The Pines of Eden

THERE was great joy in the house of Deacon Godborrow when a son was at last born to him.

He had been three years wedded, without having a child. Moreover, the deacon came of a consumptive stock; and serious-minded neighbors had argued with him that, even were he given children, they would not be likely to live long; so that not to have them might almost be considered a blessing. Therefore, the strange logic of his heart now made him rejoice that so bare a blessing had been withdrawn, and the rosy infliction of a little boy-baby bestowed in its place. Yet the long list of deaths from consumption in the Godborrow family gave force to the warnings of the neighbors; and the parents watched the growth of their child with solicitude. They named him Obed, finding in his case a far-off parallel to that of Ruth’s son of old, for he also was to raise up the name of the dead upon the inheritance of his father’s father. This inheritance was the old farm which the deacon’s ancestors had cleared in the early years of the Massachusetts plantations. A dim tradition remained of the great ‘‘logrolling ” in 1654, at which all the neighbors around had assisted, when the pioneer Godborrow, with his seven stout sons, had felled twenty acres of forest. The friendly settlers gathered and helped him roll the huge logs into heaps, where they were burned to ashes; while the workers — their cheeks glowing with exertion and the warmth of home-brewed ale — looked on approvingly at the destruction of what would have been a fortune to the later Godborrows. For two centuries the family had clung to this spot, the cleared acres growing all the time more barren, the crops more attenuated, and the faces and figures of the farmers themselves becoming lean and brown in sympathy with their worn-out acres. For two centuries, also, the Godborrows — turning sixty additional acres, which the first comer had tilled, back into woodland — had been painfully growing trees and cutting them down for firewood, which they sold at a moderate profit.

At first they let their trees grow for more than half a century, before felling them. Then, as the yield of the farm decreased and the pressure of expenses became more urgent, they allowed the new growth of timber to stand a little less than forty years. The deacon’s father had begun to cut when the woods had blossomed only twenty-eight times.

But this scanty inheritance weighed little against the joy of the deacon and his faithful wife on the appearance of a male heir. Obed flourished and waxed strong, proving from month to month a cumulative protest against forebodings. His example was a good one, and worthy to be followed: when a little more than three years more had passed, a second son was born. This one was called Seth, after an old friend of the deacon’s. The third and last came into the world two years later. This time the father was rather hard pressed for a name; but his wife’s timid brown eyes lit up with a pleasant thought when he asked her for a suggestion.

“ I don’t know why we should n’t call him Eden,” she said. “It seems just as if God was beginning over again, with us. Our three sons will make the old farm bloom once more, like a garden.”

The theological aspect of this proposal was perhaps doubtful. The deacon was obliged to consider whether it was right for fallen man to assume, even metaphorically, that he could be restored to a state of innocence. But his wife’s still sweet though slowly fading face, and gentle arm lying on his shoulder, melted away his faint scruples. As for the propriety of naming a man after a garden, that did not trouble them in the least.

Eden was the weakly one of the three. In each generation, hitherto, there were some who came out victorious from the strife with the hereditary foe, and Obed and Seth appeared to belong to the line of fortunates; but over Eden the dark destiny of many a predecessor hovered from the hour of birth. To avert this destiny became a pathetic and absorbing study with his parents. They petted him; they watched the fluctuations of his strength, and carefully conformed to them. He had fresh meat when the others had salt: and great reliance was placed on an abundant fare of milk and apples. He was kept on the easiest terms with his books, when he went to school at all; and after he grew old enough to help on the farm, he was spared at the expense of the other boys. Sheltered from the fierce heats of haying time, and left at home on the freezing dawns of winter, when his father, with Obed and Seth, shouldered the axe and set off over a glazed floor of snow to spend their day chopping in the woods, he managed to survive. The deacon and his wife had no misgivings concerning this policy of theirs; but many of the hard-working and ambitious community to which they belonged doubted its wisdom.

When Eden was about eighteen the minister called, one day, to discuss his future with his mother.

“Obed and Seth,” said he, “are good, thrifty young men. They are real helps to their father, and they have made up their minds to follow the plow. But Eden does nothing at home, and does n’t seem minded to do anything elsewhere. Have you thought of your duty to make him a useful member of society? ”

The mother looked silently at him with those eyes that once had trembled with so tender a light when she had thought of the name she would give her boy. They were grown dim and somewhat unresponsive now, after so many years of hard, unrelieved toil and petty cares. They slowly scanned the minister’s friendly but austere and polemical face. Then she said: —

“ It seems to me my first duty was to make him live.”

The minister nodded, as if the concession of this point was only so much gained to his argument. “And now that that is secure, what are you going to do with him? He will soon be a man. Have you thought of the ministry? His great-grandfather was a minister, you know, and both your husband and his father have been deacons.”

“ Yes, the deacon would like to see him fill, a pulpit. But Eden is n’t strong enough to study; and then, out visiting the sick and dying, you see— Well, besides, Eden has no taste that way, sorry though we may be to tell of it.”

“I know it. He has never experienced religion. But I pray for him. And there have been many called who had no more promise than he.”

“I’m sure,” said the mother quickly, “ Eden is n’t backward in promise. But he’s only a boy, after all. And ” — here the dim eyes suddenly grew brighter — “may be God will provide him a place and part in the world, even if neither you nor I can shape his way. ”

“ Ah, Mrs. Godborrow, you will tempt Providence,” said the minister, shaking his head. “We must not throw away our responsibility, expecting that God will take it.”

Eden’s mother turned her head aside, and tears began to come into her eyes. There was a singular weakness in her heart which the minister appeared to have fathomed. She knew she was not fitting her youngest son to grapple with life, yet she could not endure to think of his being otherwise than he was at this time. Why should not he, at least, out of the thousands of restless toilers, remain one to be cared for and caressed, without utilitarian compensation? He had been so sweet a burden in his frailty; their anxiety about him had become a dear possession to his father and mother: why should they be deprived of it? And, after they were gone, would not Eden’s two stout brothers proudly and happily lend him their support? To have Eden to care for would teach them to be generous and tender. These thoughts, however, she did not dare discuss with the minister, and she bade him give her more time to think.

But criticism had found a foot-hold within the house as well as without.

“ Father,” said Obed, as they were nooning at the edge of one of their “ wet meadows,” a few days after the minister’s call, “ why don’t you send Eden to the city, anyhow? He ’ll never be any good on the farm, but he might get a salary in a store. We can’t afford to keep him much longer.”

Obed, at twenty-three, with a strong red beard usurping much of that face which had come to irradiate his father’s heart so long ago, was a shrewd calculator, and had set his mind on attaining prosperity. Though nothing had ever been said to imply that he would be more than a joint owner with his brothers, when they inherited, he instinctively viewed Seth and Eden as despoilers of his property.

The deacon was startled at his query, but answered, drawlingly: “ I don’t know but I shall be able to settle how long we can afford it, as well as you.” Obed was fully aware that, coming from the old man, this was a sharp rebuke.

Nevertheless, he pressed his idea.

“ Well, if you ’re going to settle it, you ’d better do it pretty soon. I ’ve got my mind about fixed. If you mean to keep Eden right along, suppose you buy out my share of the farm, and let me go somewheres else.”

“ Never knew you owned any part the farm,” returned the father, dryly, in his elliptical fashion.

“ I s’pose I shall, some day,” was the rejoinder, given in a gloomy tone. “ Any way, buy or not, I ain’t going to stay here and run things, just to support a loafer. I love my brother as well as most do their’n, but there’s a time for all things, and it’s time for Eden to look ahead.”

“ He ain’t but eighteen,” suggested the deacon.

“ You would n’t have looked at it that way when I was eighteen,” said Obed. “Well, let it be; I can move West, I s’pose.”

This was a shrewd threat. The deacon knew it was impossible to let his oldest son go. Seth and he could not manage the work advantageously alone; for he himself was growing old, though but little over fifty. He made no further opposition, but put his surrender in a neutral form. “Well, we’ll see. There ain’t no need for trouble,” said he.

He reflected sadly, that afternoon, on Obed’s utterances. The young man had never before betrayed his grasping nature in this explicit manner. In these partially developed characters, passions move secretly and slowly, and declare themselves at one leap when prepared to come into the light at all. Savages do not warn, but strike.

From this hour, Eden’s departure was settled. Seth, it is true, whose instinct it was always to labor for some one else’s benefit, could not see why he should go. “ There’s enough here for all of us,” said he to Obed, “ if we only stick together. As far as taking care of him goes, why, all cattle can’t work alike, you know. We have to favor old Short Tail in the furrows.”

To this easy - going representation Obed answered briefly, “ You ’re a boy, Seth,” —a view of the case which had been so completely overlooked by the younger brother that on its being suddenly brought before him he was overtaken by disastrous astonishment, and the argument came to an end.

Eden, having few duties to interfere, had read much and dreamed more. He had soon learned to look for livelier entertainment than could be found in old bound volumes of orthodox Dr. Morse’s Panoplist, filled though they were with fiery explosions against the Unitarian heresy; and his secular readings had created in his mind I scarcely know what dim, misshapen visions of pleasure and adventuring, of excursions into the wide world and rapid rise to wealth, without other foundation than that of continuous enjoyment. The idea of leaving home and going to the city enraptured him. When the deacon cautiously began to sound him, and then warmed to his theme in the hope of kindling a spark of enthusiasm on the boy’s part, he was amazed to find that he had started a conflagration. There was no peace after that until everything had been decided.

Mrs. Godborrow turned pale when her husband told her how eagerly Eden had embraced the project. Her white, sad lips parted and stood open a little way; nothing about her appeared to remain alive except her eyes, that shone with a dry heat as they turned towards her companion. Then she asked: “ Did you expect it — did you think he would have felt so?”

Her husband shook his head mournfully. “Not hardly,” said he, after a pause. “No, I didn’t.”

Then the deacon’s wife went away, and began to make Eden’s things ready.

At the top of the little hill on the cross-turnpike, not a quarter of a mile away, Eden stopped, as his father and he trudged off, under the September sunrise, to gain the nearest railroad station. He turned and waved his rough straw hat to his mother, who was in the front doorway. There was a smile on his thin cheeks, which his mother observed yet half discredited; but she was sure that in his eyes there must be tears, though she could not see them.

When she came in to her work, her head was bowed, but her thoughts rose upward. “ O Lord,” murmured the soundless voice within, “ if I have done my duty, reward me with blessings on my son.”

In a few days Eden, installed in a humble position in a grocery store, wrote home, inclosing a livid ferrotype of himself. In this picture his head was surmounted by an ambitious muffin-shaped cap, very high in the crown, and thrusting a jaunty visor down towards his bashful young eyes. He had bought a cheap gilt ring, also, which came out strongly in the photograph, having been expressly touched up with liquid gold. He looked quietly conscious of these new and dashing elements in his appearance, yet somewhat scared by his own magnificence and the novelty of sitting for his likeness. But everybody in the village secretly admired this proud effigy, as Eden very well knew they would. Only, his mother, I think, sighed over it, and wondered if her boy would be led astray by vanity, as she pondered on the lines of the face, so evidently that of an invalid, contrasted with the fashionable coat and waistcoat, the ring and the muffin-shaped cap.

Eden’s letter expressed great satisfaction with his new life. But that did not last long. In a few weeks he had lost his first illusions and found out what an inferior place he occupied. He was ashamed of his poverty, and restive under the petty duties which lined the path to advancement. For a while he was homesick, as well; but he soon gave up alluding to any return to the farm, and spoke only of bettering his condition by new employment. His mother tried to induce him to come back for a week or two; but a fever of aspiration had seized him. He evaded the proposition. The poor boy had silently resolved never to revisit the farm until he could take with him a visible blessing in the shape of ample money. At last a crisis of this fever arrived, and with it a frightful blow to the yearning parents. News came from Eden’s employer that the boy had disappeared, had left the store and his lodging, and was thought to have shipped as a sailor. A letter from Eden himself confirmed this conjecture. He had gone for a two years’ cruise on a merchant vessel.

This was in November. Chill and pale, his mother went through her daily round of housework, constantly growing weaker, but suspecting no disaster to herself. A fresh calamity was in store. By and by the snow came and spread its convenient floor for hauling wood. The deacon sharpened his axe. “ To-morrow, boys,” said he, “ we must begin chopping.” Then he fell to musing: “ It’s thirty years, most, since my father cut the wood on Rollins hill. We ’ll begin there. Thirty years more, and it ’ll come around time again to cut those woods. I guess, though, I shan’t do much of it then.” Mrs. Godborrow, over her sewing, glanced at him wistfully, and he returned a sad, kindly gaze. They never again exchanged another glance like that.

In the afternoon of the next day, the “ pung,” or sled, had been loaded high with wood, and the deacon, sitting low down on the sled, tried to start his oxen on the homeward route. The incline was very steep, and as the rude conveyance at last began to move with a jerk one of the stakes confining the wood broke, and precipitated half the pile upon the farmer. He fell stunned. Obed, who was near, shouted for Seth, and the two carried their father home in their arms. The doctor succeeded in reviving him; but his back and head had been seriously injured, and in a few days it became clear that he would never recover his faculties. His mind was lost in a half imbecile stupor.

His wife met this shock with fortitude. She did not fail in one of her duties, and the new burden of caring for her shattered husband was borne bravely. Nevertheless, the double grief was robbing her of strength. Her endurance was a mere shell, within which empty despair and treacherous weakness lay concealed. In March, attending the helpless sick man before dawn, one blustering day, she took a cold; pneumonia followed. The doctor came, but before many days he gave place to the minister by her bedside, for the last hope of recovery was gone. Then, before she died, she spoke to her religious adviser about Eden. With a strange look in her eyes, that was not accusation, but rather a sort of unearthly justice without reproach, “It was you,” she said, “ that made me consent to his going away. I tried to act right, but I never would have thought it right only for you. You see what has come of it. . . . His brother Obed wanted him to go.

. . . He will come back. He is living; he will come ! God will give him his part in the world.”

It sent a strange thrill through all the listeners, this wild, broken prophecy, the meaning of which they could not discern, yet were mysteriously touched by.

The deacon could not understand his wife’s disappearance from the house. He complained to Seth that she had deserted him in the season of trouble and pain. When the door of his room was opened, he would turn laboriously in his chair and look, expecting her to enter. “ Did you say she was gone to a funeral?” he would demand, querulously, of Seth. “ Why is she always going to funerals? Tell her to come back. I shall die! I shall die! Then she will go to my funeral.” And presently his mind would wander away again. The duty of sitting with the old man fell naturally to Seth ; it accorded with his disposition to minister personally to others. Meanwhile, Obed went on with the care of the farm animals, and continued the wood-cutting.

The winter wore away, but before the time for plowing and sowing arrived a woman had been found to assist in the household. Seth, however, was still called upon to give most of his time to his father; and in the midst of this preoccupation Obed one day brought him a paper to sign, which would enable him, as he said, to transact business during the deacon’s incapacity. Seth put his name to it without reading it. When spring had fully come, he began to feel the need of work, and proposed to resume, as far as possible, his share in the farming. He then discovered that his brother had carried all the wood to town and sold it. He made some inquiries as to the proceeds, and Obed declined to give any particulars. “ Have n’t I kept you and father all winter? ” he asked. “ That’s about enough for you to know.”

During all this period of affliction, Obed had remained composed in mind and hale in body. A sickening perception began to steal over Seth that his elder brother was flourishing upon the miseries of the rest of the family. Still, as yet he did not openly criticise him. But it happened before long that Seth took one of the two horses out to pasture in a rough field near the forest, and left him there. The next day the horse was not to be found. Obed stormed and swore furiously, and accused his brother of stealing the animal.

“ You fool! ” exclaimed the younger. “ Don’t I own as much of him as you? ”

“ No!” thundered back Obed. “ You ’re nothing but my hired man, if I choose to have you. If I don’t, you ’re a beggar, and that’s all.” And he brought out the paper which Seth had signed a month before. It was an agreement constituting Obed trustee of the entire property of their father.

“It’s a cheat,” said Seth, growing pale. “ You ’re an unnatural scoundrel, and I ’ll have the law of you.”

Obed smiled contemptuously, pocketed his paper, and continued the search for the horse; while Seth hung behind, muttering balefully. At length they found the horse lying in a deep ditch that intersected the field near the woods: he had fallen in by some accident, the sharp root of a tree had stuck into him, and he was already lifeless. At this, Obed’s face grew ominously stern. He vowed that Seth should work for him without wages, until the value of the horse should be made good. “I’m going to make this land pay at last,” said he. “We’ve only got three to feed, leaving out father; I’m well rid of Eden, and if you don’t like my way you can go, too.”

Seth submitted. He worked out his time without wages, meditating what he should do. He had no money to go to law with, and he felt that he was now the only person who would care to prolong his father’s life. Yet he revolted at his slavish position. During the term of payment for the lost horse, he never spoke a word to Obed. He received his commands and executed them, but whenever the two met they regarded each other with silent hate. When these weeks had expired, Seth announced that he should work for his brother no longer. He had secretly resolved to try his strength by seizing a part of the land, tilling it, and taking the profits.

“ Then you may go,” said Obed,— “you and father. I can’t have you cumbering the house.” In addition, he explained that the young woman who had been keeping the house — the daughter of a farmer near a distant village — had promised to marry him the following month, and they would prefer to have the place to themselves.

“I shan’t go,” said Seth, doggedly.

“ You ’ll leave to-morrow,” answered his brother, fiercely.

The next day Seth rose early, got out the oxen, and harnessed them to the plow. As he was starting with them to a new field, Obed confronted him. “Let that plow alone,” said he.

Seth went on. The elder brother bounded towards him and seized his arm. “ Hands off! ” shouted Seth.

In a moment they were struggling desperately. The solemn, peaceful sunrise spread its crimson wings high towards the zenith; the latest star glimmered in the pale west; the birds sang louder and sweeter; and the two brothers, oblivious of all, fought on the new grass beside the road, — the grass so like that which was sprouting on the mother’s grave, just beyond that eastern hill-slope. The patient oxen stood gazing with mild eyes at these furious men, who grappled, swayed, clutched at each other’s hair, and reeled breathlessly backward and forward, intent on deadly harm. Obed’s superior strength was gaining him the advantage, when Seth managed to elude his stout grasp, and suddenly retreated to the barn. Obed pursued; but Seth instantly reappeared with a bill-hook, used for cutting trees, in his hand, — a bright, sharp weapon, curved like the tooth of some huge beast of prey. Then Obed fled for his life, and dodged behind the oxen. Seth advanced a little way, in hot chase, but all at once he stopped, let the dangerous tool fall, and seemed overcome with horror at what he had been upon the brink of doing. The moment his elder brother saw him in this mood, he dodged by him at a safe distance, dragged the only remaining horse out of his stall, and, mounting him barebacked, dashed away towards the house of the nearest justice.

An hour later Seth was arrested and examined, and bound over to keep the peace. Obed was present, but Seth seized the occasion to complain of his brother’s sharp practice and harshness. These, naturally, received no reprimand from the justice; yet Obed found it politic to propose a concession when they returned home. He himself was absent all day in the village, making some negotiations. At night-fall he came in and announced that he was going to build a new house for himself and his betrothed wife. He would therefore allow Seth and his father to occupy the old one, and appropriate three acres behind the house for a vegetable-patch. “ You can hire yourself out around, to make out your living,” he explained, with a liberal air. “ You can’t expect me to provide for the whole.”

So, though it was offered as a favor, Seth accepted this as a part of his rights. But while the brothers remained together, they had no further intercourse.

Obed was married at the time fixed, having seen that the woman of his choice was a hard worker, economical and clever, and knowing that such a woman is often the corner-stone of a well-conducted farm business. In the autumn he moved into his new house, which he had built by means of a loan. Then all connection between the two brothers ceased absolutely. Seth did not go to the wedding, and he did not, appear at church the Sunday after. From that time, in fact, he ceased to attend the services; and when the minister came to ask him the cause he answered sarcastically, and railed against the Christianity of the congregation because it countenanced the marriage of his brother and continued him in church membership, without rebuking him for his theft or making him restore his brother’s share of the property. The minister went away and reported him partially out of his mind; it very soon became apparent, also, that the sympathy of many persons who had rather taken his side had become alienated from him by this new tone, which accused the community along with Obed. Then, gradually, a fearful rumor crept about that Seth had instigated a suspicion of Obed’s having purposely loosened or weakened the stake which let the load of wood fall upon his father, hoping to kill or injure him, and so get possession of the farm. Those words of Obed’s to his father, claiming a share in the estate, had somehow got abroad, and were remembered; and this strengthened the whisperings. Thus a new source of enmity was opened between the two.

The scandal of this bitter feud between the sons of a former deacon was great, and people eyed both men, and even their houses, with a strange dread and dislike. Obed was the successful one, came to church regularly, made himself useful in the village, and overpowered to a great extent the unfavorable atmosphere that hung about him. Seth was poor and overworked, led a gloomy life with his imbecile father, and grew more and more a recluse, with his heart and soul embittered by the silent, cold warfare with his unjust brother.

But so it went on,—the two houses standing within a few rods of each other by the road; one old and decaying and stricken with a blight; the other fresh and firm, — hard and joyless in its aspect, to be sure, but still seeming to draw all the light and cheer away from the other, which once had been so happy a home, with its three boys waiting for the future.

Seven years passed : Obed, by sharpsighted traffic, was leading most of the surrounding farmers. He made special outlay to secure early and heavy crops, which brought large gain in the city markets, sold off his wood rapidly at a period of good prices, and cleared new fields to support additional live stock. He was now several hundred dollars ahead, but had not taken up his mortgage. All this time he had contributed nothing to the support of his father. But at least he had fulfilled—though how differently from the design!— his father’s and mother’s hope that he would raise up their name on his inheritance, and increase the inheritance itself.

Meanwhile, Eden had been forgotten. Nothing had occurred to break the silence that engulfed him after his resort to the sea. Seth sometimes secretly wondered what Obed was thinking about Eden; and Obed, with terror, wondered whether Seth had heard from him, — for if Eden should return, the trust might be disturbed. This secret wonder, touching a common topic, was the only bond left between them.

Seth finally awoke from his long religious lethargy, and suddenly one day began praying for Eden’s return.

It happened that just after he made this prayer he was impelled to go out to the gate of the old weed-grown flower-garden before the house. There, as his eyes fell upon Obed’s house, bitterness and doubt again overcame him, and he wished he had not prayed. In this mood he watched a man who was coming across the fields, directly towards where he stood. It was not any one he knew, so far as he could tell; but he watched him because the man looked so curiously like a boy. Suddenly the stranger paused, and was seized with a fit of coughing. He appeared to be ill. Seth felt sorry for him; then cursed himself at feeling sorry for another when he was himself so much wretcheder than any man. The stranger came on, and at last stood in the road. Looking at the two houses, he seemed puzzled; then he caught sight of Seth among the bushes, and advanced. He was a slight, pale man, with wasted but rosy cheeks, and well-trimmed, scanty whiskers on either side. He had a tall hat, with crape on it, and his meagre person was clothed with great nicety; a watch-chain, with a charm attached to it, swung delicately from his vest.

“Is this Deacon Godborrow’s?” he asked, in a soft voice that carried a kind of physical melancholy in its tone, as if it were a dead or utterly forgotten voice.

“It used to be,” answered Seth, almost surlily. Then, instantly, the manner of the two men changed. They eyed each other with a questioning excitement that passed swiftly into a glance of old-time love; and Seth bethought him of the old ferrotype.

“ You must be Eden: you are Eden! ” cried he.

“ What has changed you so?” murmured Eden, beginning to tremble violently. “ I hardly know you, Seth.”

Eden’s story was that on reaching his second port he had found mention of his mother’s death in a fragment of a local paper which had in some way strayed thither. That was in Rio Janeiro. He fell ill; his ship sailed; and on recovering, he fortunately found employment with an American merchant. He had no heart to come home, liked the climate and the life, and so stayed there. He made money, and ran into many gayeties. “I have led a wild life,” he said, with a sad smile. “I have been dissipated, Seth. Well, it’s all over now. My health has given way.” Then he told how he had written once to his father, and got no answer. “I suppose, now, the letter went astray; but I began to feel as if you did n’t care for me. I thought you wanted me out of the way, and mother was dead; and so ” — He put his hand over his eyes. “ Don’t let’s talk of it any more. My life is ended, Seth; it is n’t worth speaking of. It was a poor one at the best, and I’ve wasted it.”

Not since his mother’s death had Seth shed tears, but he wept now; and yet amid his sobs he was encouraging Eden to believe that many years of happy companionhood awaited them both. In this wise came a second invalid into the charge of Seth, the faithful servant of others. Although Eden had a little money, he was soon to become a heavy and constant care to his poorer brother; yet somehow Seth found in Eden’s return almost a compensation for all his own previous misfortune. After a few days, however, when the history of the seven years had been fully told, the question arose whether these two should not attack the validity of Obed’s trusteeship.

“No,” said Eden, “I have come home to die, — not to fight about worldly goods.”

“ Are you going to see Obed? ” inquired Seth, timidly, with a jealous fear upon him.

“ I think not,” returned Eden.

“ You might be more comfortable there,” his brother suggested.

Eden’s young, worn eyes flashed fire. “ I shall not go,” said he. After this he sat thinking a long time, silently. He began to speak, but a long and terrible spasm of coughing interrupted him. Then he succeeded in saying: “I want you, Seth, to go out with me to-morrow where we can get some young pinetrees. We must hire a horse and wagon.”

“ You mean to plant the trees? ”

“ Yes. The odor of them is good for me. Who knows, Seth? I may live, yet. I must have a little avenue of pines to walk under.”

Seth was glad to fall in with this whim. In the morning they began the planting. Eden set each tree in the ground, himself. “ I feel like a giant,” said he, hilariously.

“ Which way are you going to run your avenue?” asked Seth, looking rather startled at the direction it seemed to be taking.

“ Over to Obed’s.”

Seth let his spade fall.

“Come on; I want your help halfway,” said Eden.

They went on with the work. Now, half-way meant just to the boundary of the old house-yard, beyond which Obed’s land began. Obed had heard of his youngest brother’s return, and watched all his movements furtively. Secreted behind a window he looked on at the planting, at a loss to make out its object. Presently Eden advanced to the boundary, looking towards him. Obed shrank away, with an unexpected pang. “How much like mother he looks!” was his thought, and it pierced him with indefinable anguish. As yet he observed no sign of hostile action on Eden’s part, and the suspense gave him time to think over his own ugly course. In three days, the pines, set out in two straight rows over the rising ground, had reached the boundary. Eden, relieving Seth, paced between them out to the limit, and then called, in his loudest tone, “ Obed!”

Strange melancholy of that sweet, dying voice! No answer came, and the cry was repeated: “ Obed! ”

The eldest born could not resist this summons. A side-door opened, and he came out. “ How do you do, Eden? ” said he, constrainedly.

“I am dying,” was Eden’s answer. Obed shivered. “ Will you lend me a hand,” continued the consumptive, “to finish this avenue? I want to walk here, every day. Seth has helped me this far.”

Obed made a slight gesture of repugnance, but came forward. “ Is this all you have to say, Eden,” he asked, “ after such an absence? ”

“This is all,” returned the other, coldly.

“ You have no quarrel with me, then? You don’t intend to try driving me out?”

“ Is that necessary, on mother’s and father’s farm?” Eden inquired, in answer. “ I suppose if you asked shelter of Seth or me, we should give it. Neither one can drive out the other.”

It began to appear to Obed that he had been acting in a senseless dream for the last six or seven years. He came and worked for Eden, as Seth had done. He could not tell why he did it; but it seemed impossible to refuse; a new set of motives had come into play within him. Soon the avenue was completed, and then Obed, with a hesitation he did not himself understand, asked Eden a new question; “ Will you come into my house sometimes, now, Eden?”

It was curious how both the older brothers felt a species of awe before Eden. There was a something inscrutable in his sad, gentle ways. He acknowledged that he had wasted his life, yet the industrious Obed was surprised to find that he could not despise Eden for this. The knowledge of the world which Eden had gained, fatal though it was, placed him beyond Obed’s sordid ken; and the mysterious blending of youth and death in him formed a sort of consecration. So he awaited a reply, with keen anxiety. This was what he heard:—

“ I shall come when you have been to Seth’s; and when you come, you know what I want you to do. Think it over, Obed.”

“ You don’t know Seth,” said Obed. “ He tried to kill me once. Did he tell you that?” The question was somewhat defiant.

“ Yes,” replied Eden, quietly.

“ And yet ” — began Obed.

“ I don’t want to talk,” said Eden, decisively. “ Go and think it over.”

Obed did so. He sat in his wood-shed, alone, and tried to persuade himself that he was a fool for being influenced by Eden. In the midst of this, a thought came to him that made him start as if he had been struck from behind. This was an uncanny fancy that Eden was really dead, and that he had been talking with his ghost. The next instant, “ Pshaw!” said he, “ I don’t believe in ghosts; so what’s the use heeding him? ” He snapped his fingers, and resolved to go his own way. But then he remembered that Eden’s being dead was only a fancy; and it rushed across him that soon his gentle brother would indeed be gone. He leaped up, and was about to run to the pines, to ask Eden if he was sure he must die. His steps shortened again, and a bitter sadness invaded his breast, at the folly of this question. Somehow, he felt at this moment just as he had nearly twenty years ago, when he had done Eden a little mean injury in play, forgotten till now. . . . That very night he went to Seth’s, and began by asking Eden’s forgiveness for the petty wrong practiced on him in that game twenty years ago. This tiny pebble rolled away, his whole heart seemed to open, the feud was annulled; he burnt, before Seth and Eden, the trusteeship paper; and then they talked together about the future.

“ I have a few hundred dollars,” said Eden. ” I shall leave them to Seth Then, with his half of the farm, he will be richer than you, for you have your mortgage to pay off. Still, that’s only fair.”

Obed — silent like a man who has passed through fire or escaped any great danger, and still rests in the hush of safety — scarcely attended to what was being said.

On an evening of the next spring, while Eden still lingered, and when Obed had come to the homestead to chat, Deacon Godborrow suddenly roused himself, and transient intelligence returned to his eye. Through the open window came the pungent scent of brush-fires. “ That smells good! ” exclaimed the old man. “ It makes me think when I was young. Smelling it waked me up just now, boys. I must have been asleep. Eden, you ’re quite a man now, but you look thin. Tell mother to give him plenty of milk,” he added, turning to the others. “ Hey, what’s that I see through the window? I don’t remember that row of pines. It seems as if I’d been gone longer than I thought. Well, it can’t be more ’n thirty year since we were chopping trees with my father, I guess I shan’t be around much when you cut those pines again. But spare 'em as long as you can, boys; spare ’em!”

Under their spicy shade Eden walked, with his brothers beside him, each day, until he died; and now his pine-trees stand as a memorial and a symbol of the path he opened between those two sundered hearts.

Was not his mother right in her trust that God would give him his part in the world ?

G. P. Lathrop.