University of Virginia Library

34. CHAPTER XXXIV.
MR. LURTON'S COURTSHIP.

AFTER the death of Mrs. Plausaby, Isa had
broken at once with her uncle-in-law, treating
him with a wholesome contempt whenever she
found opportunity. She had made many apologies
for Plausaby's previous offenses — this was
too much even for her ingenious charity. For want of a better
boarding-place, she had taken up her abode at Mrs. Ferret's,
and had opened a little summer-school in the village school-house.
She began immediately to devise means for securing
Charlton's release. Her first step was to write to Lurton, but
she had hardly mailed the letter, when she received Albert's, announcing
that Lurton was coming to see her; and almost immediately
that gentleman himself appeared again in Metropolisville.
He spent the evening in devising with Isa proper means
of laying the evidences of Charlton's innocence before the President
in a way calculated to secure his pardon. Lurton knew
two Representatives and one Senator, and he had hope of being
able to interest them in the case. He would go to Washington
himself. Isa thought his offer very generous, and
found in her heart a great admiration for him. Lurton, on
his part, regarded Isabel with more and more wonder and

affection. He told her at last, in a sweet and sincere humility,
the burden of his heart. He confessed his love with a
frankness that was very winning, and with a gentle deference
that revealed him to her the man he was—affectionate,
sincere, and unselfish.

If Isabel had been impulsive, she would have accepted at
once, under the influence of his presence. But she had a
wise, practical way of taking time to think. She endeavored
to eliminate entirely the element of feeling, and see the offer
in the light in which it would show itself after present circumstances
had passed. For if Lurton had been a crafty
man, he could not have offered himself at a moment more
opportune. Isa was now homeless, and without a future.
If you ask me why, then, she did not accept Lurton without
hesitation, I answer that I can no more explain this
than I can explain all the other paradoxes of love that I
see every day. Was it that he was too perfect? Is it easier
for a woman to love a man than a model? People are not
apt to be enamored of monotony, even of a monotony of
goodness. Was it, then, that Isa would have liked a man
whose soul had been a battle-field, rather than one in whom
goodness and faith had had an easy time? Did she feel
more sympathy for one who had fought and overcome, like
Charlton, than for one who had never known a great struggle?
Perhaps I have not touched at all upon the real reason
for Isa's hesitation. But she certainly did hesitate. She found
it quite impossible to analyze her own feelings in the matter.
The more she thought about it, the more hopeless her confusion
became.

It is one of the unhappy results produced by some works

of religious biography, that people who copy methods, are
prone to copy those not adapted to their own peculiarities.
Isabel, in her extremity of indecision, remembered that some
saint of the latter part of the last century, whose biography
she had read in a Sunday-school library-book, was wont, when
undecided in weighty matters, to write down all the reasons,
pro and con, and cipher out a conclusion by striking a logical
balance. It naturally occurred to Isa that what so good and
wise a person had found beneficial, might also prove an
assistance to her. So she wrote down the following:

“Reasons in Favor.

“1. Mr. Lurton is one of the most excellent men in the
world. I have a very great respect and a sincere regard for
him. If he were my husband, I do not think I should
ever find anything to prevent me loving him.

“2. The life of a minister's wife would open to me
opportunities to do good. I could at least encourage and
sustain him.

“3. It seems to be providential that the offer should
come at this time, when I am free from all obligations that
would interfere with it, and when I seem to have no other
prospect.

“Reasons Against.

“1.”—

But here she stopped. There was nothing to be said
against Mr. Lurton, or against her accepting the offered happiness.
She would then lead the quiet, peaceful life of a village-minister's
wife who does her duty to her husband and her
neighbors. Her generous nature found pleasure in the thought

of all the employments that would fill her heart and hands.
How much better it would be to have a home, and to have
others to work for, than to lead the life of a stranger in other
people's houses! And then she blushed, and was happy at
the thought that there would be children's voices in the house
—little stockings in the basket on a Saturday night—there
would be the tender cares of the mother. How much better
was such a life than a lonely one!

It was not until some hours of such thinking—of more
castle-building than the sober-spirited girl had done in her
whole life before—that she became painfully conscious that
in all this dreaming of her future as the friend of the parishioners
and the house-mother, Lurton himself was a figure
in the background of her thoughts. He did not excite any
enthusiasm in her heart. She took up her paper; she read
over again the reasons why she ought to love Lurton. But
though reason may chain Love and forbid his going wrong,
all the logic in the world can not make him go where he
will not. She had always acted as a most rational creature.
Now, for the first time, she could not make her heart go
where she would. Love in such cases seems held back by
intuition, by a logic so high and fine that its terms can not
be stated. Love has a balance-sheet in which all is invisible
except the totals. I have noticed that practical and matter-of-fact
women are most of all likely to be exacting and ideal
in love affairs. Or, is it that this high and ideal way of
looking at such affairs is only another manifestation of practical
wisdom?

Certain it is, that though Isa found it impossible to set
down a single reason for not loving so good a man with

the utmost fervor, she found it equally impossible to love him
with any fervor at all.

Then she fell to pitying Lurton. She could make him
happy and help him to be useful, and she thought she
ought to do it. But could she love Lurton better than she
could have loved any other man? Now, I know that most
marriages are not contracted on this basis. It is not given
to every one to receive this saying. I am quite aware
that preaching on this subject would be vain. Comparatively
few people can live in this atmosphere. But noblesse oblige
—noblesse does more than oblige—and Isa Marlay, against all
her habits of acting on practical expediency, could not bring
herself to marry the excellent Lurton without a consciousness
of moral descending, while she could not give herself a single
satisfactory reason for feeling so.

It went hard with Lurton. He had been so sure of divine
approval and guidance that he had not counted failure
possible. But at such times the man of trustful and serene
habit has a great advantage. He took the great disappointment
as a needed spiritual discipline; he shouldered this load
as he had carried all smaller burdens, and went on his way
without a murmur.

Having resigned his Stillwater pastorate from a conviction
that his ministry among red-shirted lumbermen was not a great
success, he armed himself with letters from the warden of the
prison and the other ministers who had served as chaplains,
and, above all, with Mrs. Plausaby's written confession, and set
out for Washington. He easily secured money to defray the
expense of the journey from Plausaby, who held some funds
belonging to his wife's estate, and who yielded to a very

gentle pressure from Lurton, knowing how entirely he was
in Lurton's power.

It is proper to say here that Albert's scrupulous conscience
was never troubled about the settlement of his mother's
estate. Plausaby had an old will, which bequeathed all to
him in fee simple. He presented it for probate, and would
have succeeded, doubtless, in saving something by acute jug-gling
with his creditors, but that he heard ominous whispers
of the real solution of the mystery—where they came from
he could not tell. Thinking that Isa was planning his
arrest, he suddenly left the country. He turned up afterwards
as president of a Nevada silver-mine company, which did a
large business in stocks but a small one in dividends; and
I have a vague impression that he had something to do with
the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. His creditors made
short work of the property left by Mrs. Plausaby.