The House of McVicker

I.

SOME years ago there was still standing, on the high-road which leads from Greenville to Dawes Upper Landing, a plain, two-story house with a gambrel roof, which rarely or never failed to attract the notice of passers-by. It stood some yards back from the road, from which it was separated by a wide and grassy, but treeless and flowerless, garden, through which a broad path, neatly paved with clam shells, led up to the front door. To the right of the house was a small barn and a wood-shed, and beyond them a vegetable garden. At the back, a grassy lot, always cropped close by the family cow, led downwards to the salt marshes, which stretch away on every side. These salt marshes are intersected by narrow canals, through which oyster and fishing boats make their slow way to the Upper Landing, when, as is not often the case, the tide is high enough to permit them to do so. To the east of the marshes, many miles away, great dunes of sand rise up, and beyond these dunes rises and falls the ocean tide. Sometimes, but very rarely, on the short, gray winter days, when the storms are wild, the voice of the angry sea penetrates across this barrier with a long-drawn, sullen roar. The waters of Hallowbay are visible always, but the bay is landlocked, and only the dullest portion of it can be seen from the house of McVicker. The marshes — low, wide, and malarious green — seem to obtrude themselves upon the eye, to the exclusion of other objects, even as the croaking of the frogs which inhabit them fills the ear upon summer nights, and drowns the low whispers of the summer wind. But perhaps it is as well. The majesty of the sea and its deep-voiced music could never have harmonized with the aspect of the house of McVicker. The house itself was a decently kept, dingy, orderly dwelling, about which nothing was suffered to fall into ruin or decay, and for the interior of which feminine cares were evidently not wanting; for the door-steps were always scrubbed to whiteness, the oldfashioned brass knockers and door handles shining, and the windows clear and clean, and furnished with spotless white dimity curtains with knotted fringes. But one thing was strangely at variance with this commonplace decency of appearance, and that was an ordinary board scaffolding which surrounded the house on the three sides visible to the road, and at the time at which this story begins was already gray and weather-beaten. Evidently, it had once been the owner’s intention to build a two-storied piazza here, and as evidently that intention had been long since abandoned. The upper part of the front door was nailed up with boards, because the beams of the scaffolding crossed it; and these boards were also gray with age, and not without reason, for they, as well as the scaffolding, had kept their place, unchanged and untouched, for more than thirty years. The people in the neighborhood had, even to the most inquisitive, long ago given up wondering about Silas McVieker’s scaffolding. Many there were, indeed, who were newly married couples at the time he began his never-finished piazza and had grandchildren now, and were weary of answering questions about it. As for the younger members of the community, who had, so to speak, been born under its eccentric shadow, they accepted i as people always do accept the facts to which they are born ; and after the inevitable period of interrogations was past asked little and thought nothing about it. Strangers, however, were not so indifferent, and to them Mr. Bagert, a driedup little bachelor who had kept the postoffice at the Upper Landing for upwards of forty years, could make the same replies and furnish the same details which he had done for thirty years.

“Wall,” Mr. Bagert would say, rest ing, the while, one foot upon the wheel of the inquirer’s wagon, and looking retrospectively down the road, as if to call up the past, “wall, I’ve knowed as much about it as any one, I guess. ’T ain’t nothin’ but one o' Silas’s cranks. He always was kind o’ cranky. Close, too, he is. Zeke Latham, — Zeke always was a funny feller, — Zeke, he used to say Silas got ’fraid of the price of nails. He’d bought the wood for ’t a good spell back, and he was a-puttin’ of it up himself; but nails he was a-goin’ to buy of Zeke, so Zeke thought. But’t wa’n’t that nuther, ’cause he went over to Pawtucket and bought the nails; we heerd that afterward he sold ’em to a junk shop down to the Lower Landing, about ten years arter he quit work. So ’t wa’n’t the price of nails, nor nothin’ else, I guess, ’ceptin’ one of Silas’s cranks.”

“ And he is living now? ”

“ Lord bless you, yes! Ben livin’ along jest the same, savin’ and scrapin’ and tendin’ to things. He’s a putty good farmer, Silas is.”

“ But what was the cause of this particular crank? ”

“ Wall, he kinder got mad at things, I guess. I don’t know as it was any partickler thing. I never heerd so, any way; and we know putty much everything that goes on in the neighborhood, here to the Upper Landing.”

“ But he assigned some reason, surely, for stopping his work? ”

“ Wall, no, he did n’t; he jest shet up any one that asked about it, as sharp as a razor. Fust off, folks didn’t ask nothin’. He was a-doin’ of the work himself, you see, and workin’ folks has to take odd times for fancy doins. I ’member myself the fust time I ever spoke to him about it. It was about three months after he quit work on it, I guess, and I heerd he was throwin’ the cusses round putty lively when any one asked him about it; but we ’d always been putty good friends, and bein’ here to the post-office folks nat’rally expects me to know what’s a-goin’ on. So I made up my mind I’d have the truth of it. It was one November afternoon, gittin’ on towards six o’clock. I happened to be alone here, and the door opened, and Silas cum in after his paper.

“ ‘ Why, Silas! ’ says I, ‘ how do you do; and how’s all the folks down your way? ’

“ ‘ Well, I guess,’ says he, very short.

“ ‘ And Mis’ McVicker, how ’s she? ’ says I.

“ ‘ She’s well,’ he says.

“ ‘ All your folks, and your wife’s folks up to Hampshire, be they well? ’ says I.

“ ‘ Yes,’ says he. ‘ Ef you ’ll put me up a bottle of ink, I ’ll take it right along.’

“ ‘ Wait a minute, Silas,’ says I. ‘ You know you and me’s been friends this good while, along ever since we was born, I guess. I hope you ain’t in any money difficulties ? ’ says I.

“ ‘ No,’ says he.

“ ‘ Lost anythin’ ? ’ says I.

“ ‘No,’ says he. ‘ Give me that ink, will you ? ’

“ ‘ You ain’t gone security for any one, hey you ? ’ says I.

“ ‘ No! ’ says he, beginnin’ to look as if he’d chaw me up in one bite.

“ ‘ Then what in creation did you stop buildin’ that piazzy you was so hot fur long in the summer ? ’ says I.

“ ‘ Cause I choose to stop! ’ says he, in a voice that most tuck the ruff off.

“ ‘ Wall, ef you ain’t a-goin’ to build it,’ says I, ‘ why don’t you take the scaffoldin’ down ? It looks queer, Silas, it does so, and neighbors is talkin’ about it.’

“ ‘ Damn the neighbors, and you too, for a lot of pryin’, impudent fools! ’ says he. ‘ Ef I choose to let them boards rot there, what business is it of yourn ? Hold your jaw, and give me that ink. I give you the money ten minutes ago.’

“ Wall, when I saw he was so proud about it, I jest let him alone; and by degrees other folks did so, too. They never found out nothin’, and they kind o’ got tired o’ thinkin’ about it.

“ ’T wa’n’t nothin’ but crank; and when folks gits cranky they ’re cranky for crank’s sake. They ain’t got no reason to give, and that kinder makes ’em mad and feel like jawin’ when folks asks ’em things. There was some took turns askin’ Mis’ McVicker about it; but she always said she did n’t know nothing, and I s’pose she didn’t. She was a quiet kind of a woman, Mis’ McVicker was. She’s gittin’ on into years now. Silas is past seventy, and she ain’t fur behind. Strangers new comin’ into the neighborhood, like you, most always has a spell of askin’ about that ere scaffoldin’; but Silas ain't a easy man to question; he kinder bluffs ’em off. Does it putty sharp, too. There was a lady boardin’ down to Mis’ Graves’s two summers ago, — a smart, poky kind of woman she was, — and she made a bet she’d ask Silas herself. So she got Josh Graves to drive her round, one afternoon, and she whipped out of the wagon, when they got to the gate, and tripped round, as light as a feather, to the back of the house; and there sot Silas, sure enough, in his shift sleeves, mendin’ a net. Wall, Miss Jenkins wa’n’t one to be very backward, so she says, ‘ Can I have a glass of water, if you please? I’m thirsty.’ Wall, Mis’ McVicker, she stepped inter the house ter git the water; and then Miss Jenkins, she looked straight inter Silas’s eye, as bright’s a hawk. ‘ You ’ve a putty place here,’ she says; ‘but why did n’t you never finish yer piazzy ? It’s a pity to leave that ere scaffoldin’ there; it spiles the looks of the house. Why do you do it? ’ she says.

“ She spoke mighty quick, Josh said, ’cause she was ’fraid Silas would stop her.

“ Wall, Mis’ McVicker was jest comin’ out, and Silas snatched the tumbler right out of her hand, and threw it on the ground. ‘ Ef you want water, I guess you ’d better go somewheres else fur it,’ he says. ‘ There ain’t none fur you here, nor no answers to your questions neither; so you’d better go about your business.’

“ Wall, Miss Jenkins was took aback, and did n’t say nothin’; and Josh, he kinder spunked up, and says he, ‘ Mr. McVicker,’ says he, ‘ that ain’t no way to speak to a lady. Ain’t you ’shamed of yourself? ’ says he.

“‘Darn you! git out of here, will you?’ says Silas. And Miss Jenkins nipped hold of Josh’s arm, and says she, ‘ Oh, come along! do, quick ! ’ So Josh, he thought ’t wa’n’t worth while to have a row, and he went along with her without saying nothin’ more to Silas. Ye see, Silas, he’s old, hut he’s spunky, and he’s a putty strong man, too, for his years, and ’t won’t do to offend him; so he’s jest let alone. He ain’t got no reason to give for his queer ways, Silas hain’t. Th’ ain’t nothing to find out. Ef there was, why, folks’d hey come to’t, sooner or later. ’T ain’t reely nothin’ on earth but crank.”

In this, however, Mr. Bagert made a mistake.

Silas MeVicker, at this time, was a heavy, stooping old man, with a sparse, unkempt gray beard, a face ruddy from constant exposure to the salt air, and a dull eye of nondescript color, which expressed nothing but an utter lack of interest and expectancy. Thirty-four years before, his mother and father had died, within two days of each other, and had both on the same day been laid in the grave. Silas was their sole surviving child, and as he stood beside their graves his eye fell, with more interest than ever before, upon the row of four small, low, gray head-stones, half hidden among the long, coarse grass, which marked the resting-place of his brothers and sisters. They were inscribed as follows : —

AZARIAH,

SON OF ELI AND JUDITH MCVICKER.

Born July 9,1790. Died January 30, 1799.

MARTHA,

DAUGHTER OF ELI AND JUDITH MCVICKER.

Born February 15, 1793. Died June 4, 1802.

JONATHAN,

SON OF ELI AND JUDITH MCVICKER.

Born September 14, 1796. Died April 3, 1798.

JERUSHA,

DAUGHTER OI ELI AND JUDITH MCVICKER.

Born May 18, 1798. Died July 2,1799.

Silas was prompt about all that he had to do, and two months later a large slab of bluish stone stood beside the others, which bore the following inscription: —

ELI MCVICKER.

Died June 23,1834. Aged 86 years.

JUDITH,

WIFE OF THE ABOVE.

Died June 24, 1834. Aged 80 years.

Some inches lower down on the slab, and inserted apparently as a sort of postscript or after-thought, were the words:

The above Judith McVicker was bedridden for thirty -one years.

People in the neighborhood were mean enough to say that the brevity of all six monumental inscriptions was due to Silas’s love of saving, and that the information bestowed upon the public as to the condition in which his mother had spent the last thirty-one years of her life was placed on her tomb-stone to prove that he was not as mean as he might have been, after all, since it was well known that he had not sent her to the poor-house. In both of these assumptions the neighbors were wrong, however, as the head-stones which commemorated the birth and death of his brothers and sisters had been erected before he was out of pinafores. As for his parents, they belonged, both of them, to the order of people who seem to have no particular reason for existing, except to prove the correctness of the computations as to the yearly increase of population. There really was nothing to say about them (except that they had lived and died), unless Silas had been a person of strong filial illusions, which he was not. As he drove home from the funeral, he stopped at the stone-cutter’s at Greenville, selected, after a little bargaining, a decent slab, wrote, the brief inscription on it in pencil, and made his way home. It was not until three weeks later that he remembered his mother’s last request. “ Silas,” she had said, shortly before her death, “ I guess I ain’t goin’ to live much longer. Mind you put on my tomb-stone how many years I was abed. There ain’t another case like it in the State, I don’t believe.” The moment Silas recalled this request, he drove over to Greenville, and gave the requisite directions. But the headstone was already completed, and this additional inscription always read like the after-thought it was.

Silas could not remember his brothers and sisters any more distinctly than he could remember having ever received a caress from his mother, or a word of instruction or advice from his father. Fortunately, he was not sensitive, though he had a great latent capacity for feeling; and he lived through the years of his early youth without any special pain, though with a vague sense, which increased in hardness and sternness as the years went on, that life had not been compelled to yield him all that it might have done.

He was at thirty-four an erect, powerfully-built fellow, with a well-shaped head covered with crisp, curling dark hair, and keen and brilliant, though not large, gray eyes. It was a mystery that such a lymphatic, weak, and commonplace pair as were Eli and Judith McVicker could have produced this stalwart, vigorous, and energetic son, unlike and superior to his parents in blood and brain, in strength and stature.

He made no pretense of grief for their loss. In fact, he had no relatives to be observant on this point, and he would have been utterly incapable of feigning if he had been surrounded by a large family. He rather wondered, as he drove soberly home after the funeral, whether children ever were very fond of their parents; whether, if his brothers and sisters had lived, any one of them would have been “ congenial,” or, as he mentally phrased it, “ pleasant to have round.” It is possible that he answered this mental question in the negative; for he entered his empty house with a sense of decided pleasure, and glancing into the room which had for so many years been his mother’s remembered that he could have it cleaned out now, and bring his guns and fishing-tackle down-stairs, as he had often thought it would be convenient to do.

For some days, some weeks, indeed, this sense of freedom lasted, and sufficed for happiness, as did the various new arrangements he was making with his own hands in the house and on the farm suffice for occupation. But when everything was done, when the house was arranged satisfactorily, the harvest over, and a momentary lull in the pressure of work occurred, he began to feel an impatient desire for a change of some kind, and in this mood availed himself eagerly and gladly of an invitation from a distant relative of his father’s to visit him in New Hampshire. The neighbors, when they heard of this intended visit, opined that Silas “ was goin’ to Hampshire to look for a wife;” but no one felt sufficiently intimate with him to ask if such was his intention, or even to mention the subject at all. Silas, in fact, was not a favorite in his native town. He was thought to be “ kind of uppish,” and known to be a hard hand at a bargain. But if hard he was honest, and his uppishness was partly shyness and partly reserve. If his neighbors knew him but superficially, they yet knew him almost as well as he knew himself; for his life, which had hitherto flowed on with absolute monotony, had left him in profound ignorance of his own strength and weakness. Indeed, his self-knowledge mainly consisted in a very accurate estimate of his capacity for labor and for physical endurance, and a tolerably fair idea of the extent to which he could resist temptation; for he was a man of good moral character, and had till now withstood well the few temptations to which he had been subjected. But he had never examined, never discussed, himself in his life, and would have been very much surprised had he been told that his was an uncommon character, and that in all those events of life which are decided by emotion rather than judgment he would risk much more than ordinary men. He was possessed of a depth of loyalty and devotion which is too rare in this self-seeking world, and which had not yet been drawn upon; for he had never been in love, or formed one of those enthusiastic early friendships which are so effectual in calling out our better selves. Indeed, he was not formed for friendship, but for love, and a single love, and was likely to pour out all his heart’s treasure in one libation, and go through life afterward hard and loveless. Nor did he know that he was precisely in the state which rendered falling in love imminent. But so it was; and while he was winding up his affairs, and making arrangements for a lengthened absence in New Hampshire, events there were shaping themselves for his marriage with Mary Dering, who had been for many seasons the reigning beauty of Compton village.

II.

Mary Dering at this time was thirty - two years of age, — an old maid, in point of fact ; and it was a great compliment to her real beauty and grace that she was not called so. But she was too handsome, too graceful and stately, to be laughed at, and too utterly, serenely selfish to be made use of. In her early youth she had been incomparably the most beautiful girl in Compton ; and she was still one of its most beautiful women; indeed, was perhaps the only very beautiful woman of thirty-two to be seen there, so short-lived is American bloom.

She was very tall, and so finely and nobly proportioned that the commonest stuff fell into long, graceful lines over her exquisitely rounded limbs. Her small head was perfectly placed on her shoulders, and was shaded by an abundance of straight, silky, golden-brown hair; her complexion was the loveliest rose leaf; and her eyes large, dark blue, with delicately veined lids and long, dark, curving lashes. The form of her face was a true oval; and here her positive beauty ended, for her nose was not faultless, and her mouth was too large, though her teeth were brilliant, and her lips red and velvety. She rose and sat down with exquisite grace, and sewed and did the common household tasks, which were all she knew how to do, with a distinction which made it a pleasure to watch her. She was aware of this, and in her careful, deliberate, yet deft way accomplished a great deal of work in the course of the day; for she was equally fond of admiration and of having everything about her in faultless order, being peculiarly susceptible to that refined physical enjoyment which comes from dainty surroundings.

She had an immense amount of selfconsciousness, and a perfect appreciation of her own personal appearance. The study of her life had been to preserve her good looks, and she had been eminently successful, and was wont to look upon her contemporaries, who, though happy wives and mothers, were all either too scrawny or too portly, with serene self-satisfaction. The baby never was born that would have consoled Mary Dering for fading beauty; and she regarded her friends as deluded idiots in their happiness in increasing cares and decreasing bloom. She was not very highly esteemed in her native town, and was indeed one of the most arrant coquettes that ever breathed. Moreover, her nearest connections were wont to whisper occasionally to each other, with bated breath and under strict vows of secrecy, that she was “ like her father, after all, and what a pity it was.” Now the late Mr. Dering had not been, if his acquaintances spoke truly, “ so fond of the square thing ” as he might have been. And also, they would add, “ he was kinder sweet on the women; and he had n’t ought to ’a’ been, because Ellen Durnett was as good a woman as ever stepped.” An old-fashioned New England town is as exclusive and conservative a place as can be found; and it is particularly necessary that a new-comer, if he is to take root there, should be able to present excellent credentials, and should be of unblemished character. Now it happened that Mr. Dering possessed neither of these claims to confidence. Credentials he had, it was true, but they were spurious; and then he had no relations, and indeed was finally discovered to be illegitimate,—a fact which would have made every one in Compton doubtful of him forever after, had his conduct been ever so irreproachable. Unhappily, before the falsity of his character or the stain upon his birth had been known, he had succeeded in marrying Ellen Durnett, one of the prettiest and loveliest women in Compton.

She had been more than five years a widow, and had two little girls. If it be (and certainly it is) hardly a justifiable thing for a widow with children to marry again, poor Ellen Durnett lived to expiate her fault, and to have trials so severe as to induce even the friends of her first husband to forgive her second marriage. It was perhaps to these trials, which began long before her birth, that her daughter Mary owed the pathetic expression of her large, deep blue eyes.

Mary remembered very little of her father. Ostensibly on business, he had betaken himself to the West, shortly after her birth, with all his wife’s savings. He reappeared periodically and impecuniously for several years, and then vanished altogether, having, it was said, embraced the Mormon religion, and settled amid congenial scenes in Salt Lake City. Mary Dering, to the great relief of her mother’s relations, “ took after ” the Raymonds altogether in appearance, in that she was tall, straight, and large-eyed, whereas Dering was short, squat, and near-sighted. Indeed, his shining gold-rimmed spectacles had been odious objects to every one who knew him, so sure was he to obtain with their aid an undue and pernicious insight into the affairs of others; while the same spectacles protected eyes which never could look any one straight in the face, if their owner’s affairs were in question. It was currently believed in Compton that he had, before his final disappearance, signed a paper renouncing all claim to his daughter for the sum of one hundred dollars. Be that as it may, he never saw or attempted to see her again.

His wife, once relieved from the fear of his return, went back in her thoughts, as she had long since done in her love, to the husband of her youth; and one of her daughter Mary’s earliest regrets was that George Durnett had not been her father, as he was of her sisters, Geraldine and Anne Durnett. One of her earliest resolves, too, was to wipe out the stain of her father’s birth by as brilliant a marriage as she could possibly achieve. So silent was she, so “closemouthed,” her relations used to say, that the consummate worldliness of her hopes and dreams was never suspected. She was a fairly obedient child, and was as singularly soft of speech as she was graceful of gesture; affectionate apparently, and to a certain extent really, to her mother and sisters, but never willing to forego her own advantage for a moment in anything, indeed, regarding them as existing mainly for her own comfort. Secretly, Mary half despised their straightforward simplicity, and that of her sister Anne especially. Anne was very pretty, and Mary wondered that she did not take more pains to preserve her beauty, and to achieve such small triumphs with it as lay in her way. If she should ultimately marry Fred Chauncey, who went to sea before the mast when Mary herself was in short frocks, she felt that she should despise her as a person utterly incapable of considering her own advantage. As for Geraldine, Mary decided that she was too plain to marry ; and it was just as well, for she was particularly handy and industrious, and would always be a useful person to have about the house.

Nothing was further from Mary’s thoughts than that she should remain unmarried for any man’s sake; yet that was precisely her destiny. She “mistook the quality of her own nature,” and held it for something sterner than it was.

Her life, according to her own small, worldly view of success, was to a certain extent successful. She was very beautiful, as we have said, and she had more admirers and more offers of marriage than any other girl in the township. She had believed herself to be willing to marry solely for money and position, and her opportunities for such aggrandizement had been numerous. Why, then, had she never married ? There was a man, a tall, slight, dapper, dandy fellow, with shallow black eyes, pink and white skin, and greasy dark locks, who stood daily behind a counter in a shop in New York selling ribbons and pins, who could alone have answered that question; and who, without being possessed of such vices as would legally have brought him to the prison or the gallows, was as worthless a creature as lived. Selfish, sensual, mean, and heartless as he was, however, he had succeeded in making Mary Dering love him. She had promised to marry him when she was but seventeen; had retracted her promise, at her mother’s command, within twenty-four hours; and had then reëngaged herself to him secretly, and almost immediately. When he declared that he could fix no time for their marriage, she agreed in silence. When he exacted that she should never speak of the renewal of their engagement to her mother and sisters, she assented; and she subsequently submitted, so uncomplainingly as even to astonish herself in her few lucid moments, to long years of semi-neglect, of wearing anxiety, and of deferred hope. Her misery might have been shortened had she not retained her somewhat voluptuous loveliness in all its freshness; for Harvey Groot was an epicurean in his way, and would earlier have wearied of her had it not been for her beauty. He never meant to marry her; he never meant to marry at all, indeed, until he had risen in the world, and meant then to increase what fortune he had by marrying a rich woman. But he liked to be engaged to Mary Dering; and he liked to feel that for his sake she rejected better men than himself.

And so the years went on. He dangled after her during his brief vacations, and wrote her friendly, silly little letters in the intervals, being always particularly careful not to commit himself to any assurances as to the future. Meanwhile, during these years of waiting, he was accumulating money, and at the end of fifteen years, when Mary’s mother died, he was possessed of quite a respectable fortune, and saw his way toward doubling it by such a marriage as he had often dreamed of, —one which would put him in possession of ready money and an increased business connection at the same time.

That Mary would think he was behaving badly he knew, but for that he did not greatly care. It was not likely, he thought, that any of her relations would “make it unpleasant” for him. Her mother and eldest sister were dead; she had no brothers; and her sister Anne’s husband was captain of a whaling vessel, and had just gone off on a three years’ cruise. Besides, their engagement had been absolutely secret, which made it the less likely that Mary would “make a fuss.” So the letter dissolving their engagement and the newspaper containing the announcement of his marriage were mailed together, and she received them both when she and Anne were packing up their mother’s few possessions, and breaking up the home of their childhood. She bore the blow in silence, and for a few days kept at her work ; then she took to her bed, and was very ill. Anne was the most faithful, skillful nurse, the most loyal friend, the most devoted comforter, that ever sister had; but even to Anne she could say very little about her misery, and when she recovered she utterly refused the home which Anne offered her in Nantucket. Harvey, in his farewell letter, had taken it for granted that she would go there, and she would do nothing which he expected her to do. She therefore accepted a home offered her for the winter by Anne’s uncle, Eli Durnett, and transferred all her worldly possessions to his house. On the morning preceding Anne’s departure for Nantucket, she almost regretted her decision; but it was then too late to change it, and she said no word of regret, and assented in silence when Anne proposed that they should walk together up to the church-yard on the hill, where their mother and sister were buried, and wait there until the stage passed. It was a lonely place in which to make their farewells, and on that account better than any other, Anne thought; for she hoped, to induce Mary to unburden herself to her at the last moment. They were quite undisturbed there; and when they had planted the flowers they had brought with them, they sat down on the church steps, hand in hand and cheek pressed against cheek, until the moment of departure came. Even then Mary could not bring herself to give confidence, or to accept sympathy. When Anne was gone, indeed, she crept behind the thick hedge which bordered the old stone wall, and, sitting there concealed, wept her fill. When her agony was over, she smoothed her hair and rearranged her dress, and before leaving the churchyard stood for a moment looking down on the green mound beside her mother’s, where the one word Geraldine, in letters of box, stood out darkly from the grass. She had so pitied Geraldine because it was her fate to die; and now, beside the mound on which the snows of eight winters had fallen, and the flowers of as many springs had blossomed, she found herself wondering whether, after all, hers was not the better part. Heavyhearted as she was, it would have been a real consolation to her could she have known how lovely she looked at that moment. No more graceful figure ever adorned a monument, and it was not destined to remain unseen and unadmired. A traveler, coming up the hill, and pausing at the top to rest his tired horse, saw and was struck by it. He stood long gazing at her, as mute and motionless as she was herself; then, dropping the bridle of his horse, he stepped over the low wall of the church-yard, and strode toward her, paused, hesitated a moment, and finally returning to the road stood quietly waiting, until she turned and came toward him. The faint glow which rose to her pale cheeks as she perceived him was reflected in his own face, as he lifted his hat and said, rather awkwardly, “ I’m a stranger here; can you tell me if I’m on the right road for Compton village? ”

“ Yes; that’s the village down there.”

“ I ’m much obliged, I ’m sure. Perhaps you could tell me, too, where Mr. Eli Durnett’s house is? I’m on my way there, now.”

“ Do they expect you?” she said, with a faint smile.

“ Well, yes, I guess they do.”

“ Then you ’re Silas McVicker? ”

“ Yes.”

“ I ’m going down there, now. I ’ll show you the way, if you like. I live at uncle Eli’s, perhaps you know.”

Silas colored deeply, and his eyes brightened pleasantly as he answered, —

“No, I didn’t; but we’re cousins, may be? ”

“ Not that exactly. Uncle Eli is n’t really my uncle, only I call him so. My mother’s first husband was his brother.

I’m staying there now to help them.”

“Then you — you ain’t married, I take it, ma’am—miss? ”

“No,” she replied, looking down for a moment. “ No, I am not married.”

Silas was, he scarcely knew why, thrilled with ecstasy at this reply. He had a blundering idea that politeness required him to express surprise; but some better instinct withheld him, and when he spoke again it was to say, “ This is a good country for farming, I guess.”

“ Yes, it is. Uncle Eli says he would n’t change Compton County for any other in the States.”

“ I should think not. I’ve got a farm of my own that I think a great deal of, but it’s harder work getting anything out of it than it must be out of this. I’ve got a pretty big house, though,” he continued, absently looking round the landscape as if seeking to find one like it, — “ pretty big for me all alone. In the winters, to be sure, I have the fires for company; but then our winters ain’t very hard.”

“ Ours are, — a great deal too hard, I think,” said Mary, with a sigh of irrepressible weariness, as the thought of being six months house-bound with aunt Joanna Durnett presented itself to her mind in gloomy colors.

“ Do you ? ” asked Silas, eagerly. “Well, to be sure, a hard winter ain’t pleasant, especially for women. The winters don’t amount to much down our way. My house is a warm one, too. Do we go over this fence? Let me help you.”

“ No, thank you,” said Mary, getting over quickly, and displaying a remarkably pretty foot and ankle in so doing. “You’ll have enough to do to mind your horse. The bars let down, you see. There is another way, but it’s rather longer. That’s uncle Eli’s,” she added, pointing to a house which stood two fields off.

“ Is it ? ” said Silas simply. “ It has seemed a very short walk, I’m sure. I don’t know any of ’em by sight, you know,” he added, with an awkward laugh. “ May be they ’ll be surprised to see me. But they sent me a letter asking me to come and stay with ’em a spell. I've got it here,” he continued, touching the pocket of his coat, which hung across his horse and looking straight at Mary, with a glance which was unconsciously appealing.

“ Oh, I ’ll tell them who you are,” she answered, smiling. “They’ll be very glad to see you, I know. I heard them speak of your coming. I ’ll go before you, if you like, and tell them,” she repeated, making a slight movement to pass him, as they approached the farm-yard gate.

But he put his hand upon it, and held it fast. “You haven’t told me your name yet,” he said, in a low and rather tremulous voice.

“ My name is Mary Dering,” she answered in her softest tones, and with a confiding glance in his face.

He opened the gate and followed her in.

III.

“ Massy sakes alive, Eli!” said aunt Joanna Durnett, looking out of the keeping-room window. “ If there ain’t Mary at last, after the milkin’’s all done, and a young man with her. Where ever did the hussy pick him up, I wonder! ”

“ I guess,” said uncle Eli, approaching the window, — “I guess it’s Silas McVicker. I expect him along any day, now.”

“ Well, to be sure, and she picks him up fust off, in course. Trust an old maid for that, of she can find a man fool enough to run after her.”

“ Law, mother, you ’re too hard on the poor girl. She went up across the hill to bid Anne good-by. They both of ’em took a couple of rose-trees along to plant in the church-yard, and I guess the poor thing’s been settin’ there ever since.”

“ Eli, I ain't got patience with you,” answered aunt Joanna. “ You ’re jest like all the rest of ’em. Take away her round waist and her pink cheeks, and you’d find fault with her fast enough. I s’pose next you ’ll be sayin’ no woman ain’t nothin’ more ’n a young girl till she gets up towards forty or fifty.”

“No, mother, I won’t,” said uncle Eli, with a perverse twinkle behind his spectacles. “ You was an old woman before you was thirty; but Mary does keep her looks uncommon well. Look at her, now. She don’t look a day over twenty-five, and handsome at that.”

“ That ’s so,” said aunt Joanna coming closer, and looking out of the window. “ My! how she does step out, and how he’s a-lookin’ at her! It ’s a providence, his comin’ jest now. She’d ought to be married, Eli,” she added impressively. “ Mind you don’t say nothing about her age. And don’t you be fault-findin’, nuther. That often frightens men off when their minds is most made up; and it’s kinder bore in on me that Silas McVicker is the man for Mary.”

“ All right,” said uncle Eli; but any comments that he might have been disposed to make upon his consort’s sudden change of mood were stopped by the opening of the door and the entrance of Silas and Mary, who made the necessary introduction with all her usual grace: “ Uncle Eli, aunt Joanna, this is the cousin you were expecting, — Silas McVicker. He met me upon the hill, by the church-yard.”

“ You ’re welcome, Silas,” said uncle Eli heartily. “And here’s my wife, aunt Joanna they call her hereabouts. She ’ll be glad to see you, too.”

“ And I’ll be glad to call her aunt Joanna, if she’ll let me,” said Silas, shaking hands with her, and feeling as if this would be another tie between the stately Mary and himself.

Aunt Joanna received him graciously, and then withdrew, muttering that she would “ see about supper.” And Mary? Her thoughts were very far from traveling as rapidly toward matrimony as those of her companions; but she retired to her room as quickly as she could, and lighting a candle held it close to the little mirror, and minutely studied her face to see if the traces of tears were perceptible. She set it down, after a moment, with a satisfied smile, and proceeded carefully to bathe her face from a small vial of rose-water, which she took from a locked closet, and then to brush and arrange her long, silky hair.

She looked the picture of modest neatness as she came down-stairs in her mourning dress, and Silas, upon whom she waited with gentle courtesy, completely lost, his appetite and forgot the fatigues of the journey as he watched her. At night, as he lay down in the white, dimity curtained bed in aunt Joanna’s best room, he had already traveled so far away from his past life that it seemed but the shadow of a dream.

He was early astir in the morning, and went out with uncle Eli to the barn to feed the cattle, his uncle informing him, by the way, that “ Mary was off to the far lot to milk the red cow.”

Silas did not avail himself of this information. To have done so would have taken the bloom off the shyness of his love; but he contrived to be in the way when she returned, and to carry her milkpails for her to the door of the dairy, a service which she accepted as something naturally her right, and rewarded by a low-toned “ Thank you,” which was uttered with her long lashes cast down. Silas noticed them, and wondered, as he stood at the door of the dairy, waiting to be called to breakfast, whether all women had such long eyelashes. He did not remember to have noticed them before; but then, to be sure, he had never thought about women before, any way.

“ Poor mother, she kinder put me out of conceit of women,” he said to himself, with a half smile, as he obeyed aunt Joanna’s summons to breakfast.

“ I s’pose you ’re kind of lonely down home,” said aunt Joanna, as breakfast proceeded. “ You ain’t married, I believe?” she continued, determined to play her fish well.

“No,” said Silas promptly. “I’ve never thought about being married.”

“ And you’ve got no womankind round, have you? ”

“ No. I have no relations except you, and mother was bedridden so long we got out of the way of having company to our house. She thought it tired her.”

“ H’m,” said aunt Joanna. “Miss her much? ”

“Well, — no, not much,” said Silas truthfully. “ She never was much company for me, mother was n’t. And it seemed to trouble her to have me round doing things in the house. I used to sit in the kitchen, and she’d call me when she wanted things; and that was about all there was of it. To be sure, she was there; now she is n’t,” he added confusedly, as if seeking to disentangle his ideas. “ But then I go fishing and shooting a good deal now.”

“ Your house is pretty big, ain’t it? ”

“ Yes, it is; pretty nigh as big as this, I guess. ”

“ Ah, well, a house is a good thing to own, whether it’s full or empty. Silas, if you won’t have any more breakfast, perhaps you’d like to go out with your uncle, and help him this morning. There is a great deal for women to do about a farm-house like this.”

“ Indeed there is ; you must be busy enough,” answered Silas, as he moved back his chair and prepared to go out.

“ Yes. I should n’t know what to do, only for Mary,” replied aunt Joanna, loyally concealing the fact that Mary would never touch a finger to any part of the work which did not please her.

Silas made no reply, but at noon, when he returned from the field, he brought a bunch of dripping water-lilies in his hand. Not choosing to let aunt Joanna be a witness of his offering, he hung about the house until he saw that Mary was alone in the keeping-room, and then made his way to her boldly enough. She was standing beside the dinner table, engaged in putting some finishing touches to if, and he thought that she was far more beautiful than she had been in the early morning, although she was evidently tired. The peach bloom of her cheeks was deepened to a brilliant pink; there were violet shadows under her lovely eyes; and her hair was pushed back behind her small, shell-like ears. Every little detail about her simple toilet had been carefully studied by her, and she knew as well as any looker-on could know how its apparent negligence became her, and how much her beauty was improved by her heightened color.

Silas felt some slight embarrassment about presenting his offering, but she relieved it at once.

“ Did you pick those for me? ” said she, with her sweetest smile. “ Thank you. I ’ll put them in water in my room. I like water-lilies, and I don’t get them often. Uncle Eli ’s down by the pond every day, but he always forgets to bring any home.” The words were nothing, but the charming voice and the grateful glance of the lovely blue eyes made them irresistible. There was not a married or marriageable man within miles of Compton who did not know those tones and glances, but they were like the voice of Eve to Adam in the ears of Silas.

The first week of Silas’s visit passed by like a dream. He helped uncle Eli about the farm, and did many a “ hand’s turn ” about the house for aunt Joanna, but he thought of nothing but Mary, and when he was not in her presence was but half aware of his own existence.

She never thought of marrying him; but it was impossible for her to have a new man in the house without trying to captivate him, although almost unconsciously.

The long, lingering glances, the downcast. lids, the low tones, with which she bewildered Silas, were with her as mechanical as the minute care with which she performed her daily tasks. Her heart seemed dead, and she was glad that it was so. In a dumb, halfstupid sort of way, she was glad that Silas was in the house, because he admired her, and admiration was as the breath of life to her; and then his presence prevented the introduction of any subject immediately personal to herself, and induced uncle Eli and aunt Joanna to treat her with more respect than they otherwise would have done.

Still, as the days rolled on, the silent homage of this powerful, handsome man was soothing to the burning sense of mortification which she felt when her thoughts turned back to the past years so cruelly wasted. Her lost youth perpetually appealed to her for pity, and made her suddenly start and shudder, as with a stab of pain, while she went about her work. But of the man who had so trifled with her she thought comparatively little. Her powers of suffering were exhausted in that direction.

IV.

The souls of men in their progress through life go through immense changes; and Silas, after his dull life in the salt marshes, and his bare, loveless home, felt almost alarmed, at times, at the vast tide of emotion which rose and surged within him towards this gracious creature. To love for the first time in mature life is to return to youth. He had missed that rosy dawn, and now its dewy freshness, its ineffable charm, surrounded him.

It was amazing to him, in after years, to look back upon this period of his life, and reflect how honestly simple and uncalculating he had been; how absorbed in one idea; and with what worship, what reverence, and yet what a keen sense of physical beauty he had adored Mary Dering.

He had never been in the habit of reading, but under the influence of this new emotion, and an undefined longing to know something more of all good women, he one night opened the big Bible which lay on a table in his room. As chance would have it, his eyes fell upon the concluding verse of the lament of David for Jonathan: “ Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” “ The love of women! ’’ Then that was so precious a thing that it was used as the type of love in the Bible. Silas had his own private and personal doubts, as we all have, but such religious teaching as he had led him to believe every word and line of the Bible as absolutely true, and to be accepted literally; and the next day, as he watched Mary as usual, and as usual interpreted each one of her noble feminine move. ments to denote some inward grace of spirit, a voice perpetually whispered in his ear, “ Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” Every morning after that, as he used to sit at his window in the clear, delicate dawn, waiting until the rest of the family were stirring, he took the Bible and read; and as he read, looking out occasionally upon the liberal and lovely landscape which stretched away far and wide on every hand, beautiful in the rosy dawn, he credited the woman he loved with all the high qualities of which he read.

So the days went on, until the near approach of the limit of his visit crystallized his thoughts into distinct resolves. As a natural sequence, his dreams assumed a more practical character; and as he sat in the evenings, making fishing-nets, an occupation which he had brought with him, he reviewed and re-reviewed his prospects and his resources for making Mary comfortable, should she accept him. Then, again, he would chide himself severely for venturing to hope, for love was making him thoroughly humble. Aunt Joanna, too, with that loyalty to her own sex which is characteristic of all good women, had taken care to let him know, what was indeed the truth, that Mary had had many suitors, and he never dreamed that her opportunities for changing her condition were not as extensive as ever. Still, though no coward, he hesitated to put his fate to the touch, because he instinctively felt that be would risk much more than other men. In this frame of mind he rose and dressed on the Sunday morning preceding his departure. He heard Mary’s clear voice singing afield long before he left his room, and twice he turned back as he was about to go to join her, chilled by a sudden fear that she would refuse him. The second time he drew the big Bible to him, and opened it at hazard: “ Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

It was a “ clear leading.” He closed the book, went to the door, hesitated a moment, and then, returning to the little table on which the Bible lay, knelt down and buried his face on its pages, with a deep desire for divine help and protection, though he was powerless to frame any special supplication. He lingered so long, however, that the family were already assembled for breakfast when he went down-stairs, and his chance of learning his fate was over for that day.

V.

The next morning Silas rose earlier than usual, and hastened on to the “far lot,” determined to await Mary at the stile. He was disappointed; she was there already. Her milk-pail was before her on the stile, and her head was turned away towards the east. She was dressed in her ordinary working gown of dark blue print, with a snow-white handkerchief crossed over her gently-swelling bosom; her beautiful head was uncovered, and adorned only by its gleaming silken hair.

As he approached her, he saw that she had been weeping; and his heart was proud, for he thought those tears were for him.

“ Mary! ” he said, quickly. She hardly moved, only lifted her dark blue eyes to his. “ Mary, I’m going home to-day, you know.”

“Yes,” she said, listlessly, “I know it.”

He resumed: “ I’m going home, but I do not think I could go if you ” — He paused, and began again: “ Oh, Mary, I love you. You ’re the only woman I ever thought of loving; and if you will let me, I will do everything on earth to make you happy. You know all I have. Only tell me, can you put up with my rough ways? Will you have me, Mary? No man will ever love you as I do. You need n’t speak,” he added, eagerly; for she had averted her head, and the waves of pink were suffusing her throat and cheek. “Don’t speak, if you’ll have me. See!” he added, turning to the east, “ if you don’t speak until after the sun has risen, I’ll know you mean Yes.”

The golden disk rose slowly beyond the “purple rim of the horizon,” the birds burst out into cheery lilts, but Mary was still silent; and as the first sunbeam touched and gilded them both, Silas encircled her with his arm and gently kissed her golden head. Not a word more was spoken. He walked quietly beside her to the house, too profoundly happy not to be awe-stricken, and her thoughts were far away, busy with the days and hours of her early youth. As they approached the house, however, he whispered, “ May I come back for you in October, dear? ” and she answered, “Yes.”

So it was settled. Silas returned home that day, and after he was gone she begged that as little might be said about the engagement as possible, and began her preparations so systematically and quietly as to inspire aunt Joanna with respect and a belief that “ Mary had a good deal of ‘ faculty ’ after all.”

Six weeks afterward, on a clear day late in October, they were married.

VI.

The six weeks preceding his marriage were busy ones for Silas. Everything about his farm was brought into the trimmest and most perfect order. The house was painted and whitewashed within and without; and the cleaning and scrubbing, the beeswaxing and polishing, which he insisted upon, and the liberal hand with which he discarded old rags and bits of furniture, amazed the town cleaner, old widow Rose, who profited by his generosity.

He had succeeded in making things look almost attractive, and Mary expressed herself well pleased when she came to take possession of her new domain. Indeed, the evening after they arrived, as they sat after tea at the back door, inhaling the pungent fragrance of the salt marshes and watching the swallows circling round the gable end of the old barn, she felt something almost akin to happiness, something she had thought never to feel again. And Silas was perfectly happy. He would have been glad, certainly, if his wife had been more communicative and more affectionate; but he was by nature quiet and undemonstrative, and as he knew that it was to him a deep, the deepest, bliss to have her at his side and to feel that they were to be together always, he took her acceptance of him to mean a love akin to his own. Her instincts, too, were well bred, and led her to avoid giving pain, and to assume an appearance of interest in their daily life which she was far from feeling; and she was an admirable housekeeper, and took kindly to the task of arranging and putting in order the big, bare house, and of contriving and preparing nice, appetizing meals. She was fond of sailing, also, and, actuated solely by the pleasure of the novel exercise, and not at all by any desire for her husband’s society, she often accompanied him on his fishing expeditions. These were a relief to her, at first. Silas was generally occupied and silent, and she could sit in dreamy quiet, full of a sensuous enjoyment of the motion of the boat, of the cool fragrant air, and of the sunny day, which was her sole appreciation of nature. Meanwhile, her superb figure lent itself with consummate grace to every motion of the boat, and her lovely eyes smiled back an exquisite answer to the tender glances her husband threw upon her from time to time; her round, pink cheek lifted itself as readily to his lips as if she loved him, and him alone.

And yet often behind her calm brows the doubt as to whether she had done well to accept him was going on; whether, if she had waited, Harvey’s wife might not have died; whether he might not have been divorced from her; whether she might not have married a “ really rich ” man; and then she would murmur to herself at her fate. She had been engaged to that other man “ fifteen years, and it was hard to give him up after that.” There was great weakness in these speculations, and, even more, disloyalty, for she had never permitted her husband to suspect that she had been engaged to another man. Still, as it seems the nature of falsehood to show itself, Silas felt more and more, as time rolled on, a lack of reality and spontaneity in his wife’s manner. She never crossed him in anything, she never withdrew from his caresses, she never permitted herself to utter an impatient word, and yet a vague, slow pain and dissatisfaction was growing up in his heart. It was entirely like the man not to question her on the subject, but to take it for granted that the fault, if fault there was, was his own; and he endeavored to mend things by an increasing thoughtfulness for her happiness. He rose earlier and earlier in the morning, that he might accomplish enough to enable him to leave off work soon in the afternoon and take her out to drive; nay, he would walk long distances, sometimes, in order that the old horse might rest, and so be fitter to bear the long drives in which his wife delighted.

Naturally generous, he became, to every one but her, grasping to a degree, though only that he might have something to make life easier for her. For her he thought and watched and planned, for her he dreamed and hoped, until at length the desire to make her vividly happy grew almost to be a passion. It is not easy to deceive a lover who is also a husband, and at times a keen, sudden anguish pierced his heart. When alone with his wife, he felt the subtle, intangible barrier which prevented her from being wholly his. When a year had thus passed away, and he was still no nearer the enchanted land of absolute bliss, he began to long earnestly for children; not so much from any paternal instinct, as because of the possible effect of maternity upon the character of his idol. She never echoed his desire other than in words. No fibre of her heart responded to it. She was of the order of women to whom children are a burden.

So time went on; they had been married nearly three years, and a great many comforts and improvements had gradually been accumulated about their home. One of these, and one upon which Mary’s heart had especially been set, was a two-storied piazza, and it was at length in process of construction. It had cost Silas some few sacrifices to save the requisite amount of money, and after the wood had been procured and duly seasoned he had been obliged to proceed rather slowly with the work, as he had but little time to devote to it. The long upper hall, which had a window opening upon the piazza to be, was converted into a work-shop, and he spent all his spare moments there. He was very little disposed to take holidays, unless at his wife’s request; and in the early morning of the third Fourth of July which they had spent, together, he stood in front of his house, looking up at the scaffolding which supported his unfinished work, and seriously debating whether he would not neglect the national holiday altogether.

“ I don’t believe I ’ll go, after all’s said and done,” he said, as his wife came towards him from the house.

“ Not go sailing? I can’t go, because I have a bad headache, and I’m afraid of the sun; but you ought to go, Silas; they ’ll be angry if you don’t. I’ve got your dinner-basket all ready, too; and you don’t often have a holiday.”

“And I don’t care for one without you, young woman,” he answered, laughing and slipping his arm round her waist.

But she urged her point with a gentle persistency peculiar to herself and extremely difficult to resist, and which, combined with the life-long habit of making it a duty to take a holiday on the Fourth, induced him to yield to her.

“ I’m afraid you’ll be lonely, and I don’t half like to leave you,” he said, when he was all equipped, coming up behind her in the door-way and gently kissing her hair, as he put his arm round her waist, a frequent and in his mind a peculiarly tender caress, because it recalled the morning of their betrothal.

“ Never fear,” she said, lightly. “I shall miss you, of course, but I’ve got some things to do round the house that ’ll keep me busy, and won’t tire me, either. My head ain’t so very bad, but if I went I know it would get worse.”

“ Well, I ’ll tell you what I ’ll do,” he answered. “ If I don’t come home before one, you need n’t look for me; but I guess I ’ll just walk over to the landing and tell Johnson and Rose not to expect me. I’d rather put a good, solid day’s work on this piazzy than be off sailing with a lot of fellows I don’t care for.”

“I guess you’d better go,” rejoined his wife, smiling and brushing a speck of dust from his coat.

He nodded to her with a smile, without answering, and walked down to the gate, hesitated there a moment, and then, returning, took her in his arms and kissed her passionately, and left her. He never kissed her again.

VII.

She stood looking after him for a moment or two, and then went into the house and exchanged her holiday for her working dress. It was an intensely hot and perfectly still day. The road which stretched along the front of the house looked dazzlingly white and dry. Not a vehicle was to be seen, nor was likely to be seen during the day, the tide of travel being turned,in consequence of the Fourth of July festivities, to another part of the township, and with a half sigh at the weariness of life she went about her work.

An hour afterward Silas returned, walked noiselessly into the house, and, not finding her, went up-stairs, and began to fit some wooden screw-pins for the new piazza, an operation which had the double advantage of advancing his work and of being carried on so quietly as not to disturb his wife’s aching head. He was seated in the upper hall, when he saw her coming in from the garden, carrying a basket of sweet herbs, which she placed beside her on a bench under the trees, and proceeded to sort and tie up in bunches. She performed this trifling task with so much skill and grace, and looked so fresh and pretty under the shade of the trees, that he was unwilling to disturb her, and sat working and watching her with quiet delight. Once or twice she paused in her work, with a slight sigh of weariness, and, shading her eyes with her hand, gazed fixedly up and down the road; and each time she did so Silas beheld the action with a leap of the heart, and thought, “ She is looking for me.” Still, he refrained from speaking to her, that he might enjoy the pleasure of watching her a little longer. She moved the bench upon which she had been sitting at last, so that she could not see the road, and continued her work, with an occasional dreamy glance at the salt marshes; and Silas now resolved to tell her that he had returned. Laying down his knife and the screw he had been making, he advanced to the edge of the scaffolding, and was on the point of calling her, when he paused, arrested by the unusual spectacle of a horse and gig, which was coming slowly up the post-road from the south. The gig was new and handsomely appointed, and the horse was a powerful animal and well groomed, although he had evidently traveled far and hard, for he was covered with dust and foam. The vehicle came slowly until it was within several hundred yards of the house, and then its sole occupant, a very tall, slight man, more elaborately dressed than any man Silas ever remembered to have seen in those parts, alighted, and led the horse carefully by the bridle. It was apparently his desire to proceed as quietly as possible, for he led the animal over the grass at the side of the road at a snail’s pace, reconnoitering the house eagerly all the while. He passed the house, fastened his horse to a tree a few yards away, and returned to the gate, darting quick, furtive, suspicious glances in every direction as he placed his hand upon the latch and noiselessly opened and as noiselessly closed it behind him, stepping immediately afterward on the soft grass at the side of the pathway, as if afraid of the echo of his own footsteps on the walk.

Strangers were a rarity at Hallowbay salt marshes, and Silas had hitherto remained silent and motionless from the overpowering curiosity he felt as to the stranger’s movements. Now, however, he was convinced that he had some sinister motive for his visit, and, grasping one of the uprights of the scaffolding, he prepared to swing himself down and confront him. At this moment the man halted, surveyed the house with an air of considerable perplexity, and said in a soft, but distinctly audible whisper, —

“ Mary! Mary, dear!”

There was a slight rustle, as Mary sprang from her seat and ran, not toward the house, but in the direction of the speaker. She paused within a yard of him, and glanced quickly at the house, the meadows, the road, before she spoke:

“Harvey! Oh, Harvey! Harvey!” and covering her face with her hands she burst into a passion of tears.

“ Are you alone ? ” said he.

“ Yes, ”

“ Ah, I hoped it would be so,” said he, reaching her with a single stride, and taking her hand. “ I have so hoped and longed to see you, Mary. Come,” he added, after a moment’s pause, during which she permitted him to hold her hand, but still kept her face turned away; “ come, Mary, you were kinder to me once. ”

She withdrew her hand, and turned quickly upon him, her bosom heaving, her dark blue eyes burning with angry fire. “ And if I was, is it for you to taunt me with it now? Yes, a woman will be likely to be kind to the man she’s engaged to be married to for fifteen years, if she does n’t suspect he’s going to jilt her at the end of it. Mother and Anne and Geraldine all told me from the very first that you was n’t to be trusted, and I believed you, and not them. I let mother and Geraldine both die believing a lie, — believing I was n’t engaged to you, when I was, — because you made me deceive them. When you let me go, mother was dead, and I could never tell her. Oh. dear! I lie awake sometimes at night and cry about it now, to think how you’ve spoiled all my life for me; and yet I ” —

“ Love me after all, don’t you, Mary ? Say you do! I love you as much as ever I did. Come,” he added, slipping his arm round her waist; “come, we can’t be strangers, you know. You were engaged to me for fifteen years, — that’s true enough, as you say; and it looks as if I treated you bad, — I know that; but I’ve never had a happy hour since we parted, — not one, Mary. My wife is a poor, sickly, worrying thing. I have n’t had a minute’s peace or comfort in all these years, and then — Don’t turn away from me; you might be kinder to a fellow when he comes — Listen: I left New York before daylight, and I’ve been traveling in heat and dust ever since, just for the chance of speaking a word to you. Come, sit down by me, and let me put my arm round you, as I used to on the hill by the churchyard. Do you remember? ”

“I remember,” she answered. She was still standing partly turned away from him, her beautiful, supple frame shaken by the violence of her sobs.

“ Come,” he urged again, in winning tones. “ By George!” he continued, throwing his head a little back and looking at her admiringly, “ you look just as you did fifteen years ago, —the handsomest woman I ever saw in country or city. Come, sit by me, and let us talk. I want to know if you ’re happy and—Don’t turn away from me; don’t be so cold and stiff with me. I love you yet as much as ever; and you love me, don’t you ? You do, Mary, don’t you? ”

The man looking down upon them waited in breathless silence for her answer.

She turned slowly round, and suffered her large, tear-filled eyes to fall upon the face uplifted to her, and then, “ Oh, yes! God help me, yes, I do! How can I help it! I always loved you,” she answered, with a burst of tears.

Harvey again took her hand. “ Dear Mary,” he whispered.

“ Don’t touch me, — don’t,” she said, swerving aside. “ Don’t come near me. Listen: you never loved me!”

“ I did, and do,” he answered impatiently. “ D——n it, does a man always marry where he loves? I didn’t, God knows! I loved you all the time I was engaged to you. I loved you when I was married, and I do now. Oh, Mary, I wish you had n’t been in such a hurry, and then who knows what might have happened. I ’m a rich man now, and my wife is in very poor health, — consumptive, the doctor says, — and can’t live a year ; and if you were free ” —

“It’s too late, now,” she said, listlessly, and a sigh which seemed to come from the very bottom of her heart burst from her. “ Go away, now; please go.”

“ Why should I go away? ” he rejoined. “ Your husband is n’t likely to come home yet, is he?”

“ No, —but ” —

“ Then I won’t go,” he answered. “ No, indeed, I won’t. I came forty miles to-day to see you, and for nothing else. By George ! there’s been times in the last three years that I’d have walked it, and more too, just to see you walk across a room, and step out as no other woman ever did but you. Ah, smile,— that’s right; you’ve got your dimples yet, I see. You look just as you did when we first knew each other, years ago. By Jove, Mary, I ought to have married you! ”

“ And whose fault is it that you did n’t?” she said, impatiently. “Do go away, — do! Whatever was between us is past and gone. Do go away; there ’s no use in your staying. No, I won't sit down, and I won’t talk to you any more. I can’t bear it. You spoiled all my life; and now I ’ve got a good husband, and I don’t love him, and never did, and it’s all your fault. Go, — for pity’s sake go! ”

The stranger sprang to his feet. “ Come with me, Mary! ” he exclaimed, “ Come with me. I ’ll make the venture. I can make a comfortable home for you now, and after a time, if my wife dies, I 'll marry you. I swear I will.” There was an instant’s hesitation, while he held her hand, and there fell between the two a silence so profound that Silas, from his post of observation, could distinctly hear the long-drawn sighs that fought their way up from his wife’s heart, and the hurried, panting breathing of the stranger. Suddenly the clock struck two loud, distinct strokes that seemed to fill the air. “ Two o’clock! ” said Harvey, starting, and attempting to draw Mary to him. “Come, dear, we’ve got no time to lose. ”

She released herself quickly, and drew back. “ Go, then,” she answered. “ I won’t come with you.”

“ Why not? ” he asked, in a tone of suppressed rage.

“ Because I ’ll die an honest woman, as I’ve lived; and because, if I did come, you would forget me soon.”

“ But I ’ll make an honest woman of you. I swear I will. I ’ll marry you as soon as Charlotte dies, and I don’t think she ’ll live long.”

“ And then you would want to marry another rich woman. Listen: you ’ve spoiled all my life for me. I was engaged to be married to you when I was only seventeen; and then when mother died, and you knew I’d waited for you fifteen years, till I was sick and worn out with waiting and worry and misery, you just broke it all off, as if ” —

“ Now just calm yourself,” interrupted he. “ You won’t come because you don’t love me. You love this husband of yours, that your aunt Joanna makes such a to-do about.”

“ Oh, stop! Don’t torment me so,” she said, wearily.

“ And you love him, — you do, — not me! Come, tell me the truth,” he urged again, approaching her. “You’re going to stay with him, you know; if you do or ever did care for me, you might tell me, now. Which of us is it, Mary ? ” Silence. “ You never loved me,” he said, turning away.

“I did, — I did, — I do,” she cried, springing toward him. “ Oh, Harvey, you know” —

“And now?” said he, in pleading tones. “ Come, Mary, I ’ve told you all the truth. I married for money. I was in a tight place, and had to have it or be ruined; but I loved you then and ever since, and I love you now. So ” —

“No, hear me out,” she answered. “ If I went with you, you would tire of me, and cast me off. If I stay here, I shall have some one to protect me and a roof over my head. I married for that, and” —

“ Well, I ’ll leave you, since you wish it so much,” he answered. “ If you won’t come with me, I certainly have nothing to wait for, but I must say this: you abuse me for marrying for money, but if you did n’t do it, you had an uncommon deal of luck to fall into such a fat farm, comfortable house, too, and improvements going on regardless of expense. You have n’t suffered as much as you pretend to, I guess. Well, since I must go, give me one kiss for good-by.

I ’ll never trouble you again.”

But she shook her head. She had retreated to the tree under which she had been sitting, and with one arm wound round it, and her head leaning on her arm, remained mute and motionless.

“ Come,” he urged, approaching her, “ bid me good-by, Mary.”

She shuddered, but was silent.

A dark look of anger crossed his face as he looked at her, but he made no further attempt to shake her decision; only lifting the white arm that hung down, he held it for a moment in a gripe that was almost savage, and then kissing it passionately dropped it, and without a word sprang into his gig and drove furiously away.

When the last echo of trampling hoofs had died away in the distance, the last cloud of dust faded, Mary tottered back to the bench she had left, and sank down exhausted; then, lifting her left hand, she pressed it to her lips for a moment, and burst into an agony of weeping. The passion of years of suffering was poured out in that wild wail, and she sobbed until, utterly wearied out, she lay back against the tree white and shaken, gazing before her with blank, unseeing eyes. The clock struck four, at last, and starting, and glancing nervously about her, she rose and went into the house. As she did so, Silas moved from the constrained position into which he seemed to have petrified, and swinging himself down from the scaffolding crossed the garden and went away to the shore.

He was at first more conscious of physical weariness than anything else, and he threw himself upon a strip of gravelly beach, and, with his eyes fixed upon the distant waters of Hallowbay, struggled to collect his thoughts and rearrange the impressions at war within him. In heart and soul, in hope and in desire, his wife had never been his.

The first fierce impulse of rage, in which he had felt a wild desire to seize and murder her, was past. Slowly and with ineffable bitterness the true idea of her filled his mind.

“ There are no true women, then,” he thought, and smiled bitterly to himself. “ Why could n’t she let me alone? ” he whispered, a moment after, writhing in agony as he recalled the allurements by which he now saw he had been won. The thought of meeting her again was inexpressibly galling to him, the idea of a life with her not to be endured; and he shuddered and ground his teeth as he remembered the long, lingering glance with which she had followed her lover’s retreating figure, the passionate kisses she had pressed upon the hand he had held, the wild abandon of despair with which she had recognized the fact that he had left her forever. He might have forgiven her that confession of love, that burst of grief, had he not thought of long, lingering glances bent upon himself, soft words and softer caresses. “ False to both of us! ” he muttered. “ A roof over her head! She shall have nothing else! O God! O God! ”

But the anguish which racked him refused to vent itself in tears. The sun went down, the stars came out one by one in the slowly deepening twilight, and still he lay upon the shore, until the risen tide, sighing among the rank grass at his feet, bathed him in its bitter waters, and roused him from a stupor of misery in which hours had passed by unheeded.

He rose slowly, and slowly turned his face in the direction of his ruined home. “ Oh, if lightning would but blast it, — turn it to ashes! ” But it looked as quiet, as home-like, as orderly, as ever. There was the ample door wide open, a candle burning in the window; a few logs were smoldering on the hearth, the kettle singing cheerily, as it had done a hundred times before. He entered the room, and as he did so his wife rose quietly from her seat, and lifted the kettle from the hob. Not a trace of emotion was visible on her composed face, and he saw with a shudder that she had changed her gown and kerchief, and smoothed anew the beautiful hair, which that other man had toyed with, how often, years before he had ever seen her. Their eyes met as he advanced, and in an instant he saw that she knew that he had heard all.

Even then all confidence might not have been over between them had truth and loyalty been in her. But to evade and to shift were impulses so unconquerable that she said only, “ You must have had a pleasant day, you were so long away, and quite wet, too, I see.”

He heard her in silence, only recoiling from her touch as she arranged his plate and cup beside him with her usual scrupulous neatness, and then he turned and confronted her.

“ Have you nothing to ask me? ” he said in iron tones.

She understood him, he saw, but a sullen, dogged look settled upon her handsome face.

“ Nothing,” she answered sullenly. “I don’t know what you mean, I’m sure.”

“ You don’t ? ” he demanded bitterly. “ You should have gone with him, then.”

She made no reply.

“ Do you hear?” he thundered. “Do you want to ask me to forgive you ? ”

Her old power over him had not quite gone. The beauty he loved, dissolved in tears and pleading for forgiveness, might have won some meed of pity from him still.

But her nature gave her no key to his. “ What is done is done; best say no more about it,” was her thought. She had never felt the slightest impulse to unburden herself to him, and she did not now.

“ No, I don’t know what you mean,” she repeated.

He gazed at her for a moment, with a look of blank misery; then, hastily pushing his plate away, he rose and left the house.

All night he tossed about in his boat on the bay, and nature spoke to him with her thousand voices. But they did not reach him. There was no remedy for his wound, no healing. “ His own familiar friend, in whom he trusted,” had failed him.

“ God, what a fool I’ve been! ” he muttered, as the night went on. Selfscorn does not dispose anyone to tender feeling, and the breach between him and his wife was wider when the morning dawned upon his sorrow.

He recognized the fact that he could not legally put her away from him; he understood her sufficiently to know that she would not disgrace him or herself further. He was even reasonable enough to admit that there was little likelihood that she would ever again be subjected to temptation. But to believe in her again, to love her! That was impossible, — as impossible, he bitterly thought, as that she should ever love him. The treasure of love which nature had given him was spent. “ No love save mutual love endures the test of time.” His time of love had been short. It was over and gone, and with it youth had gone. He never sought an explanation with his wife. He had heard and seen more, he knew, than she, with her fatally reticent nature, could ever tell him, even if she would. And he had not the heart to attempt to mend what never could be mended, to join together the broken fragments of life. A vast gulf already separated him from that time when everything was done to please her, and her fair image filled alike his dreaming and waking hours. She had the shelter of his roof; no more. As time went on he nerved himself to do the work that was left for him to do, and resumed his old habits of thrift and industry. From that work alone upon which he had been engaged when trouble overtook him — that work which had been emphatically a labor of love — he shrank. He at first intended to remove the scaffolding which surrounded the house, but an unconquerable reluctance to handle it possessed him during the first few months of his trouble, and then the time to do so was past; and as each succeeding year sped away with greater swiftness, it became easier to ignore than to destroy that monument of past folly, and so it was untouched save by the wind and rain. It is black with age now.

M. L. Thompson.