness for its sole pleasure, that the pang in her heart
racked his with as sharp an agony. "Well, I shall die; and then I hope you
will be satisfied."

"Marcia, Marcia!" pleaded her father. "You don't know what you're saying."

"You're letting him go away from me,--you're letting me lose him,--you're
killing me!"

"He wouldn't come, my girl. It would be perfectly useless to go to him.
You _must_--you _must_ try to control yourself, Marcia. There's no other
way,--there's no other hope. You're disgraceful. You ought to be ashamed.
You ought to have some pride about you. I don't know what's come over you
since you've been with that fellow. You seem to be out of your senses. But
try,--try, my girl, to get over it. If you'll fight it, you'll conquer yet.
You've got a spirit for anything. And I'll help you, Marcia. I'll take you
anywhere. I'll do anything for you--"

"You wouldn't go to him, and ask him to come here, if it would save his
life!"

"No," said the old man, with a desperate quiet, "I wouldn't."

She stood looking at him, and then she sank suddenly and straight down, as
if she were sinking through the floor. When he lifted her, he saw that she
was in a dead faint, and while the swoon lasted would be out of her misery.
The sight of this had wrung him so that he had a kind of relief in looking
at her lifeless face; and he was slow in laying her down again, like one
that fears to wake a sleeping child. Then he went to the foot of the
stairs, and softly called to his wife: "Miranda! Miranda!"




IX.


Kinney came into town the next morning bright and early, as he phrased it;
but he did not stop at the hotel for Bartley till nine o'clock. "Thought
I'd give you time for breakfast," he exclaimed, "and so I didn't hurry up
any about gettin' in my supplies."

It was a beautiful morning, so blindingly sunny that Bartley winked as they
drove up through the glistening street, and was glad to dip into the gloom
of the first woods; it was not cold; the snow felt the warmth, and packed
moistly under their runners. The air was perfectly still; at a distance on
the mountain-sides it sparkled as if full of diamond dust. Far overhead
some crows called.

"The sun's getting high," said Bartley, with the light sigh of one to whom
the thought of spring brings no hope.

"Well, I shouldn't begin to plough for corn just yet," replied Kinney.
"It's curious," he went on, "to see how anxious we are to have a thing
over, it don't much matter what it is, whether it's summer or winter. I
suppose we'd feel different if we wa'n't sure there was going to be another
of 'em. I guess that's one reason why the Lord concluded not to keep us
clearly posted on the question of another life. If it wa'n't for the
uncertainty of the thing, there are a lot of fellows like you that
wouldn't stand it here a minute. Why, if we had a dead sure thing of
over-the-river,--good climate, plenty to eat and wear, and not much to
do,--I don't believe any of us would keep Darling Minnie waiting,--well,
a _great_ while. But you see, the thing's all on paper, and that makes us
cautious, and willing to hang on here awhile longer. Looks splendid on the
map: streets regularly laid out; public squares; band-stands; churches;
solid blocks of houses, with all the modern improvements; but you can't
tell whether there's any town there till you're on the ground; and then, if
you don't like it, there's no way of gettin' back to the States." He turned
round upon Bartley and opened his mouth wide, to imply that this was
pleasantry.

"Do you throw your philosophy in, all under the same price, Kinney?" asked
the young fellow.

"Well, yes; I never charge anything over," said Kinney. "You see, I have
a good deal of time to think when I'm around by myself all day, and the
philosophy don't cost me anything, and the fellows like it. Roughing it the
way they do, they can stand 'most anything. Hey?" He now not only opened
his mouth upon Bartley, but thrust him in the side with his elbow, and then
laughed noisily.

Kinney was the cook. He had been over pretty nearly the whole uninhabitable
globe, starting as a gaunt and awkward boy from the Maine woods, and
keeping until he came back to them in late middle-life the same gross and
ridiculous optimism. He had been at sea, and shipwrecked on several islands
in the Pacific; he had passed a rainy season at Panama, and a yellow-fever
season at Vera Cruz, and had been carried far into the interior of Peru by
a tidal wave during an earthquake season; he was in the Border Ruffian War
of Kansas, and he clung to California till prosperity deserted her after
the completion of the Pacific road. Wherever he went, he carried or found
adversity; but, with a heart fed on the metaphysics of Horace Greeley, and
buoyed up by a few wildly interpreted maxims of Emerson, he had always
believed in other men, and their fitness for the terrestrial millennium,
which was never more than ten days or ten miles off. It is not necessary to
say that he had continued as poor as he began, and that he was never able
to contribute to those railroads, mills, elevators, towns, and cities which
were sure to be built, sir, sure to be built, wherever he went. When he
came home at last to the woods, some hundreds of miles north of Equity, he
found that some one had realized his early dream of a summer hotel on the
shore of the beautiful lake there; and he unenviously settled down to
admire the landlord's thrift, and to act as guide and cook for parties of
young ladies and gentlemen who started from the hotel to camp in the woods.
This brought him into the society of cultivated people, for which he had a
real passion. He had always had a few thoughts rattling round in his skull,
and he liked to make sure of them in talk with those who had enjoyed
greater advantages than himself. He never begrudged them their luck;
he simply and sweetly admired them; he made studies of their several
characters, and was never tired of analyzing them to their advantage to the
next summer's parties. Late in the fall, he went in, as it is called, with
a camp of loggers, among whom he rarely failed to find some remarkable men.
But he confessed that he did not enjoy the steady three or four months in
the winter woods with no coming out at all till spring; and he had been
glad of this chance in a logging camp near Equity, in which he had been
offered the cook's place by the owner who had tested his fare in the
Northern woods the summer before. Its proximity to the village allowed him
to loaf in upon civilization at least once a week, and he spent the greater
part of his time at the Free Press office on publication day. He had always
sought the society of newspaper men, and, wherever he could, he had given
them his. He was not long in discovering that Bartley was smart as a steel
trap; and by an early and natural transition from calling the young lady
compositors by their pet names, and patting them on their shoulders, he had
arrived at a like affectionate intimacy with Bartley.

As they worked deep into the woods on their way to the camp, the road
dwindled to a well-worn track between the stumps and bushes. The ground was
rough, and they constantly plunged down the slopes of little hills, and
climbed the sides of the little valleys, and from time to time they had
to turn out for teams drawing logs to the mills in Equity, each with its
equipage of four or five wild young fellows, who saluted Kinney with an
ironical cheer or jovial taunt in passing.

"They're all just so," he explained, with pride, when the last party had
passed. "They're gentlemen, every one of 'em,--perfect gentlemen."

They came at last to a wider clearing than any they had yet passed through,
and here on a level of the hillside stretched the camp, a long, low
structure of logs, with the roof broken at one point by a stovepipe, and
the walls irregularly pierced by small windows; around it crouched and
burrowed in the drift the sheds that served as stables and storehouses.

The sun shone, and shone with dazzling brightness, upon the opening; the
sound of distant shouts and the rhythmical stroke of axes came to it out of
the forest; but the camp was deserted, and in the stillness Kinney's voice
seemed strange and alien. "Walk in, walk in!" he said, hospitably. "I've
got to look after my horse."

But Bartley remained at the door, blinking in the sunshine, and harking to
the near silence that sang in his ears. A curious feeling possessed him;
sickness of himself as of some one else; a longing, consciously helpless,
to be something different; a sense of captivity to habits and thoughts and
hopes that centred in himself, and served him alone.

"Terribly peaceful around here," said Kinney, coming back to him, and
joining him in a survey of the landscape, with his hands on his hips, and a
stem of timothy projecting from his lips.

"Yes, terribly," assented Bartley.

"But it _aint_ a bad way for a man to live, as long as he's young; or haint
got anybody that wants his company more than his room.--Be the place for
you."

"On which ground?" Bartley asked, drily, without taking his eyes from a
distant peak that showed through the notch in the forest.

Kinney laughed in as unselfish enjoyment as if he had made the turn
himself. "Well, that aint exactly what I meant to say: what I meant was
that any man engaged in intellectual pursuits wants to come out and commune
with nature, every little while."

"You call the Equity Free Press intellectual pursuits?" demanded Bartley,
with scorn. "I suppose it is," he added. "Well, here I am,--right on the
commune. But nature's such a big thing, I think it takes two to commune
with her."

"Well, a girl's a help," assented Kinney.

"I wasn't thinking of a girl, exactly," said Bartley, with a little
sadness. "I mean that, if you're not in first-rate spiritual condition,
you're apt to get floored if you undertake to commune with nature."

"I guess that's about so. If a man's got anything, on his mind, a big
railroad depot's the place for _him_. But you're run down. You ought to
come out here, and take a hand, and be a man amongst men." Kinney talked
partly for quantity, and partly for pure, indefinite good feeling.

Bartley turned toward the door. "What have you got inside, here?"

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