AND STILL ANOTHER PATH

It is difficult for one who has never taken an ocean voyage or lived in a small village to realize the tremendous strides which interest, friendship, love, or confidence can make in a very few days, or even hours. I met three girls once whose kind parents had provided them with a chaperon and sent them abroad to improve their minds. They met men on the Lusitania (a record trip, too) going over, and all three were engaged when they landed. Instead of improving their minds in Europe, they bought their trousseaux, and then came home (another record trip) and were married. A small village is just the same; one is introduced and after that it goes like the wind. Women tell each other everything that they shouldn't, and virtues which would never be noticed in a city beget the deepest and sincerest admiration and affection. The dearth of conventionality and variety draw spirits easily together. Perhaps the purer air is a universal solvent for pride and prejudice. At any rate, to make a long story short, Lassie and Ingram were in love with each other before Alva had finished having the porch of her house painted, or before Mrs. Ray had succeeded in tracking the case-knives to their suspicious lair of crime.

It's delightful to fall in love on the sea or in the country, quite as delightful as to fall in love anywhere else. It is too bad that fickleness is rated so low, for really the emotion of slowly discovering that one is entering Elysium should be too great an experience to be foregone forever after. However, we must not forget that fickleness is rated low because humanity long since discovered that being in Elysium is still better than making an entrance there, and furthermore that of all sharp edges known, Love is the one most easily dulled by usage. Therefore it is best to adhere to the dear old rules for the dear old game, and only thank Fate with special reverence when sea-breezes or country zephyrs float around one's own personal setting-out.

Lassie didn't know that she was in love; she only knew that she was very happy. Ingram didn't know that he was in love; he only knew that he was very happy. Alva, whose soul sank daily deeper into the near approaching abyss of her profound longings, noticed nothing. But every one else knew, of course. Joey Beall, the invisibly omnipresent, saw them alone together somewhere nearly every day. Mrs. Ray watched them come and go together for mail. Mrs. O'Neil, who never had believed that Ingram was in love with Alva, wished them well with all her heart. For she felt sure that Alva wasn't in love with Ingram, either.

"I'm glad to have something pleasant before my eyes just now," she said to Mary Cody, and Mary Cody knew that she referred to the feeling over the dam, which daily grew keener, and to the Lathbuns, who, it was now openly known, had never paid any board since their arrival, but merely referred to their banker in Cromwell, who, it appeared, was out of town, and could not send on their October check until his return.

"I don't know what there is about looking at them," said Mary Cody, who was fifteen and grown up at that (and who did not refer to Mrs. Lathbun and her daughter); "but every time he looks at her while I'm waiting on them, I feel as if I'd just about die of joy if Ed Griggs would look at me once that way."

"Don't talk nonsense," said Mrs. O'Neil, severely.

The days which bore such momentous happenings upon their bosom flowed swiftly on, and the week was speeding by—was gone, in fact.

"It doesn't seem possible, does it?" Lassie said, as she came across the bridge with Ingram one afternoon. He had happened to return from the long-distance telephone in Ledgeville by way of Alva's house; and she had happened to be ready to go home, and Alva had happened not to be ready. "It doesn't seem that it can be only a week. I feel as if it were months, instead. Do you remember that first day, when Alva told me, how I cried and how horrible I thought it was. And now I feel as if it were too sad for words, but something so great and lovely and sacred, that I'm sort of hushed in joy to have seen it all. I can see her side now, and when I go back to the world and hear people say the things that I thought myself when she first told me, I know that they are going to hurt me awfully. And yet she says that they will not hurt her."

"No," said Ingram, thoughtfully, "she seems to be quite beyond being hurt. I never saw any one who impressed me just as Alva does."

"It's very wonderful to be with her all the time," Lassie went on; "nothing seems to affect her for herself, but only things about other people. She doesn't seem to think her thoughts for herself any more, but just for others. It's how she can study and learn and carry on some part of his work for him after he's gone; it's how she can teach the people around here that Ledge won't profit in the end by being turned into a big lake or a big manufacturing district; it's how she can only prove to people that those two queer women are really honest, and really nice to know."

"And do you agree with all her views now?" Ingram asked, recalling the first of their meetings and the difference in Lassie's views from her friend's then.

"I think it's very splendid how she loves. I thought it was terrible at first, but now I—" she hesitated; "I"—she stopped altogether.

"Go on," said Ingram; "what were you going to say?"

The girl looked down the caÑon of gray, barren beauty, and then up towards the sunlit valley of sweet, sunshiny, farming country. "Perhaps you won't believe me," she said, her eyes for the minute almost as distant in their withdrawal as Alva's own; "but now, I—truly—I envy her. I would give anything to love as she does. I would almost give the world to see life as she sees it. You see, I have begun to understand what she means when she says things."

Ingram was deeply stirred by pathos of which Lassie herself was ignorant. The young desire to learn to drink of bitter waters! The longing towards the crown of thorns stirs them, because they can appreciate the sublimity of martyrdom, and cannot measure the agony!

She had stopped and laid her hand upon the bridge-rail. Involuntarily he laid his hand upon it, holding it within his strength and warmth.

"When she talks to me of him," Lassie went on, seeming unconscious of the hand and looking far ahead, "I forget myself, I forget Mamma, I forget my dÉbut; I live only in her and her hope. I never saw love like hers; she lives in him—in it—not in the world, and she's so sure of the next world and of their future. It goes all through me, the wonder of it. I can't tell you how I envy her. She said when I came that she would send me back home all different, and I see now that she will do it."

"But I don't want you different." The words burst from the man's lips. Mountain tops are serene and glorious and very close to the clouds, but oh, the good warmth, the dear, cosy loveliness of those soft green slopes far—so far—below.

Lassie was too deeply engrossed to notice. "I shall go back to my home a better girl," she said; "and I shan't let myself forget what I've learned here."

Ingram thought that she had heard, and felt himself silenced.

There was a minute of stillness, and then they walked on. The October evening was falling chill, and the night wind came winding up the gorge.

"Do you agree with her about the dam, too?" the man asked finally, as they approached the end of the bridge, striving against an echo of bitterness.

"Oh, yes, she has converted me about that, too. She took me down to call on Mr. Ledge, and when I saw that dear, courtly, old gentleman, and heard how quietly and earnestly and sadly he and Alva talked about it, I came to see how different all that was, too."

Ingram waited a second or two; then he said:

"And Mrs. Lathbun,—do you believe in her too, now?"

Lassie laughed. "No, I don't," she said, very positively; "I'm awfully sorry for them both, but I cannot believe in them."

"Alva does."

"Yes,—but Alva—"

"Yes, well,—go on."

"I mustn't. Indeed I mustn't. I promised, and this time I must keep my word. But Alva has a reason for believing in them."

"Is it a good reason?"

Lassie reflected. "No," she said, finally; "I don't think that it is a good reason at all."

They were at the hotel door now.

"Well, I'm sorry for Alva," said Ingram, "because I hate to see ideals shattered."

"Oh, but they may justify her faith."

"I am more inclined to think that they will justify your doubts."

Lassie looked pleased. She valued Ingram's opinion highly.

A little later Alva herself came home, pale as she always was, but more weary looking than nightfall usually found her.