It was a cold morning. The snow had fallen heavily the day before, and the Stillwater stage was on runners. The four horses rushed round the street-corners with eagerness as the driver, at a little past five o'clock in the morning, moved about collecting passengers. From the up-town hotels he drove in the light of the gas-lamps to the jail where the deputy marshal, with his prisoner securely handcuffed, took his seat and wrapped the robes about them both. Then at the down-town hotels they took on other passengers. The Fuller House was the last call of all.
"Haven't you a back-seat?" The passenger partly spoke and partly coughed out his inquiry.
"The back-seat is occupied by ladies," said the agent, "you will have to take the front one."
"It will kill me to ride backwards," whined the desponding voice of Minorkey, but as there were only two vacant seats he had no choice. He put his daughter in the middle while he took the end of the seat and resigned himself to death by retrograde motion. Miss Helen Minorkey was thus placed exactlyvis-à-viswith her old lover Albert Charlton, but in the darkness of six o'clock on a winter's morning in Minnesota, she could not know it. The gentleman who occupied the other end of the seat recognized Mr. Minorkey, and was by him introduced to his daughter. That lady could not wholly resist the exhilaration of such a stage-ride over snowy roads, only half-broken as yet, where there was imminent peril of upsetting at every turn. And so she and her new acquaintance talked of many things, while Charlton could not but recall his ride, a short half-year ago, on a front-seat, over the green prairies—had prairies ever been greener?—and under the blue sky, and in bright sunshine—had the sun ever shone so brightly?—with this same quiet-voiced, thoughtful Helen Minorkey. How soon had sunshine turned to darkness! How suddenly had the blossoming spring-time changed to dreariest winter!
It is really delightful, this riding through the snow and darkness in a covered coach on runners, this battling with difficulties. There is a spice of adventure in it quite pleasant if you don't happen to be the driver and have the battle to manage. To be a well-muffled passenger, responsible for nothing, not even for your own neck, is thoroughly delightful—provided always that you are not the passenger in handcuffs going to prison for ten years. To the passenger in handcuffs, whose good name has been destroyed, whose liberty is gone, whose future is to be made of weary days of monotonous drudgery and dreary nights in a damp cell, whose friends have deserted him, who is an outlaw to society—to the passenger in handcuffs this dashing and whirling toward a living entombment has no exhilaration. Charlton was glad of the darkness, but dreaded the dawn when there must come a recognition. In a whisper he begged the deputy marshal to pull his cap down over his eyes and to adjust his woolen comforter over his nose, not so much to avoid the cold wind as to escape the cold eyes of Helen Minorkey. Then he hid his handcuffs under the buffalo robes so that, if possible, he might escape recognition.
The gentleman alongside Miss Minorkey asked if she had read the account of the trial of young Charlton, the post-office robber.
"Part of it," said Miss Minorkey. "I don't read trials much."
"For my part," said the gentleman, "I think the court was very merciful. I should have given him the longest term known to the law. He ought to go for twenty-one years. We all of us have to risk money in the mails, and if thieves in the post-office are not punished severely, there is no security."
There spoke Commerce! Money is worth so much more than humanity, you know!
Miss Minorkey said that she knew something of the case. It was very curious, indeed. Young Charlton was disposed to be honest, but he was high-tempered. The taking of the warrant was an act of resentment, she thought. He had had two or three quarrels or fights, she believed, with the man from whom he took the warrant. He was a very talented young man, but very ungovernable in his feelings.
The gentleman said that that was the very reason why he should have gone for a longer time. A talented and self-conceited man of that sort was dangerous out of prison. As it was, he would learn all the roguery of the penitentiary, you know, and then we should none of us be safe from him.
There spoke the Spirit of the Law! Keep us safe, O Lord! whoever may go to the devil!
In reply to questions from her companion, Miss Minorkey told the story of Albert's conflict with Westcott—she stated the case with all the coolness of a dispassionate observer.
There was no sign—Albert listened for it—of the slightest sympathy for or against him in the matter. Then the story of little Katy was told as one might tell something that had happened a hundred years ago, without any personal sympathy. It was simply a curious story, an interesting adventure with which to beguile a weary hour of stage riding in the darkness. It would have gratified Albert to have been able to detect the vibration of a painful memory or a pitying emotion, but Helen did not suffer her placidity to be ruffled by disturbing emotion. The conversation drifted to other subjects presently through Mr. Minorkey's sudden recollection that the drowning excitement at Metropolisville had brought on a sudden attack of his complaint, he had been seized with a pain just under his ribs. It ran up to the point of the right shoulder, and he thought he should die, etc., etc., etc. Nothing saved him but putting his feet into hot water, etc., etc., etc.
The gray dawn came on, and Charlton was presently able to trace the lineaments of the well-known countenance. He was not able to recognize it again without a profound emotion, an emotion that he could not have analyzed. Her face was unchanged, there was not the varying of a line in the placid, healthy, thoughtful expression to indicate any deepening of her nature through suffering. Charlton's face had changed so that she would not have recognized him readily had it been less concealed. And by so much as his countenance had changed and hers remained fixed, had he drifted away from her. Albert felt this. However painful his emotion was, as he sat there casting furtive glances at Helen's face, there was no regret that all relation between them was broken forever. He was not sorry for the meeting. He needed such a meeting to measure the parallax of his progress and her stagnation. He needed this impression of Helen to obliterate the memory of the row-boat. She was no longer to remain in his mind associated with the blessed memory of little Kate. Hereafter he could think of Katy in the row-boat—the other figure was a dim unreality which might have come to mean something, but which never did mean anything to him.
I wonder who keeps the tavern at Cypher's Lake now? In those old days it was not a very reputable place; it was said that many a man had there been fleeced at poker. The stage did not reach it on this snowy morning until ten o'clock. The driver stopped to water, the hospitable landlord, whose familiar nickname was "Bun," having provided a pail and cut a hole through the ice of the lake for the accommodation of the drivers. Water for beasts—gentlemen could meantime find something less "beastly" than ice-water in the little low-ceiled bar-room on the other side of the road. The deputy-marshal wanted to stretch his legs a little, and so, trusting partly to his knowledge of Charlton's character, partly to handcuffs, and partly to his convenient revolver, he leaped out of the coach and stepped to the door of the bar-room just to straighten his legs, you know, and get a glass of whisky "straight" at the same time. In getting into the coach again he chanced to throw back the buffalo-robe and thus exposed Charlton's handcuffs. Helen glanced at them, and then at Albert's face. She shivered a little, and grew red. There was no alternative but to ride thus face to face with Charlton for six miles. She tried to feel herself an injured person, but something in the self-possessed face of Albert—his comforter had dropped down now—awed her, and she affected to be sick, leaning her head on her father's shoulder and surprising that gentleman beyond measure. Helen had never shown so much emotion of any sort in her life before, certainly never so much confusion and shame. And that in spite of her reasoning that it was not she but Albert who should be embarrassed. But the two seemed to have changed places. Charlton was as cold and immovable as Helen Minorkey ever had been; she trembled and shuddered, even with her eyes shut, to think that his eyes were on her—looking her through and through—measuring all the petty meanness and shallowness of her soul. She complained of the cold and wrapped her blanket shawl about her face and pretended to be asleep, but the shameful nakedness of her spirit seemed not a whit less visible to the cool, indifferent eyes that she felt must be still looking at her from under the shadow of that cap-front. What a relief it was at last to get into the warm parlor of the hotel! But still she shivered when she thought of her ride.
It is one thing to go into a warm parlor of a hotel, to order your room, your fire, your dinner, your bed. It is quite another to drive up under the high, rough limestone outer wall of a prison—a wall on which moss and creeper refuse to grow—to be led handcuffed into a little office, to have your credentials for ten years of servitude presented to the warden, to have your name, age, nativity, hight, complexion, weight, and distinguishing marks carefully booked, to have your hair cropped to half the length of a prize-fighter's, to lay aside the dress which you have chosen and which seems half your individuality, and put on a suit of cheerless penitentiary uniform—to cease to be a man with a place among men, and to become simply a convict. This is not nearly so agreeable as living at the hotel. Did Helen Minorkey ever think of the difference?
There is little to be told of the life in the penitentiary. It is very uniform. To eat prison fare without even the decency of a knife or fork—you might kill a guard or a fellow-rogue with a fork—to sleep in a narrow, rough cell on a hard bed, to have your cell unlocked and to be marched out under guard in the morning, to go in a row of prisoners to wash your face, to go in a procession to a frugal breakfast served on tin plates in a dining-room mustier than a cellar, to be marched to your work, to be watched by a guard while you work, to know that the guard has a loaded revolver and is ready to draw it on slight provocation, to march to meals under awe of the revolver, to march to bed while the man with the revolver walks behind you, to be locked in and barred in and double-locked in again, to have a piece of candle that will burn two hours, to burn it out and lie down in the darkness—to go through one such day and know that you have to endure three thousand six hundred and fifty-two days like it—that is about all. The life of a blind horse in a treadmill is varied and cheerful in comparison.
Oh! yes, there is Sunday. I forgot the Sunday. On Sundays you don't have to work in the shops. You have the blessed privilege of sitting alone in your bare cell all the day, except the hour of service. You can think about the outside world and wish you were out. You can read, if you can get anything interesting to read. You can count your term over, think of a broken life, of the friends of other days who feel disgraced at mention of your name, get into the dumps, and cry a little if you feel like it. Only crying doesn't seem to do much good. Such is the blessedness of the holy Sabbath in prison!
But Charlton did not let himself pine for liberty. He was busy with plans for reconstructing his life. What he would have had it, it could not be. You try to build a house, and it is shaken down about your ears by an earthquake. Your material is, much of it, broken. You can never make it what you would. But the brave heart, failing to do what it would, does what it can. Charlton, who had hated the law as a profession, was now enamored of it. He thought rightly that there is no calling that offers nobler opportunities to a man who has a moral fiber able to bear the strain. When he should have finished his term, he would be thirty-one, and would be precluded from marriage by his disgrace. He could live on a crust, if necessary, and be the champion of the oppressed. What pleasure he would have in beating Conger some day! So he arranged to borrow law-books, and faithfully used his two hours of candle in studying. He calculated that in ten years—if he should survive ten years of life in a cell—he could lay a foundation for eminence in legal learning. Thus he made vinegar-barrels all day, and read Coke on Littleton on Blackstone at night. His money received from the contractor for over-work, he used to buy law-books.
Sometimes he hoped for a pardon, but there was only one contingency that was likely to bring it about. And he could not wish for that. Unless, indeed, the prison-officers should seek a pardon for him. From the beginning they had held him in great favor. When he had been six months in prison, his character was so well established with the guards that no one ever thought of watching him or of inspecting his work.
He felt a great desire to have something done in a philanthropic way for the prisoners, but when the acting chaplain, Mr. White, preached to them, he always rebelled. Mr. White had been a steamboat captain, a sheriff, and divers other things, and was now a zealous missionary among the Stillwater lumbermen. The State could not afford to give more than three hundred dollars a year for religious and moral instruction at this time, and so the several pastors in the city served alternately, three months apiece. Mr. White was a man who delivered his exhortations with the same sort of vehemence that Captain White had used in giving orders to his deck-hands in a storm; he arrested souls much as Sheriff White had arrested criminals. To Albert's infidelity he gave no quarter. Charlton despised the chaplain's lack of learning until he came to admire his sincerity and wonder at his success. For the gracefulest and eruditest orator that ever held forth to genteelest congregation, could not have touched the prisoners by his highest flight of rhetoric as did the earnest, fiery Captain-Sheriff-Chaplain White, who moved aggressively on the wickedness of his felonious audience.
When Mr. White's three months had expired, there came another pastor, as different from him as possible. Mr. Lurton was as gentle as his predecessor had been boisterous. There was a strong substratum of manly courage and will, but the whole was overlaid with a sweetness wholly feminine and seraphic. His religion was the Twenty-third Psalm. His face showed no trace of conflict. He had accepted the creed which he had inherited without a question, and, finding in it abundant sources of happiness, of moral development, and spiritual consolation, he thence concluded it true. He had never doubted. It is a question whether his devout soul would not have found peace and edification in any set of opinions to which he had happened to be born. You have seen one or two such men in your life. Their presence is a benison. Albert felt more peaceful while Mr. Lurton stood without the grating of his cell, and Lurton seemed to leave a benediction behind him. He did not talk in pious cant, he did not display his piety, and he never addressed a sinner down an inclined plane. He was too humble for that. But the settled, the unruffled, the unruffleable peacefulness and trustfulness of his soul seemed to Charlton, whose life had been stormier within than without, nothing less than sublime. The inmates of the prison could not appreciate this delicate quality in the young minister. Lurton had never lived near enough to their life for them to understand him or for him to understand them. He considered them all, on general principles, as lost sinners, bad, like himself, by nature, who had superadded outward transgressions and the crime of rejecting Christ to their original guilt and corruption as members of the human family.
Charlton watched Lurton with intense interest, listened to all he had to say, responded to the influence of his fine quality, but found his own doubts yet unanswered and indeed untouched. The minister, on his part, took a lively interest in the remarkable young man, and often endeavored to remove his doubts by the well-knit logical arguments he had learned in the schools.
"Mr. Lurton," said Charlton impatiently one day, "were you ever troubled with doubt?"
"I do not remember that I ever seriously entertained a doubt in regard to religious truth in my life," said Lurton, after reflection.
"Then you know no more about my doubts than a blind man knows of your sense of sight." But after a pause, he added, laughing: "Nevertheless, I would give away my doubtativeness any day in exchange for your peacefulness." Charlton did not know, nor did Lurton, that the natures which have never been driven into the wilderness to be buffeted of the devil are not the deepest.
It was during Mr. Lurton's time as chaplain that Charlton began to receive presents of little ornamental articles, intended to make his cell more cheerful. These things were sent to him by the hands of the chaplain, and the latter was forbidden to tell the name of the giver. Books and pictures, and even little pots with flowers in them, came to him in the early spring. He fancied they might come from some unknown friend, who had only heard of him through the chaplain, and he was prone to resent the charity. He received the articles with thankful lips, but asked in his heart, "Is it not enough to be a convict, without being pitied as such?" Why anybody in Stillwater should send him such things, he did not know. The gifts were not expensive, but every one gave evidence of a refined taste.
At last there came one—a simple cross, cut in paper, intended to be hung up as a transparency before the window—that in some unaccountable way suggested old associations. Charlton had never seen anything of the kind, but he had the feeling of one who half-recognizes a handwriting. The pattern had a delicacy about it approaching to daintiness, an expression of taste and feeling which he seemed to have known, as when one sees a face that is familiar, but which one can not "place," as we say. Charlton could not place the memory excited by this transparency, but for a moment he felt sure that it must be from some one whom he knew. But who could there be near enough to him to send flower-pots and framed pictures without great expense? There was no one in Stillwater whom he had ever seen, unless indeed Helen Minorkey were there yet, and he had long since given up all expectation and all desire of receiving any attention at her hands. Besides, the associations excited by the transparency, the taste evinced in making it, the sentiment which it expressed, were not of Helen Minorkey. It was on Thursday that he hung it against the light of his window. It was not until Sunday evening, as he lay listlessly watching his scanty allowance of daylight grow dimmer, that he became sure of the hand that he had detected in the workmanship of the piece. He got up quickly and looked at it more closely and said: "It must be Isa Marlay!" And he lay down again, saying: "Well, it can never be quite dark in a man's life when he has one friend." And then, as the light grew more and more faint, he said: "Why did not I see it before? Good orthodox Isa wants to preach to me. She means to say that I should receive light through the cross."
And he lay awake far into the night, trying to divine how the flower-pots and pictures and all the rest could have been sent all the way from Metropolisville. It was not till long afterward that he discovered the alliance between Whisky Jim and Isabel, and how Jim had gotten a friend on the Stillwater route to help him get them through. But Charlton wrote Isa, and told her how he had detected her, and thanked her cordially, asking her why she concealed her hand. She replied kindly, but with little allusion to the gifts, and they came no more. When Isa had been discovered she could not bring herself to continue the presents. Save that now and then there came something from his mother, in which Isa's taste and skill were evident, he received nothing more from her, except an occasional friendly letter. He appreciated her delicacy too late, and regretted that he had written about the cross at all.
One Sunday, Mr. Lurton, going his round, found Charlton reading the NewTestament.
"Mr. Lurton, what a sublime prayer the Pater-noster is!" exclaimedCharlton.
"Yes;" said Lurton, "it expresses so fully the only two feelings that can bring us to God—a sense of guilt and a sense of dependence."
"What I admired in the prayer was not that, but the unselfishness that puts God and the world first, and asks bread, forgiveness, and guidance last. It seems to me, Mr. Lurton, that all men are not brought to God by the same feelings. Don't you think that a man may be drawn toward God by self-sacrifice—that a brave, heroic act, in its very nature, brings us nearer to God? It seems to me that whatever the rule may be, there are exceptions; that God draws some men to Himself by a sense of sympathy; that He makes a sudden draft on their moral nature—not more than they can bear, but all they can bear—and that in doing right under difficulties the soul finds itself directed toward God—opened on the side on which God sits."
Mr. Lurton shook his head, and protested, in his gentle and earnest way, against this doctrine of man's ability to do anything good before conversion.
"But, Mr. Lurton," urged Albert, "I have known a man to make a great sacrifice, and to find himself drawn by that very sacrifice into a great admiring of Christ's sacrifice, into a great desire to call God his father, and into a seeking for the forgiveness and favor that would make him in some sense a child of God. Did you never know such a case?"
"Never. I do not think that genuine conversions come in that way. A sense of righteousness can not prepare a man for salvation—only a sense of sin—a believing that all our righteousness is filthy rags. Still, I wouldn't discourage you from studying the Bible in any way. You will come round right after a while, and then you will find that to be saved, a man must abhor every so-called good thing that he ever did."
"Yes," said Charlton, who had grown more modest in his trials, "I am sure there is some truth in the old doctrine as you state it. But is not a man better and more open to divine grace, for resisting a temptation to vice?"
Mr. Lurton hesitated. He remembered that he had read, in very sound writers, arguments to prove that there could be no such thing as good works before conversion, and Mr. Lurton was too humble to set his judgment against the great doctors'. Besides, he was not sure that Albert's questions might not force him into that dangerous heresy attributed to Arminius, that good works may be the impulsive cause by which God is moved to give His grace to the unconverted.
"Do you think that a man can really do good without God's help?" askedMr. Lurton.
"I don't think man ever tries to do right in humility and sincerity without some help from God," answered Albert, whose mode of thinking about God was fast changing for the better. "I think God goes out a long, long way to meet the first motions of a good purpose in a man's heart. The parable of the Prodigal Son only half-tells it. The parable breaks down with a truth too great for human analogies. I don't know but that He acts in the beginning of the purpose. I am getting to be a Calvinist—in fact, on some points, I out-Calvin Calvin. Is not God's help in the good purposes of every man?"
Mr. Lurton shook his head with a gentle gravity, and changed the subject by saying, "I am going to Metropolisville next week to attend a meeting. Can I do anything for you?"
"Go and see my mother," said Charlton, with emotion. "She is sick, and will never get well, I fear. Tell her I am cheerful. And—Mr. Lurton—do you pray with her. I do not believe anything, except by fits and starts; but one of your prayers would do my mother good. If she could be half as peaceful as you are, I should be happy."
Lurton walked away down the gallery from Albert's cell, and descended the steps that led to the dining-room, and was let out of the locked and barred door into the vestibule, and out of that into the yard, and thence out through other locks into the free air of out-doors. Then he took a long breath, for the sight of prison doors and locks and bars and grates and gates and guards oppressed even his peaceful soul. And walking along the sandy road that led by the margin of Lake St. Croix toward the town, he recalled Charlton's last remark. And as he meditatively tossed out of the path with his boot the pieces of pine-bark which in this lumbering country lie about everywhere, he rejoiced that Charlton had learned to appreciate the value of Christian peace, and he offered a silent prayer that Albert might one day obtain the same serenity as himself. For nothing was further from the young minister's mind than the thought that any of his good qualities were natural. He considered himself a miracle of grace upon all sides. As if natural qualities were not also of God's grace!
It was a warm Sunday in the early spring, one week after Mr. Lurton's conversation with Charlton, that the latter sat in his cell feeling the spring he could not see. His prison had never been so much a prison. To perceive this balminess creeping through the narrow, high window—a mere orifice through a thick wall—and making itself feebly felt as it fell athwart the damp chilliness of the cell, to perceive thus faintly the breath of spring, and not to be able to see the pregnant tree-buds bursting with the coming greenness of the summer, and not to be able to catch the sound of the first twittering of the returning sparrows and the hopeful chattering of the swallows, made Albert feel indeed that he and life had parted.
Mr. Lurton's three months as chaplain had expired, and there had come in his stead Mr. Canton, who wore a very stiff white neck-tie and a very straight-breasted long-tailed coat. Nothing is so great a bar to human sympathies as a clerical dress, and Mr. Canton had diligently fixed a great gulf between himself and his fellow-men. Charlton's old, bitter aggressiveness, which had well-nigh died out under the sweet influences of Lurton's peacefulness, came back now, and he mentally pronounced the new chaplain a clerical humbug and an ecclesiastical fop, and all such mild paradoxical epithets as he was capable of forming. The hour of service was ended, and Charlton was in his cell again, standing under the high window, trying to absorb some of the influences of the balmy air that reached him in such niggardly quantities. He was hungering for a sight of the woods, which he knew must be so vital at this season. He had only the geraniums and the moss-rose that Isa, had sent, and they were worse than nothing, for they pined in this twilight of the cell, and seemed to him smitten, like himself, with a living death. He almost stopped, his heart's beating in his effort to hear the voices of the birds, and at last he caught the harsh cawing of the crows for a moment, and then that died away, and he could hear no sound but the voice of the clergyman in long clothes talking perfunctorily to O'Neill, the wife-murderer, in the next cell. He knew that his turn would come next, and it did. He listened in silence and with much impatience to such a moral lecture as seemed to Mr. Canton befitting a criminal.
Mr. Canton then handed him a letter, and seeing that it was addressed in the friendly hand of Lurton, he took it to the window and opened it, and read:
"I should have come to see you and told you about my trip to Metropolisville, but I am obliged to go out of town again. I send this by Mr. Canton, and also a request to the warden to pass this and your answer without the customary inspection of contents. I saw your mother and your stepfather and your friend Miss Marlay. Your mother is failing very fast, and I do not think it would be a kindness for me to conceal from you my belief that she can not live many weeks. I talked with her and prayed with her as you requested, but she seems to have some intolerable mental burden. Miss Marlay is evidently a great comfort to her, and, indeed, I never saw a more faithful person than she in my life, or a more remarkable exemplification of the beauty of a Christian life. She takes every burden off your mother except that unseen load which seems to trouble her spirit, and she believes absolutely in your innocence. By the way, why did you never explain to her or to me or to any of your friends the real history of the case? There must at least have been extenuating circumstances, and we might be able to help you.
"But I am writing about everything except what I want to say, or rather to ask, for I tremble to ask it. Are you interested in any way other than as a friend in Miss Isabel Marlay? You will guess why I ask the question. Since I met her I have thought of her a great deal, and I may add to you that I have anxiously sought divine guidance in a matter likely to affect the usefulness of my whole life. I will not take a single step in the direction in which my heart has been so suddenly drawn, if you have any prior claim, or even the remotest hope of establishing one in some more favorable time. Far be it from me to add a straw to the heavy burden you have had to bear. I expect to be in Metropolisville again soon, and will see your mother once more. Please answer me with frankness, and believe me,
"Always your friend,
The intelligence regarding his mother's health was not new to Albert, for Isa had told him fully of her state. It would be difficult to describe the feeling of mingled pain and pleasure with which he read Lurton's confession of his sudden love for Isabel. Nothing since his imprisonment had so humbled Charlton as the recollection of the mistake he had made in his estimate of Helen Minorkey, and his preference for her over Isa. He had lain on his cot sometimes and dreamed of what might have been if he had escaped prison and had chosen Isabel instead of Helen. He had pictured to himself the content he might have had with such a woman for a wife. But then the thought of his disgrace—a disgrace he could not share with a wife—always dissipated the beautiful vision and made the hard reality of what was, seem tenfold harder for the ravishing beauty of what might have been.
And now the vision of the might-have-been came back to him more clearly than ever, and he sat a long while with his head leaning on his hand. Then the struggle passed, and he lighted his little ration of candle, and wrote:
"DEAR SIR: You have acted very honorably in writing me as you have, and I admire you now more than ever. You fulfill my ideal of a Christian. I never had the slightest claim or the slightest purpose to establish any claim on Isabel Marlay, for I was so blinded by self-conceit, that I did not appreciate her until it was too late. And now! What have I to offer to any woman? The love of a convicted felon! A name tarnished forever! No! I shall never share that with Isa Marlay. She is, indeed, the best and most sensible of women. She is the only woman worthy of such a man as you. You are the only man I ever saw good enough for Isabel. I love you both. God bless you!
"Very respectfully and gratefully, CHARLTON."
Mr. Lurton had staid during the meeting of the ecclesiastical body—Presbytery, Consociation, Convention, Conference, or what not, it does not matter—at Squire Plausaby's Albert had written about him, and Isa, as soon as she heard that he was to attend, had prompted Plausaby to enter a request with the committee on the entertainment of delegates for the assignment of Mr. Lurton to him as guest. His peacefulness had not, as Albert and Isabel hoped, soothed the troubled spirit of Mrs. Plausaby, who was in a great terror at thought of death. The skillful surgeon probes before he tries to heal, and Mr. Lurton set himself to find the cause of all this irritation in the mind of this weak woman. Sometimes she seemed inclined to tell him all, but it always happened that when she was just ready to speak, the placid face of Plausaby glided in at the door. On the appearance of her husband, Mrs. Plausaby would cease speaking. It took Lurton a long time to discover that Plausaby was the cause of this restraint. He did discover it, however, and endeavored to get an interview when there was no one present but Isabel. In trying to do this, he made a fresh discovery—that Plausaby was standing guard over his wife, and that the restraint he exercised was intentional. The mystery of the thing fascinated him; and the impression that it had something to do with Charlton, and the yet stronger motive of a sense of duty to the afflicted woman, made him resolute in his determination to penetrate it. Not more so, however, than was Isabel, who endeavored in every way to secure an uninterrupted interview for Mr. Lurton, but endeavored in vain.
Lurton was thus placed in favorable circumstances to see Miss Marlay's qualities. Her graceful figure in her simple tasteful, and perfectly fitting frock, her rhythmical movement, her rare voice, all touched exquisitely so sensitive a nature as Lurton's. But more than that was he moved by her diligent management of the household, her unwearying patience with the querulous and feeble-minded sick woman, her tact and common-sense, and especially the entire truthfulness of her character.
Mr. Lurton made excuse to himself for another trip to Metropolisville that he had business in Perritaut. It was business that might have waited; it was business that would have waited, but for his desire to talk further with Mrs. Plausaby, and for his other desire to see and talk with Isabel Marlay again. For, if he should fail of her, where would he ever find one so well suited to help the usefulness of his life? Happy is he whose heart and duty go together! And now that Lurton had found that Charlton had no first right to Isabel, his worst fear had departed.
Even in his palpitating excitement about Isa, he was the true minister, and gave his first thought to the spiritual wants of the afflicted woman whom he regarded as providentially thrown upon his care. He was so fortunate as to find Plausaby absent at Perritaut. But how anxiously did he wait for the time when he could see the sick woman! Even Isa almost lost her patience with Mrs. Plausaby's characteristic desire to be fixed up to receive company. She must have her hair brushed and her bed "tidied," and, when Isabel thought she had concluded everything, Mrs. Plausaby would insist that all should be undone again and fixed m some other way. Part of this came from her old habitual vanity, aggravated by the querulous childishness produced by sickness, and part from a desire to postpone as long as she could an interview which she greatly dreaded. Isa knew that time was of the greatest value, and so, when she had complied with the twentieth unreasonable exaction of the sick woman, and was just about to hear the twenty-first, she suddenly opened the door of Mrs. Plausaby's sickroom and invited Mr. Lurton to enter.
And then began again the old battle—the hardest conflict of all—the battle with vacillation. To contend with a stubborn will is a simple problem of force against force. But to contend with a weak and vacillating will is fighting the air.
Mrs. Plausaby said she had something to say to Mr. Lurton. But—dear me—she was so annoyed! The room was not fit for a stranger to see. She must look like a ghost. There was something that worried her. She was afraid she was going to die, and she had—did Mr. Lurton think she would die? Didn't he think she might get well?
Mr. Lurton had to say that, in his opinion, she could never get well, and that if there was anything on her mind, she would better tell it.
Didn't Isa think she could get well? She didn't want to die. But then Katy was dead. Would she go to heaven if she died? Did Mr. Lurton think that if she had done wrong, she ought to confess it? Couldn't she be forgiven without that? Wouldn't he pray for her unless she confessed it? He ought not to be so hard on her. Would God be hard on her if she did not tell it all? Oh! she was so miserable!
Mr. Lurton told her that sometimes people committed sin by refusing to confess because their confession had something to do with other people. Was her confession necessary to remove blame from others?
"Oh!" cried the sick woman, "Albert has told you all about it! Oh, dear! now I shall have more trouble! Why didn't he wait till I'm dead? Isn't it enough to have Katy drowned and Albert gone to that awful place and this trouble? Oh! I wish I was dead! But then—maybe God would be hard on me! Do you think God would be hard on a woman that did wrong if she was told to do it? And if she was told to do it by her own husband? And if she had to do it to save her husband from some awful trouble? There, I nearly told it. Won't that do?"
And she turned her head over and affected to be asleep. Mr. Lurton was now more eager than ever that the whole truth should come out, since he began to see how important Mrs. Plausaby's communication might be. Beneath all his sweetness, as I have said, there was much manly firmness, and he now drew his chair near to the bedside, and began in a tone full of solemnity, with that sort of quiet resoluteness that a surgeon has when he decides to use the knife. He was the more resolute because he knew that if Plausaby returned before the confession should be made, there would be no possibility of getting it.
"Mrs. Plausaby," he said, but she affected to be asleep. "Mrs. Plausaby, suppose a woman, by doing wrong when her husband asks it, brings a great calamity on the only child she has, locking him in prison and destroying his good name—"
"Oh, dear, dear! stop! You'll kill me! I knew Albert had told you. Now I won't say a word about it. If he has told it, there is no use of my saying anything," and she covered up her face in a stubborn, childish petulance.
Mr. Lurton wisely left the room. Mrs. Plausaby's fears of death soon awakened again, and she begged Isa to ask Mr. Lurton to come back. Like most feeble people, she had a superstitious veneration for ecclesiastical authority, and now in her weakened condition she had readily got a vague notion that Lurton held her salvation in his hands, and could modify the conditions if he would.
"You aren't a Catholic are you, Mr. Lurton?"
"No, I am not at all a Catholic."
"Well, then, what makes you want me to confess?"
"Because you are adding to your first sin a greater one in wronging your son by not confessing."
"Who told you that? Did Albert?"
"No, you told me as much as that, yourself."
"Did I? Why, then I might as well tell you all. But why won't that do?"
"Because, that much would not get Albert out of prison. You don't want to leave him in penitentiary when you're gone, do you?"
"Oh, dear! I can't tell. Plausaby won't let me. Maybe I might tell Isa."
"That will do just as well. Tell Miss Marlay." And Lurton walked out on the piazza.
For half an hour Mrs. Plausaby talked to Isa and told her nothing. She would come face to face with the confession, and then say that she could not tell it, that Plausaby would do something awful if he knew she had said so much.
At last Isabel was tired out with this method, and was desperate at the thought that Plausaby would return while yet the confession was incomplete. So she determined to force Mrs. Plausaby to speak.
"Now, Mrs. Plausaby," she said, "what did Uncle Plausaby say to you that made you take that letter of Smith Westcott's?"
"I didn't take it, did I? How do you know? I didn't say so?"
"You have told me part, and if you tell me the rest I will keep it secret for the present. If you don't tell me, I shall tell Uncle Plausaby what I know, and tell him that he must tell me the rest."
"You wouldn't do that, Isabel? You couldn't do that. Don't do that," begged the sick woman.
"Then tell me the truth," she said with sternness. "What made you take that land-warrant—for you know you did, and you must not tell me a lie when you're just going to die and go before God."
"There now, Isa, I knew you would hate me. That's the reason why I can't tell it. Everybody has been looking so hateful at me ever since I took the letter, I mean ever since—Oh! I didn't mean anything bad, but you know I have to do what Plausaby tells me I must do. He'ssucha man! And then he was in trouble. There was some old trouble from Pennsylvania. The men came on here, and made him pay money, all the money he could get, to keep them from having him put in prison. I don't know what it was all about, you know, I never could understand about business, but here was Albert bothering him about money to pay for a warrant, and these men taking all his money, and here was a trial about some lots that he sold to that fat man with curly hair, and he was afraid Albert would swear against him about that and about the county-seat, and so he wanted to get him away. And there was an awful bother about Katy and Westcott at the same time. And I wanted a changeable silk dress, and he couldn't get it for me because all his money was going to the men from Pennsylvania. But—I can't tell you any more. I'm afraid Plausaby might come. You won't tell, and you won't hate me, Isa, dear—now, will you? You used to be good to me, but you won't be good to me any more!"
"I'll always love you if you only tell me the rest."
"No, I can't. For you see Plausaby didn't mean any harm, and I didn't mean any harm. Plausaby wanted Albert to go away so they couldn't get Albert to swear against him. It was all Albert's fault, you know—he had such notions. But he was a good boy, and I can't sleep at night now for seeing him behind a kind of a grate, and he seems to be pointing his finger at me and saying, 'You put me in here.' But I didn't. That's one of his notions. It was Plausaby made me do it. And he didn't mean any harm. He said Westcott would soon be his son-in-law. He had helped Westcott to get the claim anyhow. It was only borrowing a little from his own son-in-law. He said that I must get the letter out of the office when Albert did not see me. He said it would be a big letter, with 'Red Owl' stamped on it, and that it would be in Mr. Westcott's box. And he said I must take the land-warrant out and burn up the letter and the envelope. And then he said I must give the land-warrant to Albert the next day, and tell him that a man that came up in the stage brought it from Plausaby. And he said he'd get another and bring it home with him and give it to Westcott, and make it all right. And that would keep him out of prison, and get Albert away so he couldn't swear against him in the suit with the fat man, and then he would be able to get me the changeable silk that I wanted so much. But things went all wrong with him since, and I never got the changeable silk, and he said he would keep Albert out of penitentiary and he didn't, and Albert told me I musn't tell anybody about taking it myself, for he couldn't bear to have me go to prison. Now, won't that do? But don't you tell Plausaby. He looks at me sometimes so awfully. Oh, dear! if I could have told that before, maybe I wouldn't have died. It's been killing me all the time. Oh, dear! dear! I wish I was dead, if only I was sure I wouldn't go to the bad place."
Isa now acquainted Lurton briefly with the nature of Mrs. Plausaby's statement, and Lurton knelt by her bedside and turned it into a very solemn and penitent confession to God, and very trustfully prayed for forgiveness, and—call it the contagion of Lurton's own faith, if you will—at any rate, the dying woman felt a sense of relief that the story was told, and a sense of trust and more peace than she had ever known in her life. Lurton had led her feeble feet into a place of rest. And he found joy in thinking that, though his ministry to rude lumbermen and hardened convicts might be fruitless, he had at least some gifts that made him a source of strength and consolation to the weak, the remorseful, the bereaved, and the dying. He stepped out of the door of the sick-chamber, and there, right before him, was Plausaby, his smooth face making a vain endeavor to keep its hold upon itself. But Lurton saw at once that Plausaby had heard the prayer in which he had framed Mrs. Plausaby's confession to Isa into a solemn and specific confession to God. I know no sight more pitiful than that of a man who has worn his face as a mask, when at last the mask is broken and the agony behind reveals itself. Lurton had a great deal of presence of mind, and if he did not think much of the official and priestly authority of a minister, he had a prophet's sense of his moral authority. He looked calmly and steadily into the eyes of Plausaby, Esq., and the hollow sham, who had been unshaken till now, quailed; counterfeit serenity could not hold its head up and look the real in the face. Had Lurton been abashed or nervous or self-conscious, Plausaby might have assumed an air of indignation at the minister's meddling. But Lurton had nothing but a serene sense of having been divinely aided in the performance of a delicate and difficult duty. He reached out his hand and greeted Plausaby quietly and courteously and yet solemnly. Isabel, for her part, perceiving that Plausaby had overheard, did not care to conceal the indignation she felt. Poor Plausaby, Esq.! the disguise was torn, and he could no longer hide himself. He sat down and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and essayed to speak, as before, to the minister, of his anxiety about his poor, dear wife, but he could not do it. Exert himself as he would, the color would not return to his pallid lips, and he had a shameful consciousness that the old serene and complacent look, when he tried it, was sadly crossed by rigid lines of hard anxiety and shame. The mask was indeed broken—the nakedness and villainy could no more be hidden! And even the voice, faithful and obedient hitherto, always holding the same rhythmical pace, had suddenly broken rein, galloping up and down the gamut in a husky jangling.
"Mr. Plausaby, let us walk," said Lurton, not affecting in the least to ignore Plausaby's agitation. They walked in silence through the village out to the prairie. Plausaby, habitually a sham, tried, to recover his ground. He said something about his wife's not being quite sane, and was going to caution Lurton about believing anything Mrs. Plausaby might say.
"Mr. Plausaby," said Lurton, "is it not better to repent of your sins and make restitution, than to hide them?"
Plausaby cleared his throat and wiped the perspiration from his brow, but he could not trust his voice to say anything.
It was vain to appeal to Plausaby to repent. He had saturated himself in falsehood from the beginning. Perhaps, after all, the saturation had began several generations back, and unhappy Plausaby, born to an inheritance of falsehood, was to be pitied as well as blamed. He was even now planning to extort from his vacillating wife a written statement that should contradict any confession of hers to Isa and Lurton.
Fly swiftly, pen! For Isa Marlay knew the stake in this game, and she did not mean that any chance of securing Charlton's release should be neglected. She knew nothing of legal forms, but she could write a straight-out statement after a woman's fashion. So she wrote a paper which read as follows:
"I do not expect to live long, and I solemnly confess that I took the land-warrant from Smith Westcott's letter, for which my son Albert Charlton is now unjustly imprisoned in the penitentiary, and I did it without the knowledge of Albert, and at the instigation of Thomas Plausaby, my husband."
This paper Isa read to Mrs. Plausaby, and that lady, after much vacillation, signed it with a feeble hand. Then Isabel wrote her own name as a witness. But she wanted another witness. At this moment Mrs. Ferret came in, having an instinctive feeling that a second visit from Lurton boded something worth finding out. Isa took her into Mrs. Plausaby's room and told her to witness this paper.
"Well," said pertinacious Mrs. Ferret, "I'll have to know what is in it, won't I?"
"No, you only want to know that this is Mrs. Plausaby's signature," and Isa placed her fingers over the paper in such a way that Mrs. Ferret could not read it.
"Did you sign this, Mrs. Plausaby?"
The sick woman said she did.
"Do you know what is in it?"
"Yes, but—but it's a secret."
"Did you sign it of your own free will, or did Mr. Plausaby make you?"
"Mr. Plausaby! Oh! don't tell him about it. He'll make such an awful fuss! But it's true."
Thus satisfied that it was not a case of domestic despotism, Mrs. Ferret wrote her peculiar signature, and made a private mark besides.
And later in the evening Mrs. Plausaby asked Isa to send word to that nice-looking young woman that Albert loved so much. She said she supposed he must feel bad about her. She wanted Isa to tell her all about it. "But not till I'm dead," she added. "Do you think people know what people say about them after they're dead? And, Isa, when I'm laid out let me wear my blue merino dress, and do my hair up nice, and put a bunch of roses in my hand. I wish Plausaby had got that changeable silk. It would have been better than the blue merino. But you know best. Only don't forget to tell Albert's girl that he did not do it. But explain it all so she won't think I'm a—that I did it a-purpose, you know. I didn't mean to. What makes you look at me that way? Oh, dear! Isa, you won't ever love me any more!"
But Isa quieted her by putting her arms around her neck in a way that made the poor woman cry, and say, "That's just the way Katy used to do. When I die, Katy'll love me all the same. Won't she? Katy always did love a body so." Perhaps she felt that Isabel's love was not like Katy's. For pity is not love, and even Mrs. Plausaby could hardly avoid distinguishing the spontaneous affection of Katy from this demonstration of Isa's, which must have cost her some exertion.
Mrs. Plausaby grew more feeble. Her remorse and her feeling of the dire necessity for confessing her sin had sustained her hitherto. But now her duty was done, she had no longer any mental stimulant. In spite of Isa's devoted and ingenious kindness, the sensitive vanity of Mrs. Plausaby detected in every motion evidence that Isa thought of her as a thief. She somehow got a notion that Mrs. Ferret knew all about it also, and from her and Mr. Lurton she half-hid her face in the cover. Lurton, perceiving that his mission to Mrs. Plausaby was ended, returned home, intending to see Isabel when circumstances should be more favorable. But the Ferret kept sniffing round after a secret which she knew lay not far away. Mrs. Plausaby having suddenly grown worse, Isa determined to sit by her during the night, but Plausaby strenuously objected that this was unnecessary. The poor woman secretly besought Isa not to leave her alone with Plausaby, and Isabel positively refused to go away from her bedside. For the first time Mr. Plausaby spoke harshly to Isa, and for the first time Isabel treated him with a savage neglect. A housekeeper's authority is generally supreme in the house, and Isa had gradually come to be the housekeeper. She sat stubbornly by the dying woman during the whole night.
Mr. Plausaby had his course distinctly marked out. In the morning he watched anxiously for the arrival of his trusted lawyer, Mr. Conger. The property which he had married with his wife, and which she had derived from Albert's father, had all been made over to her again to save it from Plausaby's rather eager creditors. He had spent the preceding day at Perritaut, whither Mr. Conger had gone to appear in a case as counsel for Plausaby, for the county-seat had recently returned to its old abode. Mr. Plausaby intended to have his wife make some kind of a will that would give him control of the property and yet keep it under shelter. By what legal fencing this was to be done nobody knows, but it has been often surmised that Mrs. Plausaby was to leave it to her husband in trust for the Metropolisville University. Mr. Plausaby had already acquired experience in the management of trust funds, in the matter of Isa's patrimony, and it would not be a feat beyond his ability for him to own his wife's bequest and not to own it at the same time. This was the easier that territorial codes are generally made for the benefit of absconding debtors. He had made many fair promises about a final transfer of this property to Albert and Katy when they should both be of age, but all that was now forgotten, as it was intended to be.
Mr. Plausaby was nervous. His easy, self-possessed manner had departed, and that impenetrable coat of mail being now broken up, he shuddered whenever the honest, indignant eyes of Miss Marlay looked at him. He longed for the presence of the bustling, energetic man of law, to keep him in countenance.
When the lawyer came, he and Plausaby were closeted for half an hour. Then Plausaby, Esq., took a walk, and the attorney requested an interview with Isabel. She came in, stiff, cold, and self-possessed.
"Miss Marlay," said the lawyer, smiling a little as became a man asking a favor from a lady, and yet looking out at Isa in a penetrating way from beneath shadowing eyebrows, "will you have the goodness to tell me the nature of the paper that Mrs. Plausaby signed yesterday?"
"Did Mrs. Plausaby sign a paper yesterday?" asked Isabel diplomatically.
"I have information to that effect. Will you tell me whether that paper was of the nature of a will or deed or—in short, what was its character?"
"I will not tell you anything about it. It is Mrs. Plausaby's secret. I suppose you get your information from Mrs. Ferret. If she chooses to tell you the contents, she may."
"You are a little sharp, Miss Marlay. I understand that Mrs. Ferret does not know the contents of that paper. As the confidential legal adviser of Mr. Plausaby and of Mrs. Plausaby, I have a right to ask what the contents of that paper were."
"As the confidential legal adviser—" Isa stopped and stammered. She was about to retort that as confidential legal adviser to Mrs. Plausaby he might ask that lady herself, but she was afraid of his doing that very thing; so she stopped short and, because she was confused, grew a little angry, and told Mr. Conger that he had no right to ask any questions, and then got up and disdainfully walked out of the room. And the lawyer, left alone, meditated that women had a way, when they were likely to be defeated, of getting angry, or pretending to get angry. And you never could do anything with a woman when she was angry. Or, as Conger framed it in his mind, a mad dog was easier to handle than a mad woman.
As the paper signed the day before could not have been legally executed, Plausaby and his lawyer guessed very readily that it probably did not relate to property. The next step was an easy one to the client if not to the lawyer. It must relate to the crime—it was a solution of the mystery. Plausaby knew well enough that a confession had been made to Lurton, but he had not suspected that Isabel would go so far as to put it into writing. The best that could be done was to have Conger frame a counter-declaration that her confession had been signed under a misapprehension—had been obtained by coercion, over-persuasion, and so forth. Plausaby knew that his wife would sign anything if he could present the matter to her alone. But, to get rid of Isabel Marlay?
A very coward now in the presence of Isa, he sent the lawyer ahead, while he followed close behind.
"Miss Marlay," said Mr. Conger, smiling blandly but speaking with decision, "it will be necessary for me to speak to Mrs. Plausaby for a few minutes alone."
It is curious what an effect a tone of authority has. Isa rose and would have gone out, but Mrs. Plausaby said, "Don't leave me, don't leave me, Isa; they want to arrest me, I believe."
Seeing her advantage, Miss Marlay said, "Mrs. Plausaby wishes me to stay."
It was in vain that the lawyer insisted. It was in vain that Mr. Plausaby stepped forward and told Mrs. Plausaby to ask Isabel to leave the room a minute. The sick woman only drew the cover over her eyes and held fast to Isabel's hand and said: "No, no, don't go—Isa, don't go."
"I will not go till you ask me," said Isa.
At last, however, Plausaby pushed himself close to his wife and said something in her ear. She turned pale, and when he asked if she wished Isabel to go she nodded her head.
"But I won't go at all now," said Isa stubbornly, "unless you will go out of the room first. Then, if Mrs. Plausaby tells me that she wishes to see you and this gentleman without my presence, I shall go."
Mr. Plausaby drew the attorney into one corner of the room for consultation. Nothing but the desperateness of his position and the energetic advice of Mr. Conger could have induced him to take the course which he now decided upon, for force was not a common resort with him, and with all his faults, he was a man of much kindness of heart.
"Isa," he said, "I have always been a father to you. Now you are conspiring against me. If you do not go out, I shall be under the painful necessity of putting you out, gently, but by main strength." The old smile was on his face. He seized her arms, and Isa, seeing how useless resistance would be, and how much harm excitement might do to the patient, rose to go. But at that moment, happening to look toward the bed, she cried out, "Mrs. Plausaby is dying!" and she would not have been a woman if she could have helped adding, "See what you have done, now!"
There was nothing Mr. Plausaby wanted less than that his wife should die at this inconvenient moment. He ran off for the doctor, but poor, weak Mrs. Plausaby was past signing wills or recantations.
The next day she died.
And Isa wrote to Albert:
"METROPOLISVILLE, May 17th, 1857.
"DEAR SIR: Your poor mother died yesterday. She suffered little in body, and her mind was much more peaceful after her last interview with Mr. Lurton, which resulted in her making a frank statement of the circumstances of the land-warrant affair. She afterward had it written down, and signed it, that it might be used to set you free. She also asked me to tell Miss Minorkey, and I shall send her a letter by this mail. I am so glad that your innocence is to be proved at last. I have said nothing about the statement your mother made to any one except Miss Minorkey, because I am unwilling to use it without your consent. You have great reason to be grateful to Mr. Lurton. Ho has shown himself your friend, indeed. I think him an excellent man. He comforted your mother a great deal. You had better let me put the writing your mother left, into his hands. I am sure he will secure your freedom for you.
"Your mother died without any will, and all the property is yours. Your father earned it, and I am glad it goes back to its rightful owner. You will not agree with me, but I believe in a Providence, now, more than ever.
"Truly your friend, ISABEL MARLAY."
The intelligence of his mother's death caused Albert a real sorrow. And yet he could hardly regret it. Charlton was not conscious of anything but a filial grief. But the feeling of relief modified his sorrow.
The letter filled him with a hope of pardon. Now that he could without danger to his mother seek release from an unjust incarceration, he became eager to get out. The possibility of release made every hour of confinement intolerable.
He experienced a certain dissatisfaction with Isa's letter. She had always since his imprisonment taken pains to write cordially. He had been "Dear Mr. Charlton," or "My Dear Mr. Charlton," and sometimes even "My Dear Friend." Isa was anxious that he should not feel any coldness in her letters. Now that he was about to be released and would naturally feel grateful to her, the case was very different. But Albert could not see why she should be so friendly with him when she had every reason to believe him guilty, and now that she knew him innocent should freeze him with a stranger-like coolness. He had resolved to care nothing for her, and yet here he was anxious for some sign that she cared for him.
Albert wrote in reply:
"HOUSE OF BONDAGE, May 20th, 1857.
"MY DEAR, GOOD FRIEND: The death of my mother has given me a great deal of sorrow, though it did not surprise me. I remember now how many times of late years I have given her needless trouble. For whatever mistakes her personal peculiarities led her into, she was certainly a most affectionate mother. I can now see, and the reflection causes me much bitterness, that I might have been more thoughtful of her happiness without compromising my opinions. How much trouble my self-conceit must have given her! Your rebuke on this subject has been very fresh in mind since I heard of her death. And I am feeling lonely, too. Mother and Katy have gone, and more distant relatives will not care to know an outlaw.
"If I had not seen Mr. Lurton, I should not have known how much I owe to your faithful friendship. I doubt not God will reward you. For I, too, am coming to believe in a Providence!
"Sometimes I think this prison has done me good. There may be some truth, after all, in that acrid saying of Mrs. Ferret's about 'sanctified affliction,' though shedoesknow how to make even truth hateful. I haven't learned to believe as you and Mr. Lurton would have me, and yet I have learned not to believe so much in my own infallibility. I have been a high-church skeptic—I thought as much of my own infallibility as poor O'Neill in the next cell does of the Pope's. And I suppose I shall always have a good deal of aggressiveness and uneasiness and all that about me—I am the same restless man yet, full of projects and of opinions. I can not be Lurton—I almost wish I could. But I have learned some things. I am yet very unsettled in my opinions about Christ—sometimes he seems to be a human manifestation of God, and at other times, when my skeptical habit comes back, he seems only the divinest of men. But I believeinhim with all my heart, and may be I shall settle down on some definite opinion after a while. I had a mind to ask Lurton to baptize me the other day, but I feared he wouldn't do it. All the faith I could profess would be that I believe enough in Christ to wish to be his disciple. I know Mr. Lurton wouldn't think that enough. But I don't believe Jesus himself would refuse me. His immediate followers couldn't have believed much more than that at first. And I don't think you would refuse me baptism if you were a minister.
"Mr. Lurton has kindly offered to endeavor to secure my release, and he will call on you for that paper. I hope you'll like Lurton as well as he does you. You are the only woman in the world good enough for him, and he is the only man fit for you. And if it should ever come to pass that you and he should be happy together, I shall be too glad to envy either of you.
"Do shield the memory of my mother. You know how little she was to blame. I can not bear that people should talk about her unkindly. She had such a dread of censure. I think that is what killed her. I am sorry you wrote to Helen Minorkey. I could not now share my disgrace with a wife; and if I could marry,sheis one of the last I should ever think of seeking. I do not even care to have her think well of me.
"As to the property, I am greatly perplexed. Plausaby owned it once rightfully and legally, and there are innocent creditors who trusted him on the strength of his possession of it. I wish I did not have the responsibility of deciding what I ought to do.
"I have written a long letter. I would write a great deal more if I thought I could ever express the gratitude I feel to you. But I am going to be always,
"Your grateful and faithful friend,
This letter set Isabel's mind in a whirl of emotions. She sincerely admired Lurton, but she had never thought of him as a lover. Albert's gratitude and praises would have made her happy, but his confidence that she would marry Lurton vexed her. And yet the thought that Lurton might love her made it hard to keep from dreaming of a new future, brighter than any she had supposed possible to her.