University of Virginia Library

29. CHAPTER XXIX.
IN WHICH A CRISIS APPROACHES.

One cannot play with fire without burning one's fingers.
Woodbury supposed that he was pursuing an experiment,
which might at any moment be relinquished, long after a deep
and irresistible interest in its object had taken full possession
of him. Seeing Hannah Thurston only as a daughter—conversing
with her only as a woman—her other character ceased
to be habitually present to his mind. After a few visits, the
question which he asked himself was not: “Will I be able to
love her?” but: “Will I be able to make her love me?” Of
his own ability to answer the former question he was entirely
satisfied, though he steadily denied to himself the present existence
of passion. He acknowledged that her attraction for
him had greatly strengthened—that he detected a new pleasure
in her society—that she was not unfemininely cold and hard,
as he had feared, but at least gentle and tender: yet, with all
this knowledge, there came no passionate, perturbing thrill to
his heart, such as once had heralded the approach of love. She
had now a permanent place in his thoughts, it is true: he
could scarcely have shut her out, if he had wished: and all
the new knowledge which he had acquired prompted him to
stake his rising hopes upon one courageous throw, and trust
the future, if he gained it, to the deeper and truer development
of her nature which would follow.

At the next visit which he paid to the cottage after Mrs.
Waldo's half-reproachful complaint, the friendly warmth with
which Hannah Thurston received him sent a delicious throb
of sweetness to his heart. Poor Hannah! In her anxiety to

be just, she had totally forgotten what her treatment of Seth
Wattles, from a similar impulse, had brought upon her. She
only saw, in Woodbury's face, the grateful recognition of her
manner towards him, and her conscience became quiet at once.
The key-note struck at greeting gave its character to the interview,
which Woodbury prolonged much beyond his usual
habit. He had never been so attractive, but at the same time,
his presence had never before caused her such vague alarm.
All the cold indifference, which she had once imagined to be
his predominant characteristic, had melted like a snow-wreath
in the sunshine: a soft, warm, pliant grace diffused itself over
his features and form, and a happy under-current of feeling
made itself heard in his lightest words. He drew her genuine
self to the light, before she suspected how much she had
allowed him to see: she, who had resolved that he should only
know her in her strength, had made a voluntary confession of
her weakness!

Hannah Thurston was proud as she was pure, and this weird
and dangerous power in the man, wounded as well as disturbed
her. She felt sure that he exercised it unconsciously,
and therefore he was not to be blamed; but it assailed her individual
freedom—her coveted independence of other minds—
none the less. It was weakness to shrink from the encounter:
it was humiliation to acknowledge, as she must, that her
powers of resistance diminished with each attack.

Woodbury rode home that evening very slowly. For the
first time since Bute's marriage, as he looked across the meadows
to a dusky white speck that glimmered from the knoll in
the darkening twilight, there was no pang at his heart. “I
foresee,” he said to himself, “that if I do not take care, I shall
love this girl madly and passionately. I know her now in her
true tenderness and purity; I see what a wealth of womanhood
is hidden under her mistaken aims. But is she not too
loftily pure—too ideal in her aspirations—for my winning?
Can she bear the knowledge of my life? I cannot spare her
the test. If she comes to me at last, it must be with eveey

veil of the Past lifted. There dare be no mystery between
us—no skeleton in our cupboard. If she were less true, less
noble—but no, there can be no real sacrament of marriage,
without previous confession. I am laying the basis of relations
that stretch beyond this life. It would be a greater wrong to
shrink, for her sake, than for my own. It must come to this,
and God give her strength of heart equal to her strength of
mind!”

Woodbury felt that her relation to him had changed, and
he could estimate, very nearly, the character which it had now
assumed. Of her struggles with herself—of the painful impression
which his visits left behind—he had, of course, not
the slightest presentiment. He knew, however, that no suspicion
of his feelings had entered her breast, and he had
reasons of his own for desiring that she should remain innocent
of their existence, for the present. His plans, here, came
to an end, for the change in himself interposed an anxiety
which obscured his thoughts. He had reached the point where
all calculation fails, and where the strongest man, if his passion
be genuine, must place his destiny in the hands of
Chance.

But there is, fortunately, a special chance provided for cases
of this kind. All the moods of Nature, all the little accidents
of life, become the allies of love. When the lover, looking
back from his post of assured fortune over the steps by which
he attained it, thinks: “Had it not been for such or such a
circumstance, I might have wholly missed my happiness,” he
does not recognize that all the powers of the earth and air
were really in league with him—that his success was not the
miracle he supposed, but that his failure would have been. It
is well, however, that this delusion should come to silence the
voice of pride, and temper his heart with a grateful humility:
for him it is necessary that “fear and sorrow fan the fire of
joy.”

Woodbury had no sooner intrusted to Chance the further
development of his fate, than Chance generously requited the

trust. It was certainly a wonderful coincidence that, as he
walked into Ptolemy on a golden afternoon in late September,
quite uncertain whether he should this time call at the widow's
cottage, he should meet Hannah Thurston on foot, just at the
junction of the Anacreon and Mulligansville highways. It
was Miss Sophia Stevenson's day for relieving her, and she had
gone out for her accustomed walk up the banks of the stream.

As Woodbury lifted his hat to greet her, his face brightened
with a pleasure which he did not now care to conceal. There
was a hearty, confiding warmth in the grasp of his hand, as he
stood face to face, looking into her clear, dark-gray eyes with
an expression as frank and unembarrassed as a boy's. It was
this transparent warmth and frankness which swept away her
cautious resolves at a touch. In spite of herself, she felt that
an intimate friendship was fast growing up between them, and
she knew not why the consciousness of it should make her so
uneasy. There was surely no reproach to her in the fact that
their ideas and habits were so different; there was none of
her friends with whom she did not differ on points more or
less important. The current setting towards her was pure
and crystal-clear, yet she drew back from it as from the rush
of a dark and turbid torrent.

“Well-met!” cried Woodbury, with a familiar playfulness.
“We are both of one mind to-day, and what a day for out-of-doors!
I am glad you are able to possess a part of it; your
mother is better, I hope?”

“She is much as usual, and I should not have left her, but
for the kindness of a friend who comes regularly on this day
of the week to take my place for an hour or two.”

“Have you this relief but once in seven days?”

“Oh, no. Mrs. Styles comes on Tuesdays, and those two
days, I find, are sufficient for my needs. Mrs. Waldo would
relieve me every afternoon if I would allow her.”

“If you are half as little inclined for lonely walks as I am,”
said Woodbury, “you will not refuse my companionship to-day.
I see you are going out the eastern road.”

“My favorite walk,” she answered, “is in the meadows
yonder. It is the wildest and most secluded spot in the neighborhood
of the village.”

“Ah, I have noticed, from the road, in passing, the beauty
of those elms and clumps of alder, and the picturesque curves
of the creek. I should like to make a nearer acquaintance
with them. Do you feel sufficient confidence in my appreciation
of Nature to perform the introduction?”

“Nature is not exclusive,” said she, adopting his gay tone,
“and if she were, I think she could not exclude you, who have
known her in her royal moods, from so simple and unpretending
a landscape as this.”

“The comparison is good,” he answered, walking onward
by her side, “but you have drawn the wrong inference. I
find that every landscape has an individual character. The
royal moods, as you rightly term them, may impose upon us,
like human royalty; but the fact that you have been presented
at Court does not necessarily cause the humblest man to open
his heart to you. What is it to yonder alder thickets that I
have looked on the Himalayas? What does East Atauga Creek
care for the fact that I have floated on the Ganges? If the
scene has a soul at all, it will recognize every one of your footsteps,
and turn a cold shoulder to me, if I come with any such
pretensions.”

Hannah Thurston laughed at the easy adroitness with which
he had taken up and applied her words. It was a light, graceful
play of intellect to which she was unaccustomed—which,
indeed, a year previous, would have struck her as trivial and
unworthy an earnest mind. But she had learned something
in that time. Her own mind was no longer content to move
in its former rigid channels; she acknowledged the cheerful
brightness which a sunbeam of fancy can diffuse over the sober
coloring of thought.

He let down the movable rails from the panel of fence
which gave admittance into the meadow, and put them up
again after they had entered. The turf was thick and dry,

with a delightful elasticity which lifted the feet where they
pressed it. A few paces brought them to the edge of the belt
of thickets, or rather islands of lofty shrubbery, between which
the cattle had worn paths, and which here and there enclosed
little peninsulas of grass and mint, embraced by the swift
stream. The tall autumnal flowers, yellow and dusky purple,
bloomed on all sides, and bunches of the lovely fringed
gentian, blue as a wave of the Mediterranean, were set among
the ripe grass like sapphires in gold. The elms which at intervals
towered over this picturesque jungle, had grown up
since the valley-bottom was cleared, and no neighboring trees
had marred the superb symmetry of their limbs.

Threading the winding paths to the brink of the stream, or
back again to the open meadow, as the glimpses through the
labyrinth enticed them, they slowly wandered away from the
road. Woodbury was not ashamed to show his delight in
every new fragment of landscape which their exploration disclosed,
and Miss Thurston was thus led to make him acquainted
with her own selected gallery of pictures, although her exclusive
right of possession to them thereby passed away forever.

Across one of the bare, grassy peninsulas between the thicket
and the stream lay a huge log which the spring freshet had stolen
from some saw-mill far up the valley. Beyond it, the watery
windings ceased for a hundred yards or more, opening a space
for the hazy hills in the distance to show their purple crests.
Otherwise, the spot was wholly secluded: there was not a
dwelling in sight, nor even a fence, to recall the vicinity of
human life. This was the enticing limit of Hannah Thurston's
walks. She had not intended to go so far to-day, but “a
spirit in her feet” brought her to the place before she was
aware.

“Ah!” cried Woodbury, as they emerged from the tangled
paths, “I see that you are recognized here. Nature has intentionally
placed this seat for you at the very spot where you
have at once the sight of the hills and the sound of the water.
How musical it is, just at this point! I know you sing here,

sometimes: you cannot help it, with such an accompaniment.”

She did not answer, but a flitting smile betrayed her assent.
They took their seats on the log, as if by a silent understanding.
The liquid gossip of the stream, in which many voices
seemed to mingle in shades of tone so delicate that the ear
lost, as soon as it caught them, sounded lullingly at their feet.
Now and then a golden leaf dropped from the overhanging
elm, and quivered slantwise to the ground.

“Ah, that reminds me,” said Woodbury, finally breaking
the peaceful, entrancing silence—“one of those exquisite songs
in `The princess' came into my head. Have you read the
book? You promised to tell me what impression it made
upon you.”

“Your judgment is correct, so far,” she answered, “that it
is poetry, not argument. But it could never have been written
by one who believes in the just rights of woman. In the
first place, the Princess has a very faulty view of those rights,
and in the second place she adopts a plan to secure them which
is entirely impracticable. If the book had been written for a
serious purpose, I should have been disappointed; but, taking
it for what it is, it has given me very great pleasure.”

“You say the Princess's plan of educating her sex to independence
is impracticable; yet—pardon me if I have misunderstood
you—you seem to attribute your subjection to the influence
of man—an influence which must continue to exercise the
same power it ever has. What plan would you substitute for
hers?”

“I do not know,” she answered, hesitatingly; “I can only
hope and believe that the Truth must finally vindicate itself.
I have never aimed at any thing more than to assert it.”

“Then you do not place yourself in an attitude hostile to
man?” he asked.

Hannah Thurston was embarrassed for a moment, but her
frankness conquered. “I fear, indeed, that I have done so,”
she said. “There have been times when a cruel attack has

driven me to resistance. You can scarcely appreciate our
position, Mr. Woodbury. We could bear open and honorable
hostility, but the conventionalities which protect us against
that offer us no defence from sneers and ridicule. The very
term applied to us—`strong-minded'—implies that weak minds
are our natural and appropriate inheritance. It is in human
nature, I think, to forgive honest enmity sooner than covert
contempt.”

“Would it satisfy you that the sincerity and unselfishness
of your aims are honored, though the aims themselves are
accounted mistaken.”

“It is all we could ask now!” she exclaimed, her eyes growing
darker and brighter, and her voice thrilling with its earnest
sweetness. “But who would give us that much?”

“I would,” said Woodbury, quietly. “Will you pardon
me for saying that it has seemed to me, until recently, as if
you suspected me of an active hostility which I have really
never felt. My opinions are the result of my experience of
men, and you cannot wonder if they differ from yours. I
should be very wrong to arrogate to myself any natural superiority
over you. I think there never can be any difficulty in
determining the relative rights of the sexes, when they truly
understand and respect each other. I can unite with you in
desiring reciprocal knowledge and reciprocal honor. If that
shall be attained, will you trust to the result?”

“Forgive me: I did misunderstand you,” she said, not
answering his last question.

A pause ensued. The stream gurgled on, and the purple
hills smiled through the gaps in the autumnal foliage. “Do
you believe that Ida was happier with the Prince, supposing
he were faithful to the picture he drew, than if she had remained
at the head of her college?” he suddenly asked.

“You will acquit me of hostility to your sex when I say `Yes.'
The Prince promised her equality, not subjection. It is sad
that the noble and eloquent close of the poem should be its
most imaginative part.”

The tone of mournful unbelief in her voice fired Woodbury's
blood. His heart protested against her words and demanded
to be heard. The deepening intimacy of their talk had brought
him to that verge of frankness where the sanctities of feeling,
which hide themselves from the gaze of the world, steal up to
the light and boldly reveal their features. “No,” he said, warmly
and earnestly, “the picture is not imaginative. Its counterpart
exists in the heart of every true man. There can be no
ideal perfection in marriage because there is none in life; but
it can, and should, embody the tenderest affection, the deepest
trust, the divinest charity, and the purest faith which human
nature is capable of manifesting. I, for one man, found my own
dream in the words of the Prince. I have not remained unmarried
from a selfish idea of independence or from a want of
reverence for woman. Because I hold her so high, because I
seek to set her side by side with me in love and duty and confidence,
I cannot profane her and myself by an imperfect union.
I do not understand love without the most absolute mutual
knowledge, and a trust so complete that there can be no question
of rights on either side. Where that is given, man will
never withhold, nor will woman demand, what she should or
should not possess. That is my dream of marriage, and it is
not a dream too high for attainment in this life!”

The sight of Hannah Thurston's face compelled him to
pause. She was deadly pale, and trembled visibly. The moment
he ceased speaking, she rose from her seat, and, after
mechanically plucking some twigs of the berried bittersweet,
said: “It is time for me to return.”

Woodbury had not intended to say so much, and was fearful,
at first, that his impassioned manner had suggested the
secret he still determined to hide. In that case, she evidently
desired to escape its utterance, but he had a presentiment that
her agitation was owing to a different cause. Could it be
that he had awakened the memory of some experience of love
through which she had passed? After the first jealous doubt
which this thought inspired, it presented itself to his mind as

a relief. The duty which pressed upon him would be more
lightly performed; the test to which he must first subject
her would be surer of success.

As they threaded the embowered paths on their homeward
way, he said to her, gravely, but cheerfully: “You see, Miss
Thurston, your doubt of my sex has forced me to show myself
to you as I am, in one respect. But I will not regret the confession,
unless you should think it intrusive.”

“Believe me,” she answered, “I know how to value it.
You have made me ashamed of my unbelief.”

“And you have confirmed me in my belief. This is a subject
which neither man nor woman can rightly interpret,
alone. Why should we never speak of that which is most
vital in our lives? Here, indeed, we are governed by conventional
ideas, springing from a want of truth and purity.
But a man is always ennobled by allowing a noble woman to
look into his heart. Do you recollect my story about the
help Mrs. Blake gave me, under awkward circumstances,
before her marriage?”

“Perfectly. It was that story which made me wish to
know her. What an admirable woman she is!”

“Admirable, indeed!” Woodbury exclaimed. “That was
not the only, nor the best help she gave me. I learned from
her that women, when they are capable of friendship—don't
misunderstand me, I should say the same thing of men—are
the most devoted friends in the world. She is the only consoling
figure in an episode of my life which had a great influence
upon my fate. The story is long since at an end, but I
should like to tell it to you, some time.”

“If you are willing to do so, I shall be glad to hear another
instance of Mrs. Blake's kindness.”

“Not only that,” Woodbury continued, “but still another
portion of my history. I will not press my confidence upon
you, but I shall be glad, very glad, if you will kindly consent
to receive it. Some things in my life suggest questions which
I have tried to answer, and cannot. I must have a woman's

help. I know you are all truth and candor, and I am willing
to place my doubts in your hands.”

He spoke earnestly and eagerly, walking by her side, but
with eyes fixed upon the ground. His words produced in
her a feeling of interest and curiosity, under which lurked a
singular reluctance. She was still unnerved by her former
agitation. “Why should you place such confidence in me?”
she at length faltered. “You have other friends who deserve
it better.”

“We cannot always explain our instincts,” he answered.
“I must tell you, and you alone. If I am to have help in
these doubts, it is you who can give it.”

His words seized her and held her powerless. Her Quaker
blood still acknowledged the authority of those mysterious
impulses which are truer than reason, because they come from
a deeper source. He spoke with a conviction from which
there was no appeal, and the words of refusal vanished from
her lips and from her heart.

“Tell me, then,” she said. “I will do my best. I hope I
may be able to help you.”

He took her hand and held it a moment, with a warm pressure.
“God bless you!” was all he said.

They silently returned up the road. On reaching the gate
of the cottage, he took leave of her, saying: “You will have
my story to-morrow.” His face was earnest and troubled;
it denoted the presence of a mystery, the character of which
she could not surmise.

On entering the cottage, she first went up-stairs to her own
room. She had a sensation of some strange expression having
come over her face, which must be banished from it before she
could meet her mother. She must have five minutes alone to
think upon what had passed, before she could temporarily put
it away from her mind. But her thoughts were an indistinct
chaos, through which only two palpable sensations crossed each
other as they moved to and fro—one of unreasoning joy, one
of equally unreasoning terror. What either of them portended

she could not guess. She only felt that there was no stable
point to which she could cling, but the very base of her being
seemed to shift as her thoughts pierced down to it.

Her eyes fell upon the volume of “The Princess,” which lay
upon the little table beside her bed. She took it up with a
sudden desire to read again the closing scene, where the
heroine lays her masculine ambition in the hands of love. The
book opened of itself, at another page: the first words arrested
her eye and she read, involuntarily:

The weird, uncontrollable power which had taken possession
of her reached its climax. She threw down the book and
burst into tears.