University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
ELWOOD'S EVENING, AND JOSEPH'S.

For half a mile Elwood Withers followed the carriage
containing Anna Warriner and her friend; then, at the
curve of the valley, their roads parted, and Lucy and he
were alone. The soft light of the delicious summer evening
was around them; the air, cooled by the stream which
broadened and bickered beside their way, was full of all
healthy meadow odors, and every farm in the branching
dells they passed was a picture of tranquil happiness. Yet
Lucy had sighed before she was aware of it,—a very faint,
tremulous breath, but it reached Elwood's sensitive ear.

“You don't seem quite well, Lucy,” he said.

“Because I have talked so little?” she asked.

“Not just that, but—but I was almost afraid my coming
for you was not welcome. I don't mean—” But here he
grew confused, and did not finish the sentence.

“Indeed, it was very kind of you,” said she. This was
not an answer to his remark, and both felt that it was
not.

Elwood struck the horse with his whip, then as suddenly
drew the reins on the startled animal. “Pshaw!” he exclaimed,
in a tone that was almost fierce, “what's the use o'
my beating about the bush in this way?”

Lucy caught her breath, and clenched her hands under her
shawl for one instant. Then she became calm, and waited for
him to say more.

“Lucy!” he continued, turning towards her, “you have a
right to think me a fool. I can talk to anybody else more
freely than to you, and the reason is, I want to say more to
you than to any other woman! There's no use in my being
a coward any longer; it's a desperate venture I'm making,
but it must be made. Have you never guessed how I feel
towards you?”

“Yes,” she answered, very quietly.

“Well, what do you say to it?” He tried to speak
calmly, but his breath came thick and hard, and the words
sounded hoarsely.

“I will say this, Elwood,” said she, “that because I saw
your heart, I have watched your ways and studied your
character. I find you honest and manly in everything, and
so tender and faithful that I wish I could return your affection
in the same measure.”

A gleam, as of lightning, passed over his face.

“O, don't misunderstand me!” she cried, her calmness forsaking
her, “I esteem, I honor you, and that makes it harder
for me to seem ungrateful, unfeeling,—as I must. Elwood,
if I could, I would answer you as you wish, but I cannot.”

“If I wait?” he whispered.

“And lose your best years in a vain hope! No, Elwood,
my friend,—let me always call you so,—I have been cowardly
also. I knew an explanation must come, and I shrank
from the pain I should feel in giving you pain. It is hard;
and better for both of us that it should not be repeated!”

“There's something wrong in this world!” he exclaimed,
after a long pause. “I suppose you could no more force
yourself to love me than I could force myself to love Anna
Warriner or that Miss Blessing. Then what put it into my
heart to love you? Was it God or the Devil!”

“Elwood!”

“How can I help myself? Can I help drawing my
breath? Did I set about it of my own will? Here I see
a life that belongs to my own life,—as much a part of it as
my head or heart; but I can't reach it,—it draws away from
me, and maybe joins itself to some one else forever! O my
God!”

Lucy burst into such a violent passion of weeping, that
Elwood forgot himself in his trouble for her. He had never
witnessed such grief, as it seemed to him, and his honest
heart was filled with self-reproach at having caused it.

“Forgive me, Lucy!” he said, very tenderly encircling
her with his arm, and drawing her head upon his shoulder;
“I spoke rashly and wickedly, in my disappointment. I
thought only of myself, and forgot that I might hurt you
by my words. I'm not the only man who has this kind of
trouble to bear; and perhaps if I could see clearer—but I
don't know; I can only see one thing.”

She grew calmer as he spoke. Lifting her head from his
shoulder, she took his hand, and said: “You are a true and
a noble man, Elwood. It is only a grief to me that I cannot
love you as a wife should love her husband. But my
will is as powerless as yours.”

“I believe you, Lucy,” he answered, sadly. “It's not
your fault,—but, then, it isn't mine, either. You make me
feel that the same rule fits both of us, leastways so far as
helping the matter is concerned. You needn't tell me I
may find another woman to love; the very thought of it
makes me sick at heart. I'm rougher than you are, and
awkward in my ways—”

“It is not that! O, believe me, it is not that!” cried
Lucy, interrupting him. “Have you ever sought for reasons

to account for your feeling toward me? Is it not something
that does not seem to depend upon what I am,—upon any
qualities that distinguish me from other women?”

“How do you know so much?” Elwood asked. “Have
you—” He commenced, but did not finish the question.
He leaned silently forward, urged on the horse, and Lucy
could see that his face was very stern.

“They say,” she began, on finding that he was not inclined
to speak,—“they say that women have a natural instinct
which helps them to understand many things; and I think
it must be true. Why can you not spare me the demand
for reasons which I have not? If I were to take time, and
consider it, and try to explain, it would be of no help to you: it
would not change the fact. I suppose a man feels humiliated
when this trouble comes upon him. He shows his heart, and
there seems to be a claim upon the woman of his choice to
show hers in return. The sense of injustice is worse than
humiliation, Elwood. Though I cannot, cannot do otherwise,
I shall always have the feeling that I have wronged you.”

“O Lucy,” he murmured, in a very sad, but not reproachful
voice, “every word you say, in showing me that I must
give you up, only makes it more impossible to me. And it
is just impossible,—that's the end of the matter! I know
how people talk about trials being sent us for our good, and
its being the will of God, and all that. It's a trial, that's
true: whether it's for my good or not, I shall learn after a
while; but I can find out God's will only by trying the
strength of my own. Don't be afeared, Lucy! I've no
notion of saying or doing anything from this time on to disturb
you, but here you are” (striking his breast with his
clenched hand), “and here you will be when the day comes,
as I feel that it must and shall come, to bring us together!”

She could see the glow of his face in the gathering dusk,
as he turned towards her and offered his hand. How could
she help taking it? If some pulse in her own betrayed the
thrill of admiring recognition of the man's powerful and
tender nature, which suddenly warmed her oppressed blood,
she did not fear that he would draw courage from the token.
She wished to speak, but found no words which, coming
after his, would not have seemed either cold and unsympathetic,
or too near the verge of the hope which she would
gladly have crushed.

Elwood was silent for a while, and hardly appeared to be
awaiting an answer. Meanwhile the road left the valley,
climbing the shoulders of its enclosing hills, where the moist
meadow fragrance was left behind, and dry, warm breezes,
filled with the peculiar smell of the wheat-fields, blew over
them. It was but a mile farther to the Corner, near which
Lucy's parents resided.

“How came you three to go to Joseph's place this afternoon?”
he asked. “Wasn't it a dodge of Miss Blessing's?”

“She proposed it,—partly in play, I think; and when she
afterwards insisted on our going, there seemed to be no good
reason for refusing.”

“O, of course not,” said Elwood; “but tell me now,
honestly, Lucy, what do you make out of her?”

Lucy hesitated a moment. “She is a little wilful in her
ways, perhaps, but we mustn't judge too hastily. We have
known her such a short time. Her manner is very amiable.”

“I don't know about that,” Elwood remarked. “It reminds
me of one of her dresses,—so ruffled, and puckered,
and stuck over with ribbons and things, that you can't
rightly tell what the stuff is. I'd like to be sure whether
she has an eye to Joseph.”

“To him!” Lucy exclaimed.

“Him first and foremost! He's as innocent as a year-old
baby. There isn't a better fellow living than Joseph Asten,
but his bringing up has been fitter for a girl than a boy. He
hasn't had his eye-teeth cut yet, and it's my opinion that she
has.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“No harm. Used to the world, as much as anything else.
He don't know how to take people; he thinks th' outside
color runs down to the core. So it does with him; but I
can't see what that girl is, under her pleasant ways, and he
won't guess that there's anything else of her. Between
ourselves, Lucy,—you don't like her. I saw that when you
came away, though you were kissing each other at the time.”

“What a hypocrite I must be!” cried Lucy, rather
fiercely.

“Not a bit of it. Women kiss as men shake hands. You
don't go around, saying, `Julia dear!' like Anna Warriner.”

Lucy could not help laughing. “There,” she said, “that's
enough, Elwood! I'd rather you would think yourself in
the right than to say anything more about her this evening.”

She sighed wearily, not attempting to conceal her fatigue
and depression.

“Well, well!” he replied; “I'll pester you no more with
disagreeable subjects. There's the house, now, and you'll
soon be rid of me. I won't tell you, Lucy, that if you ever
want for friendly service, you must look to me,—because I'm
afeared you won't feel free to do it; but you'll take all I
can find to do without your asking.”

Without waiting for an answer he drew up his horse at
the gate of her home, handed her out, said “Good night!”
and drove away.

Such a singular restlessness took possession of Joseph,
after the departure of his guests, that the evening quiet of
the farm became intolerable. He saddled his horse and set
out for the village, readily inventing an errand which explained
the ride to himself as well as to his aunt.

The regular movements of the animal did not banish the
unquiet motions of his mind, but it relieved him by giving
them a wider sweep and a more definite form. The man
who walks is subject to the power of his Antæus of a body,
moving forwards only by means of the weight which holds it
to the earth. There is a clog upon all his thoughts, an ever-present
sense of restriction and impotence. But when he is
lifted above the soil, with the air under his foot-soles, swiftly
moving without effort, his mind, a poising Mercury, mounts
on winged heels. He feels the liberation of new and nimble
powers; wider horizons stretch around his inward vision;
obstacles are measured or overlooked; the brute strength
under him charges his whole nature with a more vigorous
electricity.

The fresh, warm, healthy vital force which filled Joseph's
body to the last embranchment of every nerve and vein—
the hum of those multitudinous spirits of life, which, while
building their glorious abode, march as if in triumphant procession
through its secret passages, and summon all the fairest
phantoms of sense to their completed chambers—constituted,
far more than he suspected, an element of his disturbance.
This was the strong pinion on which his mind and
soul hung balanced, above the close atmosphere which he
seemed to ride away from, as he rode. The great joy of human
life filled and thrilled him; all possibilities of action and
pleasure and emotion swam before his sight; all he had read
or heard of individual careers in all ages, climates; and conditiens

of the race—dazzling pictures of the myriad-sided
earth, to be won by whosoever dared arbitrarily to seize the
freedom waiting for his grasp—floated through his brain.

Hitherto a conscience not born of his own nature,—a very
fair and saintly-visaged jailer of thought, but a jailer none
the less,—had kept strict guard over every outward movement
of his mind, gently touching hope and desire and conjecture
when they reached a certain line, and saying, “No;
no farther: it is prohibited.” But now, with one strong,
involuntary throb, he found himself beyond the line, with
all the ranges ever trodden by man stretching forward to
a limitless horizon. He rose in his stirrups, threw out his
arms, lifted his face towards the sky, and cried, “God! I see
what I am!”

It was only a glimpse,—like that of a landscape struck in
golden fire by lightning, from the darkness. “What is it,”
he mused, “that stands between me and this vision of life?
Who built a wall of imaginary law around these needs, which
are in themselves inexorable laws? The World, the Flesh,
and the Devil, they say in warning. Bright, boundless
world, my home, my play-ground, my battle-field, my kingdom
to be conquered! And this body they tell me to despise,—this
perishing house of clay, which is so intimately
myself that its comfort and delight cheer me to the inmost
soul: it is a dwelling fit for an angel to inhabit! Shall not
its hungering senses all be fed? Who shall decide for me
—if not myself—on their claims?—who can judge for me
what strength requires to be exercised, what pleasure to be
enjoyed, what growth to be forwarded? All around me,
everywhere, are the means of gratification,—I have but to
reach forth my hand and grasp; but a narrow cell, built
ages ago, encloses me wherever I go!”

Such was the vague substance of his thoughts. It was the
old struggle between life—primitive, untamed life, as the
first man may have felt it—and its many masters: assertion
and resistance, all the more fierce because so many influences
laid their hands upon its forces. As he came back to his
usual self, refreshed by this temporary escape, Joseph wondered
whether other men shared the same longing and impatience;
and this turned his musings into another channel.
“Why do men so carefully conceal what is deepest and
strongest in their natures? Why is so little of spiritual
struggle and experience ever imparted? The convert publicly
admits his sinful experience, and tries to explain the entrance
of grace into his regenerated nature; the reformed drunkard
seems to take a positive delight in making his former condition
degraded and loathsome; but the opening of the individual
life to the knowledge of power and passion and all the
possibilities of the world is kept more secret than sin. Love
is hidden as if it were a reproach; friendship watched, lest
it express its warmth too frankly; joy and grief and doubt
and anxiety repressed as much as possible. A great lid is
shut down upon the human race. They must painfully stoop
and creep, instead of standing erect with only God's heaven
over their heads. I am lonely, but I know not how to cry
for companionship; my words would not be understood, or,
if they were, would not be answered. Only one gate is free
to me,—that leading to the love of woman. There, at least,
must be such an intense, intimate sympathy as shall make
the reciprocal revelation of the lives possible!”

Full of this single certainty, which, the more he pondered
upon it, seemed to be his nearest chance of help, Joseph rode
slowly homewards. Rachel Miller, who had impatiently
awaited his coming, remarked the abstraction of his face, and

attributed it to a very different cause. She was thereby
wonderfully strengthened to make her communication in
regard to the evening company; nevertheless, the subject
was so slowly approached and so ambiguously alluded to,
that Joseph could not immediately understand it.

“That is something! That is a step!” he said to himself;
then turning towards her with a genuine satisfaction in
his face, added: “Aunt, do you know that I have never
really felt until now that I am the owner of this property?
It will be more of a home to me after I have received the
neighborhood as my guests. It has always controlled me,
but now it must serve me.”

He laughed in great good-humor, and Rachel Miller, in
her heart, thanked Miss Julia Blessing.