The Mettle of the Pasture

Usually one of two fates overtakes the obscure professional scholar in this country: either he shrinks to the dimensions of a true villager and deserts the vastness of his library; or he repudiates the village and becomes a cosmopolitan recluse—lonely toiler among his books. Few possess the breadth and equipoise which will enable them to pass from day to day along mental paths, which have the Forum of Augustus or the Groves of the Academy at one end and the babbling square of a modern town at the other; remaining equally at home amid ancient ideals and everyday realities.

It was the fate of the recluse that threatened him. He had been born with the scholar's temperament—this furnished the direction; before he had reached the age of twenty-five he had lost his wife and two sons—that furrowed the tendency. During the years immediately following he had tried to fill an immense void of the heart with immense labors of the intellect. The void remained; yet undoubtedly compensation for loneliness had been found in the fixing of his affections upon what can never die—the inexhaustible delight of learning.

Thus the life of the book-worm awaited him but for an interference excellent and salutary and irresistible. This was the constant companionship of a sister whose nature enabled her to find its complete universe in the only world that she had ever known: she walking ever broad-minded through the narrowness of her little town; remaining white though often threading its soiling ways; and from every life which touched hers, however crippled and confined, extracting its significance instead of its insignificance, shy harmonies instead of the easy discords which can so palpably be struck by any passing hand.

It was due to her influence, therefore, that his life achieved the twofold development which left him normal in the middle years; the fresh pursuing scholar still but a man practically welded to the people among whom he lived—receiving their best and giving his best.

But we cannot send our hearts out to play at large among our kind, without their coming to choose sooner or later playfellows to be loved more than the rest.

Two intimacies entered into the life of Professor Hardage. The first of these had been formed many years before with Judge Ravenel Morris. They had discovered each other by drifting as lonely men do in the world; each being without family ties, each loving literature, each having empty hours. The bond between them had strengthened, until it had become to each a bond of strength indeed, mighty and uplifting.

The other intimacy was one of those for which human speech will never, perhaps, be called upon to body forth its describing word. In the psychology of feeling there are states which we gladly choose to leave unlanguaged. Vast and deep-sounding as is the orchestra of words, there are scores which we never fling upon such instruments—realities that lie outside the possibility and the desirability of utterance as there are rays of the sun that fall outside the visible spectrum of solar light.

What description can be given in words of that bond between two, when the woman stands near the foot of the upward slope of life, and the man is already passing down on the sunset side, with lengthening afternoon shadows on the gray of his temples—between them the cold separating peaks of a generation?

Such a generation of toiling years separated Professor Hardage from Isabel Conyers. When, at the age of twenty, she returned after years of absence in an eastern college—it was a tradition of her family that its women should be brilliantly educated—he verged upon fifty. To his youthful desires that interval was nothing; but to his disciplined judgment it was everything.

"Even though it could be," he said to himself, "it should not be, and therefore it shall not."

His was an idealism that often leaves its holder poor indeed save in the possession of its own incorruptible wealth. No doubt also the life-long study of the ideals of classic time came to his guidance now with their admonitions of exquisite balance, their moderation and essential justness.

But after he had given up all hope of her, he did not hesitate to draw her to him in other ways; and there was that which drew her unfathomably to him—all the more securely since in her mind there was no thought that the bond between them would ever involve the possibility of love and marriage.

His library became another home to her. One winter she read Greek with him—authors not in her college course. Afterward he read much more Greek to her. Then they laid Greek aside, and he took her through the history of its literature and through that other noble one, its deathless twin.

When she was not actually present, he yet took her with him through the wide regions of his studies–set her figure in old Greek landscapes and surrounded it with dim shapes of loveliness—saw her sometimes as the perfection that went into marble—made her a portion of legend and story, linking her with Nausicaa and Andromache and the lost others. Then quitting antiquity with her altogether, he passed downward with her into the days of chivalry, brought her to Arthur's court, and invested her with one character after another, trying her by the ladies of knightly ideals—reading her between the lines in all the king's idyls.

But last and best, seeing her in the clear white light of her own country and time—as the spirit of American girlhood, pure, refined, faultlessly proportioned in mental and physical health, full of kindness, full of happiness, made for love, made for motherhood. All this he did in his hopeless and idealizing worship of her; and all this and more he hid away: for he too had his crypt.

So watching her and watching vainly over her, he was the first to see that she was loved and that her nature was turning away from him, from all that he could offer—subdued by that one other call.

"Now, Fates," he said, "by whatsoever names men have blindly prayed to you; you that love to strike at perfection, and pass over a multitude of the ordinary to reach the rare, stand off for a few years! Let them be happy together in their love, their marriage, and their young children. Let the threads run freely and be joyously interwoven. Have mercy at least for a few years!"

A carriage turned a corner of the street and was driven to the door. Isabel got out, and entered the hall without ringing.

He met her there and as she laid her hands in his without a word, he held them and looked at her without a word. He could scarcely believe that in a few days her life could so have drooped as under a dreadful blight.

"I have come to say good-by," and with a quiver of the lips she turned her face aside and brushed past him, entering the library.

He drew his own chair close to hers when she had seated herself.

"I thought you and your grandmother were going later: is not this unexpected?"

"Yes, it is very unexpected."

"But of course she is going with you?"

"No, I am going alone."

"For the summer?"

"Yes, for the summer. I suppose for a long time."

She continued to sit with her cheek leaning against the back of the chair, her eyes directed outward through the windows. He asked reluctantly:

"Is there any trouble?"

"Yes, there is trouble."

"Can you tell me what it is?"

"No, I cannot tell you what it is. I cannot tell any one what it is."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"No, there is nothing you can do. There is nothing any one can do."

Silence followed for some time. He smiled at her sadly:

"Shall I tell you what the trouble is?"

"You do not know what it is. I believe I wish you did know. But I cannot tell you."

"Is it not Rowan?"

She waited awhile without change of posture and answered at length without change of tone:

"Yes, it is Rowan."

The stillness of the room became intense and prolonged; the rustling of the leaves about the window sounded like noise.

"Are you not going to marry him, Isabel?"

"No, I am not going to marry him. I am never going to marry him."

She stretched out her hand helplessly to him. He would not take it and it fell to her side: at that moment he did not dare. But of what use is it to have kept faith with high ideals through trying years if they do not reward us at last with strength in the crises of character? No doubt they rewarded him now: later he reached down and took her hand and held it tenderly.

"You must not go away. You must be reconciled, to him. Otherwise it will sadden your whole summer. And it will sadden his."

"Sadden, the whole summer," she repeated, "a summer? It will sadden a life. If there is eternity, it will sadden eternity."

"Is it so serious?"

"Yes, it is as serious as anything, could be."

After a while she sat up wearily and turned her face to him for the first time.

"Cannot you help me?" she asked. "I do not believe I can bear this. I do not believe I can bear it."

Perhaps it is the doctors who hear that tone oftenest—little wonder that they are men so often with sad or with calloused faces.

"What can I do?"

"I do not know what you can do. But cannot you do something? You were the only person in the world that I could go to. I did not think I could ever come to you; but I had to come. Help me."

He perceived that commonplace counsel would be better than no counsel at all.

"Isabel," he asked, "are you suffering because you have wronged Rowan or because you think he has wronged you?"

"No, no, no," she cried, covering her face with her hands, "I have not wronged him! I have not wronged any one! He has wronged me!"

"Did he ever wrong you before?"

"No, he never wronged me before. But this covers everything—the whole past."

"Have you ever had any great trouble before, Isabel?"

"No, I have never had any great trouble before. At times in my life I may have thought I had, but now I know."

"You do not need to be told that sooner or later all of us have troubles that we think we cannot bear."

She shook her head wearily: "It does not do any good to think of that! It does not help me in the least!"

"But it does help if there is any one to whom we can tell our troubles."

"I cannot tell mine."

"Cannot you tell me?"

"No, I believe I wish you knew, but I could not tell you. No, I do not even wish you to know."

"Have you seen Kate?"

She covered her face with her hands again: "No, no, no," she cried, "not Kate!" Then she looked up at him with eyes suddenly kindling: "Have you heard what Kate's life has been since her marriage?"

"We have all heard, I suppose."

"She has never spoken a word against him—not even to me from whom she never had a secret. How could I go to her about Rowan? Even if she had confided in me, I could not tell her this."

"If you are going away, change of scene will help you to forget it."

"No, it will help me to remember."

"There is prayer, Isabel."

"I know there is prayer. But prayer does not do any good. It has nothing to do with this."

"Enter as soon as possible into the pleasures of the people you are to visit."

"I cannot! I do not wish for pleasure,"

"Isabel," he said at last, "forgive him."

"I cannot forgive him."

"Have you tried?"

"No, I cannot try. If I forgave him, it would only be a change in me: it would not change him: it would not undo what he has done."

"Do you know the necessity of self-sacrifice?"

"But how can I sacrifice what is best in me without lowering myself? Is it a virtue in a woman to throw away what she holds to be as highest?"

"Remember," he said, returning to the point, "that, if you forgive him, you become changed yourself. You no longer see what he has done as you see it now. That is the beauty of forgiveness: it enables us better to understand those whom we have forgiven. Perhaps it will enable you to put yourself in his place."

She put her hands to her eyes with a shudder: "You do not know what you are saying," she cried, and rose.

"Then trust it all to time," he said finally, "that is best! Time alone solves so much. Wait! Do not act! Think and feel as little as possible. Give time its merciful chance. I'll come to see you."

They had moved toward the door. She drew off her glove which she was putting on and laid her hand once more in his.

"Time can change nothing. I have decided."

As she was going down the steps to the carriage, she turned and came back.

"Do not come to see me! I shall come to you to say good-by. It is better for you not to come to the house just now. I might not be able to see you."

Isabel had the carriage driven to the Osborns'.

The house was situated in a pleasant street of delightful residences. It had been newly built on an old foundation as a bridal present to Kate from her father. She had furnished it with a young wife's pride and delight and she had lined it throughout with thoughts of incommunicable tenderness about the life history just beginning. Now, people driving past (and there were few in town who did not know) looked at it as already a prison and a doom.

Kate was sitting in the hall with some work in her lap. Seeing Isabel she sprang up and met her at the door, greeting her as though she herself were the happiest of wives.

"Do you know how long it has been since you were here?" she exclaimed chidingly. "I had not realized how soon young married people can be forgotten and pushed aside."

"Forget you, dearest! I have never thought of you so much as since I was here last."

"Ah," thought Kate to herself, "she has heard. She has begun to feel sorry for me and has begun to stay away as people avoid the unhappy."

But the two friends, each smiling into the other's eyes, their arms around each other, passed into the parlors.

"Now that you are here at last, I shall keep you," said Kate, rising from the seat they had taken. "I will send the carriage home. George cannot be here to lunch and we shall have it all to ourselves as we used to when we were girls together."

"No," exclaimed Isabel, drawing her down into the seat again, "I cannot stay. I had only a few moments and drove by just to speak to you, just to tell you how much I love you."

Kate's face changed and she dropped her eyes. "Is so little of me so much nowadays?" she asked, feeling as though the friendship of a lifetime were indeed beginning to fail her along with other things.

"No, no, no," cried Isabel. "I wish we could never be separated."

She rose quickly and went over to the piano and began to turn over the music. "It seems so long since I heard any music. What has become of it? Has it all gone out of life? I feel as though there were none any more."

Kate came over and looked at one piece of music after another irresolutely.

"I have not touched the piano for weeks."

She sat down and her fingers wandered forcedly through a few chords. Isabel stepped quickly to her side and laid restraining hands softly upon hers: "No; not to-day."

Kate rose with averted face: "No; not any music to-day!"

The friends returned to their seat, on which Kate left her work.

She took it up and for a few moments Isabel watched her in silence.

"When did you see Rowan?"

"You know he lives in the country," replied Isabel, with an air of defensive gayety.

"And does he never come to town?"

"How should I know?"

Kate took this seriously and her head sank lower over her work: "Ah," she thought to herself, "she will not confide in me any longer. She keeps her secrets from me—me who shared them all my life."

"What is it you are making?"

Isabel stretched out her hand, but Kate with a cry threw her breast downward upon her work. With laughter they struggled over it; Kate released it and Isabel rising held it up before her. Then she allowed it to drop to the floor.

"Isabel!" exclaimed Kate, her face grown cold and hard. She stooped with dignity and picked up the garment.

"Oh, forgive me," implored Isabel, throwing her arms around her neck. "I did not know what I was doing!" and she buried her face on the young wife's shoulder. "I was thinking of myself: I cannot tell you why!"

Kate released herself gently. Her face remained grave. She had felt the first wound of motherhood: it could not be healed at once. The friends could not look at each other. Isabel began to draw on her gloves and Kate did not seek to keep her longer.

"I must go. Dear friend, have you forgiven me? I cannot tell you what was in my heart. Some day you will understand. Try to forgive till you do understand."

Kate's mouth trembled: "Isabel, why are you so changed toward me?"

"Ah, I have not changed toward you! I shall never change toward you!"

"Are you too happy to care for me any longer?"

"Ah, Kate, I am not too happy for anything. Some day you will understand."

She leaned far out and waved her hand as she drove away, and then she threw herself back into the carriage. "Dear injured friend! Brave loyal woman'" she cried, "the men we loved have ruined both our lives; and we who never had a secret from each other meet and part as hypocrites to shield them. Drive home," she said to the driver. "If any one motions to stop, pay no attention. Drive fast."

Mrs. Osborn watched the carriage out of sight and then walked slowly back to her work. She folded the soft white fabric over the cushions and then laid her cheek against it and gave it its first christening—the christening of tears.

IX

The court-house clock in the centre of the town clanged the hour of ten—hammered it out lavishly and cheerily as a lusty blacksmith strikes with prodigal arm his customary anvil. Another clock in a dignified church tower also struck ten, but with far greater solemnity, as though reminding the town clock that time is not to be measured out to man as a mere matter of business, but intoned savingly and warningly as the chief commodity of salvation. Then another clock: in a more attenuated cobwebbed steeple also struck ten, reaffirming the gloomy view of its resounding brother and insisting that the town clock had treated the subject with sinful levity.

Nevertheless the town clock seemed to have the best of the argument on this particular day; for the sun was shining, cool, breezes were blowing, and the streets were thronged with people intent on making bargains. Possibly the most appalling idea in most men's notions of eternity is the dread that there will be no more bargaining there.

A bird's-eye view of the little town as it lay outspread on its high fertile plateau, surrounded by green woods and waving fields, would have revealed near one edge of it a large verdurous spot which looked like an overrun oasis. This oasis was enclosed by a high fence on the inside of which ran a hedge of lilacs, privet, and osage orange. Somewhere in it was an old one-story manor house of rambling ells and verandas. Elsewhere was a little summer-house, rose-covered; still elsewhere an arbor vine-hung; at various other places secluded nooks with seats, where the bushes could hide you and not hear you—a virtue quite above anything human. Marguerite lived in this labyrinth.

As the dissenting clocks finished striking, had you been standing outside the fence near a little side gate used by grocers' and bakers' carts, you might have seen Marguerite herself. There came a soft push against the gate from within; and as it swung part of the way open, you might have observed that the push was delivered by the toe of a little foot. A second push sent it still farther. Then there was a pause and then it flew open and stayed open. At first there appeared what looked like an inverted snowy flagstaff but turned out to be a long, closed white parasol; then Marguerite herself appeared, bending her head low under the privet leaves and holding her skirts close in, so that they might not be touched by the whitewash on each edge. Once outside, she straightened herself up with the lithe grace of a young willow, released her skirts, and balancing herself on the point of her parasol, closed the gate with her toe: she was too dainty to touch it.

The sun shone hot and Marguerite quickly raised her parasol. It made you think of some silken white myriad-fluted mushroom of the dark May woods; and Marguerite did not so much seem to have come out of the house as out of the garden—to have slept there on its green moss with the new moon on her eyelids—indeed to have been born there, in some wise compounded of violets and hyacinths; and as the finishing touch to have had squeezed into her nature a few drops of wildwood spritishness.

She started toward the town with a movement somewhat like that of a tall thin lily stalk swayed by zephyrs—with a lilt, a cadence, an ever changing rhythm of joy: plain walking on the solid earth was not for her. At friendly houses along the way she peeped into open windows, calling to friends; she stooped over baby carriages on the sidewalk, noting but not measuring their mysteries; she bowed to the right and to the left at passing carriages; and people leaned far out to bow and smile at her. Her passage through the town was somewhat like that of a butterfly crossing a field.

"Will he be there?" she asked. "I did not tell him I was coming, but he heard me say I should be there at half-past ten o'clock. It is his duty to notice my least remark."

When she reached her destination, the old town library, she mounted the lowest step and glanced rather guiltily up and down the street. Three ladies were going up and two men were going down: no one was coming toward Marguerite.

"Now, why is he not here? He shall be punished for this."

She paced slowly backward and forward yet a little while. Then she started resolutely in the direction of a street where most of the law offices were situated. Turning a corner, she came full upon Judge, Morris.

"Ah, good morning, good morning," he cried, putting his gold-headed cane under his arm and holding out both hands. "Where did you sleep last night? On rose leaves?"

"I was in grandmother's bed when I left off," said Marguerite, looking up at the rim of her hat.

"And where were you when you began again?"

"Still in grandmother's bed. I think I must have been there all the time. I know all about your old Blackstone and all that kind of thing," she continued, glancing at a yellow book under his arm and speaking with a threat as though he had adjudged her ignorant.

"Ah, then you will make a good lawyer's wife."

"I supposed I'd make a good wife of any kind. Are you coming to my ball?"

"Well, you know I am too old to make engagements far ahead. But I expect to be there. If I am not, my ghost shall attend."

"How shall I recognize it? Does it dance? I don't want to mistake it for Barbee."

"Barbee shall not come if I can keep him at home."

"And why, please?"

"I am afraid he is falling in love with you."

"But why shouldn't he?"

"I don't wish my nephew to be flirted."

"But how do you know I'd flirt him?"

"Ah, I knew your mother when she was young and your grandmother when she was young: you're all alike."

"We, are so glad we are," said Marguerite, as she danced away from him under her parasol.

Farther down the street she met Professor Hardage.

"I know all about your old Odyssey—your old Horace and all those things," she said threateningly. "I am not as ignorant as you think."

"I wish Horace had known you."

"Would it have been nice?"

"He might have written an ode Ad Margaritam instead of Ad Lalagem."

"Then I might have been able to read it," she said. "In school I couldn't read the other one. But you mustn't think that I did not read a great deal of Latin. The professor used to say that I read my Latin b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l-l-y, but that I didn't get much English out of it. I told him I got as much English out of it as the Romans did, and that they certainly ought to have known what it was meant for."

"That must have taught him a lesson!"

"Oh, he said I'd do: I was called the girl who read Latin perfectly, regardless of English. And, then, I won a prize for an essay on the three most important things that the United States has contributed to the civilizations of the Old World. I said they were tobacco, wild turkeys and idle curiosity. Of course every one knew about tobacco and turkeys; but wasn't it clever of me to think of idle curiosity? Now, wasn't it? I made a long list of things and then I selected these from my list."