Doctor Zay

XII.

IT was an ill-tempered December day, — gray from Passamaquoddy to Point Judith ; grimmer in the State of Maine than in any other privileged portion of the proud New England coast.

“We allers do hev everything wuss here than other folks,” said a passenger in the Bangor mail-coach. “ Freeze and Prohibition, mud and Fusion. We’ve got one of the constitooshuns that take things. Like my boy. He’s had the measles ’n the chicken-porx and the mumps and the nettle-rash, and fell in love with his school-marm ’n got religion and lost the prize for elocootin’ all in one darned year.”

A passenger from Boston laughed at this. He had not laughed before since they left Bangor, at seven o’clock in the morning, with the thermometer eight below, and the storm-signals flying from Kittery to Kitty Hawk. Of all places where it might be supposed that a man with a free will and foreknowledge absolute of his especial fate would not be on a December day, the Bangor and Sherman mail-stage was the most notable. The mud of forgotten seasons and unmentioned regions, splashed, tormented, and congealed, adorned the rotund yellow body and black, loose-jointed top of the vehicle. The high windows were opaque with the thick brown spatter. The laborious wheels, encrusted with frozen clay, had given place to gaunt runners, that “ brought up ” on the abundant inequalities of the road with a kind of moral ferocity, like unpleasant second thoughts or good resolutions after moral lapses. The driver swore at his horses, and insulted the passengers by looking perfectly comfortable in a new buffalo coat. Inside the stage, lunatic gloom and the chill of the Glacial Period descended upon the unfortunate travelers. The straw was cold and thin. The blankets were icy and emaciated. The leather seats seemed to have absorbed and preserved the storms of winters, the rheumatism of the past, the sciatica of the future. The Boston passenger, though protected by his individual travelingblanket and highly-becoming seal-bound coat, expressed an opinion that he was freezing to the cushions, which the jocose passenger honored by a stare and the comforting observation, —

“ Why, we expect to.”

This pleasant person got out, about four o’clock, at what he called his “store,” — a centre of trade at some uncertain remove from the metropolis of East Sherman, — and the traveler from Boston had the impressive experience of finding himself alone in the stage during its passage through that segment of the Black Forest which the Bangor and Sherman route embraced.

He looked through the muddy windows upon the ghastly scenery with a sense of repulsion so active that it fairly kept him warm. The forest, through which the Machias stage-route ran nine awful miles unmet by a human habitation, turned its December expression upon him like a Medusa, before which the bravest pulse must petrify. Twilight and the storm were coming on. The runners made a fine, grating sound, like a badly-tuned stringed instrument, in the solidly-packed snow. Darkness already had its lair in the woods. Ice encrusted the trunks of the trees and the fallen logs. The stripped and tossing boughs moaned in the rising wind with an incredibly human cry. The leathery leaves that clung to the low oaks rustled as the stage crept by, as if they had been watching for it. It was too late to hear in the distant gloom the thud of the wood chopper’s axe. One leisurely and lonely rabbit, white against the whiteness, crossed the way and disappeared in the thicket. All the shadows on the snowy road were blue. The light that struggled from the sky was gray. The drifts were freshly blown over and deep, and the horses plunged and struggled in them, and panted up the little hills. In the forest the snow lay on a level of five feet. The silence was profound ; the desolation pathetic ; the cold deadly. It was like the corpse of a world. The vivid face of the young man in the fur-trimmed coat disappeared, at the end of the first mile, from the mud - bespattered stage window. He rolled himself up to the throat in his traveling-rug, pulled his hat over his eyes, and let the Black Forest severely alone. His whole soul sank before it. He thought of the lives barred in behind it, bound to their frozen places like its icicles. He thought of the delicate nerve, the expectant possibility, the bourgeoning nature —

“ Poor girl! ” he said aloud. “ Poor girl ! ”

It seemed that he felt the necessity of commanding himself, or of defending himself from his own thoughts; for after a few moments’ surrender to them he fumbled in his pockets for letters, and, selecting one, perused it with a studiousness devoid of curiosity, which implied that this was not the first or second reading. This done, he put it out of sight, and, leaning forward with folded arms upon the slippery ledge of the stage window-sill, stared out once more at the icy forest, with the look of a man who stood readier to fight his Gorgons than to flee them.

This was the letter : —

SHERMAN, December 10th.

MY DEAR MR. YORKE, - I suppose you’ve forgotten us, but it don’t follow. We talk a good deal about you, and should feel honored if you would visit us. I should be pleased to see you some time in holidays, for it’s as much as your soul’s worth to stand holidays in Sherman. If the Lord had had to be born in Maine at this time of year — But there ! Isaiah says I ’m growing profane as I grow old, and I don’t know as he’s far out. The Baptists are getting up a tree to head off ours. They are depending on a new recipe for a gingerbread donkey, and turkey-red candybags. Our committee have sent to Bangor for cheap bon-bons, to spite ’em. I ’ve bought some greens of a peddler, and Doctor asked me to find something suitable for her to give the cook. (I 've had three since you were here.) The peddler was drunk, and the cook is going to leave next week. This is the extent of our Christmas news. Doctor is very busy, and Isaiah is n’t very well. He’s got sciatica. He talks a good deal about your uncle, the estate, and you. The big sorrel is dead. This has been a great affliction to him. It would be a great pleasure to him to tell you about it. It is the only thing that has happened in Sherman since you left. I hope you are in improved health, and that I have not made too bold in writing you this letter. I never wrote to a gentleman before, unless he began the correspondence. I have n’t mentioned it to Isaiah, nor to any of the folks. Wishing to be respectfully remembered to your mother, I am truly yours,

SARAH J. BUTTERWELL.

P. S. Doctor has had the diphtheria. She caught it of Molly Paisley. She was sick enough for a week, and got out long before she was able. I look to see her down with something any day. It’s been an awfully sickly winter, and they ’ve worked her enough to kill five men and ten ministers. Dr. Penhallow’s been here, and he talked with me about it. He said she was carrying it too far. He was very anxious about her. But nobody can manage Doctor, any more than you can a blocking snow-storm. If Providence himself undertook to manage her, he’d have his hands full.

S. J. B.

The stage had wrestled through its last important struggle, known to the passengers as the “ long drift,” more familiar to the profane driver as the “ d-d long drift,” and the Black Forest lay at length behind the traveler. He let down the window to take a look at it, as they turned the familiar corner at the cross-roads, made immortal by an apple-blossom. They were close upon the still unseen village, now, and the night came down fast. The forest rose, a tower of blackness, like a perplexity from which one had escaped. He could just see the narrow road, winding gray and snow-blown through ; it pierced the gloom for a space, and vanished with mysterious suddenness. There was one low streak of coppery yellow in the sky, upon which the storm was massing heavily in stratified clouds. The protest of the wind in the woods was like the protest of the sea. A few steely flakes had already begun to fall ; they cut the faint light with meagre outlines, as if the very snow were starved in this famishing place. They struck Yorke in the face; he shivered, and put up the window impatiently. As he did so, he heard the sudden sound of sleigh-bells, and perceived that some one was passing the stage, almost within his hand’s reach. The sleigh was a low cutter, overflowing with yellow fox-skins and bright woollen robes. The horse was a gray pony, closely blanketed. The driver was a lady, solitary and young. She wore a cap and coat of seal, trimmed with leopard’s fur. She had a fine, high color. Her strong profile was cut for an instant against that last dash of yellow in the sky, before she swept by and vanished in the now implacable twilight. She had nodded to the driver with a smile, as she passed him, —one of those warm, brilliant, fatally generous smiles that an abundant feminine creature bestows anywhere, and takes no thought where they may strike, or how. The driver touched his cap with his whip. His pet oath stuck half-way in his throat, and gurgled away into “ Evenin’, Doctor ! ” as he yielded the narrow road to the pony, and struggled on with unprecedented meekness into the silent, frozen village street.

It occurred to Waldo Yorke, leaning back there in the stage, with his hand over his eyes, after she had swept by, that it was impossible for him to chatter with those people before he should see her. It was unbearable now that there should be anybody in the world but herself and him. It was incredible. What man could have believed that one look would undo so much, would do so much? She seemed to have sprung on him, like a leopardess indeed. He panted for breath, and thrust his hand out, alone there in the dark stage, with a motion as if he could have thrust her off for life’s sake.

The driver reined up at the postoffice, and the passenger got out. He walked over to the Sherman Hotel and called for supper, and tried to calm himself by a smoke in the dingy office. But his cigar disgusted him, and he threw it away. He got out into the freezing air again as soon as possible, and walked up and down, for a while, in the middle of the road. The sidewalks were not broken out; the drifts lay even with the fences ; there were no street-lamps, and between the scattered houses long wastes of blackness crouched. There were no pedestrians. Occasionally a sleigh tinkled up to the post-office ; the drivers clapped their ears with blue-mittened hands, and crouched under old buffaloes worn to the skin.

He passed the town hall, where a sickly handbill set forth that the celebrated Adonita Duella, the only female child drummer in the world, would perform that night, and could be seen and heard for the sum of twenty-five cents.

He passed the Baptist church, where the vestry was lighted for a prayer-meeting, and a trustful choir were pathetically rehearsing Hold the Fort, with what they were pleased to call a cabinet organ and a soprano who cultivated a cold upon the lungs. The frost was as thick as plush upon the windows of the vestry.

It was too early for either of these sources of social diversion to be open to the public. Yorke met no one, and walked as slowly as he could without congealing, stumbling through the dark, over the drifted road, till he came in sight of Mr. Butterwell’s familiar square house. He came first upon the doctor’s wing. Lights were in the office, and in her parlor. The reception-room was dark. Encouraged by this to think that the office hour was either over — it used to be over by seven o’clock — or else that no one was there, he pushed on, and softly made his way up the walk and to the piazza, where he paused. It was now snowing fast, and he stood in the whirl and wet, overwhelmed by a hesitation that he dared neither disregard nor obey. His thoughts at that moment, with a whimsical irrelevance, reverted to the letter he wrote when he first got back to Nahant, in which he had asked for her bill. She sent it, after a scarcely perceptible delay. He thought it rather small, but dared not say so. She had not written since. Now, after a few moments’ reflection, he softly turned the handle of the door, without ringing. There was no furnace in the house, and the entry was cold. The door of the reception-room was shut. He opened this, also, without knocking, and, closing it quietly behind him, stood for a minute with his back to the door. She was not there, or she did not hear him. There was a soapstone stove in the reception-room, in which a huge fire burned sturdily. Plants were blossoming somewhere, and be perceived that there must be carnations among them. The office door and the door into the parlor were both open ; a delicious, even warmth, summer-like and scented, pervaded all the rooms. He stepped on into the office, and stood still. The snow was sprinkled on his fur collar and black hair and beard.

“ Handy ? ” she called from the parlor, in that rapid way he had noticed when he first knew her, and which he had come to associate with her anxious or wearied moods. “ Handy, is that you ? Come here.”

Yorke made no answer, but advanced a step or two, and so met her — for, startled by silence, she had risen immediately— on the threshold of the inner room.

His heart leaped to see that she lost her color. She did, indeed. A flash, like fear, vibrated across her figure and upraised face, then fell, and she had herself instantly. She held out both hands to him, and drew him graciously into the bright warmth of the room, led him to the lamp before she spoke, took off the yellow globe, and let the white radiance full on his face.

“ You are well! ” she said, exultantly. “ You are a well man ! ”

“ As well as I ever was in my life, Doctor Zay. And stronger, by far. Do you see ? ”

He squared his fine shoulders, and smiled.

“ Yes, I see.”

Her firm eyes lifted, looked at him piercingly, then wandered, wavered. A beautiful mistiness overswept them; her will, like a drowning thing, seemed to struggle with it; she regarded him through it fixedly; then her dark lashes dropped. She turned away, not without embarrassment, and motioned him to a chair.

He forgot to take it, but stood looking at her dizzily. She wore something brown, a dress of heavy cloth, and it was trimmed with leopard fur, like that he saw in the sleigh. She did not recover her composure. She was like a beautiful wild creature. Her splendid color and fire mocked him. Who was he that he should think to tame her ?

Yet, should a man let go his hold on a moment like this? By the beating of his own heart, he knew that life itself might never yield him such another. He flung his whole soul into one swift venture.

“ Dear,” he said, “ I am too strong, now, to be denied. I have come back for you.”

“ Oh, hush ! ” she cried. She had a tone of fathomless entreaty. She turned from him passionately, and began to pace the room.

He saw how she tried to regain her poise, and he saw with exultanee how she failed.

“ No, no,” he said, with a low laugh. “ That is not what I have traveled three hundred miles for. Oh, how glad I am I surprised you, — that I took you off your guard ! Don't mind it ! Why should you care ? Why should you battle so? Why should you fight me? Tell me why.”

He followed her with an imperious step. She came to a halt, midway in the bright room. She lowered her head and craned her neck, looking from him to the door, as if she would take flight, like a caged thing. He stretched his hand before her.

“ Why do you fear me so ? ”

“ I fear you because you love me.”

“ No, that is not it,” he said, firmly. “ You fear me because you love me.”

He thought, for the moment, that he had lost her forever by this bold détour. She seemed to double and wheel, and elude him. She drew herself up in her old way,

“ It is impossible ! ” she said, haughtily.

“ It is natural,” he said, gently.

“ You do not understand how to talk to a woman ! ” blazed Doctor Zay. “It is presumptuous. It is unpardonable. You torture her. You are rough. You have no right ” —

He advanced a step nearer to her.

“ How beautiful you are ! ” he said, deliriously.

She turned from him, and walked to the other end of the room. He looked across the warm, bright width. A high fire was flashing in the open hearth. She stopped, and held out her hands before it; he could see that they shook. She stood with her back to him. He could hear the storm beating on the windows, as if it were mad to enter this sacred, sheltered place, where fate had thrown them together, — they two out of the wintry world, — for that one hour, alone.

He advanced towards her, with resolute reverence, and spoke her name. She looked over her shoulder. He felt that she defied him, soul and body.

“ I have assumed a great deal, I know,” he said, in a tone from which the last cadence of self-assertion had died; “ it is in your power to correct my folly and deny my affirmation.”

She turned her face towards the fire again, before which her averted figure stood out like a splendid silhouette. This silent gesture was her only answer.

“ I am not so conceited a fellow as to insist that a woman loves me, against her denial,” proceeded Yorke, with a manly timidity that well became him ; “ and I have been rough, I know, coming upon you so suddenly, and taking advantage of your natural emotion. I do not wish to be ungenerous ; no, nor unfair. I will not urge you any more to-night, if you would rather not. Shall I go away ?”

“ Yes, please,” she said in a whisper.

He turned to obey her, but, half across the room, looked hungrily back.

Then he saw that she had clasped her hands upon the mantel-piece, and that her strong face had sunk till it was buried in them. She started as he turned, as if his gaze had been a blow, and shrank before him, a shaken creature.

Even at that moment, he felt more a sense of awe than of transport, at the sight of her royal overthrow. He was beside her in a moment, and gently putting his own hand upon her cold, clenched fingers said, —

“ Dear, is it true ? ”

“ Oh, I am afraid — it is — true.”

“ And why should you be afraid of the truth ? ”

“Oh, it is a fearful thing — for a woman to — love — a man ”...

“ It does n’t frighten me.” He held out his arms, with that low, glad laugh. “ Come, and see how dreadful it is! Come ! ”

But she shook her head, and both her firm hands warned him off.

“ I have lost my self-possession,” she pleaded. “ I have lost — myself. Let me alone. I cannot talk to you tonight. Go, and don’t— I cannot bear to have you expect anything. I entreat you not to hope for anything. It will be so hard to make you understand ”...

“ It will, indeed,” cried the lover joyously, “ be hard to make me understand anything but Eden, now ! ”

But he spared her for that time, and, drunken with hope, went out, the maddest, gladdest, most ignorant man that faced the storm that night.

He waded across the piazza, where the snow was now drifting high. The dead stalk of a honeysuckle clutched at him feebly, as he went by. He presented himself at Mrs. Butterwell’s door, and bore dreamily the little domestic whirl which followed. The only coherent thought he had was a passionate desire to be alone. Mrs. Butterwell hastened to call the doctor, but he said he had spoken to her as he came along. Mr. Butterwell began at once to give him the particulars relative to the last hours of the sorrel. Mrs. Butterwell bustled about blankets, and fires, and things. She looked a great way off, to Yorke, and small; he heard her imperfectly, and had to ask her to repeat what she said. He seemed to be floating, a being of another race, from another planet, high above the heads of these old married people ; in a blinding light, at a perilous height, from which he regarded them with a beautiful scorn.

He hastened to his room, under plea of fatigue, at the first pardonable moment. It was warm there, and still. The bed had been moved into a new place, and the framed certificate was gone. The hair-cloth sofa was there, and the little three-legged table where the medicine used to stand. There was a great fire in a fat, air-tight stove. He wheeled up the black sofa, and sat down, and watched the red oblong blocks of light made by the open damper in the side of the stove. He sat there a long time. Sleep seemed as impossible as pain, and connected thought as foreign as fear. He drifted in his delirium. He had no future, he knew no past. She loved him. He reeled before the knowledge of it. Possession seemed profanity. Where was her peer in all the world ? And she chose him! With closed eyes he repeated the three words, She loves me, as he might have dashed down a dangerous wine, of which he had already more than man could bear. He was intoxicated with her.

He got through the next day as best he might. His host and hostess brought a first mortgage upon him, and Doctor Zay was hard at work. She was early at breakfast, late at dinner, and apparently took no tea. He saw her once struggling through the snow to give an order to Handy, who seemed to have added a number at his hatter’s for each degree of severity in the thermometer. Handy had private views, which no man could fathom, relative to Mr. Yorke’s unexpected appearance ; but they were not of a nature which improved his temper, and, under the present climatic conditions, he was denied the resources of the sawdust heap. Handy wore blue mittens and a red tippet tied over his ears. He drove with the doctor that day, to watch the pony, who was uneasy from the cold, in her extended “ waits.” Doctor Zay was wrapped in her furs, and had long, seal-skin gloves. She looked a trifle pale. Yorke watched the brave girl ride away into the deadly weather. She drove slowly, battling with the unbroken road. She carried a shovel to cut their way through drifts.

In the evening, as soon as might decently be, he went to her rooms. She was alone, and welcomed him with unexpected self-possession. She had a feverish flush on her cheeks. She began to talk as if nothing had happened. Site inquired about his health, and the medical items of his recovery. She spoke of his mother, and his life in Boston.

Indulgently, he let her go on. He experienced an exquisite delight in all this little parrying and playing with fate, and in the haughty consciousness that he could put an end to it when he chose. He occupied himself in noticing that she wore a woolen dress of a ruby color, with a plush jacket and white lace.

“ I have been at work myself, this winter,” he ventured to say. “ Did I tell you ? ”

“ No. What have you done ? ”

“ Sat in my office and prayed for clients.”

“ I approve of that. Did n’t you get any ? ”

“ Oh, yes ; some wills and leases, and that kind of thing. Greatness is not thrust upon me. But I ’ve sat there.”

“ Go on sitting there,” said Doctor Zay, with a little nod.

“ Thank you. I propose to.”

She colored, and was silent.

“ I wish you could have heard the Christmas oratorio,” began York again; “and Salvini, and the Damnation of Faust, — it was given twice. I used to think there was nobody in Boston who enjoyed Salvini as you would. Then we’ve had unusually good opera. I must tell you about the pictures some time; there have been one or two really excellent exhibitions.”

“ Tell me now,” said she hungrily, leaning her head back in her chair and closing her eyes.

“ No, not now. I have other things to say. You must come and see and hear for yourself.”

“ I don’t know but I shall,” she said simply.

“ Confess you are starving in this snowdrift ! ”

“ A little hungry, sometimes ; it is worse in the winter. It would rest me to hear one fine orchestral concert. Do you remember what Irma said?”

“ Irma who ? ”

“ “Why, in On the Heights. ‘ I want nothing of the world without, but some good music, with a full orchestra.’ ”

“ You shall hear a hundred,” murmured he. “It is fatuity to imprison yourself here, — it is cruel. I can’t bear it. It must come to an end as soon as possible. It has infuriated me all winter to think of you. I had to drive you out of my mind, like the evil one. You must come down from your heights to the earth, like other people.”

“ Perhaps,” said Doctor Zay, “ when some of my poor women here are better. I have a few cases it would be disloyal to leave now. But perhaps, before I am old, I may move. I have thought that I should like to settle in Boston, if I were sure of a footing. I know the women there, in our school. Some of them are excellent; one of them is eminent. But there are none now (there was one, but she died) working on precisely my basis. Indeed, there are very few men who stand just where I do, and they would not help me any. I should be rather alone.”

It was impossible to mistake the fine unconsciousness of these words. Yorke looked at her with amazement, which deepened into a vague distress.

“ We are not thinking of the same things at all! ” he said suddenly.

“ What could you think I was thinking of ? ” she cried hotly.

“ And what could you think I was thinking of ? What does a man think of when he loves a woman ? ”

“ Oh, you ’ve come back to that again,” said Doctor Zay, with an unnatural because feeble effort at lightness. But she pushed back her chair, and her manner instantaneously underwent a change. Yorke watched her for some moments in guarded silence.

“ I have returned,” he said at length, “to where we left off, last night. Why do you wish to make it hard for me ?

“ I was insane,” she said, “ to let you get to that point. I ought to have prevented — a woman should control such things. I do not know what I was thinking of.”

“ You were thinking that you loved me,” he said gravely.

She was silent.

“ Do you want to take that back ? ”

“ I wish I had never said it.”

“ Do you wish to take it back ? ”

“ Alas,” she said, below her quickening breath, “ I cannot ! It is too late.”

“ You admit as much as that ? It was not a mood, nor a — but you are not capable of caprice. Then you have admitted everything,” he said ecstatically, “ and all the rest is clear.”

She smiled drearily. “ Nothing is clear, Mr. Yorke, except that we must separate. We have both of us lived long enough to know that a man and woman who love each other and cannot marry have no choice but to turn short round, and follow different roads. You and I are such a man and woman. Let us bring our good sense to the thing, at the outset.”

“ I am destitute of power to see why we should not marry,” said Yorke, with a sudden faint sinking at the heart. She was without the tinseled tissue of coquetry. He knew that he had to deal not with a disguise, but a conviction. She had not that indigence of nature which could have offered irreverence either to his feeling or her own. “ I told you long ago,” he went on, “ that you should not be expected to surrender your profession. I should be ashamed of myself if I could ask it of you. I am proud of you. I feel my heart leap over everything you achieve. It is as if I had done it myself, only that it makes me happier, it makes me prouder. I want you just as you are, — the bravest woman I ever knew, the strongest woman and the sweetest. Do you think I would take your sweetness without your strength? I want it all. I want you. There is nothing I will not do to make you feel this, to make it easy, to help you along. I could help you a very little in Boston. That has been a comfort to me. Why, what kind of a fellow should I be, if I could approach a woman like you, and propose to drink down her power and preciousness into my one little thirsty life, — absorb her, annihilate her, — and offer her nothing but myself in exchange for a freedom so fine, an influence so important, as yours? I shall never be a great man, but I am not small enough for that! ”

She had listened to him attentively, and now lifted her eyes, which seemed again to retreat from him with that sacred timidity.

“ I never heard a man talk like that before,” she said softly. “ It is something even to say it. I thank you, Mr. Yorke. Your manliness and nobleness only make it — harder — for me ” — Her voice sank.

“ Everything should be done to make the sacrifice as light as it can be made,” urged Yorke. “ I have thought it all over and all through. I know what I am saying. This is not the rhapsody of a lover who cannot see beyond his momentary ecstasy. I offer you the devotion of a man who has belief in the great objects of your life ; in whom you have created that belief; to whom you have become — Oh, you are so dear to me ! ” he added brokenly. “ I cannot think of life without you. I never knew what love was like before. I never understood that a woman could be to any man what you are, must be, to me.”

While he spoke she had grown very pale, and it was with difficult composure that she said, —

“ Listen to me, Mr. Yorke ! This is only — hurting — us both, you and me too, to no wholesome end. Hear what I have to say, and then we must stop. I appreciate — oh, believe me! — your generosity, and the loyalty you have to your own feeling for me. I never expected to find it. I did not suppose you were capable of it. I grant you that. I have never thought but that you would desire the woman you loved to be like other women, to give up everything. I have trained myself to think so, all along. You have taken me by surprise, I admit. You are more of a man than I thought you were” —

“ It is your own work, if I am,” he interrupted, smiling hopefully.

“ But you do not know,” she proceeded hastily, “ what it is that you are saying. I do. You and I are dreaming a dream. It has a waking, and that is marriage. Few young men and women know anything more of the process of adjusting love to marriage than they do of the architecture of Kubla Khan’s palace. I have had, as you will see, exceptional opportunities to study the subject. I have profited by them. Mr. Yorke, I never knew but three marriages in my life that were real! ”

“ So you told me once before,” he said. “ I never forgot it. Ours would be the fourth.”

She shook her head with a melancholy smile. “You do not understand. You have not had my chances to see how it is. I do not think lightly of these things. Next to the love between man and his Creator (if there is such a thing, and I believe we must admit that there is), the love of one man and one woman is the loftiest and the most illusive ideal that has been set before the world. A perfect marriage is like a pare heart: those who have it are fit to see God. Any other is profanity to me ; it is a desecration to think of. I should be tortured. It would kill me to miss it. It is a matter in which I cannot risk anything, or I must reduce the risk to a minimum. Oh, women of my sort are thought not to reverence marriage, to undervalue it, to substitute our little personal ambitions for all that blessedness! I never spoke of these things before. I am not ashamed to tell you. Oh, it is we who know the worth of it! — we who look on out of our solitary lives, perhaps through our instructed experience and trained emotion. We will not — I will not have any happiness that is not the most perfect this world can give me. I will not stoop to anything I can fathom and measure. Love should be like a mighty sea. It should overflow everything. Nothing should be able to stand before it. Love is a miracle. All laws yield to it. I should scorn to take anything that I feared for, or guarded, — to look on and say, At such a time, such a consequence will follow such a cause. Then he will feel so and so. And then I shall suffer this and that,— and to know, by all the knowledge my life’s work has brought me, that it would all come as I foresaw, — that we should ever look at one another like the married people I have known. Oh, I have watched that bitterness too often ! I know all the steps, — I have had their confidences. You don’t know what things people tell their doctors. I have heard too much. Years ago, I said, I will never suffer that descent.”

“ Do you mean,” asked Yorke, trying to speak with a courage which he did not feel, “ that you took a vow never to marry at all ? ”

“ Oh no,” she said, with her ready candor. “ I am not one of those women. It is not honest to assume that there is any perfect life without happiness. It is idle to pretend that happiness and loneliness are not contradictory terms. I have always known that I should marry if the miracle happened. I never expected it to happen. I put it out of my mind. I have known I should be a solitary woman. I am prepared for it. I would rather live twenty lonely lives than to suffer that desecration, — to see you look some morning as if it wearied you. I have seen them ! I know the look. It would murder me.”

“ The miracle has happened ! ” He approached her with a passionate movement. " Trust it.”

She shook her head.

“ We love each other,” he urged, — “ we love each other ! ”

“ We think so,” she said sadly. “ You think so. But you do not know what it all means. If I had been like the other women — Oh, I am sorry you have wasted all this feeling on me. If it had been some lovely girl, who had nothing to do but to adore you, — who could give you everything ” —

“ I should have tired of her in six weeks,” said Yorke.

“And I will give you sixteen to tire of me ! ” she said quickly. But when she saw how this wounded him she was sorry she had said it, and hastened to add more calmly, “ You see, Mr. Yorke, you have been so unfortunate as to become interested in a new kind of woman. The trouble is that a happy marriage with such a woman demands a new type of man. By and by you would chafe under this transitional position. You would come home, some evening, when I should not be there (but I should feel worse not to be there than you would to miss me). You would need me when I was called somewhere urgently. You would reflect, and react, and waver, and then it would seem to you that you were neglected, that you were wronged. You would think of the other men, whose wives were always punctual at dinner, in long dresses, and could play to them evenings, and accept invitations, and always be on hand, like the kitten. I should not blame you. Some of the loveliest women in the world are like that. I should like somebody myself to come home to, to be always there to purr about me ; it is very natural to me to accept the devotion of such women. There was one who wanted to come down here and stay with me. I would n’t let her ; but I wanted her. With you it is more : it is an instinct of heredity. Generations of your fathers have bred it in you. You would not know how to cultivate happiness with a woman who had diverged from her hereditary type. Happiness must be cultivated. It is like character. It is not a thing to be safely let alone for a moment, or it will run to weeds. It would slip out of our hands like thistle-down, and I should be made to feel — you would feel, and your mother and all the people you had been taught to care for — that I was to blame ; that it was a lifelong mistake for you to have married a woman with a career, who had anything else to do but be your wife ” —

“ My mother, of all women, I know would be the first to uphold you,”interrupted Yorke. “ She believes in all that sort of thing about women. I never thought of it till this minute. It used to mortify me when I was a boy; then it only bored me. I shall kiss her for it when I get home ! You need not give a second thought to my mother. She has never got over what you did for me last summer, and she’s dying to see you, in any capacity. If you came to her in that of a daughter, she would set you on a pinnacle, and fall down and worship you.”

“ It has been very manly in you,” said Doctor Zay musingly, “ never once to ask me to give up my work. I shall not forget it.”

“ I never thought of asking it,” said Yorke. “ It’s not because I have any particular theories, and I should be ashamed to let you credit me with any sort of nobility about it. I don’t want it any other way. It would undo everything, It would make another woman of you. I want you just as you are. Come! ” he said, with a different tone. He leaned above her. She had never seen such wells of tenderness in any man’s eyes. She tried to look into them, but her own fell.

“ You make it so hard for me ! ” she cried, in a quick, anguished tone.

Then Yorke drew back. “ You do not trust me,” he said hoarsely. “ You do not believe that I love you.”

She stretched out her hands to him in a mute appeal.

“ I have waited on your caution and protest long enough,” he went on excitedly. “ I went home last summer, as you bade me. I let you think I thought you might be right. I let you treat my love like a fit of the measles. You supposed I was going away to convalesce like a boy, and establish your theory. I never believed it for one moment ! I knew all the time that what you call the miracle had got me. It has got you, too, thank Heaven ! You can’t escape it. You can’t help it. Try, if you want to. I 'll leave you to work it out. A man can stand a good deal, but there comes a point beyond which he must retreat in self-defense. I have reached that point.”

He turned from her, glowing with swift wrath. His face looked as if it were carved out of hot white lava ; it seemed to her as if it would cool off in that color and expression, and remain by her forever, like a medallion. The rare tears sprang to her burning eyes. She felt how desolate she was to be.

At the door he paused, and looked, relenting, back.

“ How tired you are ! ” he said, with infinite tenderness. “ I would have rested you, poor girl! ”

“Oh, don’t!” she cried piteously. He approached her ; she motioned with her warning hands. He stood hesitating, and she saw how perplexed and tossed he was.

“ If you had truly loved me,” he said savagely, “ we should not have parted in this way. It would not have been possible to you. You could not have tortured me so. You would have trusted me. You would have risked anything. We should have taken hold of our problem together. Our love would have carried us through all these — little things — you talk of. I have overestimated the miracle, — that is all.”

Before he had finished speaking she glided up to him; her deep-colored dress and waving feminine motions gave her the look of some tall velvet rose, blown by the wind. She put both her hands in his, threw her head back, and looked at him. For that one moment she gave her soul the freedom of her eyes.

“ You shall know,” she whispered. “ You shall know for this once ! . . . Do you see ? ”

He drew away one hand, and covered his face.

“ It is because I love you that I — hurt you so. It is because I love you that we must part in this way. It is for your sake that I will not let you make a life’s mistake. Oh, how could I bear it! I should waste myself in trying to make you happy. I could not live unless I made you the happiest man in all this world, — no, don’t interrupt me; I know what you would say — but it would not be so. I will never marry a man unless I can make him divinely happy ! I will not wrong him so. I will not wrong myself. This is right that I am doing. I am accustomed to making difficult choices and abiding by decisions. It is hard at first, but I am trained to it; I know how to do it. Don’t worry about me ; I shall get along. Go, now, — go quickly ! I can’t bear any more of this.” She drew back from him by a subtle movement, and gathered herself commandingly. He hesitated for a moment, opened his lips to speak, said nothing, obeyed her, and went.

xIII.

He decided not to see her again, and left by the morning stage.

When he had got back to Boston, he wrote to her what he thought a very deep letter. She answered it by a beautifully straightforward, simple note, in which there seemed to be nothing concealed, because there was nothing to conceal.

He wrote at intervals through the remainder of the winter; she answered him kindly. He tried to keep himself informed of the state of her health, and did not succeed in the least. She inquired minutely after his. Once she sent him a prescription marked ars. 2 m., for an influenza. She exhibited the best of good camaraderie, and was rigorously destitute of tenderness. She seemed to have accepted a certain relation of kindliness and frank mutual interest, with that mysterious facility by which women substitute such things for a passion. He was far more disheartened than if she had intrenched herself behind a significant silence.

In April Mr. Butterwell had occasion to write concerning the purchase, in Boston, of a horse to replace the sorrel. Mrs. Butterwell added a postscript. She said that the doctor was growing very peakèd, and had gone to Bangor on a week’s vacation, visiting a college classmate. She said the doctor had done a terrible winter’s work. She said she hoped the Lord knew how the smallpox got to Sherman, for she was sure she did n’t. She said Dr. Penhallow had gone to Europe.

In May Mr. Butterwell wrote again, to say that the new horse was satisfactory, but that the lawyer was drunk; and if Mr. Yorke felt any uneasiness about his uncle’s estate —

Mr. Yorke did experience great uneasiness about his uncle’s estate. He took the first boat of the season, and steamed away promptly for Machias. He arrived there in the afternoon, and got a horse and boy, and started for Sherman. He reached the cross-roads at dusk, dismissed his driver, and, carrying his light bag, walked as briskly as the atrocious state of the roads permitted towards the village.

In going by a little group of lumbermen’s cottages, he noticed a covered buggy standing at a ragged gate.

He would have passed it without a second thought, but for a sudden consciousness that the horse was an acquaintance whom he was likely to cut. He perceived then that it was indeed Old Oak. He looked into the buggy and recognized the blankets and fox-robe; for it was winter still in the reluctant Maine May. Without a moment’s hesitation, he got into the buggy, and wrapped himself up in the robes, and waited.

He had to wait a long time. It grew dark. Several people passed, but no one noticed him. Some men were hanging about the house, and a woman or two ; they seemed to be neighbors. He could not make out what was the matter, but inferred that these good people had some source of serious excitement connected with the lumberman’s cottage. He asked no questions, not wishing to be seen. Now and then, he thought he heard cries in the cottage.

It might have been half an hour, it might have been more ; but she came out at last. She had on a brown felt hat, with a long feather. She walked fast, nodding to the loafers, and speaking curtly ; and, coming up, swung herself into the buggy, in her supple way. She had sat down beside him, and begun to tug at the robes, before she saw that she was not alone in the dark carriage.

“ Don’t let me startle you,” said Yorke.

She sat quite still, half leaning forward, for an instant; then sank back. She did not speak, nor take the reins. He perceived that she trembled from head to foot.

“ I have done wrong ! ” he cried remorsefully.

“I did not — expect — to see you,” she panted. “ I was not quite myself. I have been going through a terrible scene. Where are the reins?”

“ I have them. I shall keep them, by your leave.” He touched Old Oak, and they started off slowly, plunging through the deep spring mud.

“ You will upset us in this quagmire,” she complained. “I know every stone and hole. Give me the reins.”

He did so, without comment. She drove steadily, but feebly. She began to talk at once.

“ There’s a man in that house in delirium tremens. It is the worst case I ever had. They called me at three o’clock. I 've just got him quiet. He was firing a revolver all over the house when I went.”

Yorke uttered a smothered cry.

“ At everything and everybody,” said Doctor Zay. “ Ball after ball, as fast as he could pull the trigger. They were all frightened. Nobody could do anything, I — He is all right now. Nobody has been hurt. I got it away from him. He is asleep. I — Mr. Yorke — will you please — to take — the reins ? ” She sank backwards, and slowly leaned and fell against the buggy’s side. “ Don’t be disturbed,” she gasped. “ I shall not faint. I never did — in my life. I am only — out of breath. I shall be — all right — soon.”

He resolutely put his arm about her, and got her into a more comfortable position. She panted, and was very pale, but had herself under soldierly control. He saw that she was right; she would not faint.

“ Either, alone, would not have been — too much,” she said apologetically. “ But both together — to find you there — and then I was up all night with a patient who suffered horribly. And I have n’t — eaten very much to-day. I am ashamed of myself! ” she added, in a stronger voice.

“ I 'm glad you had a buggy,” observed Yorke maliciously.

“ Oh, I had to,” she said innocently. “ Since the diphtheria my throat has been a little troublesome — and these cold spring winds — Thank you, Mr, Yorke, I am quite myself, now. I can sit up alone.”

“ I don’t think you can,” he said decidedly.

“ Mr. Yorke ” —

“ Dear ! ”

“ Oh, hush ! ”

“ I have overtaken Atalanta this time. She stopped for a leaden apple, — for a revolver ball, — and I got the start. Do you suppose I am going to forego my advantage so soon ? Do you think you are going to send me off again, after all we have gone through ? Do you think I will give you up to your pistols, and your diphtheria, and small-pox, —you — you, — my darling, my poor, brave, lonely girl? Do you think I will ever leave this accursed State of Maine again without you ? You don’t know what kind of a man you’re dealing with, then,— that’s all,” he added, by way of anticlimax. But his heart bounded to see that she did not protest and battle ; nor, indeed, did she answer him just then, at all. She was worn out, poor girl.

He did not disturb her silence, which he felt stealing upon himself deliriously, as if it were the first fumes from the incense of her surrender. How should he breathe when the censer swung close ?

“Mr Yorke,” at last, “ are you sure ? ”

“ As I am of my life.”

“ That it is me you want, — a strongminded doctor ? ”

“ A sweet-hearted woman ! It is only you.”

“ How do you know I sha’n’t make a — what was it ? — ‘ cold,’ ‘ unnatural,’ ‘ unwomanly ’ wife ? How can you expect anything else, sir ? ”

“ I never saw a woman in my life who would do as much, give as much, to make a man happy as you would, — as you will.”

“ I wonder how you dare ! ” she whispered.

She turned her neck, with a reluctant movement, to look at him, as if he had been some object of fear.

“ Oh, I dare more than that.”

“ How long have you — cared — for me ? ”

“From the very first.”

She sighed. “ I wish I could say as much ! I can’t. It took me some time. I cared most about the case, till you got better. And then I was so busy! But ” —

“ But what ? ”

“ Oh, I could make up for that. I would n’t be ” —

“ Don’t stop,” rapturously. “ What would n’t you be ? ”

“I would n’t be outdone in any such way. If we ran the risk, I mean, — if it seemed to be best for you. I don’t believe it is ! I think it would be the worst thing that could happen to you. Why don’t you get out of the buggy, and go back to Boston ? What did you come here for ? ”

“To look after my uncle’s estate, to be sure:”

“ Oh! . . . You must be very anxious about it ? ”

“ I am very anxious.”

The buggy lurched and lunged remorselessly over the dark and swampy road. She sat erect and white. She did not lean against anything. She did not speak, nor turn her face towards him. He dimly felt that only another woman could understand her at that moment, and had a vague jealousy of the strong withdrawal which nature had set between her strength and his tenderness, as if he found a rival in it.

“ Dear,” he said once more, with that lingering accent on the word which gave to his urgency more the force and calm of an assured, long-married love than of a crude young passion, “ you told me that love was like a mighty sea. It has overflowed everything. Nothing has been able to stand before it. It is a miracle, — like eternal life. Dear, are you ready to believe in the miracle ? ”

“ Be patient with me,” said Doctor Zay. “ I have a scientific mind. The supernatural does n’t come easily to it. How shall I begin ? ”

“ Say after me, ‘ I believe in the life everlasting,’ — that means my love, you know. I want to hear you say it, first of all.”

“ I believe — in — you. Will that do ? ”

“ I will try to make it do,” said Yorke.

“ But I don’t believe in your driving,” observed the doctor. “ There is a ditch four feet and a half deep, with a well in it, off the right, here. You are making straight for it. Give me the reins ! If you don’t mind — please.”

“ I don’t care who has the reins,” he cried, with a boyish laugh, “ as long as I have the driver ! ”

They had got home, by this, though neither perceived it, till Old Oak stopped in the delaying spring twilight, and sighed the long sigh of the virtuous horse, who rests from his labors, aware that his oats shall follow him. Yorke accompanied the doctor, without hesitation, to her own rooms. She experienced some surprise at this, and vaguely resented his manner, which was that of a man who belonged there, and who intended to be where he belonged. He held the office door open for her to pass through, and then shut it resolutely. All the scent and warmth that he remembered were in the rooms. In the uncertain light she looked tall and far from him. He felt that all her nature receded from him at that moment, with the accelerated force of a gathering wave.

“ It is not too late,” she panted. “ You can save yourself from this great risk. You can go. I wish you would go ! This is not like simple happiness, such as comes to other people. It is a problem that we have undertaken, — so hard, so long! No light feeling can solve it; no caprice or selfishness can live before it. If we fail, we shall be the most miserable people that ever mistook a little attraction for a great love.”

“And if we succeed” — he began, unabashed by this alarming picture.

She gave him one blinding look.

“ Come,” said Yorke, passing his hand over his eyes. “ You have had your way long enough. My turn has come. Has n’t it? Tell me!”

“What do you waut?” she asked humbly.

“ I don’t want to feel as if I were taking a sort of — advantage. If you put me off one minute longer, I — shall. I shall take all I can get. I shall like to remember, all my life, that you came to me first, of your own accord; that you loved me so much, you would grant me this — little proof.”

He held out his arms.

“ Is that all ? ” she whispered. With a swift and splendid motion she glided across the little distance that lay between them.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.