THE WALK TO THE LOWER FALLS

"I certainly am going with Mrs. O'Neil when she carries that paper to the post-office after dinner," Lassie exclaimed, as soon as they reached their rooms. "Oh, Alva, this is the most interesting experience I ever had. I'm just wild. It's such fun!"

Alva came straight to her, laid her two hands on the girl's shoulders and looked into her face.

"Lassie!" she said, in a tone of appalled meaning, "Lassie!"

Lassie laughed a little, just a very little. "I didn't make them bad," she said; "it's just that I enjoy the fun of the developments."

"The fun!" said Alva, "the fun! When there isn't anything except tragedy, misery, and shame!"

"But, Alva, if they are that kind of women, isn't it right that they should be found out?"

Her friend dropped her hands and turned away.

"Oh, dear—oh, dear," she said, with a sigh that was almost a moan.

Later they went down to the dining-room. Ingram had not come that noon, and Mrs. Lathbun and her daughter were sitting placidly at their table. Alva and Lassie took their own seats as usual.

There are not many sensations so complexly curious as to be obliged to eat your dinner within five feet of two ladies who perhaps are to be arrested as soon as a man who drives a fast horse can get back from Ledge Centre with the sheriff.

Mrs. O'Neil's criminal code, reinforced by such stray bits of procedure as she could recollect on short notice, led to a supposition on her part that the case would go almost in a bee-line from Mr. Pollock the attorney to the Geneseo jail. Therefore Mary Cody's eyes were full of rounded curiosity as she waited at table, and Lassie could not forbear to glance often at the quiet and simple-looking pair,—the mother in her dark blue print, with its bands of stitched silk, and the daughter with the red silk front that had so impressed her from the beginning. Alva could not look at them,—her mind was full of devious wondering. Mrs. O'Neil glanced in from time to time, her pretty face darkened by vague distress, mixed with some righteous indignation.

The door opened and Ronald Ingram entered. It was a surprise and a great relief, for of course he knew nothing and was consequently under no constraint.

Mary Cody rushed to lay a place for him.

"This would be a grand day to walk to the Lower Falls," he said, as he sat down; "why don't you do it? You haven't been yet, have you?"

"No," Alva said; "there hasn't ever been time."

"Why don't you go this afternoon, then? I'll go with you, if you like. I'm free."

"I can't go this afternoon; take Lassie. That will take care of you both at once."

"I think that would be fine," said Ingram, heartily, "if Lassie will like to go."

Lassie looked helplessly from Alva to the Lathbun family. "I couldn't go right after dinner," she said, hesitatingly, and stopped short to meet Alva's eyes.

"Why not?" the latter asked; "wouldn't you like the walk?"

"Oh, I should like it very much," Lassie declared, her face flushing. It seemed to her very cruel that no such delightful plan had ever been broached before, when it was only just to-day that she wanted to stay at home. She looked at Ingram, and the wistful expression on his face was weighed in the balance against the thrill to come at the post-office when Mrs. Ray should read the Kinnecot paper. Such was the effect of the past week in Ledge upon a very human young girl.

"Why can't you come, too?" Ingram asked Alva.

Alva lifted her eyes to his, and in the same second Miss Lathbun at the other table lifted hers, and fixed them on the other's face.

"I can't this afternoon," she said, very stilly but decidedly; "I have something that keeps me here."

Lassie looked at her reproachfully. She was going to stay and hear Mrs. Ray! For the minute Lassie felt that she could not go herself.

"I think I'll stay with Alva," she said, suddenly.

"Lassie!" Alva exclaimed.

"Oh, come," urged Ingram; "it's such a grand day. You both ought to go. Come, do."

Alva shook her head. "I've a letter to write," she said; "I—" she stopped. There was a noise outside. It was Mr. O'Neil, driving up the hill towards the house! Mary Cody gave an exclamation in spite of herself, and darted into the kitchen. Mrs. Lathbun, who faced the window, said calmly:

"Why, there's Mr. O'Neil, just in time for his dinner."

Alva turned her head, feeling cold, and saw there was no sheriff with him. Mrs. Ray could be seen standing out on her back porch, shading her eyes to make out anything visible. Of course Mrs. Ray did not know full particulars, but Josiah Bates had been to Ledge Centre on horseback and had seen the O'Neil mare hitched in front of Mr. Pollock's. The postmistress knew that something was up.

Alva drew a breath of relief. The sheriff had not come back, so they could not be arrested at once. Or else they could not be arrested at all. There seemed to be a hush of suspense in the room, but Mr. O'Neil did not enter to relieve it. Only Mary Cody entered, and Mary Cody's face was as easy to read as a blank book.

"Then you'll go?" Ingram asked again.

Mrs. Lathbun and her daughter rose and went up-stairs, leaving the other three alone.

"Of course she'll go," Alva answered; "go, dear, and get your wraps."

Lassie cast one last appealing look towards her, and then she also left the room.

"Ronald," Alva then said, hurriedly, "Lassie will tell you what has happened here. I feel confident that there is some error in it all, but whatever you think, try to be charitable, merciful. Don't be narrow in your judgment."

"Are you referring to your own affairs?" he asked in surprise.

"I am not the only one who craves mercy," she said, smiling; "there are many others."

"Sharing your views?" he asked, smiling in his turn.

"Lassie will tell you," she repeated.

"Alva," the man said suddenly, earnestly, "don't teach her too many ideals. We are mortal, and life is a real thing."

"I understood that perfectly," she replied; "but the world is not immortal and immortality is a real thing, too. A desirable thing, too."

"To be achieved by working on the mortal plane, remember."

"I have worked all my life upon the mortal plane; I shall be back there next summer, you know. Yet Lassie has learned to see only beauty in my immortal winter to be between."

"Ah, there is your error," said Ingram; "you expect to live this winter and return to your old life in the summer. But that's something that you never will be able to do."

"What do you mean?"

"You won't be able to go back next summer."

She looked at him sadly. "But I shall have to go back next summer," she said; "do not deceive yourself as to that. And now excuse me, I want to speak to her before she goes."

She left him and ran up-stairs. Lassie was putting on the hat that looked to the eyes of Ledge like a feather duster upside down.

"You're going to stay here and have all the fun," she protested; "oh, I'd give anything to see Mrs. Ray read that paper."

"But I shall not see her."

"You won't see her!"

"No, dear;" then she went and stood at the window in her favorite posture. "Oh, Lassie," she said, "I like to hear Mrs. Ray talk and I enjoy the funny things she says, but do you think that to look on at the hunting down of these two women is any pleasure for me? When I know why they are destitute—why they are in hiding."

"Alva," cried Lassie, "you don't mean you still believe that story?"

"Yes, I do."

"You're crazy!"

"I expect so. But I still believe the story."

Lassie stood still, staring at her friend's back. Then she went hastily forward, seized her impetuously in her arms and kissed her.

"Oh, little girl," Alva said, turning, "don't you see that it's charity, and if they really are not what they pretend to be and if it all really is a lie, it may be long before charity will cross their path again?"

"Alva," Lassie said, with her little whimsical smile, "you've taken all that nice, agreeable, aching desire to go to the post-office and see the paper read, completely out of me."

"Well, are you sorry for that?"

Lassie lifted her pretty brown eyes. "No," she said, frankly; "I'm not."

Then she ran down to Ingram and they set forth at once, for it is a long walk to the Lower Falls.

The day was magnificent. The bright autumn sun shone on the lines of steel that glinted beside their way across the bridge, and there was a silvery glisten dancing in all the world of earth and heaven and in the rainbow of the mist, too,—a glisten that bespoke the approach of the Frost King and the further glory soon to be. The glints of brown and yellow here and there amidst the red presaged that Nature's festival was daily drawing nearer to its white close. Ingram, looking ahead towards the trees that hid the little Colonial house, wondered and wondered, but was recalled by Lassie's bursting forth with the whole story of the fresh developments which they had left behind them.

"Oh, by George," Ingram exclaimed; "I'd like to have seen Mrs. Ray get the news myself."

Lassie felt herself fall with a crash back into the pit of ordinary views.

"Would you?" she asked eagerly; "oh, but we couldn't go back now; Alva would be too disgusted."

"Of course we can't go back now, but we've missed a lot of fun."

"Yes, I thought it would be fun."

Quite a little pall of gloom fell over both, in the consideration of what they had missed, and both stared absent-mindedly up and down the valley, seeing nothing except the vision of Mrs. Ray perusing the Kinnecot paper.

"Alva is so serious over everything," Lassie said presently, with a mournful note in her voice.

"She's too serious," declared Ingram.

"She's looking forward to so much happiness that she says she can't bear to add even a breath to any one's misery."

"And she isn't going to have any happiness at all."

"Don't you think there's any hope?"

"Of course there isn't any hope."

"What will become of that house?"

"I don't know, I'm sure."

"Shall you be here this winter?"

"I don't know about that. I don't know just how long it will take for the survey."

"But you will be here while they build the dam, too, won't you? And that will take years. Won't you live here a long time?"

"The dam is not a fixed fact as yet, you know; far from it."

"Isn't it? Every one talks as if it were,—that is, every one except Alva."

"But I couldn't live in that house, anyway; I wouldn't live there for anything, would you?"

"No, it would be full of ghosts to me. I'd feel about it just as you—" the words died on her lips, as she suddenly realized how their unconscious phrasing sounded. It was the first sunburst of the idea to her, and it stormed her cheeks with pink.

"No," said Ingram, unobserving, "that house would not affect any one but you or I, in that way; but for us—" thereupon he stopped; the idea which had come over the girl like a sunburst came over the man like a cloudburst. He was almost scared as he tried to think what he had said.

"Alva is—is—so set against it—the dam, I mean," he stammered, hurriedly; "she—she has—told me all her views."

"But she's different," said Lassie, catching her breath. "I don't know very much, but I know that it doesn't look just that way to others."

"The ultra-altruistic vaccine is already beginning to work again," Ingram said, trying to laugh; "but you must not attack me, you know—"

"I'm not attacking you," Lassie interposed, hoping her face would cool soon.

"Because, you see, I am nothing in the world but a mere ordinary, humble, civil engineer, sent up here by a commission to see what the situation is in feet and inches, and sand and gravel. I wholly refuse to take sides as to the controversy;" he had regained composure now.

"I suppose that you haven't really anything to say about it, anyhow."

"Nothing except to make a report. That's all."

Both felt relieved to be back on firm, friendly ground, but both were saturated through and through by the wonderful new conception of life bred by the accidental speeches. They did not look at one another, but went down the steps and along the curving road with a sort of keyed up determination not to let a single break come in the flow of language.

"But you must be glad to work on a popular project," Lassie said.

"But it isn't altogether popular," Ingram rejoined; "it's only popular in spots, you see. If every one around here was as wild as I have seen some people become when the business threatened their trees or their river, we might be mobbed."

"Why, I thought that every one wanted it. Alva said that the difficulty was that all the people who would do anything to save the Falls were not born yet."

"She was partly right, but not altogether. The difficulty is that, with the exception of Mr. Ledge, the people who are interested in preserving the Falls do not live here, and the people who will make money by the destruction of the Falls are right on the spot and own the land."

"Why, you talk as if you didn't want the dam, either."

"It is no use discussing my views; the dam will be a great thing. Very possibly there will be no more Falls, but the high banks will remain—until commercial interests demand their quarrying—and all we can do is to go with the tide and remember that while man is destroying in one place, Nature is building in another. There will always be plenty of wild grandeur somewhere for those who have the money and leisure to seek it."

"But Alva says that Mr. Ledge is trying to save this for those who love beautiful spots, and haven't time or money to go far."

"America isn't made for such people," said Ingram, simply.

Lassie thought seriously for a moment, until a glance from her companion hurried her on to say: "I suppose that we are too progressive to let anything just go to waste, and that's what it would be if we let all this water-power flow unused."

"Of course," said Ingram; "here would be this great tract of woodland, which might be making eight or ten men millionaires, and instead of that one man tries to save it for thousands who never can by any chance become well-to-do. No wonder the one man has spent most of his life investigating insane asylums; he is evidently more than slightly sympathetic with the weak-minded."

"Are you being sarcastic?"

"No, not at all. I like to look at the Falls, but then I like to look at a big dam, too; and sluice gates always did seem to me the most interesting wonder in nature."

They were deep in the quiet peace of Ledge Park by this time, and only the squirrels had eyes and ears there. (They didn't know about Joey Beall.)

"Oh, how still and lovely!" Lassie exclaimed; "how almost churchlike."

The broad, evenly graded road wound away before them, and the double rank of trees followed its course on either side.

"I used to camp out here summers, when I was a boy. You've read Cooper's novels?"

"'Deerslayer' and all those? Oh, yes."

"Their scene was not so far away from here, you know; only a few score miles."

"There must be all sorts of stories about here, too?"

"Did you ever hear tell of the Old White Woman?"

"No."

"She lived around here. She was stolen by the Indians and grew up and married one."

"How interesting! I wonder how it would seem to really love an Indian?" Then Lassie choked—blushing furiously at this approach of the painful subject.

"You speak as one who has had a wide experience with white men." (Ingram felt this to be fearfully daring.)

"I've never been in love in my life." (Lassie felt this to be fearfully pointed.)

"How funny," said the man, "neither have I! Not really in love, you know."

Such thin ice! But the lure of the forest was there, and the lure of the absence of interruption, too. Lassie felt very remarkable. This was so delightful! So novel! Better than Mrs. Ray and the Kinnecot paper even. Why, this was even better than all Alva's love affair. Ten thousand times better! How stupid she had been.

"How funny!" she said, looking up.

"Why do you say that?" Ingram asked, quickly.

He seemed quite anxious to know why she thought it funny that he had never been in love before, and that was so delightful, too. A big, handsome man anxious as to what she thought! She felt as wise as if she had already made her dÉbut.

"I don't know why I said it," she answered, laughing; "it just came to me to say it. Was it silly to say? If so, please forgive me, because I didn't mean it."

"There's nothing to forgive," said Ingram; "only I never expected you to say anything of that sort. You don't know anything about me and you haven't any right to judge me." He spoke in quite a vexed, serious way, and Lassie felt as wise now as if she had made two dÉbuts.

"But you were in love with Alva years ago, you know," she said.

"I wasn't really in love; I only thought that I was."

"Oh!"

There followed a silence for a little while. Lassie was much impressed by the statement just made. Of course it wouldn't be polite to repeat to Alva, but it was very interesting to know, oneself. The road ran sweetly, greenly on before them, all strewn with piney needles. There was no sound except a little breeze rustling overhead, and the occasional fall of an acorn or pine-cone.

"How does Alva's story affect you, now?" the man asked, suddenly.

"Differently from at first. When she first told me what she meant to do, it just pounded in my ears that he was going to die in that very house over there; and that they would have to carry him into it just as they would later carry him out of it. Oh, it did seem so terrible to think of this winter, and of her, sitting there beside him,—so terrible—so terrible!"

"And doesn't it seem terrible at all to you now?"

"Not in the same way. She has talked to me so much; she has made me know so much more of her way of looking at it. You know—"she hesitated a little—"she feels about death so strangely,—it doesn't seem to count to her at all. She feels that in some way he will be always near her; she says that he promised her not to leave her again."

"Poor Alva!"

"I suppose that he is such a very great man that he can affect one like that. I am beginning to see what very different kinds of people there are in the world."

"Thank God for that!" Ingram exclaimed.

"Alva says that he is one of the greatest men that ever lived. She says that to share even a few days of life with a man who has been a world-force for the world-betterment, would overpay all the hardship and loneliness to come."

They emerged into the sunshine just here, and the roar of the Middle Falls burst upon their ears. The fence of Mr. Ledge's house-enclosure stretched before them, and to the right, along the bank, towered two groups of dark evergreens.

"We can go through here," Ingram said, unlatching the gate.

So they entered the private grounds and passed around the simple, pretty home and out upon the road beyond.

"Everything is as sweet and quiet here as in the forest," said Lassie.

"Yes, it's a beautiful place," Ingram assented.

They went on and entered the wood path that goes to the Lower Falls.

"I cannot understand one thing," the man said, suddenly; "if they loved one another so much, why didn't they marry long ago? If I loved a woman, I should want to marry her."

Here was the thin ice again—delight again.

"They never thought of it," Lassie said, revelling in the sense of danger; "they couldn't. They recognized other claims."

Ingram walked on for a little, and then he said: "I suppose that what you say is true, and that with people like them everything is different from what it is with you and me."

(You and me!)

"Yes," said Lassie, "Alva doesn't seem to have minded that his work meant more to him than she did, and I suppose that he thought it quite right that she should do her duty unselfishly."

"It makes our view of things seem rather small and petty—don't you think? Or shall we call her crazy, as the world generally does call all such people?"

"I know that she's not crazy," the girl said.

"Shall we have to admit then that she is right in what she is going to do, and that instead of its being horrible, it is sublime?" He looked at her, and she raised tear-filled eyes to his. But she was silent.

"I think that we must admit it—for Alva," he added; "but not for ourselves."

The girl was silent and her lips trembled. Finally she said: "I believe that what she said is coming true, and that I am changing and that you are changing, too."

"Oh, I'm changed all the way through," he admitted.

It was a long walk to the Lower Falls, and yet it was short to them. Very short! But too long to follow them step by step. It was a beautiful walk, and one which they were to remember all their lives to come. It was such a walk as should form a powerful argument in favor of the preservation of the Falls.