Caroline Crofton had completed her course at Vassar, one of its earliest graduates, and one of the most brilliant in her class of thirty odd young New England, graceful, gifted, and generous girls, that have long been noted for their purity of principles and perfection of character. She was smaller than her classmates, an only daughter of Judge Crofton, whose manner and training marked him as a classical, refined, and upright gentleman, and a dignified and just judge.
All that culture could impart, or character add to the graces of nature, was bestowed upon Caroline, who never assumed the fashion of shortening her name by fancy contractions. Carlinewas the shortest way of calling her, and this was not a favorite with her mother. From her father she inherited the qualities ascribed to her, while her mother, like a clinging vine wound around the oak, was of a trusting, lovable, nature, of darker hair and eyes than the Judge; and the two mingled in the daughter, and formed a slender figure and a graceful form, an ardent, lovable character, as one could easily discover.
Diligent by nature and proud of her progress in early studies, Caroline had entered Vassar’s advanced classes and employed all her energy to excel in each department.
She literally lived in her books for four full years, to the exclusion of modes, society, or even the newspapers; her one ambition seemed ever to be excellence, and when the graduating day arrived, and the long row in white were seated in breathless awe to read their papers and receivetheir reward, something more than a common interest was awakened.
Such are the days when young men of wealth and ambition, and poorer men with an eye to the beautiful, come in and listen to the overdrawn pictures of school-girls’ first productions.
The theme of Caroline Crofton was “Pioneers;” how they had founded our government in the little log school-houses of New England, in the sixteenth century; how they had established their town meetings and voting precincts; how they had gradually driven back the Indians (“noble redmen”) from the rich, fertile valley of the Mohawk in New York, cleared away the underbrush from the fertile plains of Northern Ohio and Pennsylvania, and boldly evaded the massive pineries of bleak, cold Northern Michigan; dauntlessly, fearlessly, and bravely establishing schools and churches in the very midst of Indian huts and wigwams, taking theirlives in their hands, to improve and populate a great and growing nation; and how wonderfully they had all prospered.
In her vivid and graphic picture of a fruitful theme (a theme learned from books and stories), she dwelt on the part that mothers had borne, and brothers were bearing, in this tide of prosperity and improvement, till tear-drops came fast to the earnest eyes of the old gray-haired professors, who were judges, and many a mother’s heart leaped with joyous pride at the mention of brave sons battling with the Western wilderness, for their sons were among them.
Caroline Crofton could feel the hush of silence, always such applause as is irresistible; she could feel the emotion, and conveyed that emotion to her audience; she forgot herself, forgot her hearers, and read with a girlish animation born of deep-seated belief in the grandeur of thetheme she advocated. Round after round of applause greeted her conclusion, and she staggered to her seat literally overcome by the brilliant effort which resulted in a handsomely inscribed medal as first of her class of Vassar.
Whether the influence of that essay on the mind of Caroline, or its greater influence on Cyrus Arthur (a newly arrived resident of Vassar) was the most potent means of a quick acquaintance between them, is not well known to the writers; certain it is that an early friendship soon refined into affection, and meagre inquiries into his character being satisfactory to Caroline, he was promptly admitted as a suitor at the dignified household of Judge Crofton, on the banks of the beautiful St. Lawrence. The Judge was led to believe that a long acquaintance had ripened between schoolmates, when in fact it was a love at first sight affair, and on very little consideration.
That these young and ambitious lovers enjoyed all that is allotted to their class is forever a secret, for their after-life reveals but little of its mystery. Their after-life was a struggle for bread first, and position soon after. They really put off living, very foolishly.
Cyrus Arthur was a large, strongly built, dark-haired, handsome fellow, of considerable assurance in the social gatherings, and generally managed to lead off with the dances and parties from his size and commanding way more than from any merit of talent or real goodness in himself; one of the village leaders who gained favor by fine looks and outward appearance; one of the petted class of forenoon brilliants whose afternoons are often more shaded.
There was a smile of serene contentment and half-satisfaction on the haughty face of young Arthur as he offered himself to the Judge’s daughter in that manner assumed by generalsin battle. He obtained his prize, and she obtained her ambition. He married beauty, she married a leader. Her highly colored future was a life of intellectual greatness; his first pride was of conquest, then of distinction.
A large man in a small place may be a little man in a large city.
In good season they were married, of course; and of their courtship little need be said, for it was all unromantic.
Arthur’s father was a merchant of limited means, and the younger having high notions of going West to grow up with the country, early settled in a lumber-making city of North Michigan, where he took his fair young companion, who soon realized that her rose-colored romance of brave pioneers was not a living reality.
Dreams are one thing, real life is another; work was scarce in the big overgrown city, but plentiful in the pineries; and after the first day ofmarried life wore into weeks, and living expense came around with painful regularity, the new couple were forced to economize, then look for employment, which they first found in tending store and camp, cooking for a large lumber-ranch; certainly far less refining than the vision of a Vassar schoolgirl’s essay had pictured.
But they prospered, and by dint of close saving, always coming from the wise counsel of the weaker one, they became managers, then owners, of a portable saw-mill and a ranch, and gradually a store building partly paid for.
From the letters home, showing their thrift and economy, gradually came small sums lent to the far-away idol of the staid old Judge’s household. Cyrus was surprised and delighted one day to find a large bill of goods sent on to fill up their store and give them a start in their hard beginning.
It was the work and influence of that little brainywife, whose tender hands had grown harder by cooking, mending, and working for forty or more robust workmen, and the reward it brought and the encouragement to both. With a well-stocked grocery and comfortable surroundings, Cyrus began to look the world in the face quite complacently, and take matters easier. Meanwhile, the silent ambition of Caroline determined, if growing up with the country meant anything, she would fathom its mystery, and she continued to delve and save, and plan and execute, and encourage her husband in his extensive contracts.
Here was a profit on forty laborers, a margin on their payment in goods, a rise in lumber, and a golden opportunity to buy vast tracts of pine timber at very low figures in cash payments. Drawing on her savings the little wife advised wise investments.
Fifty-seven, eight, and nine were the three trying years in Northern Michigan. Many a man would cheerfully trade a load of shingles for a bag of corn, and a thousand feet of timber for a single ham. New England thrift was in the market, and the little daughter of a discreet judge balanced the chances and made hay in sunshine most effectually.
Four years passed by, and a rapid rise in prices gradually increased the value of timber, then lumber, then shingles, then lands, and long before the war ended, Arthur and his once timid wife were among the wealthy citizens of the Rapids.
A large, strong frame, and but little anxiety; a dark, swarthy complexion, with a heavy black beard; the face of such a man at thirty-eightshowed less signs of wear than his little fair-faced companion at six years younger.
Age, climate, work, and care were telling on the slender build of Caroline. The rapid birth of three children in ten years told also their story of a mother’s anxiety, written in shading lines on her once delicate features.
Absorbed in her duties as a wife, she had little room for society, while he, a man relieved by riches from hard labor, was approaching that prime of maturity when the world looks complacently upward to one who has prospered, not even asking how, or why, or any reason.
Long trips to large cities, absence from home, mingling often with wealthy lumbermen, and assuming that position that wealth ever commands in society, were doing for Cyrus Arthur what they will do for many in like situations.
He craved a larger field for usefulness, he movedand settled in a large city; he craved society, he was a favorite with women; he developed a fondness for the more forward class. He fell; he fell often.
If he had ever loved his devoted wife, the author of all his success and prosperity, he now grew unloving, haunted by the caresses of more passionate women. Driven by appetite to seek the companionship of the brazen and deceitful, he lost his self-respect, his love of home, and grew madly in love with a most bewitching character, lately divorced from her husband.
A spell came over him; “the trail of the serpent is over them all,”—the “twelfth temptation,” as shown in the powerful drama of its name, that takes a farmer-boy in innocence, carries him safely through the perils of a great city, saves him from saloons and wine, and larceny and dishonesty, and at last when weakened by tampering with sin, brings him face to face withsuch dazzling beauty that his fall before it seems as natural as his ruin later is effectual.
The trail of the serpent had crossed by the path of Arthur. The coil wound around him, for he loved the bold siren who enchanted him, and yielded to the twelfth temptation.
“For a woman can do with a man what she will;” yet a man who knows a woman thoroughly and loves her truly—and there are women who may be so known and loved—will find, after a few years, that his relish for the grosser pleasures is lessened, and that he has grown into a fondness for the intellectual and refined amusements without an effort, and almost unawares.
Fettered and controlled by the witchery of his evil genius, Cyrus Arthur lost all power but that borrowed of his seducer. Her counsel replaced the once wise confidence of a bettercompanion. Her influence was as a loadstone in a compass,—it carried him in dumb obedience to her will. He was absorbed, confused, bewitched, stranded, lost!
As often as they met in their evil way, she demanded a divorce and insisted on early proceedings.
“But the cause?” he would say. “Cause?” she would answer; “make a cause!” “Not so easily done,” replied her willing admirer.
“Money will do anything,” was her ready answer.
“Money will do anything,” repeated the fond lumberman; “true, money will do everything.”
But how? When, and where?
These questions were all puzzling.
There was a dark-faced inspector, a man-of-all-work in lumber camp, called Roland, who hadoften called at Arthur’s, and who occasionally partook a little too freely of Northern fire-water, as the Indians term it, and whose poverty at such times would consent to almost anything, on one pretence and another.
Young Roland was sent to inquire if Mr. Arthur was in, or if Mrs. Arthur needed shopping done, or errands attended to, with instructions to hint that his employer was seen riding out with the enchantress in a cutter, seemingly on the way to another village. These little irritations were to be repeated for effect, but no effect seems probable. They did create some inquiry, and at such dates of confidential conferences Mrs. Arthur was alone with the hireling spy and listened to his inferences of her husband’s indiscretions.
Neither by word nor deed nor murmur did Caroline exhibit a sign or symbol of her unhappiness, save by the deeper lines and paler countenancethat easily escaped detection to one who barely looked her in the eyes twice a day for months together.
It was a failure; she would never act, he must take the initiative.
Armed with a sworn affidavit of her infidelity with Roland on a recent occasion, together with further papers to complete their separation and settle an alimony of a few thousand dollars as her share of their large property, Cyrus Arthur visited his wife late at night as a robber would call for her jewels, and demanded a complete surrender. Stunned and shocked, and overcome by the intelligence, she wept most bitterly, pleaded, begged, and implored her husband, in the name of Heaven, to spare her and herchildrenfrom a disgrace so terrible. The sighing of the pines in a Northern forest would have moved him as soon from his purpose. She was between him and an enviedobject; he must succeed. He was already goaded to desperation. Seizing the part of her plea relating to her little girls, he made the worst of it.
“If you would spare yourself and them from disgrace eternally, make no denial and all shall be secret, and no one the wiser.”
“Can this be true?” asked the distracted mother of the other’s lawyer.
“Yes,” he replied, cases have been heard on default and divorces granted, and not one scrap of bill or answer ever published.
“What is a bill and answer?” questioned the little woman in her tears, for she never dreamed of a divorce between her and her husband till that moment.
“It is the ground and denial for divorce,” replied the attorney.
“Cyrus Arthur,” said his wife, as she looked at the eyes that evaded her earnestness, “do you mean this proceeding, or are you trifling?”
“I am in earnest,” he answered.
“Have you forgotten my home, my surroundings, the shock to my mother, my father, my own feelings, my neighbors, our children? Do you realize how you sin, and wrong me?
“How I have toiled and helped you, planned our success! How I have suffered, gone almost in the grave, in bringing you these children! Are you in earnest?
“If your heart is not iron, speak to me; shall I deny such a foolish slander? Shall I tell you before God, who will one day judge us all, that every one of the charges are infamous lies and perjuries; shall I place my word against his and you deny me?”
“But you cannot swear in court in such cases,” said the ready lawyer.
“Then Heaven will hear me; I am innocent. And may the Almighty end my life right here, if I have ever, by act or look, or word or deed,done aught that a true woman should not do in every day of our married life, from first to last, as God is my witness!”
“But your children?” he pleaded, as if he had heard not a word of her earnest protest.
On and on they argued, later and later grew the hour, till, worn out at midnight they passed her the papers, and eight thousand dollars, with which she was to return to her home in New England, and abandon all defense to the proceeding, including a release of all dower interest in his estate, real and personal.
You may smile at the absurdity, you may question the reason of such haste and compulsion.
“But who, alas! can love and still be wise?”
Ask of the court records in every American city, and you will find stronger cases and stronger instances, more degradation, greater hardship, and equal perjury. Ask ofonecourt and find this case!
No sleep nor rest comes to Caroline Arthur. Early dawn found her surrounded by her weeping children, in alarm at the sudden illness, for she only called it illness.
Twice she started for the City National Bank to deposit her money, and twice relented. Once she determined to consult a neighbor, and later concluded she would bear alone her sorrow.
Hastily filing his bill and securing her appearance, an early demand for a hearing before a commissioner, in less than asingle weekcame a divorce on the ground of infidelity.
Elated by his victory, with his deeds well recorded, and the court’s great seal granting their divorcement, Cyrus Arthur stalked the streets in supreme confidence as a man of victory.
It is said that Roman generals, once victorious ever bore about with them the marks of conquerors; so did our modern general, but for a brief duration.
Once in the newspapers, and the busy streets were vocal with open denunciation. “Eight thousand dollars from a property worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars!” came from bankers. “The wife that made him what he is,” said another. “A shame to our civilization,” said the third. “A fraud, a sham, a pretext,” said another.
And the majority joined in the last anthem,—“a sham, a pretext,” a trick to turn off his worn-out wife and marry that impious trader in unvirtue and immorality.
Press interviews were had, and the dear little lady of clean hands and honest heart, whose soul shone as a diamond in the filth of foul slander around her, utterly and consistently refuted and denied the whole story, and related its history with marvellous circumstantial evidence to convince any reasonable person of her truthfulness.
Indignation knew no bounds; a firm of able lawyers at once filed a cross bill, and a prayer to set aside the fraudulent bill and another to annul all conveyances to Arthur; and within almost as brief a limit as he had secured his decree she had been restored to her rights with a divorce from Arthur and a thirty-thousand-dollar settlement.
He was driven from the city in infamy, and she lived on in honor; but the stain on the children was of a nature more permanent.