LEARNING LESSONS

The wide range of standpoints is one of the most interesting studies in this world. A man on a hill can look to the horizon in all directions, and wonder about all the little black specks which he may see thereon, and all on the horizon can see the little black speck on the hill and draw their own conclusions as to what it may be. Ledge thought city people lacking in intellect because of the way they "took the Falls," and the visitors thought the townspeople lacking because of the way in which they "took the Falls." Mrs. Ray knew that Ingram and Lassie were in love, and Ingram and Lassie didn't know it; and Ingram and Lassie had been told by Mrs. O'Neil that Mrs. Ray would eventually marry Sammy Adams, while Mrs. Ray herself not only didn't know that, but had declared herself to be "dead set" against the proposition. The State had appointed a commission, and Mr. Ledge was troubled over its results; and all the while Creation, in the first of its creating, had settled the outcome of the commission's task definitely and forever. And so they all went merrily, blindly forward, Alva, like the evening star, moving serenely in the centre, almost as unconscious of her own position in people's eyes as the evening star is unconscious of telescopes. She was happy in her ideal existence, and always hopeful of good to come for others. Her aims were high and true, her sincerity splendid, and Lassie was learning a great deal—more than either of them guessed, in fact. And the second week was now going blithely forward, while Alva worked and waited, hoping each hour for the telegram that should summon her to bring her lover into the haven her love was building. But the telegram came not.

"Lassie," she said, one noon, as they stood on the bridge looking down into the tumbling waters below, "I wonder if I were ever like you, and I wonder if you will ever be like me!"

"How so?"

"If you will ever be really in love? I can't believe that very many people really know what love means,—that is, in the way that I mean it. If they did, it could not possibly be a shock to any one to see me doing what I am going to do. It would seem the only thing to do."

Lassie made no reply for a little, then she said, slowly: "When we love, we look forward to life together generally; that is why people won't understand you." She hesitated again. "I mean-that seems to me to be the reason; perhaps I'm wrong."

Alva reflected, too, her eyes upon the autumn glory flaunting its color over the deep gray shadows before her. "Even if one puts it all on the material plan, I should think that the whole world would recognize by this time that it isn't the man that a woman loves that fills her soul with ringing joy; it's the way in which she loves the man. It's herself and the effect of himself upon her thoughts that counts. It isn't the house, but the life within the house that makes a home, you know."

Some shy, latent color rose up in Lassie's face. "I never thought about it in just that way," she said; "but I suppose it's the truth."

"My dear, it is the truth. Of course it is the truth. No one to whom sufficient has been revealed can doubt it. If you can't see it so, it is because you are not yet old enough to comprehend. When I say 'old enough' I don't mean the Lassie who is eighteen; I mean the Lassie who began long before this mass of rock became even so stable as to be shifting ocean sand. I mean the Lassie who departed out of God to work in His way until she shall return to Him in some divine and distant hereafter."

"Oh, Alva, you do say such queer things!"

"Perhaps; but you see I know all this. It came to me through dire hours of need. I've demonstrated its truth, step by step. Try to grasp the idea."

"Do people ever think you crazy?" The question came timidly.

"Every one always thinks any one or anything that they can't understand, crazy. Mrs. Ray thinks me crazy, and it's very difficult for me not to consider her so."

"Alva!"

"Yes, really."

"I'll try to consider you sane."

"Thank you very much, dear." She smiled brightly. "Oh, Lassie, it's such joy to have you to speak to. I was so choked and crowded with thoughts before you came. It was so blessedly good that if I could not stay with him, I could come to this quiet spot and have the house and you to help me wait the days away. You see, Lassie, one has to be part body in spite of everything, and it's so hard to keep your body up to your soul. Sometimes it seems to me that all of a sudden I am drawn into a whirlpool and cannot get hold of anything solid. I don't know just what it is, but I imagine that I feel as they say the Saxons felt when they saw the comet flaming in the year of the Conquest, that something portends. And it seems to me so hard that I could not have stayed with him. But they wouldn't hear to that."

Lassie pressed her hand. "I don't wonder at the way you feel," she said, sympathetically; "there must be so much that is hard in your mind these days."

"Words are poor to tell what I feel," said her friend; "that is what binds me to him,—it is that he and I do not need to speak. We can feel without translation."

"I wonder if I shall ever be loved like that," Lassie murmured wistfully, and at her words the delicate flame illumined her face again.

Alva did not notice; she was looking down into the cleft beneath, and watching the little river fret itself into foam and spray.

"Look!" she said suddenly. "Isn't it lovely in the noon sunlight? Fancy the countless centuries on centuries that it must have taken the river to cut itself this path. There was once a great lake on the other side—the side above the bridge—and it is with the idea of restoring that lake that the State is having this survey made. The difficulty is that the State isn't geologist enough to know that the lake's outlet flowed out there to our left, and that this river is comparatively a new thing. If they remade the lake, the lake would be desperately likely to remake its old outlet."

"Would it hurt?"

"Hurt! My dear, it would be another Johnstown Flood."

"Oh, dear! Do many know that?"

"Yes, dear; but it wouldn't drown the men who will own the water-power, so what does it matter to this world of yours."

"But is that right—to look at anything in that horribly selfish way?"

"In what other way do rich financiers look at anything? But there will come a time when a change will dawn. Look, dear, down there; see the rainbow dancing on the spray. Well, that's the way that public opinion is going to come in among us soon—in a rainbow of truth."

"It will be beautiful everywhere then?" Lassie asked, smiling.

"Very beautiful!" Alva stared down upon the writhing, leaping waters below; "and I shall have given my all towards the dream's fulfilment. And I shall have learned from him how to devote my life to the same great ends that he served. Lassie, when one comprehends that not happiness but usefulness is the end to be worked towards, then one begins to see what living really means."

"How much it is all going to mean to you!"

"How much? Ah, only he and I can guess at that! There will be something quite different from all the imaginings, in our sweet, sad days of work and suffering and comforting. I dare not try to picture it to myself. I only think often of how I shall pause here in my walks to come, and steal a long look over this scene, so as to go home and describe it. He loves beauty and he loves wood and water."

"You'll go back and forth across the bridge often then, won't you?"

"When I'm married, you mean?"

"Yes, when you're married."

"My dear, fancy what a joy Mrs. Ray will be to us. I shall go for the mail expressly so as to tell all that Mrs. Ray said to me when I went for the mail." She paused and smiled and sighed. "Lassie, I wish I were strong enough not to mind one thing. I know so well—so very well—just how it will look to every one,—above all to my parents, who are to be driven half mad, even though I shall only ask a few months' freedom, in return for all my life before and after. I wish that I might be spared the sharp, keen realization of all that."

Lassie's eyes sought hers quickly. "But you have a right to do as you please, Alva."

"Have I, dear? It seems to me sometimes as if I were the one person who had no right to do as she pleases, not even in that which concerned her most. You know that every one thinks that if a woman marries with a prospect of years of happiness taken or given, she is justified in going her own way. Any one would feel that, would understand that view. I never could have done that, because my life was too heavily loaded with burdens and responsibilities; and his was the same. It was because we were so hopeless of happiness for so long that we do not cavil over the wonder of what is offered us. Because if it had come in the form that it comes to others, we must have refused it. It did come to us in that form, and we did refuse it. It was only when it returned in a guise that the world calls tragic, that we could accept it for our own."

"Yes, Alva, I understand," her tone was a cry, almost.

"Lassie, remember one thing, and don't forget it during any of these hours that we shall spend together. If I read life by another light than yours, it isn't because it was natural to my eyes. Once I might have recoiled even more than you did, when I first told you. God's best purposes for humanity require that we recoil from what seems unnatural. But there are exceptions to all rules, and in return for two human lives freely offered up on the altar of His world, He gives, sometimes, a few days of unutterable happiness to their spirits. Lassie, he was big, he was splendid; you know all that he was as every one else does. If I had been young, if I had been ignorant enough to dare to be selfish, and if he had been young and ignorant enough not to know how necessary he was to thousands,—why, then, we might have been happy in the way that two people out of a million sometimes are. But we had gone beyond all that, or else we passed beyond it the instant we realized; at any rate, we knew too well that I was bound hand and foot on the wheel of my life and he was bound on his. We had to set our faces in opposite directions and go on. Straight ahead. The world for which we sacrificed ourselves will never even be grateful. The world could not have understood why we should make any sacrifice; the world generally disdains those who do the most for it. Isn't that so? If you tell any one in these days that your first duty is to do right by your own soul, and that that means doing what is best for all other souls, they stare. If I say to you that I could bear to live alone and he could bear to live alone, because we both knew absolutely that we had had centuries of one another and should win eternity united, you'd stare, too."

"I wouldn't quite—" faltered Lassie.

"Don't try to, dear; only think how it is to him and to me now, when we are to have this short, this pitifully short space of time together—to have to take it in the face of such an outcry as will be made. When I creep back into life again, with my heart broken and my dress black always from then on, I shall be so notorious, such an object of curiosity for all time to come, that my friends will prefer not to be seen in public with me. When I think of my home-going to tell them, my very soul faints. My father abhors any form of physical deformity; what he is going to say to my marrying one who is so maimed and crushed that he can not use his right hand, I can't think. And then there is my mother, to whom sentiment and religion are alike quixotic. What will she say?"

She was silent, and then she suddenly left the rail and moved on.

"Ah, well, if it could only stay bright like this until we came back together! But that is impossible. What we shall see together will be the snow lying softly over all, and the brown, curving line of the tree-tops and the pink sunset glow in the west. He will lie in his chair and I shall sit on a cushion thrown close beside him, and with that one hand that they have left him pressed to my face, we shall look out over all the wide, still world and talk of that future which no one can bar us out of, except our own two selves. God can say 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant,' but He proves in the saying that the doing and the goodness and the faith all emanated from the one who served. Religion is such a grand thing, Lassie; I can't understand any one with intelligence choosing to be an atheist. And lately, since I have realized that the real trinity is two who love and their God, I have been overcome at the mysticism of what life really means. Oh, I'm truly very, very happy. As I look over these hills and valleys, I think how all my life long I shall be coming back here—not to weep, but to remember. I shall be left lonely to a degree that hardly any one can comprehend, because for me there will be no possible chance of any earthly consolation; but in another sense I shall never know grief at all, for I know, with the absolute knowledge that I have attained to, that grief like all other finite things is unreal, and that my happiness is eternal."

They were now on the tracks quite near the hotel.

"I wonder if Mrs. Lathbun got a letter from her lawyer to-day," Lassie said, changing the subject suddenly.

They went up the steps and opened the door, and there in the hall, on her hurried way out to meet them, was Mrs. O'Neil, her face quite pale with excitement.

"Oh, what do you think?" she cried, opening the door into the dining-room; "come right in here. What do you think?"

"What is it?" both asked together.

"The biggest surprise you ever got in your life. They're swindlers!"

Alva stepped in quickly and shut the door. "What?" she stammered; "who?"

"They're swindlers, both of them! It's all in the Kinnecot paper." She held out a paper which she had in her hand to Alva. "You can read it; it isn't a bit of doubt but what it's them."

Alva, turning quite pale, took the paper and read:

A PRETTY FOXY PAIR

Two women, claiming to be mother and daughter, came to the Walker House in this village a few nights ago and inquired for supper and a night's lodging, claiming they were very tired, as they had walked over from Warsaw. Landlord Walker thought it a little strange that they should have walked over when there were two railroads that run from that village through here, but said nothing and gave them supper and furnished them a room. They remained in their room until about noon the next day, when they paid their bill and left, taking the overland route for Ledge, or in that direction. They registered at the Walker House as Mrs. Ida M. Lathbun and Miss H. A. Lathbun, which are the same names given by a pair who had been spending the summer in the vicinity of Silver Lake and Perry. As stated above, they came here from Warsaw, and our esteemed brother editor in that place paid them the following compliment in a recent issue:

'A woman and daughter who are going from town to town, boarding in one place until compelled to seek another because of their inability to pay their board, have been found to be in this town, coming here from Perry and Silver Lake, where their record is one of unpaid bills. They are smart, clever, female tramps, who have no income and no visible means of support.'

It is said at Silver Lake they stated they were expecting some money, and would stay at one boarding-place as long as they could, and when fired out would settle at another. They finally went to Perry, and, when compelled to leave there, walked across the country to Warsaw, stopping at Mr. Samuel Adams's overnight, while en route.

The older Mrs. Lathbun is said to be an own cousin of Arthur Rehman, who has been before the public for one escapade or another for many years. She is said to have been well-to-do at one time, and is living in expectations of more money from some relative. The couple were fairly well dressed and intelligent looking women.

Alva's hand holding the paper fell limply at her side. She looked at Mrs. O'Neil and Mrs. O'Neil looked at her; while Mary Cody, who had come in from the kitchen, and Lassie looked at them both.

"Well, what do you think of it?" Mrs. O'Neil said, finally.

"I can't believe it," Alva gasped; "it can't be true!"

"Just what I said! You know I said that right off, Mary Cody? But Jack believes it. He's gone to Ledge Centre to see Mr. Pollock."

"Who is Mr. Pollock?"

"The lawyer."

"And where are they now?"

"Up-stairs. They never get up till noon, you know."

"How long have they been here?"

"Two weeks and a little over."

"Haven't they paid you anything?"

"Not a cent."

Alva became more distressed. "And the girl is so delicate, too," she said.

"Delicate! I should think that she was. Every third day the old lady has all my flat-irons wrapped in towels to put around her. And then, think of it! October, and not a coat or a flannel have either of them got."

A slight shiver ran over Alva.

"You're cold," said Mrs. O'Neil; "come into the kitchen. Mary Cody, you stand at the door and listen, for that old lady is a sly one."

Mary Cody stood at the door, and the other three went into the kitchen.

"Won't Mrs. Ray be pleased," said Mrs. O'Neil. "She was down at the church, or I'd have gone right up to her with the paper. It was she that set every one after 'em, because she was so crazy over their staying at the Adams farm that night. She's so jealous of Sammy."

"Ow!" exclaimed Mary Cody, interrupting; "I hear the stairs creaking!"

Mrs. O'Neil grabbed the newspaper and thrust it back of a clothes basket. The next instant Mrs. Lathbun, with an empty pitcher in her hand, came in through the dining-room door.

The large, heavily-built woman, not stout but very robust in appearance, had on her usual dress, and smiled pleasantly at them all in greeting.

"Was there any mail?" she asked, going to the stove and beginning to fill her pitcher from the reservoir as she spoke.

"No," said Mary Cody; "I went myself."

"Dear me, how annoying," said Mrs. Lathbun; and then, having finished filling her pitcher, she quietly retired again.

"To think maybe she'll be in the jail at Geneseo to-morrow!" Mary Cody exclaimed, in an awestruck whisper.

Alva turned interrogative eyes towards Mrs. O'Neil.

"Yes, Jack is going to have them arrested," she said.

"Merciful heavens!"

"Isn't it awful? I'm sorry for them, myself."

"But—but suppose there's some mistake?"

"There can't be, Jack says."

Alva shut her eyes and stood still for a few seconds. "The poor creatures," she said, softly and pitifully,—then: "How did you say you came to find out about it?"

"A man from Kinnecot had the paper in the station, and Josiah Bates brought him over to our bar this morning and asked Jack if he could see how folks like that could get trusted. Jack said yes, he could see, and then he told the man from Kinnecot that just at present he was trusting the same people, himself."

"Oh, dear," Alva passed her hand wearily across her forehead; "it's awful."

"Yes, isn't it? The man gave him the paper then. And Jack's first idea was to take it right up-stairs to them, but then he thought they might skip before he could have them arrested, so he decided to drive over and see Mr. Pollock first."

"I can't make it seem true."

"No, I can't, either. Of course they never paid anything, but they're nice people. I've liked them."

"Then they won't know anything about all this until they are really arrested?"

"No," said Mrs. O'Neil; "they'll eat dinner just as calm as they've eaten all their other dinners."

"Come, Lassie," said Alva; "that reminds me that we must get ready for dinner, ourselves."

"Do you want to take the paper up-stairs with you?" Mrs. O'Neil asked; "right after dinner I want to take it up to Mrs. Ray, but you can keep it till then if you like."

"No, thank you," said Alva, with her strange, white smile; "I read it all through."

When they were up-stairs Lassie exclaimed:

"There, now you see—"

But her friend stopped her with a gesture. "It's too terrible to talk about," she said, simply. "I must think earnestly what ought to come next."

Lassie became silent.