University of Virginia Library

31. CHAPTER XXXI.
MR. LURTON.

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 cpithets 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:

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:

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

mature 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 in
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.