CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library PS 3142.S8 1985 3 1924 008 705 216 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis bool< is in tile Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924008705216 THE STORY OF AVIS. EY ELIZABETH STUART (pHELPsj Wo^^ Author of "The Gates Ajar." " Now, all the meaning of the King was to see Sir Galahad proved.'' ^^^^^m M TOjtl Wmt3JeM BOSTON AND NEW YORK; HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. (3t{ie Stibec^'itie H^ng^, ^ambttaBt. COFYEIGHT, 1S77, BY JAMES E. OSG.OOD & CO. Alil/ BIGHTS HESEBVED. TWENTY-EIGHTH EDITION. ITte Riverside Press^ Cambridge^ Mass.^ U & ^ Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. "Pray you, say nothing; pray you, -who neither feel, nor see the rain, being in't " THE STORY OF AVIS. CHAPTER I. " And all I saw was on the snnny gronnd, The flying shadow of an unseen bird." WHAT was it about lier ? Coy Bisliop at the Poetry Club that night, while a theological student with a cold in his head was declaiming from the second canto, sat per- versely wondering. It was becoming to Coy to wonder; she did not very often, — being a blonde, with a small mouth and happy eyes. She changed the accent of her thoughts as they pursued her ; out of irresistible sympathy, perhaps with the reader, who experienced some elocutionary difficulty in changing his ; though, indeed, she found liei own reveiy so much more to the purpose just then than her desire for literary culture, that she conceived a distaste for the young gentleman as a tiresome intermption, and hoped that some of the gills would refuse him before tlic winter was over. 7 8 THE STOBY OF AVIS. What was it then ahovt her? There was mow sense than syntax in Coy's question;' at least a sense perfectly clear to herself, who, as the only person concerned in this mute discussion, had obvi- ous rhetorical rights therein. This was in the days when young ladies had not begun to have " opinions " upon the doctrine of evo- lution, and before feminine friendships and estrange- ments were founded on the distinctions between protoplasm and bioplasm. Yet, even fifteen years ago, the resembh^nce of the human face to different types of animals was nO novelty to any thoughtful fancy. So, too, the likenesses in the human body to forms of life incident to the vegetable world, were surprising only to people ignorant of the anatomy of the nervous and arterial systems. Coy was not ignorant. Harmouth girls never were. Her mind was stocked with facts sufficient to bring these correspondences before it. But there she stumbled upon a dense idea across which neither the diploma of the Harmouth Female Seminary, nor the " com-se of study " in which all Harmouth girls engaged, could strike a light. Had anybody ever said that people resembled metals ? "Was it GalUeo, or Socrates ? Newton perhaps. Or — or — could it have been John Rose ? The theological reader at the other end of the room just then, suddenly observing Miss Bishop's averted face, floundered into an acute embarrassment upon seeing that she blushed swiilly, and wondered THE STOEY OF AVIS. 9 If ho had read from the love-passages too long. Hia mind gathered an immediate accretion to the convic- tioa that light literary work was unsuitable to the preparation for the gospel ministry. Coy was not blushing about John Eose : young men are too common in Harmouth to be easily blushed about. She was aware of a certain incon- gruousness in that fancy about the metals. What was the use of reading-clubs, and suffering such anx- iety about the coffee, when one took one's turn, il one could not tell whether one owed an idea to an old Greek, or an evening- caller? That she could have originated it, Coy never for an instant con- ceived. She left ideas to Avis. What she meant about the metals was this. All people in their physical natures are akin to some form of inorganic existence. Some, for instance, are clay, sheer clay, mud. Certain metals enter into the X)mposition of certain temperaments : brass or iron, gold, silver, or steel, stratifies in the nature, and gives character to body and soul. " Who knows," Coy would have said if she could, — "who knows but a skilful soul-geologist may learn to detect these metallic traces in men and women, and can act upon the character of a soul's topography accord- ingly, can map it with some accuracy, can fathom its weailth, or measure its barrenness, indicate the presence of its mines, discover its fossils, accoun. for its deluges, prophesy its earthquakes, its volea- notis? " It was surely in the old creed of the alch© 10 THE STOKY OF AVIS. mists, that metals were endowed with sense and feeling, and possessed of either masculine or femi- nine qualities. , Then why not the man or the woman with the sense or the trait of the metal? Now, AtIs was a magnet. Coy's metallic theory had by this time rather nm away with her. But of so much she was sure: when Avis was a baby, mother-earth yielded pure perfect magnet up into her composition. Shrewd Natui-e, never to be cheated out of her control over her children, held back her gold, her gems, her sil- ver, and her fine, dumb pearl, and wrought into Avis just the one thing more precious than they aU. People, to be sure, were artifldaUy magnetized to a certain extent. Barbara AUen, for instance, turn- ing the exact intellectual pose of her head (there was but one intellectual pose to Barbara's head) towards Philip Ostrander, whUe he read his paper on Spenserian metres, was a species of electro- magnet. But Avis was, without alloy, loadstone. In Avis there existed that attiibute — no, that quality ; which was it? Coy remembered hearing one of the Professors say at a supper that there was a difference between these two things ; but she did not remem- ber which was which: she seldom did. At aU events, Avis had that one particular coloring about ber (Coy decided to call it coloring), which is, in a woman, powerful abive all beauty, wit, or genius, — that subtile sometl)ing which we name charm. THE STORY OP AVIS. 11 Now. it was true and tender in Coy to sit thinking this about Avis. That was a wise word which said, that, when we have ceased to enjoy the superiority of another, we have ceased to love him. Hence it may be thp self-defensive strategy of affection, that we feel our friend's advantage long before we allow ourselves to perceive it ; nay, in proportion to the depth of our feeling under it, are we not apt to have a frost-bite of the intellect, which makes its distinct acknowledgment a matter of hard thawing? And Coy was not by any means a girl of liquid moods. She sometimes felt it proper to judge A^is very severely ; else what was the use in having grown up with her? For instance, she had reproved her for staying BO much by herself since she had come home. Bar- sara, now, thought that affectation, it was plain to see (and affectation it would have been in Barbara) , though, of course, she was too weU bred to say so. Coy knew better than that. It was only morbidness. Coy had the glibness of most unaccentuated natures in the use of thio convenient word, which is with- out a rival in its adaptability to cover aU forms of character differing from one's own. There had been a ripple of surprise when Avis came into the club that night. The club met at Chatty Hogarth's. Chatty was the president's daughter, and an invalid. Avis did not like to refuse poor Chatty. It was the first time that Misa bolwl] had appeared in Harmouth society since he' return from Florence. 12 THE STORY OF AVIS. At this rate, it was plain that Miss Cora Bishop's Spenserian culture would be very deficient. Coy, Bdth a pretty change of mental attitude, which had a pretty bodily expression down to the very tips of her fingers, tightening, like growing shells, about the covers of her book, brought her intellect to leai severely upon the business of the evening. " But fly, ahl fly far hence away, for feare Lest to you hap that happened to me heare." A low and singularlj"- musical voice was pronoun- cing these words as Coy looked up ; not the catarrh al theologue, surely? He had finished his contri- bution to the evening's entertainment, thank the Muses! and Mr. Ostrander was reading, — Philip Ostrander, the new tutor. There was always a new tutor to be considered in Harmouth University : he had not always, however, a musical voice. " And to this wretched lady, my deare love; O too deare love, — love bought with death too deare I " Clearly Mr. Ostrander was an efiective reader; "a cultivated reader, ' ' Coy said. Miss Dobell, from her corner opposite the gentleman, sitting a little in the shadow, and giving equable and earnest atten- tion to the performance of each member of the Poetry Club, in turn, said only, " an efi'ective reader," Iml hesitated at the word, and listened thoughtfully. " With sudden feare her pitcher downe she threw, And fled away," Bang on the reader. THE STORY OP AVIS. 13 "Full fast she fled, ne ererlookt behyud, As if her life upon tie wager lay." Musical was the word assuredly. Mr. Ostrander'a voice held rather melody than harmony, but music, beyond a question. There was a modesty and sin> plicity about its accent not common to young men in those stages of growth in which Harmouth knew them ; perhaps a little uncommon in any young man. It suffused a penetrative sense of pleasure, of unexplained organic joy, like that of Nature in her simpler moods : it had an effect not unUke that of an unseen brook or a fljdng bird. Though the brook chanted, it ran ; though the bird sang, it flew ; its sweetness was measm-ed by its evanes- cence. People often noted Mr. Ostrander's voice. Young ladies had been heard to declare that it was " like Mozart." Avis DobeU, sitting in the shadowed corner of the president's parlor that night, had happened to place herself against some very heavy drapery, which clasped, two warm arms of intense color across the chill of a bay-window. The color was that called variously and lawlessly by upholsterers cranberry, garnet, or ponso ; known to artistg as carmine. Tbs material held a satin thi-ead, which lent to the cur- lains the lustre of jewels in a dark setiing, or of watei nndcr a flaming sky. In the gaslight and firelight of the room, the insensate piece of cloth took on a strange and vivid life, and seemed to throb as if i* !icld some inarticulate passion, like that of a subject toul. 14 THE STORY OF AVIS. Coy or Barbara would have known better tliau ta have ventured their complexions against this tryii^ background. Avis went to it as straight as a bird to a lighthouse on a dark night. She would have beaten herself against that color, like those very birds against the glowing glass, and been happy, even [f she had beaten her soul out with it as they did. She had a fierce kinship in her for that color, of which she seldom spoke. She did not expect it to be anderstood ; she did not care that it should be ; per- haps she imjjerfeetly understood it herself: she only knew that it made her happy to be near it. To- night, for instance, though she had felt this Poetry Club rather a bore, a positive wave of pleasure flowed to her from the sight and contact of that curtain, which she felt in every sense of soul and body. Avis was affected by color as the more sensitive musical temperament is by sound. Color divorced from form, crude and clear, was to her what the musical notation is to the composer, who, without striking a note, reads the score by the horn* as other men read printed text. Besides,, she knew perfectly well that the curtain became her. Against this backgi-ound of the passion of car- mine, Avis, sitting silentlj- the evening through, had ti solitary look. There was a certain aloofness in her veiy beau'v if one chose to call by the name of brauty the kindling of her face : it was somehoTi THE STORY OF AVIS. 15 nnlike that of other handsome women. It cannot be said that she was quite without consciousness of it ; no woman could have been : it might be rathei that she made no effort to appear unconscious of it. She had nothing of that wide-eyed, infantile look of distraction, which, in a grown woman, indicates the very quintessence of egoism. She carried about her an indefinable air of having been used to the love or admiration, probably, of men as weU as women, which the most exquisitely modest women wiLL sometimes wear, and which is as unmis- takable as it is aUming to the eye. Her dress, made in the fashion of the time, fitting closely, and without trimming, was of a negative tint, something toning apon black, else she should not, and so would not, have sat by the carmine curtain. She wore, as aU well-dressed women wore at that time, a very full white under sleeve, which completely concealed the outline of the arm. Over her shoulders a shawl of Fayal lace, white, and very delicate, hung like a thistle-down. She had a fresh but fine and restless color, and brown, abundant hah-. She had a gener- ous mouth and a delicate ear. Her profile, when the carmine curtain took it, had the harmony of a strong antique. " Avis," said Mrs. Hogarth, when Mr. Osti-ander had finished his canto, and the little party of young people had fallen into that general discussion of the topic of tJie evening's study, which was usual in Harmouth " Clubs," — " Avis, my dear, are we to hear nothing from you to-night? " 16 THE STORY OF AVIS. ■' Oh, yes, Avis ! " urged Chatty. . " You must excuse me," pleaded Avis in a voicfl more timid than one would have looked to hear from a young lady of so much presence. She spoke faintly, lilce a shrinking child : indeed it made hei feel like one, coming, from the strange changes of her Hfe, suddenly back here among her old playfel- lows ; being called out by Mrs. Hogarth so, as if she were to recite a lesson. Mrs. Hogarth was one of those people who always made her feel as if she were a little girl, always would : it would not mattei to IMrs. Hogarth if she had painted the Sistine Mary. There were others, however, in the Spenser Club, strangers, across whom stirred a visible wave of interest when Avis, speaking for the first time, drew all the eyes in the room towards the carmine cm-tain. Coy remarked it, and felt proud of her ; for Avis had got into the newspapers. It was seldom that a Harmouth woman got into the papers. It was only men — men at Hannouth : indeed, the Univer- sity existed, she supposed, for the glorification of men. This was all right and proper. Coy had never been conscious of any depressing aspirations towards ie college diploma ; but she took an aromatic en- jojTnent, after all, in the fact that one of the pro- fessor's daughters had adopted " a career." She ^was glad it was precisely A^is, and not Barbara, oi nome of the other giiis, who had painted a good picture, and sold it in London. She enjoyed having THE STORY OF AVIS 1 7 ^ It tlioroughly understood in Harmouth that people wlio knew about such things (Coy was not quite sure who; but that did not matter) had predicted \ " brilliant future " for the modest young lady who made that picture. "May I not be pardoned," repeated Avis, " if I do not bring my share of the work to-night? I have been busy in other ways so long, it is not pos- sible that I could find any thing to say worth your hearing, on a subject which the rest of you .have been studying aU winter." "Avis!" said Coy suddenly from across the room, " if I had done 3, real mean thing, should you want to know it? " "No," said Avis : " if anybody I cared for could be mean, I should rather never know it." She spoke in the graceful surface-tone through which the serious instinct of an earnest nature can no more help penetrating, than the sun can help shining through ornamented glass. " You have turned over two leaves, Mr. Ostrand- er," said Barbara Allen, who was looking up foot- notes with him. "And do you incUne to Upton's conjecture? It seems to me, if we grant the Hcmy Vni. theory, then Una " — "It's about Una that I've been mean," said Coy rather loudly. " Avis, I brought your sketch of Una that you gave me. I know you'll let mo show it. You. never were a bit of a shirk, now, Avis; and this is just your fair contribution to a Spenser evening. Please, Avis ? ' ' 18 THE STORY OF AVIS • Avis did not please, that was plain ; but she con., Bcnted -without any fuss; and the young pcopk gathered about Miss Bishop to see the sketch. It was a sketch in charcoal, strongly but not roughly laid in, and preserved by a shellac, wLich lent a soft color, like that of a very old print, to the paper. It bore marks of the artist's peculiar style ; for it was already recognized in art-circles that Miss DobeU had " a style." The sketch was expressive of the lines : — " Ere long he came where Una traveild slow, And that champion wayting her besyde. . . By his like-seeming sMeld her knight by name Shee weend it was, and towards him gan ride: Approaching nigh, she wist it was the same ; And with faire fearefull humblesse towards him shee came." Miss Dobell's Una was a spirited figure ; did not ride the lion like a donkey, neither did she pat him Uke a dog, in the approved manner : he followed ner in a shadow almost as heavy as that which hides the Jupiter in Correggio's lo, — dark, vague, and inscrutable as fate. She had been waUdng swiftly : the lethargy of collapse from motion had settled on every limb. Ai-rested in the full light, the woman curved one fine hand inward, like a shell, as if to warn the creature back. It was impossible to look upon tliis woman, and not say, " She sees the mar she loves." Her ej'es leaped to him; her lipi leaned to him ; her whole being gravitated to him. THE STOBY OF AVIS. IP "Pretty girl," said John Rose, who dared say any thing to anybody; and, besides, he used to know Avis in college, — " very pretty girl ; but how she holds her head ! Put her into a Harmouth Sen- ior party now, she'd freeze a fellow into a sherbet." "Was Una so easUy won, my dear ?" asked Mrs. Hogarth, with a little matronly smUe. " Easily wen ! " A voice behind the young artist repeated these words in a protesting whisper ; then, gathering distinctness, said, — " My dear Mrs. Hogarth, do you not see ? Every nerve and muscle is tense for flight. She will turn and run before that clmnsy knight gets up to her — if she can." Avis, turning with a grateful look to see who had interpreted her picture, felt Coy's hand laid upon her arm. " Avis, may I present Mr. Ostrander? " Avis very ceremoniously bowed. As she did so, there flitted across her eyes, like the shadow of an onseen object, an expression which Coy found it so dtflScult to understand, that she even made up her mind to ask her afterwards if she had objected to the introduction. But probably Avis had met far more interesting men in Florence, where it was understood that she bad been much sought. "May I?" urged Ostrander with hesitancy, putting out his hand for the sketch. On the back of it was written, with a brush dipped in a crimson water-color, these words, — 20 THE STOBY OF AVIS. " She speakes no more Of past: true is that trae love hath no power To lookeu baeke; hia eie be ftxt before." •'I am glad not to have blundered," te sua simplj' in lianding the picture back. The weight of talk had by this time slipped from the picture, and he and the two j'oung ladies stood slightly apart. " But, after all, you see," said the young man musingly, " your Truth is subject to Love, om- nipotently subject." " I am not responsible for Spensgr's theology," said Avis, laughing evasively; "and an artist has such gloriously lawless moods ! Why should I trouble myself to think about Una everyday? I had a pretty gM to draw: so I di'ew her. But I ixit the lion in, so people shouldn't make a mistake. ' It is better to be dmnb than to be misunder- stood.' " " Who said that? " asked Ostrander, with a fine smile. But he was conscious of feeling some curi- osity over this superficial little speech of IVQss Dobell's. There was not a superficial stroke in the picture, — nor in the speaker, to his mind. " How do you know that I did not say it? " re- lumed the young lady. "Mr. Osti-ander," said Coy, "Miss Hogarth wants you to bring Miss Dobell the oysters. Do it gricefully. She'll sketch you wMle you are gone I " When Ostrander retumetJ, Coy had been callcd THE STORY OP AVIS.' 21 *way, and Avis was alone. As he handed her plate, their eyes met in a long, flill, grave look. Avis's eyes were neither brown nor black, yet they were very dark. One sometimes sees in the lining of waves on which the fuU sun shines, and in which Oie bright weeds are thidi, a color that resembles them. Philip Ostrander said, — "I have seen you before." Avis hesitated : she hesitated perceptibly before she answered. "Yes." " Had you forgotten it? " Now Ostrander spoke with hesitation : he felt a little alarmed at his own intrepidity. This young lady in the Fayal shawl, with the slightly disturbed carriage to her head, had suddenly acquired through- out her face and figure a beautiful protest, which he felt it would be the easiest thing in the world to mistake. Should he go on ? or stop exactly where he was ? After a moment's silence, he said, with an accent of renewed decision, — "J3aeZ you forgotten it? " Avis lifted her eyelids very slowly, and iii bci honest, even voice, sud, — " No." THE SXOBY OF AVia CHAPTER n. "We tejolcoln hunting Trath In company aa in luntlng guns, " -< Fbehistius. " For mervaiUe of this knight him to behold, Pull besily they waiten, young and old." — Chauceb. COY and John Eose walked home together in the dear, old, foolish country-fashion, which Har- mouth was too full of young people to outgi-ow. It was a night of many stars. The two, as they stepped out into the April weather (in deference to the constitution of the Spenser Club) , at the stroke of half-past ten, had involuntarily stood for a mo- ment with uplifted faces in the thin, half-frozen snow. Great pulses of light beat before the eyes, where stars that our Northern atmospheres know only in their happiest moods, were aflame that night ; and arteries of ike ran along wastes of space, quiv- ering as they ran : the very ether in which they hung seemed to be crossed with fine lines, shadow drawn on shadow, like the nerves of a mute and infinite organism, whose heart only — beating somewhere, impassioned, imprisoned — was hidden from th« «ight. But Coy and John Rose did not talk about the stars : it was not theii- way. The young man, if he had said any thing, would have wrenched a pun out THE STORY OP AVIS. 23 of them perhaps, or propounded a conundrum, foT no better reason than that the sight of them had moved Mm. And the first thing that Coy said was, — " Avis wishes us all in Guinea. "But why?" " She hasn't seen so much astronomy since she was In Italy. She wants to be by herself, and re- duce it to Prussian blue and Naples yellow. I think it must be very uncomfortable to be an artist. You're always looking at Nature with a professional squint : you can't put yourself on any sort of terms with her, I should say, more than a photographer can with a complexion, or a dentist with front- teeth." It was true enough, that Avis, coming out of the close room into the freshening April night, had thrilled beneath the sudden throbbing -of the stars, with an impulse which those only know whose life in its more poetic stages has been passed under the ardors of a Southern sky. Some slight distm-bing element which had entered into the evening for her, served only to malte the coolness and calm and vastness more marked and reposeful. She had drawn a deep breath as »one does in re-adjusting one's self to a momentarily suspended action. She would have liked Mr. Ostrander better if he had not exclaimed, "Almost Florence!" as he turned to take Barbara home. She was glad it was Dobody but Barbara's brother, poor fellow ! who wa« 24 THE STORY OF AVIS. to walk with her, and that he did not expect her to talk about the stars, and that Coy and John Eose Beemed so very comfortable together just in ftont of them. Her mind was pre-occupied in ways to which the little inner life of a Harmouth readir^-chib was as foreign as — ah, well ! — as foreign as the carmine curtain to the cold north star. She felt no less annoyed than perplexed by the slight pressure oi circumstance which seemed to have drawn her to-night into the exact atmosphere of that half- expressed life. She longed for the poise which soli- tude only can give, and half wished that she had not invited Coy to spend the night with her, and see the Venetian views to-moiTOw. Her fancy about the curtain and the light-house came before her with a strange, pictorial vividness, as she walked on, talking common-place to Barbara's brother. Out beyond the little sheltered town the gi-eat sea swept. She could hear the far beating of the tide upon the receptive April air. While the ciuTcnts of these delicate human lives swept softly on in their elected channels, long waves thundered against the Harbor Light. MUes away through the night, some homeless bkd took wing for the bui-ning bosom of the reflector, and straight, straight — led as un- erringly as instinct leads, as tenderly as love con- strains, as brutally as Natiu-e cheats, with a glad fluttering at the delicate throat, with a trastful quivei of the flashing wings, like the bending of a harebell, THE STOKT OP AVIS. 25 Bke the breath of an aiTow — came swaying; waa tossed, was toru, and fell. She had been out when she was a child, after many a storm, and seen them dead there by hundreds on the rock. The light-keeper gathered them up into a bushel-basket once, for the scientific professor. They had strewn the shores of her young thought with untold and ungathered suffering, — those birds. No one thing had been more responsible for the attack of universal scepticism which she had success- fiilly weathered at eighteen, in common with the existing senior class of college-boj^s in her father's lecture-room. Sometimes in Florence, on a radiant night, when across the roofs, against the setting sun, the sparrows stood twittering in Italian (no New-England sparrow could have rehearsed in that accent if his engage- ment for the season had depended on it) , and the voices of children whose parents' eyes had never questioned Fate, poured their pUant chirrup into the Arno's ijionotone beyond the studio window, — then suddenly, like a drop of sleet upon a flower, would fall a vision of the Harbor Light at home, and to- wards it, through the freezing night, a bird fly to its death. She had not thought about the light before, since she had come home. But Coy and Jolin Rose were walldng together oeneath the April stars. They did not talk of the Spenserian metres, nor the Uptonian theory Thej 86 THE STORY OF AVIS. discussed the oysters and the last engagement, the tsoELug concert and the impending battle, the hazing scrape, and the Mission Sunday school. Then they talked a little about Barbara, and a little of the new tutor, and then about Miss Dobell, and then a Uttle about art and life, and earnestness, and about a man's understanding himself, and about th(3 beauty of high purposes, and the preciousnesa of sj-mpathy, and the uncertainty of the future, and many other original and impressive themes. And the young man made no conundrums now, and grew so grave, that Coy took fiight, and asked him. Was he going on a mission? But he answered, grave]y stUl, Did she thinlt him fit? To which she told him promptly. No ; that he would set the cannibals to making bad puns before a week was out ; and then he said he was afraid he should, and that he must be content with some obscure position among edu- cated Americans who read the charades in the reU- gious weeklies Sunday mornings. And by that time they were at the gate of Professor Dobell's old- fashioned silent house, and stopped to wait for Avis. " Poor Mr. AUen ! " said Coy, turning the curve of her cheek in the starlight. " I don't know about that," said the j'oung miu- later perversely. " But Avis will never, never " — " I wouldn't gi-ant that any woman I cared for would never, never, as long as she allowed me upon terms of friendship at all." persisted the young man. THE STORY OF AVIB. 27 "Bat," said Coy hui-riedly, "Avis is not like other women. She never was." " Then you admit " — began John Rose. " I admit that I'm cold, and here she is," shiv- ered Coy. Coy was half frightened. If Mr. Hose had said anymore about sympathy and friendship just then, she would have gone into the house with- out waithig for Avis. The color had heightened in her young face. Her foot tapped the snow sharply in her impatience for A^ds to come up. It seemoi to her as if she and John Rose, standing there in the professor's snowy, shaded yard, had been left alone, the only two people on the breathing earth. " I never saw a woman have a latch-key before," said Coy, as the two girls, having dismissed theii escorts, lest so many voices should disturb the pro- fessor, stood together upon the door-step. "Father is in the study," said Avis; "and I begged aunt Chloe to go to bed ; and the girls are tired, poor things ! Why shouldn't a woman have a latch-key?" This was one of those propositions of which the burden of proof certainly lies with the negative ; and Coy replied only by an amused smUe as they passed ii\to the large and silent house. It was lighted only in the halls ; for aunt Chloe was of an economical, old-fashioned temper, and taought it rather snobbish lO waste good kerosene, when there was not brandy enough for the soldiers in the hospitals. Aunt Chloe 88 THE 8T0EY OF AVIS. had attacks of benevolent parsimony very i)eculiai to herself. Wlien these overtook her, she resolutely denied herself her cup of Oolong tea at night ioi months at a time, and relinquished butter on hei buckwheats of a morning. It was never quite clear to the rest of the family exactly how the United- States army was the better for that tea or butter. " But aunt Chloe has that sense of superior per- sonal sacrifice, which is the most useful element in om- charities, beyond doubt," laughed Avis, as she and Coy went directly to her own room, treading softly past the study-door. It was abundantly hght and warm in Avis's room. The fire was in the grate ; the curtains were di'awn ; Avis's easy-chair and sCppers were before the hearth. It was a plain, rather a grave place, that Uttle bed- room ; would have been prim with Avis out of it ; ~>such a room one would look for in a house of which Professor Dobcll's sister had been the mistress for eighteen j'ears. Aunt Chloe believed in good blan- kets and towels, and a plenty of them ; and, when you bought a piece of furniture, buy "the real" always ; but, as long as there were home missionary boxes to be made up spring and fall, she co>ild not see that the New Testament recommended a fasliion in carpets, or that St. Paul could possibly have been sensitive to any lack of harmony in ujholstcry or mantel ornaments. There was one fine bit of marble, — the Melian Venus, lliis, with the few foreign trinkets and engravinfrs which Avis had scattered THE STORY OF AVIS. 29 about the room, seemed to be there only by tolerance, till she herself came into it. Then a fair congmous- aess settled upon the air. Every thread of color left in the old rug, and antiquated chintz, and faint wall-paper, seemed to shake itself, and begin to shine. The fireUght leaped to her feet like a lover. All the room budded and opened like a flower about her, as the two girls threw themselves in lithe atti- tudes upon the old rug to " toast tlicir feet " h'ke children at the Are. I find that I am talking rather lawlessly about these ' ' girls. ' ' Avis DobeU was a woman of twenty- sis, and Coy not many years the younger. But they were girls still to each other by that prettj' trick of speech and fancy common in the comradeship of all women before marriage. Sometimes we find it in our way to smile at this illusion; but, like all illu- sions, its pathetic side is its deepest and its truest one. Within the soul of every unwon woman abides eternal youth. Though the snow be on her hair before the King may claim her, yet shall he not find violets and the birds of spring, when at last, at last, his coming feet shine beautiful upon the mountains of hei ungarnered heart? It was quite the proper thing in Hannouth, as 1 have intimated, for young ladies to be somewhai Bcrio'isly intelligent ; and so when Ax^s had got hei 'ong hair down over her white merino wrapper, and Ooy, ^vith a gay suk shouldcr-rooe thrown across hei ivight-dress, was crimping her short front-loclts be- fore the deepening fixe, she began,- — 80 THE STOEY OP AVIS. " What do you think about the Club, Avis?" " I thought you called it a Chaucer Club," said Avis. "Oh! 60 it is," said Coy. "We've been the whole mortal winter poking over Chaucer. We onlj got .nto Spenser last week. For my part, I hate him." "Which?" " Why, Chaucer ! I never did like old-fashioned poetry, and I never shall. I'm a terrible modern, Avis. I Uke Tennyson and Whittier and Long- fellow, and the Brownings, and so oh. And that Scotchwoman, Jean Ingelow, cultivates me more than two Spensers. I've just had to set to on the old fellow like a Latin prose-lesson all winter. We've really worked very hard," said Coy, with a sense of high literary virtue. " I never worked so hard in a club in my life. That is Mr. Osti-ander's doing. They say he's veiy talented. But, then, talented tutors are so common in Harmouth ! I wonder we don't hear more of them afterwards, don't you?" Coy wound her small fingers in and out of her crimping-pins with a sinuous motion ; her two lifted bare aims enclosing a face as innocent of sarcasm as a mocMng-bird's. Coy was one of the immortal few who can look pretty in theu* crimping-pins. " I suppose you've gone on having clubs," mused A^is, leaning her head back against the seat of the easy-chair, and clasping both arms above it, " every Printer, just as we did when we were girls." " Just the same," said Coy, " as we did when yon THE STOEY OF AVlB. 81 were at home six years ^o. You know how it ia wiih people : some take to zoology, and some take to religion. That's the way it is with places. It may be the Lancers ; and it may he prayer-meetings. Once I went to see my grandmother in the country, and everybody had a candy-pull : there were twenty- five candy-pulls and taffy-bakes in that town that winter. John Rose says, in the Connecticut Valley, where he came from, it was missionary barrels ; and I heard of a place where it was cold coffee. In Har- mouth, it's improving your mind. It comes hard on me," said Coy plaintively. " It comes rather hard on me. Generally I have an intellectual conviction that I bught to improve my mind. But nothing comes of it, you know, tiU therels a club. Then I groan; but I go in for it hardest of them all. Improving your mind is as bad as old poetry. I don't take to it," said Coy mournfully.^ "I ought never to have been born in Harmouth. If I'd been just a downright society girl now, I could have been a dunce, and nobody ever have known the difference : I know I could. But the amount I've read this last fom- years ! It positively makes my head swim to think of the titles of the books. Andj strictly speak- ing, I'm not in the Faculty either, you know, Avis ; for father resigned when I was — Why, it was the j'ear I was going on with Jim Snowe : I couldn'*- ha-ve been fourteen. I wish, when father took to patenting his discoveries, he had taken me witli him I think I could have patented a crimper that would 52 THE STORY OF AVIS. make a simpler systeni of ponctuation in youi finger than this." "And so," added Coy, turning one bare foot slowly around from side to side, before the deep-red lire, as if she were baking an exquisite bit of porce ■ lain, " and so we run to reading-clubs ; and we all go fierce winter after winter to see who'll get the ' severest.' There's a set outside of the Faculty that descend to charades and music and inconceiva- bly low intellectual depths ; and some of our girls snealt off, and get in there once in a while, like the little girl that wanted to go from heaven to hell to play Saturday afternoons, just as you and I used to do, Avis, when we dared. But I find I've got too old for that," said Coy sadly. "When you're fairly past the ooUege-boys, and as far along as the law-students" — " Or the theolc^es? " interposed Avis. " Yes, or the theologues, or even the medical de- partment ; then there positively is nothing for it but to improve your mind." Coy pathetically turned the other foot to the fire, and watched it with an attentive air, as if there were danger of its being overdone. " And so we have the clubs. Sometimes it's old poets served hot, and sometimes it's plain history cut cold, and it may be a hash of the fine aits, or even B ragout of well-spiced science. One wintcs" it wag political economy. I had my first gi-ay hairs tha winter. But the season we took the positive philoso THE STORT OP AVIS. 33 phy, they thonght I was going into a decline. And we all fight, to begin with, in the politest possible way, every year, as to who shall be in, and who sha'n't, and what we shall be allowed to have for supper. And the wrong people are always let in, and the right ones are always left out ; and we have the usual number of flirtations, and the usnal set of jokes ; and we get off the old one about Bar- bara Allen's name regularly, for each new club. And there are about so many engagements, and the usual number of offers ; and so it goes. I think I must be growing old. I only had two last winter." Coy drew both feet back from the ardor of the fire, and folded them in the plaid-silk robe. There was a silence, which she broke by saying, — " Mr. Ostrander is tutor in Latin." "Is John Rose going to settle over the Central Church? " asked Avis. " Erobabl}'. Father says he will have the call." " It seems unspeakably funny to me to see John turn into a minister," said Avis. " He was such a httie scapegrace in college ! I remember his telling me he should like to preach ; but it would never do, he was too fond of slang ; should say, ' Wot larka, my brethren ! ' before the sermon was over." " Oh, yes ! Well, he's got past that," said Coy. ' He's very good, I think : he's a great deal better than I am. Tm not good at all. But I think my- •elf he'U make a peculiar minister, he is so much Uko other men. Did you know there was talk of 84 THE 8T0EY OP AVT8 maHng a professor of Air. Ostarander? — professoi of geology." "But I thought he was teaching Latin," said Avis. " So he is ; but there's no vacancy in Latiii, and he is said to have a very versatile mind. He was once educated in medicine, besides. Father says he has a very broad grasp." " I should think so," said Avis, with an inscruta- ble look. " How old, pray, is this Mr. Ostrander ? " "Oh, he's very old!" ^aid Coy: "he's almost thu"ty. He teaches German too," she added per- suasively, after a silence. ' ' He has a class of young ladies. Barbara is in it, and I'm going to join when I get round to it. I should think j'ou would like to go. What pretty arms you have, A\'is ! " Avis had risen from the old rug, untwining her arms from the locked position above her head, which they had steadily retained while Coy was talking. The sleeves of the white wrapper fell away in the abrupt motion. " They're not fat, lUre mine," said C03', with a critical air. " Did anybody ever tell j'ou they were like the arms of BIme. Recamier, in David's pic- ture?" " Yes," said Avis : " I have been told so. Let na go to sleep now. Coy." A^is was a light sleeper, and she lay long awake thr.t night, watching the glow within the grate, and listening to the beat of the siutf" upon tho shore, al- THW RTOBY OF AVIS. H5 most a mile beyond her father's house. She lay, rather she sat, perfectly still, bolstered against aunt Chloe's generous pillows, with one hand thrust through her long hair, and her strong young eyes fixed undazzled upon the white-heat of the coals, till it had died to a delicate blush of color, until the blue ashes had crept like the hue of death upon a human cheek across it. The window towards the sea was open, and the rhythm of the tide beat a strange duet with Coy's gentle, happy breathing on the pUlow at her side. It seemed to her a great song without words, fuU of uncaptured meanings, deep with unuttered impulse. She would have liked to fit expression to it ; but Avis never wrote " poetry," never had, even when she was in her teens. That was not the baptism with which she was baptized. Certain words, as sleep overtook her, adjusted them- selves in a disjointed fashion to her thoughts ; but when, starting, she roused and wakened, staring about the daBkening room, from which even the starlight iras nojPT gone, she found that they were only these : — " Fall fast shee fled, ne ever lookd behynde Aa U her liie upon ihe wager Uor" 8« THB 8IOB¥ Of A^Tia CHAPTER m. ■■ B; Dstnre > philoBopber, iplrited, nrilt, and strong.*' — Plito. " Toing, and a woman; 'tis thna Bbe wus mine."— Ck>ETHx'B Pas DOHA. WHEN Hegel Dobell, Professor of Ethics and Intellectual PMlosopby, tliirty-five years old, and a bachelor, brought home one day to the old- fashioned house set apart for the incumbents in his department a bride of nineteen New- York summers, all Harmouth shook its highly intellectual head. In the nature of things, it was argued, a man of years and reputation, a man pre-eminently a scholar as wcU as a student, a man capable of writing the celebrated brochure, ""Was Fichte a Mystic?" to say nothing of the correspondence with the Berlin professor whose name Harmouth never could re- member, on the subject Hannouth always found it diflScult to recall ; even thi-owing out of the question the pamphlet on the " Identity of Identity' and Non- Identity," which that other celebrated German (name also gone for the moment) was understood to have discussed at one of his Sunday dinners, be- fore his mind gave way, — such a man, it was urged, must find a slender stock of conjugal promise in the choice of a society girl known to have bees ^sy, and understood to be pecnliar. Any man, ir THE STORY OP AVIS. 37 .'act. filling the metaphysical chair in Harmouth University, must discover that he had mistaken the premises of his syllogism in marrying a spoiled Dhild, whoso parents had experienced dilficulty even ill restraining her within polite circles at all. This prettj' young thing, who peeped shyly as an anemone out of her stj'lish hat at the congregation in the college chapel, looked demure enough, and ielicate, as if a waft of wind or sun would wilt lier. Yet it was distinctly understood, below the baled breath of Ilannouth, that the gi-eat professor had won this little lady but just in time to prevent her from running away to go upon the stage. Perhaps, indeed, it was a trifle gossipy to call it "running away;" and Hannouth never gossiped. Miss Mercy had suggested as much as this, and the phrase was decorously amended. Miss Mercj' was a mild and matronly power in Harmouth always, even before her marriage. In fact, Harmouth hacJ privately selected her as the proper Mrs. Dobell long before the New- York girl was met or thought cJ". Was she not a lady of unexceptionable antecedents, whose family had been " professional " for as many generations as a good American could conscientious- ly count at all? Could it be denied that she was liealthj", handsome, and thirty-one? Could one fail to recall her marked (and lucrative) success as prin- cipal of the Plarmouth Female Seminary? and if j'ou ..hose to consider her known interest in the university scientific endowments ? — And where else was that 88 THE 8T0EY OF AVIS. a woman wlio had read the j)rofessor's lectures on Spinoza through ? It was not for a long while, indeed, not until ]\Iisj Mercy had become the second Mrs. Hogarth, and the president's wife had avenged the spinster, that Harmouth was comforted for this highly-educated lady. But i)erhaps she was right. The little bride had not exactly run away. Yet there was certainly a freak for the stage, intercepted somewhere. And clearly she was a restless, glittering, inefficient thing, like a humming-bird turned radical. Would the great professor bend his well-salaried powers happily now to investigating the varieties of honey which his quiet garden-roses might have and hold for a petulant beak ? At all events, it was as clear as the Law of Ex- cluded Middle, that the great professor — like any small man who delays marriage till he has reached the age when his neighbors should choose for him — had made a serious blunder. The professor, however, Ulic every other genius, had a touch of obstinacy about him, and persistently delayed, as his time ran metaphysically on, to discover that he had blundered at all, was an inexcusably tedious while in beginning to be disappointed in his marriage-venturfij and ended by flatly refusing alto- gether to be miserable. TMs was an unscientific evolution from precedent, which tried Harmouth to the soul's depths. "We can forgive our friend much THE STORY OF AVIS. 39 All true allegiance deepens in geometrical proportion to Ms deserved misfortune, and a crime can only test the temper of sound loyalty ; but who can pardon him for not being unhappy when we have foretold him that he would be? If the professor's little wife were a himuning-bird, she was a very tender and true one : she loved the great hand that had lured her from the fields on w'lich the wild dew laj^, and sipped his grave domes- tic honey with happy, upturned look. Once in a whUe, when the professor, stroUing about the house in the pla3'-hour which rigorously followed meals, saw through the window Mrs. Ho- garth waUdng intelligently and plumply by upon i.he president's arm, a fine scintiUant gleam of fun tTvinkled in his deep-set eyes. He said nothing, — he never said any thing of any matter which kindled that rare spark under the cavern of his brows, — but he strode across the room to where his wife was sitting, puUed his nervous hand out of his pocket, and bending his gaunt, awkward shoulders, gently laid a finger under her chin, and turned her young face up to his ; and then she said, — " Do you want any thing. Professor? " And then he said, — " Only to see if you look happy and well, my dear." Perhaps after that they looked into one another's eyes a moment with something of the gravity whicli is insei; arable from aU deep happiness, before she 10 THE STOKY OF AVIS stirred, and put up both lithe arms to be caught, to be clasped, to be devoured against his hcf^rt. J''or it was the old imperious story that we knon eo well, — this storj' of the scholar and the woman: vslio can explain the witchery by which it pulls at the heart-strings of us all ? As alive as Faust, as old as Abelard, as tender as Petrarch, as eternal as Dante, it keeps pace with our calmer passions and our serener time. In the sweep of pre-eminently weU-regulated af- fections that eddied through the real life of that decorous university town, there was probably none more constraining, there certainly' was none more controlling, than the love which had settled upon the quiet home where the rebellious little society girl had passed her honej-moon, and begun to ex- tract from joj' the elements of rest. It was the same old intense, delirious story, — tlie oveiTvrought mind captured by the unused heart, the monarch wiU bent to the subject emotion, the gi-ciit j)urpose gone suppliant to the gi-eat passion, — a wise man become as a fool for a pah" of velvet ai-ms ; and the author of the Identitj' of Identity and Non-Identity was the elected priest or victim of the ancient and honorable experience. That was as one chose to look at it. Ilarmoutb might call him a victim ; but, in the glamour of his own vision, he was the awed priest chosen for an imposing and sacred ser-vicc. No coUego-boy in his class-room, straggling witl THE Sl'OUY OF AVIS 41 his fii'st fancy, struck wilder currenta than this grave man in his late, impetuous love. There was no girl, dreaming with shy ej-es in the twUight before a folded and glorified ideal, who had a simpler or more ro- mantic faith in it than the metaphysician held in his, Tn his pure and studious life Hegel Dobell had been blessed above his own deeming or dreaming in this, — that he had never spent his nature upon unworthj', or even mixed or insufficient feeling. The great passion of his life was one with its great loA'C. The forces of both overtook him with the swiftness of a freshet. He yielded to the ton'ent with the childUlie and. ecstatic surprise that ho would have felt at the dis- covery of a new axiom. It was Eden in the old-fashioned house ; and the tremulous amazement of the fli'st man and the first woman filled it. To them was given dominion over a world as unreal to souls incapable of sublimation by a great love, as the Paradise of Milton, or the ^'alace of Kubla IChan. They were not of dull fancy, after all, who nick- named the professor's wife. There was something bird-lOfc in her ; in her buoyant attitudes, in a way she had of turning her head sidewise to look at her husband as she perched upon the aim of his chair, in the cooing tones of her clear but uninsistent voice, and especially in a certain reserve that was very marked in her. "We are apt to think of a oird as rather an open-' acartcd, impetuous creature, tolling aU she knows- 42 THE STORY OF AVIS. pouring out her private affairs to the whole worid't hearing by simple force of her nature. In fact, per- haps no creature is more capable of concealment. Naturalists load us with stories of her little strata- gems. "We have but to look intently in her eye to b« made conscious that she has her mental reservations about many matters ; in particular, opinions about ourselves, which it is not worth while to explain. The robin at your door on a June morning seems to be expressing himself with lavish confidence; but, to a patient listener, his song has something of . the exuberant frankness which is the most impene- trable disguise in the world. The sparrow on her nest under your terrace broods meekly; but the centuries have not wrung from one such pretty pris- oner a breath of longing for the freedom of the summer-day. Do her delicate, cramped muscles ache for flight? her fleet, unused wings tremble against the long roots of the overhanging grass? She turns her soft eye upon you with a fine, far sarcasm. You may find out if you can. It was in memory, perhaps, of some of the sweet nonsense of her honeymoon, that Mrs. Dobell hatl Bclected for her little daughter the name of Avis. " Mamma," said the child one day, not coming bo her mother's knee, but sitting in the sunlight at some distance from her on the floor, " what shall 1 be? ' " What shall you be, Avis? " K Drayton Allen is going to keep a dog-store ; aac THE STORY OP AVIS. 4S « Ben Hogarth is going to be president of some col- lege. WhatsliaU7be?" " What will Coy be, my dear, and Barbara? " " Coy is going to be a lady, she says, mamma." " Very weU," said mamma. " And Barbara is going to get married." Mamma made no reply. " I think I'd rather keep dogs," said Avis grave- ly, after a silence. After some moments, receiving still no answer, the child rose to her feet, pushing back her thick hair from her eyes, standing in the full sun. " Mamma, did you run away? " "DidlM7ta«?" " Barbara says you ran away. She says you ran away in a stage." " Barbara told you a very wrong storj', my child. Come here." Avis threw down her playthings, and went slowly to her mother's knee. The mother put her arm ex- pressively about the child; but still she did not speak. " Mamma," began the little girl, again, " I have never seen anybody in a theatre." " Some day you shall, when it is right and best." " Mamma," slowly after a pause, " did you ever want to keep dogs? " " Not exactly, Avis." " 1 thought not. You know you didn't like that dog T had who drowned himself. Now, what I'd 44 THH STOBY OF AVIP like to know is this : if you wantal to keep thea tres, why didn't you ? " Mrs. Dobell, with some signs of agitation, L-iid aside her sewing, and drew her little daughter upon Ler lap. She looked into Avis's eyes for a long moment, with that instinctive assurance of sjiupa- th3' and impulse of confidence, which, from the lioui when the baby's face is first upturned to hers, s mother feels at times in the presence of a woman- child. " Avis," she said gravely, " I married your papa: that is why I never acted in the theatre." " Oh, yes ! Well, I didn't know. Did j'ou never want to run away after j-ou had married papa? Did you never care about the theatre again? Mamma, what is the matter ? Arc j'ou cold ? I don't want to go away and plaj% I haven't talked enough. I had a great many questions to ask you. I like you better than I do Barbara's mother. You're so muc'i prettier, mamma." But long after tliat, after her pretty mother had become a thin, sweet vision, like a fading sketch to the young girl's heart, she recalled with incisive distinctness the way in which she had been put down from her mother's knee that morning, then Impulsively recalled, snatched, kissed, and cried over with a gush of incoherent words and scalding tears. She never saw her mother cry before or aftei liiat. But all that she could understand of wha) nhc said wr.s, — THE STORY OF AVIS. 43 " Oh, my little woman! Mother's little woman ittle woman ! ' ' This glimpse into her mother's heart, the child, held by some blind and delicate sense of honor, nover shared with, any other human ej'es. When she was herself a woman grown, and not tiU then, she asked her fatJier once, if he supposed her mother to have possessed genuine dramatic talent. "Unquestionably," said the professor, lifting iiia head. " My wife was not lili:e most women, giveij to magnifying every little aesthetic taste into an unappreciated genius. She had, beyond doubt, the histrionic gift. Under proper conditions she might have become famous." " Why, then, should she never have cultivated such a gift? " ventured Avis. "Because," said the man simplj-, "she married me." " But do you not suppose," persisted Avis, " that in all those years, shut up in this quiet house, she ever knew a restless longing in that — in those — in such dkcctions? " ' Avis faltered beneath the old man's sharp and sudden look, bent upon her in a kind of deep, in- dignant pity". " Your mother was my wife," he said superbly; " and my wife loved me." One other morning spent in the sunlight with hei mother became pictorial in Avis's memorj', — one Blher only ; and whether the first threw tlio, more 46 THE 8TOEY OP AVIS. powerful focus upon the last, or the last against the first, it were difficult to say. Avis was nine. years old that morning. It was winter; and her father waked her in the freezing dawn, while as yet only a single feather of gold flecked the east, where snow- clouds were piling high. Her mother had been ailing, ill : none knew ex- actly why. It was quite certain that she had no disease ; only the waxing and waning and wasting of a fine, feverish excitement, for which there seemed to be neither cause nor remedy. Last night they told her she was better. They had called her now in hot haste. Swift feet passed to and fro across the halls ; and voices broke and whispered at the doors. The chUd, jn her little night-gown, pattered across the entry, shivering with cold ; but, when her mother asked her why she cried, she said j)apa had hurt her hand when he took hold to lead her in. The light had broadened when she climbed upon the high, old-fashioned bed, and pulled aside the clothes to get in upon her mother's ai-m. Some one objected to this ; but some one else said, " Let the child alone." The color in the east unfolded, and hung against the windows like a wing, she thought, as she lay down, and curled against her mother's heart. "Mamma," began the child, "I am sorry yon ore sick. Sha'n't I bring yc.» a little picture that 1 drew last night?" THE STORY OF AVIS. 47 But her mother answered only, " There, my daughter ! Mother loves her ; there ! ' ' "It is a picture of a bird, mamma, with trees. I thought you'd like to see it. And — ; O mamma ! the wing ! — see the wing the sun has made upon the sky ! It looks as if it meant to wrap us, wrap us, wrap us in." As Avis, leaning on one little arm, uttered these words in the dreamy monotone of an imaginative child, the. sun-burst broke full against her face. It was then that there rang throughout the room a tense and awe-struck cry. It was not in any sense a cry of pain ; rather surcharged with a burden of wondering joy. Then there followed words resonant and vibrant : — " Under the shadow of His wing shalt thou abide." But when Avis, dazzled by the sunrise, turned her head, some one came from behind, and swiftly laid a gentle hand across her eyes. And though she begged them, tiU the day was dark again, to let her go back, iust for once, and hear mamma say, " Mother loves her," none would give her leave. The professor's sister was a homeless widow, of excellent Vermont intentions, and high ideals in cup- cake. In the course of a severe and simple life she had known one passion, and one only, — the refined passion for flowers, which makes the sole poetry of many a plain, prosaic story. She accepted her call- 48 THE STORY OF AVIB. .ng and election conscientiously, when she was sun.' moned to that most difficult of human tasks, the training of another woman's child. When Hegel's letter came, beseeching her to bring the presence of the " ever- womanly " into the desolated house of a heart-broken man, she praj'ed over it for a week. And then she spent another in wonderirig what it would be her clear duty to do by that child in regard to pickles and hot biscuit: her poor mother had never attended to her diet. She held it to bo the first business of any woman who undertook the manage- ment of a hterary family, lilte her brother's, to attend properly to its digestion. And then she wi'ote her brother simply — sajing nothing of either prayers or pickles — that she would come and do the best she could. Her sole stipulation was, that she might be allowed to bring her geraniums. Her best — to her glory be it said, from the day when she first unpacked in the professor's house the rather rural-looking trunlts, to which Avis's town- bred sensibility immediately objected — aunt Chloe faithfully, evenly, and nobly did ; and what could angels or mothers more ? Yet when she had been in her brother's family a year, she came to him one day with a sunken look about the temples , — a family look, indicating sternly- repressed feeling, in which she bore at times a mar- vellous lilceness to the professor. " Hegel," said the childless woman, with a quiver |[ng lip, " I should like to have j-our little daughtei THE STORY OF AVIS. 49 ''What's the matter now?" The iiiufcssot brought his black brows together, looking up from the copy of Hamilton's Lo^c, in which he was try- ing, with the "patience of genius," to keep six places open with five fingers. " Nothing very new," sighed aunt Chloe. " The same old story. She had to rip her seam out in the — iihe undergarments, and she would not stir the jeUy. And, when I went to ask her why she had not madeher bed,,I found her putting tinfoil over the medallions that you brought from Mantua ; making impressions of them with her finger-nail. And the noses, Hegel ! It will displease j'ou very much to see the noses. The Laocoon is as black as the register ; and the Apollo ' ' — The professor strode across the room, and into the parlor where A.\\s sat, deep in the broad cush- ioned window-sill, with the medallions on her lap. A vein on the child's temple began to t.lirob as she looked up. "Papa, I never meant to hiu:t their noses! I didn't know they were so tender, — just lilic sugar. I wanted to make a statue out of the tinfoil. Poor ApoUo, papa ! He's just a snub." Avis brought the medallions to him with a swift, sweet gesture of appeal, which too frequently con- verted her clearest faults into her most irresistible claims upon one's sympathy ; or, as aunt Chloe put it, "tiimcd her from a simicr into a sufferer" at ouco. 50 THE STOKT OF AVIS. " Never mind tlie noses ! " said the professor, jTitably tossing the medallions to one side. " Atis, don't you love your aunt Chloe? " " Why, yes ! " said Avis, with wide eyes. " I like aunt Chloe. It isn't aunt Chloe that I hate." "What do you hate?" Her father looked at her across the great black Ix)gic, as a depressed garrison might Jook at the progress of an enemy whose movements it was ut- terly unable to forecast. " Aunt Chloe says it's unladylike to hate," said Avis. " If it is, then I'd rather not be a lady. There are other people in the world than ladies. And I hate to make my bed ; and I hate, hate, to sew chemises ; and I hate, hate, hate, to go cooking round the kitchen. It makes a crawhng down my back to sew. But the crawhng comes from hating: the more I hate, the more I crawl. And mamma never cooked about the kitchen. I think that is a ser- vant's work. I'm very ugly to aunt Chloe some- times, papa. And then I'm sorry. But I don't tell her, unless I thinlj of it. On the whole, papa," add- ed the child gravelj', " I have so many sorrows in this world, that I don't care to hve." " But," said her father, with rather a gymnas- tic sternness, "it is shirking not to attend to your ivork. There's nothing meaner than a shirk." " I'm not a shirk, papa ! " cried Avis, with hot, indignant eyes. " It isn't the wo?* I hate. I raked ap the leaves for you last fall, and you said I did THK STORY OP AVIS. 51 It most as well as Jacobs. And I go to the post- ofScc cverj' day. It's not the working, but the hating and the crawling, that I mind." " It is proper that little girls should learn to sow and cook," said the professor of intellectual philoso- phy faintly. He turned the leaves of the Logic ; he groped blindly among the marginal annotations. His two hundred um-uly boys in the college class-room he could manage ; but all the wisdom of Sir WiUiam was as the folly of a fool to teach a great man what to say to a Uttle girl who did not like to sew. There was a vein of broad tolerance in Hegel Dobell's sturdj' nature. He knew that it would give Jiim " a crawling " to sit for fifteen minutes at that slow, nervous, precise drawing in and out of the ucedle, at which his little daughter, with flushed cheeks and twitching fingers,, sat by the hour at a time. "A crawling?" Call it a brain-fever. Yet it.was unquestionably proper for aU women, certainly for all women belonging to himself, to be versed in those domestic accomplishments to which the feminine nature was created to adjust itself happUy at some cost. So he only said, — " Well, well, my dear ; do as aunt Chloe bids you, and hate as few things as possible. And now, if you want to make statues, spare my medallions, and put the tinfoU on your dolls' faces in the play- room." " My doUs ! " said Avis. Her color came swiftly : she lifted her little head with the helpless look of 62 THE STORY OF AVIS. one who receives a perfectly unavcngeable insult " Why, papa! I harcn't had a doll since long before mamma died. You knoio I buried my last one undei the tool-house. And Coy came to the funeral." But papa and Sir "William the Wise were gone. "It is an admitted principle in all systems of education," said the professor plaintively to his si». ter, ' ' that some concession shall be made to the moulds of individuality. In point of fact, all theories cool off in such moulds at last. There certainly is this element of justice in the electoral sj'stem which is in danger of becoming so threatening to oui universities." " Do yovL want Avis to give up learning to cook? " asked aunt Chloe, with a puzzled face. " Certainly not/' said her father, retreating promptly and safely behind the cover of the Logic. Aunt Chloe sighed. In her heai't she thought, that if A^ds failed in the end to grow up .lilce other girls, and be a credit to her, it would be owing chiefly to her poor mother's city-bred, unthrifty system of allowing ser\'ants to manage their work with so little personal supervision. It has been said that every human opinion is btrong enough to have had its martjTs. Aunt Chloe would have gone to the stake cheerfully for this con- rction. THE STOEY OF AVIS. 68 CHAPTER IV. " Tet thoroughly to believe In one's own self, So one's self were thorough, were to do Great things."— TEJnrysON. THE illuminated hours of life are few ; but tKose of our first youtli have a piercing splendor which neither earlier nor later experience can by any chance absorb. Avis was perhaps sixteen, when one of iiese phosphorescent hours flashed upon her. To the day of her death she wiU recall the last detail that expressed it to her. As most of us re- vive the sunrise of love, or the first assault of gi'icf, it is given to a few to individualize the moment when aspiration lays a coal of Are upon our young dumb lips. She was down in her father's apple-orchard, where the low, outskirting branches yield the outlook to the sea. Between her and the shore swept placidly the tixpanse of the fann, for whose sake the professor clung with syllogistic precision to the old-fashioned iiouse so far from the centre of the town. The ripen- ing grain had a sinuous, feminine motion under the light wind. The staUis of the young corn turned their edges in profile towards the sun ; and the short sills hung lUa! the hair of b.ibies, tangled and falling : it seemed to Avis that she could see a, stir now and 51 THE STORY OP AVIS, liicn, and tiny green hands put up to pusli it out of winking eyes. In the meadow the long gra^ss rioted , and black and brown and yellow bees made love to crimson clovers. How they blushed ! She sho-ilf] thinli they would. They were too la\ish of their honey, those buxom clovers, lilie an- untaught country lassie with a kiss. But the daisies that slm-ted the old gray stone walls — the sHm, white daisies witb the golden hearts — looked to the j'oung gM's fancy lilic tlie wgihs in the Bible stor3-, carrying each a burning lamp. She had climbed into the highest, airiest branch of the highest tree in aU the orchard, principallj- be- cause aunt Chloe said it was unladj'UliC to chmb. Any thing, every thing, that aunt Chloe did not want her to be, she would like to become that morning. It was purelj' because aU things had gone naiTowly wrong in doors that day, that she had taken her little blue-and-gold guis' copy of " Aurora Leigh," and rushed out fiercelj' with it into the wide June weather. Because aunt Chloe had made her late o the drawing-lesson to get that parlor swept ; be- cause she had been rude and wrong about it, and aunt Chloe had been poUte and right ; because aunt Chloe had said she would never gi-ow gentle and womanly Hire other girls, and she had retorted that Bhc hoped she never, never, never should ; because, Loo, she had told aunt Chloe hotly, to that goo(" lady's extreme periilexity, that " cav-pet-dusting {fwugh a pretty trade, was not the imperative labo* THE STORY OF AVIS. 5S ijler all," and so liad run up to get the poem, and see hi secret if she iad lier quotation right, — because of all this, here tliey were, she and Aurora together, tossing lO^e feathers in the apple-bough, high, <5tiL, sale from aU the whole round, rasping world. Besides, aunt Chloe never could find her, .and would have to make the pudding by herself. So near our pettiest motives do our largest in- spirations lie ! She had casUy thrown off the annoj'ance of the morning, with the blessed, elastic temper of her young years ; iUnging herself upon one elbow, in that way of hers, pressing her fingers against her temple and under the gu'hsh fillet of her closely braided hair, balancing herself dexterously by her feet upon the tremulous bough, and so plunged into that id}'! of the June, that girls' gospel, which wiU be great as long as there are girls in the world to thinli it so. As few poems are ever read, as only an imagina- tive gu-1 can read those few, Avis in the apple-bough read on and on. She had always meant to take just some such June morning, and find out to her satis- faction what the woman really meant to say who wi'ote that book, but had only nibbled at it hitherto 'ndiscriminately, after the manner of girls. Full of the vague restlessness which possesses ali healthy young creatures, and the more definite hun- gers natural to a girl of her temperament, Avis was ready to be fed with any full, rich nutriment whicb seemed to promise flbrino to a growing soul. 56 THE STOUT OF AVIS. Poison or nectar, brimstone or manna, our lips BlaJte at the nearest, be it wliat it may, in the crisis of that fine fever which comes but once in life. Avis was not without capability of relishing a certain quaUty of poison, not too fully flavored, of prismatic tints, and in a lily's shape, like hyacinths. But n was sUent as a convent in the apple-boughs; the growing day drew on a solemn veil of light ; upon the sea the steps of unseen sacred feet were stirring — and so the manna fell. I like to thinlc of this young thing, coiled there, like an oread, in the apple-tree, with the shadow of a leaf set lOiie a seal upon her parted lips, and her eyes leaping now and then, dumb prisoners, from her book to the horizon of the summer sea; her heart arising with the sweet imperiousness of gui- hood to solve thfe problem of her whole long life before that robin yonder should cease singing, or the next wave break upon the shore, or the lamp of one of the virgin daisies go out under the shadow of the »verflying cloud that swept across the meadow. " The June was in her, with its nightingales; " and are there not those of us who would j-ield om lives to know their Junes once more? Avis, long years after, used to remember with » jxisitive thrill how she said aloud that morning. Jirowiug back her head, and turning her eye thi'ougli tJie close leaves to the vivid sky, — " I am alive. What did God mean by that? " THE STORr OF AVIS. 57 And then was friglitened lest the very orioles should understand her. It seemed to her to he the first time that she had ever really thought she was alive. But no one could understand : no one should under- stand. She sat up, and looked at the birds with her finger on her Ups. Despite our most conscientious endeavor to " go on cutting Ibread and butter," it is on ideals that the world's starvation feeds. And to most of us who must perforce live prose, there is a charm be- yond all definition in the development of a poetic nature. In the budding of all young gifts, in the recognition of all high graces, in the kindUng of aU divine fires, we feel a generous glow upon our own colder and serener fates, like the presence of the late evening light upon a drift of snow. When the pas- sion of our lives has long since wasted into pathos, and hope has shrivelled to fit the cell of care, we lean with increasing ardor on the hearts of those in whom purpose and poetry were permitted to be one. On Monday when the fire smokes, on Tuesday when the bills come in, on Wednesday when the children ciy, it is not more smoke, more debt, more tears, we want : tell us, rather, how a statue grew, or how a poem sprang, or how a song was wrought, or how a prayer conceived. Avis climbed down from the apple-tree by and by, with eyes in which a proud young purpose hid. It aad conit; to her now — it had aU come to her very plainly — whj she was alive ; what God meant bj 58 THE STORY OP AVIS. making her; what he meant by her being Arls Dobell, and reading just that thing that morning in the apple-boughs, with the breath of June upon her, — A\'is Dobell, who had rather take her painting- lesson than go to the senior party, — just Avis, not Coy, nor Barbara. She climbed down, and went straight into the house to her father. The orioles looked kindly after her ; and the maiden daisies held then- lamps aloft to light the going of her impetuous feet ; and perhaps either bu'ds or flowers came nearer to the young girl's heart just then than our tcnderest imagination can ever take us. Aunt Chloe had made her pudding alone, and the professor had eaten it. Avis thought of it as she went into the studj'. Very wcU. Other women might make puddings. She went straight to her father's knee, and, stand- ing with her straw hat hanging bj' the strings be- tween her crossed hands, said as simply as if she had been asMng for a kiss, — " Papa, I should like to be an ai-tist, if you olease." The professor looked up from the " Critique of Pure Eeason" with a faint, aiDpealing perplexity, like a child waited from a nap in a strange room. "O Avis! you have come. Your aunt missed you at dinner. I am sony that you have made hei wore trouble about j-our domestic duties." Afis stood for a moment perfectly still. She THE STORY OF AVIS. 59 seldom entirely lost the delicate, fluctuating coloi ffbich ligMed her face. At that n-oment she be- came, for one of very few times in her life, abso- lutely pale. " But, papa," she stretched out both her hands a little towatds him, — "papa, j-ou do not understand nio. I have decided this morning that I want to be an artist. I want to be educated as an artist, and paint pictures all my life." "Poh, poll!" said the professor. "Nonsense!" Ah, well ! we must forgive him. Wliat should he know of the apple-trees and the orioles, the daisies, and the blue-and-gold poem, and the way of a June morning with a j'oung girl's heart? " Nonsense, nonsense I " repeated Professor Do- bell. " I can't have j'ou filling j'our head with any of these womanish ajpings of a man's aflTairs, lUic a monlvcy playing tunes on a hand-organ." He spoke with a rude irritability not common with bim 'n his treatment of his little daughter ; and under that cavern of his brows glittered the rare spark which his wife had known so well. Avis, by some subtle law of association, thought at that moment of her mother, and wondered if papa were thinking of her also ; but she said nothing, only (urned miserably away. "But my child," called her father more gently, " come here, come '"cre ! What is aU this about? I don't understand. If you want to go on with BO THE STORY OF AVIS. your drawing-lessons, notliing is to prevent, that 1 know. Make j-oursclf happy with j-our paint-box, if you like. That was a verj' pretty little copy which 5'ou made me of Sir WiUiam. The likeness was really preserved." Still, still, and forever, Achilles will have his one little vulnerability. When he was a j'oung man, Hegel DobeU had been told that he resembled Sir William Hamilton. Perhaps he did : at all events, it was the pride and delight of his gentle life to think so A portrait engraving of the gi'eat philosopher always hung above the study-table. To be in\'iteQ into that stud}' was to be expected to obsen-e with more or less promptness that remarkable lilfcncss. His coUege-bo^-s understood this so well, that he used frequently to remark, after a Aisit from some more than commonly promising young man, how much that resemblance seemed to be thought to in- crease with j'cars. "It was a very pretty little copj'," repeated the professor. " I do not want to make pretty little copies ! ' ' cried Avis with quivering lip. " ' 7 w7io love my art would never wish it lower to suit my stature.' " The professor of intellectual philosophy, not being well read in " Aurora Leigh," stared at this alarm- uig quotation. But Avis went headlong on, — " 1 want to be educated. I want to bo thoroughly fcducaled in art. INIr. Majniard told me, when T drew the Venus, tliat I should go to Florence." THE STORY OF A Via 01 •' Ccrtaiuly," said her father, "you shall go w Florence in due time, lUio other educated young ladies. And, when you have had enough of Mr. Maynard, I will send you to the Art School, if that will make you happj'. But fret no more about ' be- ing ' this or that. Your business at present is to ' bo ' a studious and womanly girl. Now kiss me, and nm and beg aunt Chloe's pardon for being late to dinner." So lightly do we dispose of the instincts of the young thing lifting the first startled, self-concentrated ej'cs to ours. "Wc pat the sleeping lion at oiur feet as if it were a spaniel, ofTcring milk and sugar to the creature that wouM feed on flesh and blood, and settle, after the trifling disturbance, to our after- dinner nap. There was little enough of the lion in poor Avis's composition. She had all the self-consciousness ot the artistic temperament with but a small share of its self-confidence. After this little scene with her father, she shranlf and sluivelled into herself for a long time. She must be spurred, applauded, to her possibility, or it was possible no longer. It seemed to her an arrogance not to measure her belief in herself by the beUef of others in her. Above all, she craved at this time the dailj' stir and stimulus of .■,n idealizing love. She wondered sometimes, if in the feeling that other girls had about their mothers lay hiddei the wine which she found missing from hex 30iitli. For a soul which loved her so that it 62 THE STOBT OP AVI3. could not help believing in her, Avis could have dared the world. But only mothers, she supposed, evei cared for a perplexed and solitary girl like that. Still, because her hour had come, and because " the June was in her," she bent blindly to her young pur- pose, in her young and gi'oping way. But she quoted no more Mrs. Browning to hei father ; and, if he praised her crayons, she sat poUtely silent. It is j)ossible that this poised reserve excited in the professor more respect than a man may natu- rally be supposed to feel for the mental processes of his daughter at any age. "When Avis, being nineteen, and having finished, as one was careful to say in Harmouth, her school education, thus delicately expressing the true Har- mouth compassion for those types of societj' in which post-graduate courses of reading were not added to a young lady's accomplishments, — when A-vis was sent to Europe with 0 Ainte) on the wings o' the win' making' speed: Errand-runner he malce o' the blasts, and loons o* bis ain, lu bleeze o' lowe." — Scotch Psalms. IF Philip Ostrancler expected Miss Dobell to joiu his Gennan class, he was doomed to what it is not exactly con-cct to call a disappointment. Proba- blj' he did expect it. . The other j'oung ladies had all joined. Young ladies were apt to join any classes which he' chanced to open without undue reluctance. He had been in the frequent way of this sort of thing, in the natural course of that gi'iping struggle with waj^s and means which had brought the kcen-ej'ed, povertj^-riddcn boy from an uncultivated New-Hampshire home to one of the most brilliant positions which New England had then to offer. For it was now considered, as Avis heard from hei father when she had been at home a little wlulc, quite assm-ed that Mr. Ostrandcr would ultimately take the geological chair thi'ough the probation of t;;c assistant professorship. True he was not a darmouth graduate, this the professor rcgi'etted keenly ; but his shining talents bui'ued the mrxe con- spicuously for this disadvantage. And thai he had THE STOBY OF AVIS. 78 refused a position in Ms Alma Mater to compass those two years in Germanj', bj-^ which a promising young man expected, with some confidence, fifteen or twenty years ago, to become immediately " dis- tinguished," had naturally recommended liiin to the Harmouth perceptive Faculty. Coy was right when she said that Mr. OfArander wias thought in Hamiouth to be remarkably versatile. At all events, a versatility which can be converted into a dollar an hour is not to be despised by a Harmouth tutor ; and Ostrander held the rudder of his j'ct unanchorcd craft with a very easj' hand. In this matter of the German lessons — which, requu-ing but the slightest tji^e of attention, left him space for a good deal of revery, — he was con- scious of watching narrowly to see what Miss DobeU would do. During the afternoons which he spent in the sunny jiai-lors of the Harmouth ladies, with the prettiest guis in the city chii'ping guttm-als at his feet, or in the evenings which he devoted to Barbara Allen's fine renderings of Schumann, he made no attempt to deny .that the young artist occupied cer- tain large untravelled spaces upon the map of his fancy. It is more than possible, that if Avis had tirifted into the German class ; if there had been established between them that time-honored relation of master and pupil, which, alwaj's fraught with the sweetest possible perils to man and woman, is more stimulating to the imagination of the pupil than of the master ; if Avis, too, had sat and cliirped at liis feet, then — well, wJiat then? 74 THE STORY OF AVIS. Possibly Ostrander assumed that then the delicaie poem opened one day at vespers in the Madeleine would hardly have been found worth the reading, and the radiant, undiscovered country would have scarcely compelled the explorer over the threshold. Possibly, too, both nature and experience would have talren Ms brief, had he been tried for this assumption Ctetrander, at this period of his life, protected himself against the ambuscades of his own temperament with that forethought which an unmarried man of thirty is clearly expected to have acquired. But he experienced a singular sense of relief and expectancy, when several weeks had passed, and Miss Dobell did not join the German class. That sibyl of the Madeleine perhaps possessed the fine old classic instinct '*which every year he thought grew rare and rarer among women. She must, it seemed, be absolutely sought. Some pressing Faculty business took him, before the vacillating April days were quite over, to Pro- I'essor DobeU's house. He called at dusk, and aunt Chloe invited him to tea. He hesitatingly refused ; but when she said, — "Then come nest Friday, Mr. Ostrander: it is a long time since we have had the pleasui-e, and I notice my brother is always in good spirits when you have been to see us," he accepted the invitation at smce. He did not in the least attempt to wrestle ■dth his motive in this innocent bit of scene-shifting. THE STOKY OF AVIS. i5 but allowed himself to be led blindfold by it. His wisli to see that girl again had become imperative. Ostrander had the deepest respect for whatever he found really imperious in himself. "With Friday, the New-England April weather had assumed one of the caprices which we tolerate eo tenderly in any born coquette ; and snow fell heavi- ly. The day before had been as gentle as a baby's dream. Avis worked in the studio in the garden without a fire ; and one of the coUege-boys brought Ostrander a tuft of saxifrage from the pale-green promise of the meadows. That morning the wind lay in the east sleepily enough ; but by noon the air was blurred with the large, irregular spring flakes, as if Nature had taken a wayward fancy to fold her- self in a Japanese screen. In, the afternoon, when Ostrander had stroHedf out of town, and down the shore to see the surf, the drifts were abeady pUing high. He tramped through them Ughtly enough, in the rubber-boots which are the chief end of man in New England, and with his soft silk cap drawn over his eyes, and his powerful figm-e bent a little with the first languid action of a wrestler upon it, yielded himself to the intoxication of the winter shore. Few gentler passions pass more readily into the permanence and fidelity of love than the passion for the sea. Ostrander had an elemental Mnship with it in himself, which every year of his hfe had intemiified. He sometimes wished that he was quite sure he cared as much for any htiman creature 76 THE STOBY OF AVia as be did for Harmouth Harbor. He stiuck off down the drifted beacb toward tbe Light. The wind was in bis face. Through the opaque air bo could see rudely defined, lilce the values of a vast, unfln- iahed sketch, the waves leap and slip and faU upon tbe glazed clifTs, and across the nari'ow reef fron; which the light-house shot sheer against the sky. He pushed on down, perhaps a mile, to find a shelter ; and there, with the tide at bis feet and tbe spray in his face, flung himself upon the freezing rocks, pos- sessed with a kind of fierce hut abundant joy. The Light stood just across the bay where the Harbor widened to the sea ; it might have been a dozen rods or so from where Ostrandcr sat. The reef, traversable at low tide, ran from it to a gorge within the cliff. Tbe Tvell-defined metallic tints com- mon to the New-England coast — the gi-eens and reda and limbers, the colors of rust, of bronze, of ruins — covered tbe reef. The gorge was a vein of deep purjile lava, which to Ostrander's educated eye told the story of a terrjble organic divorce. Tbe wave that tore its heart out at bis feet was throbbing green; but, bej'ond that, the inrolling tide, the challcy outline of the Light, tbe harbor- mouth, the narrowing liorizon, the low sk}'', all the world, lay gray beneath the footsteps of the dizzy snow. The wind was rising from tbe sullenness of a blow to the anger of a gale ; and the crash of ihe breakers which be could see bad a shrill, petu- lant sound set to the boom of those unseen acroai tbe bay. THE STOEY OP AVIS. 77 Was it tlie lawlessness of all this, or the law of it, that tlmlled Ostrander ? "Was it the passion, oi the purpose, which coroinanded him? "Was the Eternal djama of unrest an outlet, or an inlet, to liia nature ; an excitant, or a sedative ? It were hard to say. The 3'oung man asked himself the question, but found a shrug of his fine shoulders the most inteUigent answer at his command. Or perhaps we must admit that there was as much rheumatism as philosophy in that shrug. It certainly was growing' verj' cold, and darkening fast. Ostrander had been somewhat sheltered by the cliflT at whose feet he sat; so much so, that lie was quite unaware of the extent to which the wind had risen. A man does not sit very long upon an ice- covered rock ; but a few moments wiU suffice to lei loose the prisoned temper of an AprU gale. "When he turned to get back to the beach, he found the wind racing through the lava-gorge at the rate of perhaps eighty miles an hour, and the snow seeth- ing under his feet before the first oncoming of the heavy, breeze-swept tide. He stopped to pull up his coat-coUar, as he would now have the storm at his back ; as he did so, the fog-beU began to toll from the Light, and he turned Instinctively at the sound. At that moment he saw a figure between himself and the light-house, moving slowly shorewaids along the reef. It was the figure of a woman — it was the figure of a lady, sjght and delicately dresse pleasant consciousness of possible peril. TheT gale took the heavy drapery of her skirts and long water THE STORY OP AVIS. 79 proof cloak in a cruel fasMon, winding them about and about her limbs. She looked very tall iu the waning light, and there was a certain grandeur in hei motions. She stood out against the ice-covered rock like a creatm-e sprung from it, sculptured, primeval, born of the storm. As Ostrander ran along the reef, he saw her stop or stagger, hesitate, then stoop slowly, and take to her hands and knees. She rose again in a moment, and stood cowering a little, afraid or unable to stretch bcr full height to the force of the gale, which seemed to Ostrander something satanic, now that he was in the teeth of it upon that reef. Could a blind, insen- sate force of Nature, so many feet of atmospheric pressure to the square inch, obedient to a powerful, and, on the whole, kindly-disposed Creator, set the whole weight of its brute organism to work with this devilish intelligence, to beat a delicate woman, blow by blow, to death ? There seemed something so pro- 'bundly revolting to Ostrander' s manhood in this idea, 'ust then, that it did not occur to him, that he was LOt the only man in the world who had ever experi- enced his first genuine defiance of fate in some stress of peril sprung upon the woman whom he would have given — What would Ostrander have given to save her? It seemed to him at that moment that he would lave given 'his young life ; for as he crept along the •eef — now swiftly, that he might reach her, and then slowly, that he might not startle her — she threw up ker arms, and fell. 80 THE STOEY OP AVIS. He came leai^ing from rock to rock, and woulci pas- fribl}' have plunged into the water ; but thi'ough the clask he heard her voice. She said, " I have not fallen into the water. Can you get over to that great pm-ple rock? " She spoke so quietly, that he was completely re- assured about her until he crawled over under the pounding of the gale, and, dashing the snow out of his ej'cs, looked down. She had slipped from the edge of the reef, and hung at fuU-length along the slope of a huge bowlder. The slope was perhaps twenty feet long, and very gradual : it was covered with ice. The spray froze in his face as he looked over. The water was breaking across her feet. She clung with both hands to the polished edge of the bowlder : there was blood upon the ice where she had clutched and beaten it away. But perhaps the fact which came most distinctly to Ostrander's con- sciousness was, that the tips of her fingers were absolutely without color. The first thing which he did was to tear off his fur gloves, and, leaning over the reef, stretch both Ms warm hands upon hers. The water sucked between the reef and the bowlder in a narrow, inli:y stream. '' You are right," she said: " they were getting frost-bitten. There. Now I can hold myself easily tnoug^l as long as I must. Mr. Ostiander, do job find it very slippery upon the reef ? ' ' "Kot in the least," said Osti-ander grimly, grind Ing his heel into the ice. THE STOEY OF AVIS. 81 "Can you brace yourself sufDciently to put one Toot against tlie bowlder ? • ' "I should hope so." " Only one foot, please, and only one hand. Do not try to get upon the bowlder, and do not step between the bowlder and the reef. Do you under- stand?" "Miss Dobell, give me one hand now — slowly. Raise your fingers, one at a time, and put them into mine. "Do you understand that j-ou are not to come upon the bowlder? "If you do not give me your hand immediately, I cannot jpossibly answer for what I shall do." " Promise me, that, if I slip, you will let go." " I promise nothing. Give me your hand ! " " Promise that you will not let me drag you after me." " I promise any thing. For God's sake, give me, this instant, the fingers of your right hand ! ' ' She gave them to him with that, obediently enough. She lifted them one by one from the ice ; one by one he slipped his own under them, slid the pahn of his hand slowlj'^ under the pahn of hers ; so cautiously, but with the full prehensile force of heir own supple touch to help him, reached and grasped tier wrist. A^-is had firmer fingers than most women ; but they were as supple as withes. " Now, the other ! " They managed it with the other more nervously, for the water was now dashing freely in their faces. 82 THE STOBT OF AVIS. " Now I am quite firm upon the reef. I shall draw you easily up. Do you trast me perfectly that I know what I am about? " " Perfectly. Do you remember, that, in case of an accident, only one must slip? " " I remember." "Very well." " Are you ready? " " Quite ready." It seemed to Avis but a moment's work ; and they sat crouched and panting side by side upon the broad surface of the reef. She could not possibly have said how she came there. Her most definite thought was a perfectly new conception of the jDOwcr of the human hand. Ostrander's controlled, intelli- gent grasp challenged the blind mood of the gale : it was iron and velvet, it was fury and pity ; as if the soul of the storm had assumed the sense of a man. As soon as might be, for the tide was rising fast, they made their way across the reef, and sat down for a moment's breath upon the shore. Neither had yet spoken. Ostrander had not, indeed, released the grip which he had of Miss Dobell's hand. Avis "vas the first to break the silence which had fallen apon them. She said, — " I am afraid I have killed the bird." " I beg your pardon? " said Ostrander, staring. " I went over to the Light to see about the biids that are brought by the storm," said Avis, exactly THE STOBY OP AVIS. 83 as if nothing had happened. " The keeper gave Qie a little blue-jay that he picked up under the light-house. Ho thought it might live ; and I wrapped it in my cloak-pocket. Ah, see ! No : it Is alive." " Give it to me," said Ostrander, adopting the young lady's tone very quietly. "You are too much chilled to keep it. And now are you able to get on a Uttle ? The tide is becoming really trouble- some ; and the waUs is longer than I wish it were." He took the bird, and, unfastening his coat, wrapped it in his breast. Avis, looldng up thi'ough the dusk, thought how tenderly the httle act was done. "The poor thing flutters against my heart," said Ostrander in his exquisitely-modulated tones. He had one of those voices into which all the tenderness of the natm-e flows readily, lilce the meadows which are the first to receive the freshet of the river. And i,hen Ostrander was really sorry for the bird. Avis made no reply. She took his arm in silence, and in silence they passed through the lava-gorge, and out upon the drifted beach. There she stopped and looked back. The fog-bell was toUing steadi- ly, and under the gray sheen of the snow the gi'ayer mist stole in. " I have always wondered exactly what made this gorge," she said, quite as if she and Ostrander had only come out on a Utile geological expedition. Wliat was torn out of ihe heart of the rock? " 84 THE STOEY OF AVIS. " Nothing was torn out," said Ostrs-nder " The two sides of tliat gorge are thrust apart by flood oi fire. They were originally of one flesh. It was a perfect primeval marriage. The heart of the rock was simply broken." Avis stood for a moment in the purple shadow of the cleft, into which the water was now bounding high. A certain awe fell upon them both as Ostran- der spoke. Instinctively they glanced from rent side to rent side of the divorced cliff, and then hito one another's faces. Stu-red by the strain of peril and the thrill of safety, A^'is's excited imagination took -sivid hold of the story of the rock.* It seemed to her as if they stood there in the wake of an awful organic tragedy,, differing from human tragedy only in being sjonbolic of it ; as if through the deep, dumb suffering of Nature, the deeper because the dumber, all little human pains went seething shal- lowly, as the tide came seething through the gorge. In some form or other, the motherhood of eai'th had forecast all types of anguish under which her children groaned ; had also thrilled, perhaps, beneath all forms of joj'. Suppose the bridal gladness or the widowed pathos of a rock. Suppose the sen- tient nature of a thing adapted to its reticence. What a story, then, in sea or shore, in forest, liills, ond sky, in wind and fire, in all things whose mighty fips were sealed ! Suppose she herself, gone muie as the mutest of them, cognizant of their secret joined to thsir brotherhood, were dashing on the tide across Iho lara-gorge. THE STORY OF AVIS. 85 As they turned away, she leaned rather heavily upon his arm, and tremulously said, — "I suppose, Mr. Ostrarider, if it had not been for you" — "Ah, no, no!" interrupted Ostrander quickly. • The light-keeper would have got out the boats. I have only saved you a pretty cold bath. Pray let us not taUi of that. — But indeed," he added, abruptly changing his tone, " I begin to understand why the people in the novels alwaj's are saving each other's lives. It is just another instance of the absolute naturalness of much that we are all used to call unnatural in fiction." "And why?" asked Avis, without the least ap- parent awkwardness. "Because nothing acquaints two people lilie the nnconventionalities of danger. It seems to me — pray pardon me — as if I had known you for a long tune." Avis made no reply; and they struck out upon Lie drifting shore. They seemed to have been taken np now, and driven by the gale behind them, as if ttiey had been scooped into the hollow of a mighty Land. "And nothing isolates," continued Ostrander, ' ike the interchange of emotions which any such expeiii'nce involves. See now," added the young man, looldng about the desolate shore, "how lonely we seem. It would be easy to think that there waa ao other life than ours in all this world." 8G THE STORY OF AVIS. He turned as he spoke, and would have slood to face the wind ; but the mighty hand -which had gath- ered them swept them imperiously on, as if it con- ceived them to have been bent upon some terriblo errand of its own. Perhaps Ostrander, too, had received quite Ma share of the excitement of that April afternoon. He was in some sense rather a guarded man in his habit of speech among women, sufficiently cautious not to involve himself in those little ambiguous sallies of the lip to which young ladies attach an importance which a man reserves for aflFairs. He caught himself in thinldng that he did not know another woman in the world to whom he could have made that speech without a savage and humiliating fear of misinterpretation. With a little of the madness of any rarely-tasted license, he plunged on, — " How lilie you it was, in the midst of all that, to teU me to get upon the purple rock ! " "How do you know it was like me?" laughed Avis, as they struggled through the snow. " I thinli I have always known what would be like you," said the young man in a lower voice, " since I saw you in the Madeleine." There is a certain shade of expression peculiar to a man's face, which every woman knows, but fe^v? understand. It falls as far short of the flash of over-mastering feeling on the one hand as it does of self-possession on the other. Its weai-er is at THE STOKY OP AVIS. 87 once constrained to admire, and predetermined not lo love ; and xDrecisely in so far as he is unconscious even of that predetermination does this delicate play of the features take on the appeai'ance of the strongest emotion. It was not so dark but that Avis, looking up through the storm, saw that sensitive expression dart across Ostrander's face. Then the lines about his mouth subsided, his eye cleared, he lifted his head, and it was gone. She need not be a vain woman, only an inexperienced one, who reads in such a facial change a tenderness which it by no means bespeaks. Avis, being neither the one nor the other, suffered nothing more than a slight feeling of sur- prise. " I suppose," he added, after a few minutes' pro- found attention to the problem: given darkness, a lady, and a snow-drift four feet high, how to floun- der through the latter with that grace which it will be a pleasure to reflect upon to-morrow, — "I sup- pose you now went home, and thought what a rude American you had seen. I was glad when I. saw you come into the Chaucer Club. I have always felt that I owed you an apology for that stare." He said this with the manner of one who is con- Bcious of having said an uncommon thingi and has- tens to wrench out of it a common-place signifi- cance. "Not in the least," said Avis with composm-e. " I owe the making of a very satisfactory little 88 THE BTOEY OP AVIS. sketch to you. I put you into sepia, on a neutval gray. Couture took a great fancy to that sepia.' " D' I have been in any sense the cloak acrosii which j'om* royal feet have stepped upon the muddy road to glory, or the roj'al road to glory, or — my metaphor is gone mad, and' I give it up," said Os- trander, with the carelessness which conceals rather than expresses meaning. "At aU events, I am glad you made the sketch. "We are getting along bravely. Are you very cold ? " "Not much. Only my hand which I bruised. Thanlf j-ou ! No, I should bo very unhappy to take your glove. How is my bird, Mr. Ostrander? " " I forgot the bird ! " He sought for it very gently with his free hand, and said, — " It lives. It is quite warm. But it docs not stir." "Why," said Avis as they drew in sight of hei father's house, — " why should we disturb my father by telling him about that slip upon the rock? " "Why, indeed? You are very wise and right. We wiU not talk of it." " I have been away from him so many years," said Avis in the almost timid- way she had when her gentlest feeling was aroused, " that, now I am come back, I find I lUie to spare him all i^ossible pain, rvec a little one like this. And now, Mi\ Ostrander, how 13 my bu:d?" The light from the hall fell full upon his face THE STOEY OF AVIS. 89 leben they stopped without the door. The snow lay lightly on his beard and bright hair. He looked like a young Scandinavian god. He slipped his hand very tenderly under his shaggj' coat as he stood there looking down at her. " I hope all is well with the poor thing," said he But the bird upon his heart lay dead. Avis was in no possible sense what we caU a woman of moods : her mouth and eyes were too har- monious, and her chin too broadly cut. Yet she had as many phases as the moon. So (as unconscious of the lack of originality in his fancy as most excited young creatures to whom all earth's duU, old figures are sublimated by the moment's fever) Ostrander thought, when she came down to supper that night, gone, by some ten minutes' magic, out of her wet wrappings into a wonderful warmth and delicacy. Even the scent of her dress as she swept past him — a fine French perfume, but one which he could not associate with any pretty Parisienne whom he had ever met — added to this impression. At once she had become a housed, sheltered, hearth-loving crea- ture. The soul of the storm lingered only upon her hair and eyes. There was a certain native daintiness about A vis, distinct from the inevitable elegance of a young lady recently returned from Paris, and h.irdly to be expected of the artisti? temperament. She Vad her mother to thank for that, aunt Chloe said, ir.t was still well remembered in Harmouth that the 90 TIIB STORY OF AVIS. professor's wife wore colors that no reading-cluli would have thought of combining, and laces of a very uninteUectual character. Ostrander did not recollect having seen any other woman in such a dress as Miss Dobell wore that evening. It was of white French flannel, very fine and soft, somewhat loosely worn, and unornamented. She was standing by her father's open fire when he came back from his room at the college, and was ushered by aunt Chloe into the study. Her eyes only moved to meet him. She looked slender and shining as a Doric column. "Ah," said the professor, " I am more than glad to see you here. I do not recall, Mr. Ostrander, whether you have been in my study before. So? Then you wiU have seen my engra^'ing of Sir Wil- liam, — Avis, be good enough to tui-n on the gas a little, — the only copy from that plate, sir, to be found in this country, I believe." Ostrander was hastening to say that there was, he fancied — or was it fancy? — a remai-kable likeness, when Avis interrupted him b}' saying, with an irrele- vance which surprised the professor in a girl of Avis'a really coherent mind, that aunt Chloe had sprained her wrist ; had tried to lift her great ivy-jar. Aunt Chloe tended her flowers as if they were all orphans, nnd loved that ivy like her own soul. " I hace never thought myself lacking in the c(m- moner forms of humanity," observed Avis, her (ij-es electric with merriment : " but I certainly could not Bit up nights with a sick ivy." THE STOBY OP AVIS. 9l "It was a German ivy," said aunt Chloe plain- tively; "and I thought it would freeze. I can't sleep warm if I know my iDlants are cold. Did you never notice, Iilr. Ostfander, how an arbutelon, for instance, will shiver? It will shiver lilic a thorough- bred spaniel at a draught of air. But the ivy was heavj-. And A'V'is, I thinls: j'ou must pour the tea, if j'ou please, my dear." Ostrander was not sony to see Avis pom- the tea ; but he recommended an arnica bandage to aunt Chloe with much graceful sjTnpathy, discussing the continental pronimciation with the professor, mean- while. Ostrander had no deeply preconceived repulsions to women with " careers," holding it the fu'st duty of an educated man to cultivate a tolerance of opinion, especially in matters in which opinion most unconsciously cooled into prejudice ; but he had, without doubt, his preconceived ideals. Among these he found that he had never placed a j'oung woman in a white French evening-dress, poming tea at a cultivated table, with a shigularly pretty arm. After tea — for the simple habits of the Chiistian family were not often disturbed for a quiet guest, and especially not for any pet of the professor's, like this young man, — Avis went to her accustomed seat upon a low cricket at her father's feet, and, sit- ting in the full firelight with bent head, read the Vsahn for evening praj-ers. A beautiful womanUness was upon her. She seemed to bo wrapped in it like a Naiad in a silver shell. D2 THE STORY OF AVIS. Ostraudcr yielded himself to the dcmestic spirit of the evening with the rare relief which a homeless and restless man alone can know. He sat with his hand above his cj-es, and listened to her reverent young voice. After praj-ers, the professor monopolized the con- versation, to the exclusion of the ladies, — a Ilar- mouth habit of which his wife had nearly succeeded in breaking him ; but aunt Chloe supposed that was the way in all literarj' families, and a lady could always take her work while gentlemen tallied. Ostraudcr did not object to this fonn of parlor etiquette, however, just then. He would have been quite satisfied if he need not have exchanged another word with Miss Dobell that evening. It suited his mood to steal a look at her now and then in silence. Even to watch her, almost reduced his thought of her to garrulousness. In the beautiful scholastic sense which wise men give to our common phrase, he had become conscious of her. He was made aware of the variations in her voice, her attitude, her glancC; as he was made aware of the fluctuations of his own breath. He felt her presence in the room as he felt aunt Chloe's rosc-hj-acinth in the atmos- phere. Was the repressed excitement of a shared and unspoken experience upon her as upon himself? Sue spoke but little, and wandered about the room wheii aunt Chloe, from over her knitting, rccom- mcn.'.ed some light crochet-work, which she was aur« Mr Oatrander would excuse. THE STORY OP AVIS. 93 How Buperb slie was in that white wool! as if vue liacl wrapped herself in a snow-cloud ; as if the very soul of the stoi-m, gone mad as a lover to in- fold her, tiu'ned warm as the June to win her, had followed her in from death and the freezing sea. She was standing with her face bent, and buried In the hyacinth, when aunt Chloe presently called her : — "Avis, Mr. Ostrander wants to get a portrait done for a bh-thday jDresent to his mother." " Mr. Ostrander, then, is a devoted son?" said Avis, lifting her face. " So I was telling him. And we have so few! Good sons have gone out of fashion, lUic hollyhocks. I hope you wiU be able to give him the sittings, Avis. The studio will soon be quite comfortable with the May sun." " How is it, Avis? " said the professor, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and stopping in his walls across the room to look at her. " Can you gratify Mr. Ostrander, my dear, do j'ou think? " It was when Ostrander was wading back to his roo3i3, beating his way through the damp and heavy diifts with the good temper of a man who has passed an exhilarating evening, that he saw, turning the sharp corner upon the college green, a slight Bgure struggling before him in the snow. It stag- gered with the helplessness of a creatiu:e encum- 'bcred by heavy swathing of the limbs, as only a 04 THE STORY OP AVTS. woman mummied in her skirts can stt.gger. The poor soul was sliglitly cLressed, and carried a little bag such, as is carried by agents or female peddlers, — a sight much less common fifteen years ago than now. As Ostrander approached, she tripped, and foil heavily across the snow, bruising her head," he thought, against a lamp-post as she fell. Inwardly wondering of how many more damsels in distress he i was elected to be the knight-en-ant before that stonn was over, with a lurking smile upon his lips, but instant pity in his eyes, he sprang, and lifted the young woman to her feet. As she turned to thank him, the light fi'om the street-lamp fell fuU upon her face and his. They looked steadily at one another before she spoke. THB SIOBY OF AVIS. 9fi CHAPTER VI. " The clearest skies are tbose That farthest ofE appear To birds of strongest wing. The dearest loyes are those That no man can come near With his best following." n. K. Weeeb. riIHE subtle footsteps of the spring stole on. ■i- The Chaucer Club adjourned till the " months with the r " should reinstate the oyster-suppers. The German lessons — since now a yachting-party offered its own peculiar tj-pe of culture, and a little wider variety in those forms of stimulus which no Intelligent young lady is ashamed to admit receiv- ing from the masculine mind, — the German lessons flagged. The deepening sun upon the picture of Sir "William wandered through the open window by which the professor had wheeled his study-chair. Aunt Chloe's geraniums were promoted to the gar- den, and aunt Chloe's soul to the seventh heaven of tender garden cares and hopes and fears, which those only know whose nature bourgeons with " the green things growing," and with these alone. And in the studio, Couture's pet pupil sat paint- ing the veiy successful portrait of her first American Bitter. B6 OTR STORY OF AVIS. Her great master, if he might have stJoUed tki ouyh the old-fashioned garden, and into the snug summer- house whicli Avis had levied for her uses, would possibly have said, with a keen glance from face to face, — '^ Tres bien ! You give Mademoiselle a .ong- haired student. She gives you Thor, Odin, Balder. Mademoiselle idealizes. Mademoiselle has a future.'' It seemed to Mademoiselle, meanwhile, that in strange senses, tingling as an unmastered science, and blinding as an unknown art, and solemn as an antrod world, her future, thi'ough the budding of that spring, advanced to meet her. She became electrically prescient of it. She throbbed to it as if perplexing magnetisms played upon the lenient May air. It was as if she held it in her j'oung hand as she held the ^dolet-bud? that Ostrander brought her. He brought her only buds. " I am so glad to be at work ! " she said, — " so gi-avcly, gi'catly glad ! " She said this to herself. It was necessary to say something. She did not remember to have worked so excitedly before. She thrilled to her task as the violet thrilled to the sun. Never had she seemed to conceive or to construct, with her imagination so re- cipient and docile to her inspirations. Never had she seemed before to be in such harmony with the infinite growing and 3'earning of Natm-e. She stood like the child of the desert, with her ea. TUB STORY OF AVIS. 97 »t tlie lips of the sphinx. Tlie wliole world had leaped into bloom to yield her the secrets of beauty. She spread the spring showers upon her palette, and dipped her brushes in the rainbow. As for her sitter, he served as well as another to pass the mood of the May weather ; better, perhaps, with that stimulating, legendary tj-pe of beauty. She found much beauty — and more, .^he better she knew it — in Philip Ostrander's face. She told hiin so one day, with a naivete which enchanted him. "I rarely meet," said the j'oung artist, "with beauty in men. I have known several beautiful women. '^ "And other women, it seems, know beautiful men," urged Ostrander, gracefully evasive of thd compliment, though he felt to the bottom of his soul the utter absence of that which would haive given it a distinct value to him. This young woman re- garded the contour of a man's face precisely as a physician regards a hectic flush or a bilious eye-ball. It was the intricate strife of the artist with the woman in her which had been the bewitchment of that look surprised in the Madeleine. He rather hoped some sudden, abashed consciousness would overtake her cahn, professional scrutiny: he had often wished so while the portrait had been in prog- ress. Just now he would have been glad to see her i'lush, perhaps. But she went serenely on. " [ know, I know ! But I never could understand it. When I was a girl, and the other girls tallied 98 THE STORY OF AVTS. about the handsome college-boys, I was gi-catlt puzzled. I did not know but I was color-blind about it, or that my eyes were made with different lenses. I am afraid I am not just IUjo other women," added Avis simply, dipping her brush with deiBp absorption in the madder-rose. " Thank Heaven ! " said Ostrander, in a low, de- lirious tone. Avis lifted her eyes with a startled change of ex- pression, holding the tube of brilliant color like an arrested thought upon the ah-. " I did not understand you? " she said gravely. " I said you were in danger of dropping the mad- der-rose. There ! AUow me. Do not stir : it wUJ hit the hem of j'our dress." He stooped to pick it up, her dress, as he did so, falling with a faint electric touch against his hand. Raising his head suddenly, he surprised her eyes upon him. They were yfiAe, grave, imperious. They made him thinlf of a Juno that he knew, and thought the grandest in the world. Was it the sen- sitiveness of a young man's wounded vanity that led him to fancy that her lips parted with something of the dumb and delicate scorn that the lips of that Ludovisi Juno, alone of all sculptiu-e that he had over seen, commanded? In truth. Avis had come home with large segments of her natm-e not altogether occupied by j'oung Scan- dinavian divinities ; and it is doubtful if all the gods sf OljTnpus would have appealed to her sensibilitiei THE STORY OF AVIS. 99 on any sustained scale, just then, otiier than as af- foriling more or less fresh material for "a charcoal," "amemorj'," or "a sienna." As the souls of the dead arc said, in the hideous fable, to suck the heart's blood of the living, so, without doubt, a great purpose sprung too early upon a young life may dehumanize it, — sometimes does. It is impossible to over-estimate the effect of substi tuting an intellectual for an emotional passion in the absorbent phases of- a woman's life which are cov- ered by the decade from sixteen to twenty-six. Such an experience maj"^ prune the nature, as we are told that hardship does that of certain savage races, re- tarding theh*" tenderer impulses. While the other girls talked of love and lovers. Avis sat and sketched their sliy, expectant faces. Yet nothing could be more fatal to horticultiure than to mistake the re- tarded for the stunted or the sterile growth. Avis's abundant being had suffered no depletion. She was alive to the nerves of her soul. She was stiU an unwon woman. She felt even glad some- tunes, that there wore men in the world who loved her. She Ulied to thinlr that they, loved her because tbey could not help it. She wondered why it was, that, the swifter the retreat of her nature from them had been, the surer had been the advance of theirs. Shts was sorry about it when it liappened ; but she had no coquettish conscious- ueras of having been m fault. And she thought very dumbly of her power to mat the music of any other 100 THB STOKV OF AVIB. ILfc. Men usually married. And it was pleasant tfl remember tliat she was not unlovely or unlovable. Sometimes, when she sat before her easel, forecast- ing her fair future, she felt suddenly glad, with a downright womanish thrill, that she was so sure of the beauty and patience of her pmpose; that she was not to live a solitary life because no other had been open to her. Perhaps the woman does not live for whom the kingdoms of earth and the glory of them could blunt the tooth of that one little poisoned thought. And Avis did not mean to marry: that was a matter of course. It was not necessary to talk about it : young women were apt to say something of the sort, she believed. She had never meant to maiTy, and she knew that she had never meant to. She acted upon this consciousness as reticently as she did upon the combinations of her palette, and as natmaUj' as she did upon the reflex motion of her muscles. But the silent footsteps of the spring crept on. It was pleasant in the garden studio. The square little building with the Gothic door and porch, and long, low windows, stood within call of the house, yet was quite isolated bj' the budding trees, an island in a sea of leaves. It gave a sense of soli- tude to the fancy, which was rather heightened than lessened by the close presence of unseen life. When sunt Chloe, who had the best intentions in tho world in the mattei of matronizing Avis throoah thii THE STOUY OF AVIS. 1 01 pcfrtrait, tnjtted in and out in her short garih'.n-govm, it seemed somehow only to deepen thci'- isolation. When she suddenly remembered that the lilies were to have been bedded this morning, or wondered Lf Jacobs had let the cows into the corn-patch, 'or was afraid the newspaper over the wisteria had been blown away, or was sm-e Julia would get the dum- plings underdone, or the professor get home from lecture before the study was dusted, and, begging Mr. Ostrander to excuse her for a minute, van- ished for an hom*, Aids, looking gently after her, used to think of some odd, old words : " 2'hen she departed into her own country by another way." Tiurning to Ostrander, she would find his eyes upon her; but his Hps said nothing. The roMns came and peered at them with cm-ious glance upon the window-ledge ; a ground-sparrow who had built her nest just beneath the wooden doorstep twittered in a tender monotone ; the boughs of the budding apjilc- trees hit the glass with slender finger-tips, and rcd- i ened if one looked at them ; the dumb sunlight ciawlcd inch by inch, like a creeping child, across .,he steps, and in upon the floor ; the air was full of ',he languors of unseen buds ; far and faint upon the diore summoned the rapture of the hidden sea. He could understand, Ostrander thought, why i< was-given to the first man to woo the first woman In a garden. Out of aU the untried moods of the cew heavens and the new earth. — the gloom of the forest, the strength of the hills, the stir of the moors, 02 THE STOEY OF AVIS. or the glory of the sea, — what could have taught that perfe3t primeval creature the slow, sweet lessoi of love's surrender, like the temper of one budding flower ? Eve, he had always fancied, was rather hard to win. And now the hurrying footsteps of the spring Bwept on. In the ripening grass the clover-buds appeared, bursting into color impetuously, like kisses that a child tln-ows to the sky. In the pansy-bed beside the summer-house, aunt Chloe's old-fashioned lady's- delights lifted their impressive faces, and sat like philosoi^hers in the sun, asking forever a question to which no man could reply. The imperfectly defined soent of buds faded &om an air gone drunk with yielding blossoms. One day, as Avis sat painting busilj', there came a stir upon the apple-tree, as if a spirit had troubled the soul of it. A fine, almost inaudible sound, lUie a murmur of appeal or remon- strance, crossed the boughs ; and a shower of blos- soms fell in upon her. > " Every petal is a perfumed sheU," said Avis, Irawing her breath. " See how they drift to their places, di-awn by the currents, compelled by the currents, of an unseen tide!" answered Ostrander. His voice had the tense resonance wMcli precedes tremulousness. " Tliis means," he said, as he stooped to gathei THE STOBY OP AVIS. lOS A leaf which had fallen from her hair, and was siiiK- Ing with a reluctant motion to the floor, — "tUi» means that May is past, and June has come to js." He said this in his penetrative undertone, — thai tone which may mean any thing or nothing, but which, in Ostrander, gave one the impression that he spoke ni a delicate, spiritual cipher, to which it were a dulness amounting to grossness not to find the key. He thought, as he spoke, that a faint flush stirred across A\-is's listening face ; but, if so, it was transparent as the color of the petal in his hand, and as swift to fade. " I have been very slow about the portrait," retm'ned Avis, hastening to speak. " I worked more rapidly with a master. At the first plunge into a solitary struggle, a self-distrust, which I can neither explain nor avoid, comes upon me no-w and then. Kite the cramp upon a swimmer ; yet I am quite sm-e I am doing better work. If we had mul- tiplied the sittings a little, the picture would have been — should have been — finished before the apple- blossoms feU." " Pray do not misunderstand me," urged Ostran- der gently. "How could you for one momeni thinli" — " Mr. Ostrander," intemipted Avis, with a sud- den piercing candor in her eyes, " I did not mis- understand you." "Then tell me," pleaded Ostrander, caressmg tljo apple-blossom which ]ay quivering across hia 104 THE STOKY OF AVIS. hand like a thing that might fly, — " tell me what 1 would have said. I am struck dumb to-day." " I think j-ou meant to say that there is a calendai for all kind tliought that people acquire of one an- other," said A^^s quietly. "All friendliness is a progression. A Mend is a marvel, a creation, a discoverj% a growth like a year; and June will foUow May." "A friend, a friend!" said the young man, bringing his hand slowly across his eyes. "How often do j-ou find the June in the soul of a friend? " "I am not sm-e," said Avis, lajing down her brushes, " that we either of us quite know what we are trjing to say. Strictly, since you ask me, I must tliinli my life has been barren of that which, it seems to me, a friend frould put into it. Of course, one is alwaj's giving and receiving a sort of sernce and tenderness. But I see many women find the closest sjTnpathies and the deepest comfort. Per- haps I have been necessarily too much absorbed in my own afliairs to cultivate that divine self-oblivion vhich is the first condition of friendship." She took up her brushes with a solitary look ; but, before Ostrander could answer, it had turned into an expression which deterred liim from speech, like an outstretched hand. He had never seen her look so seriously annoyed, nay, disturbed. He had heard women talli about friendship before : he had never seen one who did not mellow under the subject lika a September afternoon, ^ut Misa DoboU frozt before the sunbeam fell. THE STOET OF AVIS. 105 In truth, Avis was bitterly annoyed with herself. She recoiled from her little innocent impulse as if it had held the compromising power of an impnidence, and felt the scathing hurt which a delicate nature receives from the re-action of aU misplaced ardor. She had not reached the age — perhaps with those serious eyes of hers would be long in doing so — when we can catch only the ludicrous angle in the sight of a woman taUiing friendship with a man. But a friend, — a friend. She had allowed this man a momentary privilege, sacred and mj-stical to her as her maidenly dim \'ision of the rights of plighted love. He had overtaken her upon the boundary of a country holj' as heaven, and huraaji as Eden. A\\a Dobell, in her nm-tiu:ed, loved, and eventful, but, as she truly said, most solitary life, had,,.di-camcd of the heart of a friend with more passion and more reserve than most women dedicate to the lover of theh' young ideal. But, lOie Frigga, the wife of Odin, who foreknew, but never foretold, the destinies of men, she had the silence of her nspu-ations. She had never told apybody that she felt soUtary before ; she had never chattered about sympathy, pr cackled about being imperfectly' understood; an obstinate weakness in people, which she hated M she did some of her tubes of paint, always telling on the colors of character, killing supcrioi values by its terrible encroachment. AU forms of self-pity, like Prussian-bhie, should be sparinglj ased. 106 THE STOBY OF AVIS. A friend? Her friend? What was this that sh« had done? She felt a sudden sick emptiness of soul, as if au artery had been opened there, which no human power could ever bind. Her whole nature crouched, as if it would spring upon this man who had severed ft. She had returned to her painting quietly enough. Ostrander watched her between his half-closed, guarded eyes. " Beautiful leopardess ! " he said; but he did not say it aloud. And now it was Jime in the garden studio. Coy was privileged one day to come in when Avis was working alone, and criticise the picture. " I suppose I must make a fish-horn of my fingers ? ' ' said the young lady plaintively. "I never knew an artist who didn't go about the world with one hand curled up at his eye like the tin fish-horns that we find in galleries to see the pictui-es through. I always use them devoutly, of course ; but I never knew what they were there for. — Yes, Avis, that is a likeness. His eyes are too big, and his nose is too little, and there's too much — what do you call it? — action? in the left mustache ; but it is a very good likeness. How much you have improved ! As ilrs. Hogarth says, 'It will be quite a step for Avis.' " " I do not mean to paint portraits," said Avis, coloring slightly, "though Couture said I probably must, in America. But I have different p^lans : al THE STOBY OP AVIS 107 least I have different hopes. Is the hair too higlilj Bghted, Coy?" " No." Coy uncurled her hand lOie a long spiral shell, and hcnt her two keen, unaided eyes upon Avis. "No: j-our portrait is alive. Flattered, of course : that is the first duty of a portrait-painter. I d'dn't know before, that Mr. Ostrander had a mother. I wonder if she gave him his light hair. He looks like the people with the horrid Norse names in the iioems Longfellow's taken to writing, — Frigga, and those." " Wasn't Frigga a woman? " suggested Avis. " Oh, well ! it's all the same. He has the antique, Icelandic style. Blrs. Hogarth is much interested about it." " Ah !" said Avis. ' ' And Barbara," added Coy. ' ' But then Barb{U'a isn't in the Faculty." Avis made no reply. " In fact, Avis, I may say that the greater part of Harmouth is familiar with the history and progress of this portrait." "Oh! I suppose so," said Avis wearily. "It is ;ust so if a woman.writes a poem, or doQs any thing ,£ss to be expected than maldng One-Two-Three- Four Calie. I must submit to that: I work so busily and so happily, that I seldom thinli about it. But I suppose the woman never lived who would not lather work in the shelter of a desert or a st.ar." "Very true," saac Cov with her most motherly 108 THE 8T0RT OP AVIH. Bir, "And you know, Avis, you never even knew till you got home, that Ilarmouth had engaged yon m Florence to tiro sculptors and one artist — no, two artists and a sculptor, besides the Italian count." " You are wrong : it was a German baron," said Avis in a tone of scientific precision. "At all events," said Coy, with a swift glance from the portrait to Avis, and back again to the portrait, " it is a good subject. Jlr. Eose says they call him the beauty of the Facultj', — the belle of tlie Faculty, I thiiilc he said. Isn't that good? The Antinous of a college Faculty! I should as soon look for a Belvedere in the third tertiary strata. Now, there's my father. If it hadn't been for moth- er's Idnd interference, I suppose I might have looked hke him ; probably should have been propor- tionately intellectual. Erains and beauty, as some one was sajing the other day of the critic and the creator, — but I don't think that was Mr. Hose, — seem to be born enemies." " O Coy ! " cried A^-is, lighting. " Scliiller and Goethe and Burns ! And see that print of Eobert- son behind you." "Very likely," insisted Coy. "Indeed, I know gix'ls who are more in love with a photograph of Frederick Robertson to-daj' than they ever were with a live man. But all the same I stake my point and refer you to any good album of the poets — oi %o clergy. As a rule, a man can't cultivate his THE STORY OP AVIS. 109 mustaclie and his talents impartially. There's api to be something askew or deficient in handsome men. They don't do gi-eat things, I think, more than flowers do — or women." So, with a pretty ingenuity that she had. Coj worlted out the chance barb which had annoyed Avis. She knew. Avis never sat so still with just one vein throbbing in her temple, unless she were anuoj-ed. And yet the June budded in the garden studio, and one day the portrait was done. AaIs, feeling the inevitable strain which falls upon the i^ortrait-artist with the completion of a work, had slept lightly and little for several nights. The moment when the subject and the picture are first brought face to face, she thought no experience could ever make other than one of refined nervous trial to her. She had often heard artists speak of this ; and some of them never outgrew it, as some great orators are found never to outgrow the sudden sick bounding of the heart, and trembUng of the muscles of the face, wliich the first sight of an audi- ence produces. . The artist's pubUc, narrowed for the moment into one pair of human ej-cs, acquires a kind of omni- Xiotence, Ulie that of the sliding vrall in the old story vf martjTdom, which, towering higher as each day brings it nearer, creeps to crush the victim at the appointed horn*. She once heard Alexander say that he could tell aca'oss the studio, by the look of a man's back, whether he liked his picture. no THE STORY OF AVriS. Slie would have been sorry not to have Mr. Os" trander lilre the portrait, but more sony, she thought, Lf it failed to please that lonely old mother in New Hampshire. Mr. Ostrandcr had said that he was not able to visit his mother as often as he would lUse ; the state of his health requiring a difTereiil climate ii; the brief vacations which an over-worked man cannot afford not to expend to the best physi- cal advantage. He had said tliis so sadly, that Avis felt very sorry for him. It did not occur to her till afterwards to be very sorry for the old lady. As the day drew on when she was to show him the picture, her repressed excitement deepenecl. She must have lost more sleep than she had sup posed, so taut a tension seemed to have been sprang upon her nerves. Dm-ing the night she lay with wide eyes, seeing the souls of unwrought pictures, like disembodied spirits, sweep by, vision upon vision, electrotj-ped upon the darkness with the substance of wine or opium fantasies ; an experience which chanced to her only in her most fertile moods. "When day broke, a strange buOj-ancy overtook her. Her veins seemed filled with a fine fire, lilie an intoxication which she had seen follow the use of certain rare liqueurs among Parisian women, — juices expressed from subtle fruits, or the flowers of fruits, after which the Lachi'jTnae Chiisti seemed gi-oss. Ostrandcr came after tea to see the picture. Hei father and aunt Chloe had just been in, finding them THR STOKY OF AVIS. Ill selves sufficiently pleased with the work: but, a Faculty meeting, involving a pet quarrel witli the Theological Chair, absorbed the professor ; and aunt Chloe had an oleander to water before the sun had set. The artist and the model were left alone. It was still quite light. The birds, in unseen nests, were singing themselves to sleep with a lessening, crooning ciy, as children do, one by one falling smothered in silence. The surf upon the beach had died ; ohly a slight sob came from the I-Iarbor, like that of a creature in whom a great struggle had worn to a peaceful close. There was not wind enough to take the poUen from a hly. But the beoe were awake, and hummed dizzily among the flowers. " My picture must be the final cause of this even iug," said Ostrander lightly, as they approached the easel ; for he felt her strained nerves beneath her quiet manner, as sailors feel the prophecy of a storm upon a sleeping sea. "Such a • coloring wUl define It like a frame. . . . Ah ! There. Do not move it. The light is perfect — and so is the portrait. Miss Dobell, my mother will be satisfied." " You are very good to thinis: so," said Avis, draw- ing her breath. " But shall you be satisfied? " "More than satisfied," said Ostrander, after a pause. He stood for a few moments, sUently looking at the picture, before he adied in a lower tone, " Much more. Do I really look lil5:e that? Out of the kind eyes of a friend? . . . Why!" turning suddenly, so that his eyes swept her face and figure, 112 THE STOBY OP AVIS. "are you so tired? You are worn out. t have wearied you. Pray do not stand." In truth A^is trembled heavily, and sank into the chair which he had brought. -'Did you mind me so much?" murmured Os trander, with a daring rapture in his voice. " I am ashamed ! " she cried impetuously ; " but it is a nervousness I have when a picture comes to an end. It is lUie the ending of a life." Her chance words fell with a sudden dreary signi- Qcance upon them both as they sat looking across the Uttle room, which seemed to be absorbent of the intense evening Ught, and to throb like a topaz about them. Avis looked up at Mm with timid, candid eyes. It would be lonely in the studio to-morrow : he must know that. She had nothing to conceal from this man, — nothing, nothing ! She repeated the word to herself with a sharpening emphasis. But she rose with a swift motion, as if she dis- carded some encroaching thought, and, going to the doorway, stood there, looldng out across the garden. Ostrander followed her, and gently said, — " Do you see the bees on the wigelia? " As he spoke, one circled away fi-om the blush of the slu'ub, and hovered over her with a slow, intoxi- cated swing. " You have flowers about you," he said. "No — yes: I had forgotten. It is the rose ii aiy hair." THE STORY OP AVIS, 118 She flung it away as slie spoke with a startled gesture. " You did not listen," said Ostrandcr, " to the bee. Have j-ou forgotten the pretty thought about the growing of the grass and budding of the flow- ers? — that it is only because our eye's are not fine enough, that we do not see a lily open, or a clover bloom ; and only because our ears are not delicate enough, that we do not hear the sap ch'culate in a rose-leaf, or the heart throb in the insect that alights upon it." " I have thought of that," said Avis in a low voice, " every day. Sights that I never saw, and sounds that I never heard, it seems to me I have heard and seen this spring. Something ails the June. I have felt as if I had her heart beneath a microscope all the time. It is the being at home, I thinli, and finding my father so well, and content to see me hard at work. And I am always excited when I am at work." " No," said Ostrandcr in a changed voice. " No, that is not it. I believe j'ou are the only woman in the world who would not understand. You do not, will not, will not. Ah; hush ! For all that ails the June is, that we love each other." The young man had hardly uttered these words before he would have given a ransom to recall them. There is something appaUing, at times, to the didi- est fancy, in the inexorable nature of human speech. The word that has leaped irom the lipd has gone, aa 114 THE STOKY OF AVIS. the soul goes from the body ; it has taken on the awful rebellion of a departed spirit ; to recall it ia like recalling the dead. A moment ago your friend was youis, to have and to hold, to Mss, to clasp. Now, whose is he? and what? and where? An instant past, j'our thought was your slave, mute, subservient, safe : now it defies you. Ostrander had felt himself blindly driven, that evening, towards some riot of expression, circling slowly to it as the bee circled to the flower in her abundant hair. He had struggled against this im- pulse stoutly. As long as his love was his secret, he felt himself to be, in a certain mystical, exalted sense, the master of this beautiful, defiant creature. He could love her. She could not help that. Deeper than all the moods that the subtle June night could ever strike, he knew now that he loved her. It was no riot : he was not the man to mistake a revolution for a riot ; he knew the diSerencc. He had been spurred into speech by an instinct, daring as aU instincts are, and as fuU of danger. And his instinct had told him that this was a v\ oman to be surprised, not wooed. He felt, that, if lie came suppliant to her, her whole being would have gathered itself lilre a queen, and recede/ from him. He could not have dallied with her, or pleaded with he, or sighed before her : that seemed to him an artificial process, adapted for the winning of other women, in whoso tenderness there was usually an element of art . They might mdt beneatl THE STORY OF AVIS. 116 It : it would be like the administration of ether to the grand simplicity of her soul ; the influence meant to subject her into a gentle dream would prove a powerful excitant ; she would freeze under it, lite ice mechanically formed at mid-summer. He could not think of her as a woman to whom a man would ever say, "Learn to love me. Permit me to teach you. Suffer me to be near you." He would as naturally have said to a beautiful torrent, " Seek to love mc ; " or beckoned to some sweet, wild creature of the woods, expecting it to fawn at bis feet. The young man's nature had leaped to entrap her, as the hero in the old mythology crossed the ring of fire that surrounded the daughter of the gods. When he had made the plunge, he found indeed a woman sleeping ; but it was a woman ai-med. Avis lifted her eyes slowly, like one struggling with a fugitive dream. He would have given years tf his life at that moment to see her lip tremble, or hor eyelash fall, or her commanding figure shrink. She did, indeed, change color, but it was to take on ihe color of white fire. And then the antique cast of her features came on. She looked lilie a great, dumb, protesting goddess, whom some hght hand had just dragged from the bosom of the earth to the glare of day. As they stood there, the humming of the bees in the wigelia-bush reverberated, and seemed to fill the world. One crawled 07it of the rose wMch she had 116 THE STOBT OF AVIS. 3ast awa}', and reeled against Iier foot. Tlioj' stooc; just as his broken -words had aiTcsted tliem, fastened by each other's eyes. Suddenly in hers there dawned a far, startled look : she began to tuin her neck a little from side to side, like a deer stirred by the sound, bnt not as yet by the sight of p'orsuit, and secretly preparing for flight. Then she thrust out both her hands. " I deny it ! " said the woman. "I assert it!" said the man. They faced one another, flashing lilie duellists. "You assume," she blazed, stammering, and straggling with her words, — " you presume — what no man" — "I presume to say that I love you," he urged, swiftly scintniating into a dazzUng tenderness. " I quite dare to say that I love you. I know what I am saying. I love you, love 3'ou ! " At that moment his words seemed to her a Mnd of unendurable liberty, like personal approach, as if he had touched her dross or hand. Her startled maidenhood felt a wild rebclhon in just standing there, and knowing that his eyes were on her." Ilcr own had now fallen. She began to quiver and flush, bnt it was not with tenderness. She was caught between tvu) fires. She could not have told just then for w lick cause she felt most repellant of hun, —thai, lie idvcd Iicr. or that he had told her she loved him. A kind of wide recoil from him, such as sho had never known from any man, made either of thos« THE STORY OP AVIS. 117 euppositions seem to her like usuriiations ; like in- fringements of some blind, sacred law, -nliicli she felt about her, lilje the -evening air, and would seek to understand at a calmer time. But it was not an instinct of repugnance that had spread in a moment — there, through the calm June afterglow — a sudden impassable distance between herself and this man (an antipathy would have been less complex, and so more tractable, than this feeling) : it was a rebound of dismay ; it was at once blindly instinctive and rigidly measured, lilte that which one makes before a plunge. No man had ever spoken to her lilte this man. His words had the character of events. She felt as if she had in one moment put a great fact behind her, whoso effects the whole of life could not undo. Wliat was the weakness in her nature that had made this experience possible ? and what the tumult there which made it memorable, stamped it upon her like the mould of a great sorrow, or a wild joy? Her startled look had broadened now, and bright- ened, lilce a light coming near and nearer to one through the undergrowth of a dense forest. There was even a kind of ajDpeal in her voice, though it was with ceremonious dignity that she said. — " I hope, Mr. Ostrander, that you may find your- self as much mistaken in your own feeling as you .^ave been, so extraordinarily, in mine. It will undoubtedly be so. Nothing is easier than to over- estimate the depth of a pasaijig influence." 118 THE STOBT OF ATIS. "I have over-estimated nothing," i/ersistcd Le doggedly. "And I am mistaken in nothing. Ah, Lush ! Let me speak ; let me explain. You do not understand j'ourself or ■ me. You recoil ; you are angry with. me. I was abrupt, I was uncouth, I was unreasonable ; but before God I believe I was right. Turn to me one moment. Let me see j-our eyes. Let me beg of you to listen " — "I wonder, Sir. Ostrander," said aunt Chloe, panting up across the pansy-bed, "if I might so greatly trouble you as to help me one moment with the gi'aioo-vine. ^ And, A-vds, I am sorry ; but there are callers : I thinli it is Mr. Allen and his sister ; and the grape-\ine wiU get a sprain if I leave it as it is. I thought — if thej''ll excuse the garden- gown — 3'ou would lilie to bring th body taken the liberty to differ from him about the non-ego ? Poor father ! His nervous irritabilitj grew upon him a little. "Yes," said aunt Chloe, " I thinlc it does. We must watch him more carefully. We must see that he is kept amused and exercised." This was said in the tone which aunt Chloe always adopted in discussing this time-honored subject, — the tone usual with the women of a literar3'^ man's family ; one of cahn and gentle superiority to a race of beings, and to a class of weaknesses, which must be tolerated, but might not be cured or improved. Aunt Chloe said he must be kept amused and ex- ercised, exactly as if she had been speaking of a fine terrier or blooded racer, for whose physical nurture she was professionally though affectionately respon- sible. " I wonder," went on aunt Chloe, with placid ir- relevance, " whj' we none of us gave Mr. Ostrander his title?" "His title?" A^'is held the skimmer suspended nt a rash angle over a plate of bread-calie. " Yes, his medical title. You know he graduated somewhere in medicine ; but I believe he found it dis- Ustcful or injurious ; I thinli it was injurious to his hea".tli. And I should no more have thought of hin: as a doctor than I should think of him as a — por peine," said aunt Chloe, finding her imagination sud- THE STOEY OF AVIS. 135 3enly bankrupt of scientific similes. " But. now he must needs go into the army, it comes into plaj'. It shows the great usefulness of a liberal education, 1 suppose ; but your father is just as much worked up about it. You are dribbling the cream on the bread- cake. Your father says the country needs superior young men to jjreserve the tone of her colleges as much as she does at the front just now. And he says there's a plethora of surgeons. Mr. Ostrander was such a pet with him ! What have you done with the skimmer? And the worst of it is " — "Well," said Avis, "what is the worst of it?" For aunt Chloe had suddenly set her sentence away to cool in the ice-chest, into which she had dived bodily on one of those mysterious domestic inspira- tions which Avis had long since ceased attempting to fathom. Aunt Chloe's face and shoulders had quite disappeared ; but the back of the pansy-gown pre- sented a broad and impressive front, if I maj' be allowed the expression. Avis's eyes ti-acedthe pat' tern up and down. There seemed to be notliing but a brown palm-leaf and a purple stripe in aU the world. "You were saying, aunt Chloe, the worst of it was" — " The berries are withered," said aunt Chloe, slowly exhuming herself from the refrigerator. " Oh, yes ! the worst of it is about the professorship. Mr. Ostrander received the call last night, and this mprning he enlisted for three months. That is what has put your father out so. I told Mm, if the young 136 THE STOKY CIF AVIS. man was worth any thing, he was worth their waitiiig for. But he said three months was long enough to kill a man, and that he lilicd to see a young fellow have a mind, and stick to it. Now, if you'll call Julia, we will have these picked over." The next day Coy and Barbara came over to beg some of aunt Chloe's flowers to send out to camp, whither, they said, Mr. Ostrander was going in an hour. The next night the professor laid a letter upon Avis's plate at tea, from which, when she opened it, there dropped out a check, drawn in Philip Os- trander's name, upon the Harmouth Bank. It was enclosed in a letter-sheet, on which was written only, in the pencilled camp-scrawl which so quickly takes on something of the sacredness of death, — " I have made it payable to your father's order, thinking it may be more convenient or agreeable foi you to cash." Nothing more. It was the price of the portrait. THE STOKY OP AVIS 183 CHAPTER Vm. "Toncli IB the sight of tlio body, . . . Sight U the tonoh of tha eonl."— Ghabives Blako. Bead us at length, Bead this transcendent thing Neither angel nor human ; Alert with a liou's strength, Plumed with an eagle's wing, — But still ; with the face of a woman. JULY kindled slowly' but flercelj', lUfc tlio heart of a furnace. The delicate edges of each nerv- ous leaf on the famous Harmouth ckns curled and blackened. The much-gravelled sidewallts hm-ned the dignified feet of the professors on their patient way to lecture. The much-expanded cotton um- brella gloomed gracefiill}' above their heads. The coUege-hoys fitted for biennial under the tutelage of the ice-cream vender, and became the abject prej's of the soda-fountain and the lemonade-boy. The yachting-parties drew in their idle sails. Aunt Chloe's anxious watering-pot made no tours among the stifling flowers till tJie scorching sun had stooped. The blinds of the garden studio were closely drawn. At the front, hale soldiers di'opped from the ranks ■^th sunstroke, and the wounded died of thu-st upon 'ij.e field. It was the summer of battles, — Fair Oaks, The Seven Days, Cedar Blountain, Eull Run, Har- per's Ferr}', Antietam. 108 THE STOKY OF AVIS. Avis, that summer, seemed to herself to be turn- ing her life through her fingers, as we turn the pages of a book whose purpose we foreknew, but whose constmction is blind : its action moved slowly and almost painfully, ]ike the motion of superfluous de- tails muffling the stir of events. She read on and on and on, with fixed eyes, but with a sense of ex- pectance difficult to explain or justify : by and by the text would be clear ; by and by she should live in terse sentences. She had set herself, with more patience than power, resolutely to work ; but she found the lips of her visions muttering in a foreign tongue. She sat entire days before an untouched canvas. She stared entire nights upon untapestried darkness. Her father found her one day, burning the sketches in her studio in a fever of self-despair. He said nothing, except that he thought the sketches were promised to him, gave her a keen look, patted her cheek gently, and went away. He could not help her. He supposed that was the way the "fine frenzy " worked upon the feminine nature. Perhaps her mother would have known what to say lo the child. If she must Uve this life, she needed her mother. The professor had long since tabulated his daughter as a glittering syllogism whose premises veia incorrect, though its conclusion was pen'ersely attractive, and so, like a philosopher, peacefully given her up. It must be admitted that Avis's pic- tures were better than her biscuit. And man dii THE STOEY Oi? AVIS. ' 139 not live on bread alone. And sometimes, when he came out from the studio, a dimness lilce faint mist stirred far within Ms cavernous eyes.- She would have been proud of this dark-eyed, deft-handed, un- domestic girl. She had never wanted a boy. Beycnd two or three really fine things done in Paris, the landscape which had attracted so much notice in London, a sketch or so in the spring exhi- bition, and Philip Ostrander's portrait, Avis had as yet done little towards giving form to her ideals ; and more than one year of Coutui-e's golden proba- tion was gone. Her return to America had been in itself one of those stimulating experiences whose immediate efifect is a sedative one. The elemental loves of kin and country had been stirred in her to the finest fibre of their wide-reaching roots. She had come home to find that the after- noon sun in her father's study, on the picture of Sir William, thrilled her as no glory or story of Vati- can, Pitti, or Louvre, had ever done. It meant more to her, at first, just to go out into the garden and bury her face in the young gi-ass, and listen to Uie squirrels scolding in the pear-trees, and _ the ■nistful call of the cows waiting for Jacobs down the lleld, than it seemed as if the fair young future ,. eforc her could ever mean. EspepiaUy she was moved by the spring scents ; the breath of the earth, where the overturned loam lay moistly melting shades of brown together, — amber, umber, sienna, mad' 140 THE STORY OF AVIS. Aer, bitumen, and Vandyck, — with that tenderne&s which is so inexpressibly heightened by the gravitj Df the color ; the aromatic odor of the early bonflrea with whose smoke the languid air was bliuTcd and blue ; then by the exhalation of small buds, the elm and the grape that borrowed the mantle of the leaf, as wild things do that of the forest, to escape detec- tion. Every sense in her quivered to homely and unobtrusive influences. It was a long time before she could look at a certain faded cricket in the parlor that her mother worked, without the strange, hot tears. She would not have exchanged the choirs of St. Peter's for the sound of the old chapel beU calling the students to evening prayers. And then — ah well ! and then there had been that slip upon the Ught-house reef; that had cost its own proportion of dumb daj'S. And after that she had painted the portrait. And then it would have been jnpossible to forecast the precise personal effect of /his war. Life, she tliought, had pressed too near iier, since she came home, for her to teU the world what it meant ; clung too close, and with too sweet insistence, like the friend who stops the mouth with kisses. All those studies which had stood with their faces ^ the wall while Ostrander had been in the studio, she would have lilced to put out of the wide world, If her father had not cared. She wanted a clean, oold, barren start, like a racer in a moor. There THE STORY OF AVIS. 14) weio some pleasant little tilings among them too, — a Florentine sunset, five poplars on the crest of a hiU against a sky of dull metallic red ; a Neapolitan girl tossing her bambino into the air; a study of breakers under an advancing fog, the mist stalk- ing in about a headland, Ucking up the deep under- tones of a great green wave ; figures, — a man and a woman peering over the edge of a precipice under an intense tropical moon ; a woman's head, the eyes quite turned away, — a study from some Parisian model, — unfinished. But Avis put them aU back with their faces to the wall, sat an hour longer before her blank canvas, then laid down the charcoals, and went wearilj' out into the hot air. The sultrj- evening had settled upon the sultrier day. The coUege-boys over on the green were singing army songs. "The studio is too hot," said aunt Chloc with conscientious sympathy. " I wonder if it wouldn't help you out to go down cellar, and stir the ice- •.ream." " I shall get to work to-morrow," said Avis, who never liked her studio to be under family discussion. But to-morrow Coy came over to take her to the chapel, where the women of Harmouth sat with hushed voices, rolling bandages and picking lint. The butchery of Bull Run had fallen upon the man- gled land. This meant that it was August in the garden studio. Avis had meant to have a picture — ha^ 142 THE STORY OP AVIS. hoped to have a good picture — well under waj' bj the time tliat tlie copper-colored sunlight sti-ugglcd through the August murk upon the easel. She went up to her bedroom that night with dog- ged eyes. She had fallen into one of these syn- copes of the imagination in which men-haTC periled their souls to stimulate a paralyzed inspiration. By any cost — " by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine" — the dumb artist courts the miracle of speech. Angel or devil, who is it that troubleth the toi-pid waters ? Equally the soul makes haste, lest another should step down before her. Avis shut and locked the door of her bare, old- fashioned room, looking about it with a kind of tii- umphant rebellion. She was a woman. Those four walls shut out the world from the refined license of her mood. She wanted nothing of it, — the great unholy world, in which seers struggled and sinned for their visions. Let them go fighting and erring on. God spoke in another way to women, — in no earthquake, in no fire of the soul, but in still small voices. What would her escaping natui-e with her ? Perhaps by and bj', when all the house was stUl, she would go bounding down through the long grass, and dash herself full-length upon the shore, and let one wave — just one — break its white heart upon her. Or she would push her little boat off from the beacli, and row out alone a mile or two down the Harbor, till she was exhausted (and so calmed) bj THE STOVLY OF AVIS. 143 the wljoing of the faint moonlit shores. The cnlj thing she could think of that she wanted, out of all the intoxications that the round world held that sum- mer night, would be a roomfuU of hyacinths, — rose- hyacinths, — and some one to play Schumann in the sultry garden. Then, by morning, she might paint her picture. Was that what the work of women lacked? — high stimulant, rough virtues, strong Tices, all the gi-eat peril and power of exuberant, exposed life ? Dreamily across the. cm-rent of her thought, float- ed the pathetic ^ound of the boys' voices in the street, stiU and forever busy with those army songs : — " In the beauty of the lilies Christ was bom. across the sea." She tm-ned from the window with an abrupt, de- jected motion. Who could make a picture tiU the war was over ? " Since he died to make men holy," sang on the boys, " Let us die to make men free." She stood for some moments quite still, in the mid- tilt of the room, htr arms thrown down, and her fingers clasped together at the tips. Suddenly start- ng, with a firm step, and half-amused, half-curious jghting of the face, she unlocked a little French dressing-case that stood upon the bureau, and took 144 THE STORY OP AVIS. from it a slender bottle, bearing the trade-mark of a house in the south of France, and the label, " Eau de Fleurs d'Oranger." She poured the liquid out, holding it to the light, Each drop was an amber bead, sluggish and sweet. Leave men their carousal, their fellowship, the heart's blood, of the burning grape. In the veins of the buds that girls wear at their bridals runs a fire of flavor deep enough for us. The wine of a flower has carried many a pretty Parisian to an in- trigue or a convent. Could it carry a Yankee ghl to glory? So, half laughing, half credulous, wholly excited, Avis swallowed a cautious dose of the innocent- looMng liqueur., darkened her room, threw wide her blinds, and went to bed. In the com-se of perhaps ten minutes she experi- enced a slight swimming of the head : she bolstered herself high upon the square pillows, and threw her arms down by her side ; they fell heavily, and she found it a task not quite worth the undertaking to stir them again from their places. A duU but not painfiil pressure set slowly in the brain, and a slight but not disagreeable ringing, in the ears. The most distinct thought that she had was now a sense of relief that she could not hear the army songs. Sud- denly the room began to reel. Then, as if a TitaE had taken her by the feet, and swung her thiouglj infinite space, she felt herself sjjin round and round. As suddenly all motion and all sound ceased. Sh« THE STOEY OF AVia. 145 sat up against tbo pillows. The world was sliU, cool, calm. If she had been foolish to try the ex- periment upon so warm a day^ she thought she was lightly punished. Her head was quite clear and strong. She got up, and bathed her face and bare arms and neck. All her motions were free and fuU ; only a faint sickness remained. Nothing had hap- pened. She drained a tiunbler of ice-water, and went back to bed. The moon had now set. Nothing riad happened, except that the darkness had become alive. That which she saw appeared at the remote wall of the room, — a panorama extending from floor to ceiling, stirring slowly, like Gobelin tapestry which unseen hands rolled and unrolled. She roused her- self, sitting with her hands clasped about her knees, giving, as was her liabit, a more u'on atten- tion to these fictions of licr own nature than to any thing which those of others had made fact in the world. Neither Raphael nor Titian could have taught her what she learned in one such self-articu- late hour as this. The first thing which she saw was a huge earthen vase, standing by itself against the wall, raised a few inches from the floor, thus, and thus only, indi- cating to her eyes that it was not what wo are used to call a reality. It was of an antique Egyptian mould, with which she must have been unconsciously familiar; but the pattern of its decoration was one p«irfectly unknown to her. Through a maze of 146 THE STORY OF AVIa. lotas-leaves Isis went seeking Osiris, the figures moving family before her eyes till they had iidjusted themselves with what seemed a voluntary motion to their attitudes upon the claj'-. The flgm-es were black, expressed by gray lights. The leaves were of an opaque green, without veining or shadow. A raised design of silver and steel surrounded the neck, lips, and pedestal of the jar. If it had been light enoughj she could have taken her pencil, and accii- ratelj' copied this design, which was very intiicate, and which pleased her. At the mouth of the jar a bronze crocodile lurked, with fore-feet and jaws only raised above the edge, lolling lilic a tongue. This appearance, which lasted but a few moments, was the signal for a kaleidoscope of beautiful and soulless fonn to stk before her, slowly and subtly, hire the outer circle of a whirlpool into which she was to be drawn. Pottery, porcelain, furniture, draperj', sculptui'e, then flowers, fruits, — a medley of stiU-hfe, — swept through strange, half-revealed, but whollj' resplendent interiors, which glided on in- differently-, lUfc languages that said, ' ' What hast thou to do with us ? " Now and then, out of the splendid maze, a distinct effect seemed to pause, and poise it- self, and woo her through the dark. An open hand, raised, and turned at the wrist like a flower on its stem, held water-lUies drooping and diipping. A sunbeam, upon an empty chair in a student's alcove, focussed upon a child's shoe and a woman's ribbon. \ skull gi-ound a rose between its teeth Bees,, THE STOKT OP AVIS. 147 npon a patch of burning July sky, wooed a clover. In a pool in a cliff, a star-fish defined the colors of a tangle of weeds and shells. In a thicket of wild- briar a single rose-leaf had fallen upon a gray stone, across which, and over the miniature clearing in the mimic forest, the tattered and fringed light lay. These passed. Avis nodded at them like the children at the visions in Hans Andersen's tales. It was all a Mnd of bric-a-brac. She had not the ce- ramic nature. Let them go. They were succeeded by an uplifting and sweep- ing on of perspective, by means of which great dis- tances seemed to become measurable in the little room. Through them the generous moods of nature stuTed, and earth turned herself about like a beau- tiful creature half awake. At first it was the cac- tus on the campagna which shot up against the dark,, scarlet, blazing, having a pulsation like a heart ; it towered heaven-high, as if to the ej^es of one who sat below its level ; and low through, and far beyond it, the sun had set, shri,nldng under a purple cloud. Then out of a cool, green shadow faint outUnes grew, sharpened, swept ; and a world of ferns arose. She could see spiral buds uncoil deUcately, like the opening life of a silent gu'l, and the fine fronds sway and aspire. These, too, shot high, as if she Jiad been prone upon the ground among them ; and on them the light lay low. From the gold to the cold, every chromatic shade due to them was there. It was b melody in green. 148 THE STOET OF AVIS. From this there slowly gathered itself, ai d leanei) towards her, one Titantio wave. It was a mid- ocean wave. It reared its full-length from foot to head. The colors which are seen only at the ocean's core settled upon it. Not a shoal tint was in it. It was both the science and the art of a wave. It held both the passion and the intellect of the sea. Above its crest there was flung one human hand, and a strip of pearl-white sky. A medley of outlines followed, — caravans crawl ing through a desert ; sunsets behind palmettos ; twi lights in forests " wherein no man had been since the making of the world ; " a silver fog curling from a harbor pierced by the masts of anchored ships; wastes of snow, blue-cold, and wan, unbroken by human foot, defined by the loneliest of aU horizons, — the horizon of pines ; then one mountain-peak, swathed below in gloom, swiftly broken at the sum- mit into gloiy, on which "God made himself an awful rose of dawn." But Avis bowed her head before these things, and said, " Only the high ]Driest enters in." When she raised her eyes, they feU upon forma and faces grown gaunt with toU, — an old man sow- ing sparse seed in a chiU place ; the lantern-flash on a minerjs stooping face ; the brow and smile of a starving child ; sailors abandoned in a frozen sea ; a group of factory -womea huddling in the wind ; the poisoned face of a lead-worker suddenly uplifted like a curse ; two huge hands knotted with labor. THE STORY OF AVIS. 149 ind huggard with famine, thrust groping out upon Ihe dark. But her heart cried out, " I am yet too happy, too y^oung, too sheltered, to understand. How dare I be the apostle of want and woe ? ' ' Even with the word the vision changed, and slowly as she leaned to look, swiftly as her heart beat in gazing, there gi'ew the outline of a Face. It was a Face dark, dim, brightening, blinding, beneath a crown of thorns ; but she dashed her hand across her eyes, and said, " I am unworthy." The night might have been now well worn on, and she was conscious only of that exhaustion of the nature which comes from a highly-excited but impotent imagination. The repose of creation had failed to reUeve the fever of vision. She was thinking so, dejectedly enough, listlessly look- ing in one corner of the room, where two or thi-ee slender, bright harebells seemed to be spring- ing fi'om a cleft in a rock, when, as she looked, a girl in the garb of a peasant stood stoop- jug to pluck them. Instantly the room seemed to \)ecome full of women. Cleopatra was there, and lOdiva, Aphrodite and St. Elizabeth, Aiiadne and Esther, Helen and Jeanne d'Arc, and the Magda- lene, Sappho, and CorneUa, — a motley company. These moved on solemnly, and gave way to a sQent army of the imltnown. They swept before her in file, in procession, in groups. They blushed at altars; they knelt in convents; they leered in the 150 THE STOKY OF AVIS. Btrecta ; they sang to their babes ; thej stooped and stitched in black attics ; they trembled beneath sum- mer moons ; they starved in cellars ; they feU by the blow of a man's hand ; they sold their souls for bread ; they dashed theu- hves out in swift streams ; they wrung their hands in prayer. Each, in turn, these figures passed on, and vanished in an expanse of imperfectly-deflned color like a cloud, which for some moments she found without form and void to her. Slowly but sui'ely at last, and with piercing vividness, this unfolded, and she saw in cmi; out- lines, lOtc a story told in a few immortal words, this only : — She saw a low, unclouded Eastern sky ; fire to the horizon's rim ; sand and sun ; the infinite desert ; a caravan departing, faint as a forgotten hope ; mid- way, what might be a camel perished of thirst. In the foreground the sphinx, the great sphinx, re- stored. The mutilated face patiently took on the forms and the hues of Ufe ; the wide eyes m6t her own ; the dumb lips parted ; the solemn brow un- bent. The riddle of ages whispered to her. The mystery of womanhood stood before her, and said, " Speak for me." Avis lay back upon her piUow with a sudden, long, sobbing sigh. She was very tired; but she tiad seen her picture. To-moiTow she could work. Up to this point there had been nothing unpre. oedented in the character of these fantasies, ex THE STORY OF AVIS. 15] jepting in their number and variety. Her creative moods were always those of tense vision, amount- ing almost to optical illusion, failing of it only where the element of deception begins ; but now when, exhausted and satisfied, she turned upon her pillow, nestling her check into her hand lUie a child, for sleep, none came. Still before her closed eyes the panorama swept imperiously ; but it had become a panorama of agonies. For a long time she per- ceived only the suffering of animals, an appalling vision of the especial anguish incident to dumb things. She saw the quiver of the deer under the teeth of the hound, the heart-throb of the purhued hare, the pathetic brow of a dying lioness, the reproach in the eye of a shot bu'd, a dog under vivisection licking the hand that tore him. Sharplj', without ti-ansition or preparation of the fancy, this changed to — O heavens ! Wliat ? Avis started, with a cry that rang through and through the sleeping house, beating her hands against her eyes, as if she would beat out the very retina on which the shadow of such sights could faU. For now she was pursued by a vision of battles. Martial music filled the room ; bright blood-streaked standards wavted and sank and rose again ; human faces, like a wind-struck tide, sui-ged to and fro ; men reeled, threw up their arms, and fell ; the floor crawled with the dead and dying ; wounded faces luddledin corners, came and vanished on the ceil- ng, entered and re-entered through the door, gapped 152 THE STORY OP AVIS. their life away upon the bed. The glazing eye, the whitening jaw, the clinching fingers, the ineffectual, hoarse effort to breathe a broken name, — all were there : nothing was hidden, hinted, or veiled ; noth ing was spared her. "0 terror! Opity! Have mercy, have mercy, have mercy! " Aunt Chloe came panting in (in an amazing wi-ap- pcr that outdid the pansy-gown) , and shut the blinds before she struck the light. No good housekeeper would let in the mosquitoes, whatever the emergency. ' ' Nightmare , Avis , or colic ? I thought the black- berries were sour. Never mind, we will have a hght directly. Why, what is this broken glass? Pieces of a bottle on the window-sill ! Are you hurt — cut ? I was sm'c I heard j'our voice. But, fortunately, it lias not waked your father. Now, my dear ! " " Aunt Chloe," said Avis, passing her hand blind- ly across her eyes, " where is the military music? " "Music? There's no music, but those boys: they've kept it up tiU now, the worse for them! There'U be some business for the Faculty to-morrow. I always thought the objection to a university town was the students. So that was what waked you, «ras it? I don't see why your father doesn't put a utop to these midnight carousals. Army songs, indeed ! I suppose the cats in the back-yard think ihey're patriotic, and I had one in Vennont that iscd to start ' America ; ' but he never got bej'ond 'iiie second bar. There, my dear. All right now Why, Avis!" THE STORY OP AVIS. 153 For Avis, like any broken-hearted woman who was not going to paint a great picture to-morrow, had fallen back upon the pillows, and crying, ■■'Auntie, auntie, auntie! let me cry a minute," lay shivering and sobbing in the chill dawn. Aunt Chloe and the professor sat in the study in the August suuset. Aunt Ghloe had meant to take the first opportunity to recommend to the Faculty a stricter regime of night police for those boys ; but she had forgotten aU about the boys. Her knitting- work (blue stockings for a theological student des- tined for the Bulgarian field) lay idly on her broad , benevolent lap. Now and then the rare, honest tears of her Puritan race fell : it was too dark for Hegel to see them. Under the Bulgarian stocking lay the evening paper, folded with the particulai* crease indicative in aunt Chloe' s family that a newspaper was sacred from the waste-basket, and elected to go upon file in the left corner of the third shelf from the top in the little what-not in the study alcove. "What," asked the professor, bringing his more than commonly nervous pace to a halt, "what, by ••he way, did Avis say to this? " "Nothing." "Nothing at all? I should have thought — they were thrown so much together — that the young man's fate would have been something of a shock k) her. Where is she ? ' " She has been in the studio aU day, except a 154 THE STOBY OP AVIS. while when she would go rowing. I found her with a terrible headache this morning, what with the blackberries and the boys. I don't believe Avis has had a headache before since she had the measles. But directly after breakfast she dragged herself out into that hot summer-house, and there she's befen. I carried her the paper. I thought she'd better read it herself. She thanked me, and went on drawing. Oh, yes ! she asked if I knew where he would naturally be carried." " To his home in New Hampshire, I should sup- pose," said the professor sadly. " I believe there is an old father — or mother. I should have thought Avis would have been more touched by this." " No doubt she feels it," said aunt Chloe, with a certain reserve ; " but you know when she is La that studio, nothing is to be got out of her." "True," said the professor, "any close occupa- tion, indeed, is literally a pre-occupation : the ab- sorbed mind is inhospitable to intrusions. Sir Wil- liam says" — " Are the Faculty going to do any thing? " inter- rupted aunt Chloe, who seldom found Sir William as much to the point as might have been expected of a reaUy intelligent-looking man who resembled her brother. "What can be done? But you may be right There ought at least to be some formal action, somo exjffession of sympathy. Now you remind me o' It, I win just step over to the president's, and se« if the matter has been broached." THE STOEY OF AVIS. 155 •' Poor fellow, poor fellow ! Tell Avis 1 will to back in season to say good-night," added the pro- fessor gently, coming back after he had closed the door. Aunt Chloe sat for a few minutes in the dark, still idly, thinldng how long it was since she had seen Hegel so much moved. Then she rolled up the Bul- garian stocking^ and went to put away the paper in its place, stopping only by the window to be sure that the marked passage lay folded on the top. The faint and now rapidly dying light enabled her to read, with her common spectacles, very clearly, — " Ostrander, Philip, surgeon: in the lungs." It was perhaps a week after the battle of Bull Run, and Avis had found herself quite undistuibed at her work, left, indeed, in a rather exceptional soUtude, at which she wondered. She liked to see Coy now and then ; missed her, as we miss the sun- light whose presence we are yet too absorbed, or too miserable, to note. Harmouth without Coy would have been like Harmouth without the ehns or the chapel bell. She clung to Coy with the almost pathetic loyalty of a woman whose twenty-six years iad given her no comradeship of a fibre against vyhich her own could lean. In all her young and *ater friendships Avis had been used to bringj^not to receive, the elements of support. Deeper than b11 chance in this, some unconquerable instinct lay. [n the relations of girlliood slie had been mar]<0(5 (bi 156 THE STORY OP AVIS. a certain sweet but unapproachable reserfe. She kissed the girls politely, since it was expected of her ; but, in their indiscriminate caressing, she found no part nor lot : her nearest intimate could not recall iin hour of weakness, of pain, or of excitement, which had surprised Avis into it. As for C03', she would as soon have thought of petting the Facu."ty as of offering any of these little feminine eccentrici- ties as an expression of her feeling for Avis. Now, Coy had never voluntarily staid away from her a fortnight before in all her life. When, there- fore, she came into the studio one morning after this temporarj' defalcation. Avis turned the sphinx to the wall, and received her with unusual warmth. "Avis," began Coy at once, "you are pale, — pale as the higher mathematics." " And 3'ou," said Avis, closely scratinizing her, standing at arm's length, with both hands on her shoulders, " you are as radiant as a Neapolitan rose." " So she said in a novel, I think," said Coy. " Be original. Avis, if j'ou must be complimentary. You don't ask me, either, why I radiate. If you don't keep a cricket in yoiu* studio for me, I shall have to sit in your lap ; and I've gained five poimds this summer. "Well, the classical dictionary W}}1 do : It is quite as hospitable. A'V'is? " " Very weU, Coy." " If you were like other women, — which yo:i know you never, never will be, as I've said in youi THE STORY OF AVI8. 157 defence a hundred times, — but just to suppose it, as you might suppose you could make Parker-house rolls, or a tatting collar, or any other chef d'ceuvre of which your nature is incapable : what I want to know is, if you Uked a man, — let me sharpen that crayon for you : I hate to sit doing nothing, — if you hked a real, live, dreadful man, do you suppose you would be (dl summer finding it out? " "0 Coy! AsIj me some conundrum with which aiy education has. made me familiar. But what is it. Coy? Who is he? What have you come to tell me?"' Avis laid down the crayon, pushed the sphinx a little away from her, and, gentl}' clasping her hands around Coy's neck, looked with a solemn tenderness at her. " I said if there were," nodded Coy perversely. "You generalize from insufficient data. Avis, — a mistake said to be common to women and reformers. But speaking of men — you know aU about Blr. Os- trander? If you don't, I have a lovely bit of gossip for you, — a kind of Sevres specimen, very rare. I like to gossip in Harmouth : it is considered so un- intellectual." "I knew that there was some hope of Mr. Os- jander's recovery." Avis removed her arms firom Coy's neck, and took up her charcoal. "Pathei laid so this week. I have heard nothing else." " You didn't know that he was in Harmouth? " ^'TnHarmoutli?" 158 THE STORY OF AVIS. •' He was brought "here last night." Coy, on the dictionarj', waited with a pretty, expectant look, perhaps to be questioned further; but Avis asked no questions. She replied that she had supposed him to be in New Hampshii-e, and finished sharpening the charcoal slowly. "Guess now, Avis, where he is staying. Just guess." " I never guessed any thing in my life." "Your superior women never can. Don't mind it, dear: it's a deficiency common to yom- class. Give it up ? At Mr. Stratford Allen's. ' ' " Mr. Allen is very Idnd," said Avis, after a momentary silence. " And so," said Coy, " is Barbara, — very land." "Barbara is a good-hearted girl," urged A%is honestly. "I don't like to hear women speak of one another in that tone. Coy." " Mr. AUen went on as far as Washington to oring him home," proceeded Coy, ignoring the rebulie. "Mr. Ostrander had no brother or father to depend upon, and Stratford Allen is always doing such things. He wouldn't let him go to those hot college-rooms. And I believe, in point of fact, it was thought the mother was too old to be any thing but a ouden in a sick-room ; so New Hampshii-e was just put quietly out of the question. And here comes is the advantage of being j-om* brother's housekeeper All that Chiistian self-sacrifice and grateful patriot- !sm can do, Barbara wiU sec to it is done, yoc THE STOBY OF AVIS. 159 may depend. There hasn't been such a dainty bit of household art-decoration as that in Harmouth circles this many a day. Meanwhile, poor Sir. Os- fcrander ia stiU very iU, and greatly exhausted with the joMuey." Avis put away her charcoal, and, rising, hunted in her portfolio for a model of her sphinx, then for a blender, then for the chamois-skin and chalk After a Uttle delay she sat down again, and began touching in the values of the sketch with a firm and conscientious hand. "Now," she said gi-avely, "since we cannot help Mr. Ostrander, — you or I, — what is it about that other man, Coy? Am I not fit, not enough Uke other women, to hear ? ' ' The point of the blender trembled a little against the sphinx's chin. " And you haven't been to see me for a fortnight, Joy!" "Avis," said Coy with judicial solemnity, "I have done the best I could by ycu. "We weren't engaged till last night ; and I haven't even told my mother yet. I'm going to make John do that. It is with falling in love as it is with rehgion, — j'oui" parents are the last people to know when you've been converted. At any rate, that's the way at our house. It's a family awkwardness we have. I'd rather be disinherited than teU my mother I lo\ed a man. She married father because she kespected him. I've heard her say so. So I poked John in at vhe front-door this morning, to have it well over 160 THE STORY OP AVIS, with, and I ran out across lots, and oier here to yon. It was mean, but unavoidable.- John will have no trouble: he's precocious, patriotic, and nious, — three harmonious p's. He gqt one very becoming scar in the army. He's several years too young to have been caUed to the Central Church. And there's been a revival already since he was settled. Mother will cry a little, and be as happj as a kind-hearted old lady with a funeral to go to." "And you," said Avis, lajing down her work, and once more bringing the tips of her fingers together about Coy'-s neck, '■'■you are happy, Coy? There. Hush ! I see. It wasn't fair to make j-ou look IJlce that." Avis's sense of awe increased. It seemed to her a kind of rudeness for her to sit and watch this young, transfigured face. She had almost a con- sciousness of indelicacy, as if she had usui-ped one of John Eose's new and sacred rights, in having surprised Coy into the expression with which — half kneeling, with both arms about Avis's waist, and her face uplifted — she regarded her. The two women sat for a little space in silence ; Avis still with that delicate action of the hands which hovered about, but did not rest upon Coy, as If she had become a hoty object that she might not touch. There was something very noticeable in tliis reticent and reverent motion. She was thinking iiow far apart, aU at once, and by one little word, ihe and this other woman, scarcely younger thac THE STOUY OF AVIS. 161 aerself, scarcely more full of unexpressed life, seemed to have been thrust. "How natural," she said rather wistfiilly, — "how natural it must seem to bo so happy!" "It is as natural ns life," said Coy, suddenly starting to her feet, — "so natural, that I think John will expect mo by this time. I'll tell you more about it all some other daj'. But there's really nothing to teU, Avis. Ho propounded the conundrum, and I gave it up. "We just loved each other, and so we're going to be married. That's aU," added Coy simply. " It sounds a simple matter, as you put it," said Avis, smiling in rather a lonely way. "And I don't mean to make fun of John's revivals," said Coy, traning in the doorway. " If there were more' like John in the world, there'd be less like — mother, perhaps. When he was in col- lege, don't you know how he used to say he should have to be a minister to keex> himself straight? It sounded mean ; but it was only brave. And now there isn't a thread, not a shred, of cant in him. Tc the bottom of his soul he means what he says, aui* says what he means, when he tries to save a soul. John believes people have got to bo saved. Sol have given him a chance to try his hand on me. But I shall never be half good enough for him, never ! " When Coy had crossed the garden, she came back, lad, putting her face in at the half-open door, »aid, — 162 THE STORY OF AVIS, " Avis, there's only one little matter that troubleg me." Avis, uncovering the sphinx, looked intenoKa- tively around. <" It is Barbara Allen's cnrls." THE STOBY OF AVIS. 168 CHAPTER IX. " Wliat'B death? You'll love mo yet! " — BBOTrnino. "Loved for we did, and lilse the elements, That know not what nor why." — Two Noble KmsMKN. "VTOW and then a feature, an attitude, an accent, _LM gets a mathematical hold of our imaginations, as far removed as is possible from the aesthetic oi magnetic way, yet more imperious than either ; like the pattern of the waU-paper in the room which has known some tragedy or ecstasy of our lives. We sit enchained by a trick of speech in the man we hate, or the cut of the brow in the creature we despise, the shadow under the lip of the stranger we neither expect nor care to meet again, or the glance of the friend in whose broken faith eternity could not tempt us to confide. These things hap- pen as the comets march and countermarch, by laws deeper than, though apparently subservient to, ca- price. Something of this sort occurred to Philip Os- trauder as he lay through the long September days in Stratford AUen's luxurious guest-room, wooing, more slowly than might have been expected of his youth and health, an escaping soul to remain in s mutilated body. He had been very near death. 164 THE STORY OF AVT8. Of thiH, though no one had told Mm so, he waa fully aware. He had enlisted in a reckless temper, IUjc — who can count how many other young men? to Ythom the war offeredthe quickest and most inci- sive road to a glorious solution of inglorious jier- jonal difficulties. Ostrander had the refracting, not the absorbing nature, in which ambition kindles under emotion, like the maple-leaf, whose heart the autumn seeks carhcst, and earliest deserts. A keen passion like vanity, a strong one lilte love, or a subtle one like that of immediate personal sway, ti'ansfigm-e the resolve of such a nature, only so long as they may focus upon it. He would have felt himself humili- ated to own to another man how impossible he had found it to dedicate to a science of which he be- hoved himself to be enthusiastically appreciative, the life which a woman's foot had bruised. Yet he felt no more degradation in admitting this to him- self than he did at admitting the beating of his heart. Perhaps we may say he made as little resist- ance to it. The position reserved for him in Hannouth Col- lege ceased to possess those elements of attraction irhich he considered conditions of success for him- self in any thing, as soon as he found himself com- pelled to undertake it in teeth of the precise expe- Qencc awaiting the man who has to adjust the hunger of a strong nature to the famine of a denied love ITiis, as ho assumed, was the fault of his tempera I'HB STOBT OF AVIS. 165 ment. He yielded to it as he would to a distasto Tor a poem or a pie. The -world was wide. A Harmouth professorship was not an undue part of it. One man would answer jibout as well as another to fiU any mould, unless, perhaps, the chalices of life ; and it could hardly be said that the veins of his nature throbbed, with sacramental wine, only a serviceable, secular brand. It was, indeed, he thought, indicative of a narrow, if not an arrogant fancy, to suppose that it made much difference, in the end, who undertook any given little portion of the work of his age : these youthful enthusiasms were interchangeable. if he were shot, there would be one indilferent geologist less in the world, possibly one grio\-ing woman more. He had moments in which he had dared believe that she would mourn for him. IIo foimd these inexpressibly and mystically sweet. Regret in a nature Ulic hers might easily turn iiitc tenderr;ess, when her beautiful, fierce inaidenhooj was forever safe from its encroaclmient. Death would not be a costly price to pay for that subtle and constraining mastery of her soul which repent- ant grief and virgin widowhood would give him. Nay, the barren chance of this seemed worth far 'ntterer than a soldier's fate. There would be a few obust physical pangs, more or less, perhaps the mevitable homesickness to be expected at first from entering an unknown life, the relief consequent upon leaving one with wMcb 'le was at present thor- 1G6 THE STOEY OF AVIS. ooghly dissatisfied, then the wide spaces ani free chances of a spiiitual economy in which to make his nature worthy of approach to hers, as, by an in- stinct deeper than the reverent humility of newly- awakened love, he felt that it was not likely to be- come, in the conditions of this. For Ostrandei believed in another life. Fifteen years ago, an educated j'oung man did not find it absolutely im- perative to doubt the immortality of his own soul. He had, therefore, — for it was thus that he loved this woman, with all the strength and the weakness, with the heights and the depths, of his nature, — gone into the anny, moved by a profound and intel- ligent hope that lie" might never come out of it. "When, however, the shot struck, he had grappled mth. death as manfully as most life-sick young crea- tm'cs do, if given the chance ; for, as he fell, his major's horse toppled over on him. It was the struggle consequent on the effort to free himself from so hideous a death, rather than the wound (not in itself deadly) , which had made the natiu-e of his leril. The pierced lung was badly bruised. Through the sultry daj-s and cooling nights in »('hich the first breath of autumn crept, his mind had sliiTcd sluggishly towards the positions in whicn death had met it. His medical training told him Ihat this was his most hopeful sj-mptom, and one to be festered. He jielded himself peacefully to the little eddies of a sick-room existence. He would lia\c' been glad to forget that the whole round world THE STORY OF AVIS. 167 iras not bounded by tlie daintily-decorated , scented, and soothing spot in wMch bis recoyery met him. He would have been glad to forget that there was any other woman in the world than this excellent sister of a good fellow whose kingly hospitality was Uliely to save his life. He experienced a peculiar sense of relief in the presence of a simple feminine nature lending itself to these delicate cares with which he felt himself surrounded unobtnisivelj', as he was with the pale, cool pearl-tint of the walls, the select engravings, the luxurious knick-knacks of the toilet or the medicine-table, the exquisite service of his breakfast, or the pattern of ferns on the lace, to which the Venetian blinds lent a suffusive wood- land tint. Awaking one morning, several days after his re- turn to Harmouth, from the state of semi-conscious exhaustion into which the hot journey had thrown him, he had been made aware of a distinct and new sensation of optical pleasure. For the first time, he perceived within the hazy hghting and shading of the room a soft outUne upon which his eye wandered, rested, and remained, with the wide, blind impulse of a baby's on a sunbeam. It was the outline of a woman's neck. It was 1 delicate neck, of not too muscular nor yet too fuU a curve ; of the sensitive fairness which ac- companies umber tints in the hair, ej'es, and brow. The hair was brushed well up from it, lingering re • lactantly in little rings, of which it was difficult to IG8 THE STORY OF AVTS. express the images of endearment that they pre- seutcd involuntarily to tlie mind, as it is difficult to explain those which we receive from tendrils oi from the shadow of tendrils upon a ripe leaf. Thrown high over a comb, two or three curls fell, leaning lightly, and j-iclding with an almost imperceptitle stir to the motions of the wearer's breath. The sick man's fancy had from that time found itself curiously, but not ungratefully, subject to the outline of those curls ; pursuing it idly in his weak- est hours, with interest in Ms stronger ones ; tracing the exact course of a lock that defied him like the pattern of an old lace ; watching for the resumption of certain broad lights or warm shadows that he saw yesterdaj' ; disappointed if they did not re-appear ; nervously fretful sometimes if he could not under- stand why, when she turned herhead, one curl would fall, and another onlj' nestle closer to its place ; busy now and then in putting them into imaginary ordei upon his finger. He once heard a celebrated beautj say, that, if she could possess but one phj-sical attrac- tion, it should be that of pliant and abundant hair. "Miss Barbara," he had said one daj', "do you ever arrange your hair in any other vray?" " Do j'ou not like it?" she answered, turning hei aeok slowl}'. She generally sat with her profile to> Wards him. " Amazingly." " Does it have a nervous effect on you in any way — to sec the curls fly, I mean? I can change it 1/ it annoys you." THE STORY OF AVIS. 169 " It docs not annoy me in the least. But I shoftlcl jke to see it changed — for once," lie demanded, in the idly autocratic tone of the spoiled convalescent. ''Certainly," said Barbara. "I T/vill do it up plainly some day, if j-ou wish. I will try and re- member it." But she never did, it chanced, remember it. Certainly there never was a better nurse than Bar' bara Allen, — soft of step, and quiet of dress ; sure of the right word at the right time, yet mistress of long silences ; never taxing a weak and wearied attention with chatter about her china, j-ct capable of "bringing the English breakfast-tea in a lotus-leaf, and the ice- water in a pond-lilj' ; competent to adjust the color of the doj-lcy to the prevailing tint of one's supper ; throwing an atmosphere of domestic franlcness about a homeless man when her brother was in the room ; just bnished in his absence by a poised rcsci-ve ; per- ceptive of the precise moment when speech is a strain, and silence an oppression, and a song of Schubert's, touched in the twilight, should stir lilco a spirit ihrough the quiet house ; full of those delicate and •,»ictorial resources of which returning strength is least likely to become ungratefully critical. " You have been so Mnd to me ! " said Ostrander, the day that he took his fii-st step into the cool hall, and she drew out the white linen ottoman for him from the dh-ect draught, and took the cricket at his feet, there being no other seat there foi her, — "so kind, that it seems a sort of rudeness or affectation 170 THE STOKY OP AVIS. for*ine to express a gratitude that -must only deepen with time." " Stratford and I are so glad ! " said Barbara trarmly. "It is the only very visible way we have had open to us of doing our little share for the meii who are imperilling their lives for us. The obligation is all on our side, Mr. Ostrander. And you have been such a delightfully romantic invalid, it has been like having a poem or "a story alive in one's own house. How do you thinli we are going to get along on plain prose when you arc gone? " " Shall you miss me?" asked Ostrander, leaning back upon the white ottoman, and watching her dreamily. It was a graceful pose she had upon the cricket ; and the low wind was busy with her hair. Barbara lifted her brown eyes ; but they fell, and she said nothing. She was content to be watched like that. Why spoil an innocent pleasure by talk- ing? "So much?" continued Ostrander in a lower tone, clasping his hands behind his head, and bring- ing his lips together under his bright beard. "I don't know but it is worth a man's being shot, to be first cured, and then missed — so." Now, as Ostrander could never have sat with downcast eyes listening to his own voice', its effect could hardly have been a measurable thing with him. And then ho was very gi-ateful, and at that moment he was fiUed with the tender flood of returning life — > and Barbara happened to be there. THE STORY OF AVIS. 171 Tea, to wMcli, for the first tune, Ostrander stag* gered down, was late that night. Barbara always waited tea for her brotlier. Stratford Allen, who had failed to develop that naturally superior manner to be expected of the business-man who is known to have endowed a university, came in with, perhaps, an unwonted touch of his habitual, modest, sad re- Berye. When Barbara asked him why he was so late, he said he had been at the treasui-er's office. " Did you ask Professor Dobell about those Ger- man books for his department? " asked Barbara. "Yes : I stopped at his house a moment," said her brother, coming up to give his cordial hand to Os- trander. " I think you had better run over there to- moiTow, Barbara. Miss Avis has got hmt rowing." "Oh! Much hurt? — Mr. Ostrander, not in the draught, please : take this chair." "Nothing serious, I hope; but a troublesome bruise. She was pulling her boat in through a heavy sea, and brought her thumb between the rock and the bows somehow. She made light of it , but it will cripple her for a while, I am afraid. — Os- trander, how pleasant this is ! ShaU I help j'ou to the very last huckleberry that was to be found in New England?" After tea, Ostrander said that he wished to try a s,ep or two upon the loiazza. Stratford objected; but Barbara said it was her rule that sick people (of any thing beyond a common-school education) ehould be allowed to do as they liked. She cama 172 THE STOHY OF AVIS. up to him witli a rose-bud in one band and Ms over- coat in another, — Ms winter coat : Barbara's liglitcs* sentiment had a sufflciently practical ballast. She pinned in the rose, a pliunp, hot-house bud of a sturdy color; one long sinuous cui-1 fell over it Osti'auder drew his fuiTed lappel over the flower with an exquisite motion which an artist or novelist would not have wasted upon any tMng less than a Madonna lily. "With his peculiar tenderness of touch, and with Ms eyes fixed upon her, he folded it slowly against his heart. "As if it had been — a woman," thought Bar- bara with a discreet vagueness of imagination. Barbara had a high respect for a man who could receive a favor of hers with a grace so princely But she did not wish she were that rose. Ostrander, still touching his coat with a certain gentleness, crept out into the rapidly chilling air. He had come out to try his strength. He meant to know for hunself about that hurt hand. He crawled along with a suppressed fierceness when ho found how weak he was. The fat rose-bud slipped and fell. He did not see it, and stepped on it twice in crossing the piazza-floor. It was impossible to have better intentions than aunt Chloe's, when any member of the family was by dliicss or otherwise thrown defencelessly upon them. When Avis had been for three days incapacitated foi work by her little accident, aunt CMoe rosolutelj THE STOEY OP AVIS. 173 IXKjk her sewing, and went to find her. It was non- Bcnse to be moping out there lilte a chilled blue-jay. Avis must be entertained. The first condition of recovery, were it from a broken thumb or a broken head, aunt Chloe held, was to be got out of one's self. And, in the nature of things, we find those people to be self-absorbed who are not occupied in our own particular forms of benevolence, precisely as we find those irreligious who are not of our own especial faith. The main trouble with Avis, aunt Chloe reasoned, was, that she did not go out of her- self. What if she could not paint for a week or two ? A soldier's box could be packed, at all events a Har- mouth soup-ticket could be distributed with any energetic left hand. It may be that aunt Chloe's stout impulse, like that of many another outflowing heart, sometimes struck nearer to a truth than the richer but less objective fancy. But Avis in the orchard, flung upon the short September grass with her Ruskin and Hawthorne, and Mrs. Jameson, and other resources not so im- mediately telling upon the needs of the age a^ the soup-tickets, responded to aant Chloe's sj-mpathy, with the assurance that she was not in pain, and fully occupied, and hoped to bt at work again in at most a fortnight. " I hope so, my dear, I'm sure." said aunt Chloe, ^nDoriously seating herself beside her, and unrolling a package of metaphysical shu-ts ; "for it must be 174 THE STORY OP AVIS. very lonely, having so few resources as you do. 1 came out because I thought it bad for you to be so much alone." " Thanlj j^ou, auntie," said Avis in a sincere tone, closing her book. "How odd an this is about lilr. Ostrander and Bar- bara ! " began aunt Chloe, carefully fitting a gusset. (Why was it, that it always made Avis irantic to sec aunt Chloe fit gussets?) "It is the last thing I should have thought of. Should you have thought of it?" "Perhaps not," said Avis; "but it is very nat- ural." "I hope, for her salie, it wiQ prove a bond fide en- gagement," buzzed aunt Chloe : " it wiU be so awk- ward for her otherwise ! Though it isn't a choice I should have made for Mr. Ostrander. I sent him some nasturtiums this morning. Avis, let me see that hand once more. I don't understand why you should look so fagged out over it." ' ' A little hurt sometimes causes a good deal of pain," said Avis rather wearily. She threw herself back upon the brown grass, and closed her eyes while aunt Chloe talked. It u-ked her, this enforced idleness, more than she could remember to have been u-ked by any thing since she sat cutting ou^ uight -clothes with aunt Chloe, on the dining-room table, at sixteen. Just now, it seemed as imperative to be bus3', as action to the swimmer ; and her efforts to exchange her palette for her books had been piur THE STORY OP AVIS. 175 poseless and Bpasmodic, like the motions of the sink Ing. She seldom read while she was at work, and could recall many a sketch which had been ruined by the morning paper. She could not set the fire of creation to boiling the tea-kettle of acquisition. Especially had this experience proved untimely and unmerciful. There seemed to be great spaces In her nature, into which she neither cared nor dared to look, and which the events of the summer had imper- ceptibly enlarged, lOie the boundaries of a conquer- ing country. She found herself now with a kind of terror thrust into them against her wiU. "My dear," said aunt Cliloe with unwonted ab- ruptness, folding the gusset, however, before she laid it down, " I don't know but there is a provi- dence in this accident, after aU. I have been troubled about j-ou for a long time. It is always a pity for a woman to become dependent upon any excitement outside of the sphere to which she must, of course, in the end, adjust herself. And reaUj':, Avis, I don't see how 3'ou are going to marry in that studio. I do not wish to speak of such matters with any in- delicate freedom," added aunt Chloe with her old- fashioned womanly reserve, which Avis, in all her life, never remembered to have seen broken in this «vaj' before ; "but of coiu'se, my dear, you \rill ex- pect to .marry." " No," said Avis gently, with the perfectly hope- loss feeling/one has unaer the necessity of an ex- planation which kindliness demands, but which is gwe to be only a deepening mystery to the auditor. 176 THE STOEY OF AVIS. " No, auntie, I do not expect to marry." " In a certain way," replied aunt Cliloe with grara hesitation, " tliat is the way a woman should feel. I had refused j-our uncle twice before I thought of marriage. I am glad you preserve so much mod- esty about such matters. Young girls now-a-daya are generally so different ! Of com-se, no lady wiii ever allow herself to become interested in a gentle- man till he has positively sought her in marriage." Aunt Chloe roUed up her work as she uttered thia fij'st and great commandment, upon which aU the law and prophets of womanhood hung, with the serene dignity which only an absolute inability to conceive of two sides to a question can give. Wliat a lady ought not, that, of course, a lady never did. It was scarcely necessaiy to remind any niece of hers of that. But aunt Chloe had almost a sense of immod- esty in having spoken, as she had felt it her duty to do, to Avis. Marriage was not a thing for women io chatter about. But equally it was not the thing for women deliberately to put themselves bej'ond the reach of that honorable institution, which, we must adroit, was ordained of Almighty God, and neces- sary to weak-minded man. And, when a poor moth- erless girl had reached the age of twenty-sLs without any apparent appreciation of this fact, it was clearly the duty of somebody to remind her, with that delicacj belonging to the old-time breeding, of the mistaken Bi\d undesu'able position into which she was drifting. " Not," said aunt Chloe, hastening to a virtuoui THE STOEY OP AVIS. 17i qualification of her unwonted indiscretion, — "not that a maiden lady cannot live a very uscM and un- Bclflah life, my dear. I have known many instances. But I thinli you, Avis, would be happier in the mar- ried state ; and so I thought I would take an oppor- tunity to caution you a little. You seem to be so absorbed in that painting, that somebody must think for you. And now Coy has gone, and Barbara wiL soon follow, you will be left verj' much alone. I can- not dcnj' that I feel some anxiety for your future." " Thanli you, auntie," said Avis again. A dull sense of disturbance mingled with her surprise at aunt Chloe's unprecedented expression of feeUng. She was glad when the last gusset was roUed away, and Julia called to ask if she should scald over the marmalade. She wandered away restlessly, when aunt Chloe had gone, through the orchard, over the meadow, across the field. She crushed the crisp grass idly. The brown butterflies circled over her head ; and the grasshoppers rose and fell in then- short autumn riot, which lends almost a pathos to a creatme that is alternately repulsive and absm'd, as the throb of any ephemeral life must do in its last delight. Avis watched them with a sudden, fierce envy : they would die of the bitter frost ; but they had leaped to the summer sun. She stopped — from a feeling too ill defined to be called a puriiose, perhaps hardly conscious enough to be named an impulse — at ihe spot where she had 178 THE STORY OF AVIS. last seen and spoken with Philip Ostrander. It wa» broad, white September noon. The narrow shadow crept crouching against the feet of the stone wall. • The direct touch of the sun fell gi-atefuUy ; for the morning had been chill. There was a rising, but as yd unagitated wind, which appealed to, but did not stu-, the purple heart of the sea morning-glories that sprang from the sand across the waU. The watei had the superlative and unmated meaning of a Sep- tember sea. The near waves broke weedless and kiudUng, clean to the heart's core, like a nature burnt holy with a consecrated passion. All the colors of the tide and of the shore compelled attention, as if one must create a vocabulary to express them, as if one struggled to say, A blazing brown, a joj-ous gray, a restless gi-een, a reticent red, a something never seen before : in every tint there was a subtle contradiction. The life and death of the year wrestled upon the face of the water. The whole harbor looked to Avis lilte some large soul, in which a conflict old as time, and young as hope, and eternal as nature, and sad as fate, was impending. Bj' and by the harbor, too, must freeze. A pace or two down the wall, two little stunted spruces grew, — sparse, wind-beaten things, shiver- ,ng a^a}' from the sea with the touching action of all trees upon an easterly shore. Avis, stepping aloi^ lo help herself up bj' the assistance of theu" shrink- .ng brunches, climbed the stone wall, and stood for a moment between them, looking across th« clilT, and down. THE STORY OF AVIS. 179 In her full lithe length there, a perfect panei ugainst the sky and sea, she was still standing, when sho heard her name spoken under breath ; and immediately the speaker added, — "Do not move, I pray you; do not even turn youi- head just this moment." Neither starting nor stirring, -without comment or inquiry, she obeyed. Perhaps her breath came with some swiftness ; for she seemed to sway a very Uttle in standing. In her pale straw-colored summer dreSS-, she looked hlce a delicate flame, slender, and ascend ing against the sky. Still without turning, she gently said, — " This is long enough, I think, Mr. Ostrander." "Is it? Areyoutu-ed? Ah! Well, I am self- ish. I would have kept you there much longer. Well, then, if you must. Shall I help you down? " Then she turned. Slowly, like a statue on its pivot, she circled towards him between the dark lines of the two trees, and slowly opened Jier grave eyes upon his face. Perhaps she was not thinking that he would be so sorely changed. It was so long since she had seen him ! SUence had been heavy between thenif and the shadow of death had overhung. In all the strain of this summer she had thrust herself back upon her own quiveringly-poised imagination — a terrible companion. Upon the battle-field, beneath the shot, within the blazing hospital, upon the scorching journey, and at the door of death, she 180 THE STOEY OP AVIS. had followed him as one follows afar cfT, cxcnan- ging the terror of that which is for the hoiTor of that which may be. Her mind had not been at any time /.aggard in its apprehension of the fact that he lay, at a stone's throw from her, grappUng with life, and that another woman rendered him the tender oUices of friendship and of compassion. But her pictorial instinct, cruelly loyal to her thus far, had failed her at last. This face, tJiis, which he lifted to her now, haggard and gi'aj', tense with that enforced patience, so foreign to a man, that a woman instinctively gauges the extent of his phy- sical suffering by his acquisition of it, — against this, her saddest vision had not fortified her. Astronomy happened upon a beautiful and signifi- cant phrase when it gave us " energy of position," and meant us to understand by it that certain sepa- rated bodies are far apart, with great spaces to travel to reach each other. At that one moment the energy of position between these two seemed an immeasm-ablo thing. Avis, perhaps because she had just obej'ed him in standing RtiU to be looked at, had turned a little coldly. Where she stood high upon the wall, her health and youth and color seemed to cut themselves like articu- late words before his ej-es. He, upon the side of the ascending field, crawled weakly towards her. He "vas shattered as a broken column. For that mo- ment they looked steadily and eilontly upon cm another. IHE STORY OF AVIS, 181 TTion slowly, furtively as an unacknowledged motive or a rebel fancy, there crept over ber face a cliangc. It was the marvellous and magnificent cliange wrought upon a woman's face onl}' by that compassion which steals a regent to the palace where Love the King has been dethroned. Nothing is more beautiful, because nothing is more womanly, than that subsidence of the muscles, that quiver of the nerves, that kindling of color, and luminous entreaty of the eye. The young man held his breath before it, stirred with a perfectlj^ new and dai-ing hope. lie felt, that, had he come to her again in the power of liis man- hood, he might again have gone as he came. It was his phj'sical ruin and helplessness which appealed to the strength in her. He would have died to see that lip of hers tremble so — for him. Now he saw it — and lived. He had exchanged nothing but a shot king and life-long feebleness — for heaven. He di'cw a weak step nearer to her, and held out his arms. She wavered for an instant. The morning-glory behind her, across the wall, wavered as much in the Qow rising wind. Then, with a low, inarticulate cry, she stretched both hands down towards him. He took them, and she shd down from the waU, luid stood beside him. She did not offer to remove her hands. lie thought she was unconscious of his touch, for she lipd not veu taken that broken, piteous .ook I'lOm his face. "Oh!" she said ipdistinctly. "IdidnottLiiit— I did not know ' ' — 182 THE STOKY OF AVIS. "You did not know I was so changed?" He gently toolc her hurt right hand by the wrist as he spoke, holding it like a drooping water-Uly by the stem. " There, I must have hurt j-ou. I was cruel but I was dazzled. Poor little hand ! There is » great deal of suffering in a little hurt like this. A bruise is so much worse than a cut — in hearts oi hands. I have had the cut. You have almost drawn the life-blood out of .my soul, I think ; but you — you have been bruised." A wild flash of dissent or protest shot across hei ej^es ; but the quiver of her lip increased. " AUthis time," he went on in the pathetic ac- cent which mortal illness leaves lingering so long upon a man's voice, " you have sent me no word, no sign." She silently shook her head: her eyelids looked heavy, as if a distinct effort only prevented them from drooping. " You never expressed to me the commonest sym- pathies of friendship." Imperfectly she said, "No." "I lay, pretty weak, watching, day after day, tiinldng perhaps j'ou would come, or speak one little word. I went down into the valley of the shadow of death without you. You never extended a finger- tf)uch to help me." " 1 never did." " You did not dare ! " Then her eyelids fell; then her quivering lif THE STOKY OF AVIS. 183 melted ; then her whole face broke and blazed. She enatchcd away both hands, and covered it. ' "Let Tue hear you say it," he demanded with a kind of solemn authority which seemed, for the moment, to be that of one who dealt with a divine, not a human, passion. " You dared not ! " "I — dared — not." " Let nie know why not.'' " Because you did not — ask me to." Scarlet behind her shielding hands she flung out the words. He took one blind step towards her. "If I had asked you — would j-ou have come? Did you care? Did you want to come — when 1 was suffering — to me ? " "Oh! every day, every hour — there was not a minute — for so many cruel weeks. It was so hard ! Oh ! don't thinli I am crying : it's only that I can- not get my breath — and I couldn't go — I was afraid " — "You were afraid you loved me!" he cried. " You are afraid of it now." As long as he lived, Ostrander saw in dreams the expression of exquisite pain with which she dragged her hands away from her face, and met his eye. She Beemed lUfe a creatm-e whose throbbing heart was torn out of her live body. " If this be love," she slowly said, " I am afraid I love you now." He staggered, he was stilL so weak : he staggered, 184 THE STOKY OF AVIS. and, putting out one hand upon her shoulder, sank BlowJy to the gi'ound. " Oh ! " she cried, " I have hml; you ! " " No, oh, no ! Hush ! You have healed me. I am well. Only let me rest a minute, tiU .my breath comes." He leaned panting against the wall, under the scant shade of the storm-tormented spruce. "Oh! I have hurt you," she repeated, kneeUng beside him. "What can I say? Is there any thing that I can do?" She had melted into a gentleness under which he felt his head spin giddUy. There was a suppressed, appealing accent in her voice which he had never heard : it was faint as the iirst golden outline of Land to one long in mid-ocean. He put his head back, and closed his eyes. He would not for Ufe's sake, just then, have seen more than that mistily throbbing boundary. It was as much as he could bear. If this was her pity, what would her tender- ness be? When he had gi'own a little sti-onger, he turned, and silently looked at her. Abeadj^ upon her rested that indefinable change, ou the hither side of which, when once it has touched her, all time cannot put a woman's face. In yielding her confession, she seemed aheady to have jaelded some impalpable |[K)ition of her personahty. In the words of the old stoiy of chivahy, "her soul had gone out of her." llur blinding consciousness of having taken the firs' itep in a road which led to some indefincd but im THE STOKT OF AVIS. 185 ptrative surrender of lier nature liad an effect upon her incalculable to one fumiliar only witli a simplei bype of woman. She did not look subdued, only startled. And, when he reverently extended his thin hand again towards her, she shrank, with widening, fear-stricken eyes. Just then Ostrander thought her beautiful terror of him more precious than her love. He did not press any expression of his feeUng upon her, and they sat quite stiU, and the live noon pulsated about them. Presently she said tremulously, — " You are so weak ! And you wallied across this long field: how will you ever get back? I am troubled that you came." "I can go anjTvhere," said Ostrander in an in- toxicated tone, " do any thing. I can go the world over ; for 3-ou will go with me." He turned to her, leaning his head upon one wan hand on which the sunlight drew out the veins. She tm-ned away. She could not just then saj' the word Thich would darken sun, moon, and stars in the face Lf a man who looked like that. Her own grew tense and pinched. " But stUl, as you say," said Ostrander, — whether wilfuUj' or not unconscious of this movement, — "1 iim not yet very strong. Indulge me. Let me hear you say once more — I'U not ask for it but once yo-day — that j'ou are a'Vaid you love me." *'0h! I am afraid I love 3'ou.' There, hush! ' 186 THE STORY OF AVIS. She sprang to her feet, putting her finger ou her own jps. " And can you not love me Tvithout being afraid ? '' She shook her head, her eyes beginning to wandei from side to side. "But why?" ^'I do not know. I am made so," defiantly. "Let me go. Let us go now — home, somewhere. Dh, I forget ! I am cruel." She broke into a peni- tent tenderness. " Are you rested? Can you walk BO far yet ? Can you go ? " " One moment." Ostrander rose feebly, and stood beside her. His startling pallor bm'ued as , marble does if thrust into the fuU sun, as if it were lighted, not from without, but from within. He folded his arms with the resolute action of a man who thinks that is the safest thing to do with them, before he said, — '^ You will not leave me, I think — to-day — like this. I am ahnost too sick a man yet to be left — 80." " Do you appeal to my pity? " she flashed, draw- ing a step back. " No. I appeal to your love." The scorching color slowly rose, lighted, sped fired her face, brow, and neck : when he saw it, he knew that he had never seen her blush before. Sue seemed to stand imprisoned by that blush, as if it had been a physical paralysis or pain. "My love," she said under her breath, — " mj love t Do you knOw to what you are appealing? " THE STORY OB AVIS 187 " Hardly, — yet," said Ostrander deliriously. " 1 ftm not strong enough to know to-day. I only ask that j-ou win give me the right to know" another day — to-morrow — when you will. Is it too much to ask?" She made as if she would have spoken some im- pstuous word ; but a glance at him restrained her. He was trembUng heavily, and his breath had visibly shortened. He looked very Ul. Her heart Icapec' with the deep maternal yearning over suffering that is more elemental in women than the yearning of maiden or of wife. Had he spoken no word of that other love to her, she could have gathered his faint face in her arms, and brooded over it with leaning cheek and sobbing voice ; but this other, this en- croaching, appaUing love, which she felt in herself, as yet, only as the presence of a vague, organic dread, — for this, natm-e gave her no speech nor language but the instinct of flight. Yet flight now would be either coquetry or cruelty, and of both she was incapable." " I will see you," she said after a moment's grave silence — " yes, I will see you again." Ostrander was sensitively conscious that her trans- parent honesty could not wrest even from her com- passion a distinct mortgage to his now blinding hope. But he felt himself as physically unequal to enduring just then any possible depression of that lope, as he was to yielding any larger allowancex>f the scant breatli with which he must compass thai 188 THE STOUT OP AVIS. widening distance across the dizzy field . He paused, however, to say witli a certain authority, — " You understood what I asked in asking that wa may talli of this, that we may talk of our love, again? " "Yes." " And you distinctly grant that we may speak of it, so?" She said, " If j-ou stand another moment, you cannot crawl home." " I shall stand tiU j-ou grant what I ask." "Oh, I grant it! Come! How shaU I — how can I help you over this rough ground? I wish I were a man! " " I am son-y not to sjTnpathize with any wish of yours," said Ostrander, breaking into a bojish laygh as they tm-ned, strildng down into the brown stubbty field. " And now, if you will i)ermit me, — just a hand upon your shoulder. It shall be a light one ; and I shaU get along famously. I am already stronger than I was." She lent him her strong young shoulder simply and readilj', and, he leaning upon it with radlaat eyes, they passed over the conscious mesdows ia the wM'«i September noon. THE STORY OF AVIS. 189 CHAPTER X. "Are there not . . . Two points in tlie adTcntnre of tbe dlTOl? — One— when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge; One — when, a prince, he lisoa with his peail. Festus, I plunge 1 " FESb I wait you when ;ou rise I BBOwirmo's FjcACEUSDa. n^IIERE now began in Avis a memorable conflict, J- which only a woman, and of women fierhaps onlj' a few, can articulately understand. Ostrander felt thait it was only accelerated, but did not believe that it was in any other sense affected, by the state of extreme exhaustion into which that morning by the shore had plunged him. He had straggled up through the orchard and the garden, and as far as the studio, where he sank upon the steps. The professor and aunt*Chloe came out and got him into the house ; and he lay for the rest of the day upon the study sofa, sorely spent. Nothing would have suited aunt Chloe better than to keep him beneath ner motherly wing ; she had small secret respect for Barbara AUen's nursing. What could a giii with red curls know about gunshot wounds? And she understood that Mr. Ostrander had been kept too long in a darkroom: men, lilte flowers, waxed strong in tlie light of heaven. Un- 190 THE STORY OF AVIS. doubtedly, Barbara could play opera music for him down stairs ; but meanwliile, who was to rub the poor fcUow's feet? or esert an authoritative influ- ence in the question of wet or dry heat in an attack of pain ? And now that he had really gone back to the college (too soon, as it had clearly proved), she could surely tal-ce him in hand without any discom"tesy to the Aliens. Aunt Chloe's hospitaUty expressed itself with the touch of dignity, which, though it makes acceptance easy, leaves denial graceful. She did not press the matter, when Ostrander, growing stronger with the heavily cooUng evening, said only that it was best for him to go ; and he returned to his old quarters, upon which he held some Uen by courtesy until his health should admit of a definite settlement of his relation to the university. Avis was in her room when his carriage drove up, and did not come down. She had presented herself through the day only so much as was necessary to prevent remark. ' She hovered about him distantly. In her eyes smouldered a dangerous light. "When once they had been left for a few minutes alone together, as the afternoon shadow was stooping to the study-floor, she had fanned him conscientiouslj', to be siu:e ; but she had not broken by a breath, the Expressive silence which settled like a tliii'd person ility between them. He did not waidi her, but lay vith closed ej'cs : he perceived the shining of hei %kender wrist, the faint scent from her dress and THE BTOEY OF AVIS. 191 hair. "WTien aunt Chloe came in, she felt his pulsa anxiously, and said she had given him too large a dose of the elderbeiTy-wine. For that next day he left her to herself. And foi yet another he stood afar olf from a struggle upon which he felt it unchivalric to urge, more than need inevitably be, the appeal of his phj'sical wreck and disordered fulm-e. Upon the thu'd day he came, leaning upon John Eose's arm. Rose had found him down the street, crawling along home. But John Eose had an appointment with a lady, and would not come in. Aunt Chloe stood in the haU with her bonnet on. She was going to a very special female prayer-meet- ing (of which far be it from me to speak scepti- cally), appointed to further the discontinuance of the war. And the professor would not return from the lecture-room till after the Alpha Delta Phi din- ner, which would be a late (and dyspeptic) affair. Aunt Chloe tliought the parlor too damp for llr. Ostrander, and would send Avis into the study. He went in, and awaited her with such nei-ve as he could command : he would not have turned his transparent hand over either way upon his chance. He waited what seemed an immeasm-able, and reaUy was rather a cruel time. When at last she came in, down the long, sunlit, tome-like room, between the rows of books, he was shocked to see the traces of a sleepless and joyless struggle that she boie. 192 THE STORY OP AVIS. He met her with some indistinct, impelvous word of cndcaiTnent, and drew her beside him upon the old mahogany sofa. " You suffer ! " he cried, with the helpless bewil- derment of the strongest man before the natui'c of a strong woman. " I would make you so happy ; and I have made you miserable ! "Why do you f iiffcr? " He held her fast now by the deUcate crossed wrists. She lifLed her tender face. " I suffer," she said, " because I love you." "Oh! Is<7jafaU?" ' ' I never loved any other man. I did not know what it was lilce." She gently drew her hands away, and folded them one into the other. " And what is it liljo ? Can j'ou tell me? " One might have said of Ostrander's voice at that moment, what was said once, and said perfectly, of music, that it was " love in search of a word." " It is lilvo — death," said the woman slowly, with a deepening shade on every feature. "Then," said the j'oung man lightly, "I am ready to die." But he was sorry to have made her smile so ; for her smile did not encourage him. " It is civil war," she said. Spurred by a momentary stinging sense of having retraced liis own footsteps, he leaped on, — " Do you remember that 3-()u were to give me an answer, — that you were to talk with me of oui future, to-day? " THE STOBY OF AVIS. 193 "Yes." "And I may know — now — what it i& you have to say to me?" "I\Ir. Ostrandcr, in all my life — since I was a little gu'l — I have never known one hour in which I expected — like other women — to marry." "You could not be like other women," he mur- mured ; but she waved his words away with her bruised hand. " I don't think you understand what that means. I never could conceive of myself as expecting it. I cannot now. I do not wish to marry any man. It seems to me a perfectly unnatui-al thing that any man should look me in the face, and ask me to be his wife : it alwaj's did. And that a man of j-our superior intelligence should actually expect it is really incomprehensible to me." She pelted these words at him over her shoulder. Ostrander heard them too anxiously to smile. It was the iiTational outcry of a creature rasped and wrung by the friction of her own natui-e upon itseli". Only a woman terrified by the serried advance of a mighty love upon an able and discomfited resistance; could have spoken those words in that way. lint only a few men in the world would have insthictively understood this. Ostrandcr was not one of these few. It seemed to his dizzy eyes that her face receded as she spoke, growing larger but dimmer with every word.. "I never said this before," she added, wit)\ the 194. THE STOKY OP AVIS. rapid, incisive utterance of one who is expressing wliat is so long familiar, and so long suppressed, as to have become a functional part of the being, and to exhale involuntarily like the breath. " I never cared enough — for any one — to try to explain it. But I must tell you. I had rather not be happy than to be happy at such a cost as maiiiage demands of ■women." "Ah! then you own that you would, that you could, be happy." He hastened to entrap her in her sweet admission. She gave him one ti-anscend- ent look. As if she had given him some matchless wine never before unsealed for human hps, his head grew hght. But then there fell a swift and great withdrawal upon her ; and her face gathered itself together like a garrison, while she said, — " I told j'ou something about this long ago, before you went into the army, that day by the shore ; but I could not explain it then, for I could not explain myself then. Every thing that I felt then has inten- sified. With my feeling for j-ou has deepened this other feeling, ^he more I care for you, the more I shiinlj from what j'Ou ask." " Let us talli of this quietly now, and reasonably,'* said Ostrander in his low, ^'ibrant waj-. "I -will urge nothing upon you. Only let us reason about it. Blaniage is not to be treated with such personal In'cverence or rebellion, I think. It is really the best plan Almighty God could contrive for us. I; Is his will that men and women should love one another, and, loving, marry." THE STOET OF AVIS 195 •' Brit I do not see it to be his will for me," urged Avis. "He lias set two natures in me, warring against each other. He has made me a law unto myself — He made me so. , How can I help that? I do not say. Heaven knows ! that I am better, or greater, or truer than other women, when I say it is quite right for other women to become wives, and not for me. I only say, If that is what a woman IS made for, I am not Hire that: I am different. And God did it." There was a solemn but yet submissive arraign- ment in these words, and in the tone with which they were uttered, to which, at that moment, Os- trander found no ready lover's argument of a texture large enough to be laid against them. " Even if I had no work, no life, of my own," she continued less calmly, " I thinli it would be the same, though I cannot tell. But I have my work, and I have my life. I was not made to yield these to any man. I was not made to absorb them in his work and his life. And I should do it — Lf I married him . I should care so much — too much for what happened to him. ... Mr. Ostrander, if I were a man, I would not stoop to ask such a sacrifice of any woman ! " " And I stoop to ask for no more than I give," he said with a haughty humility. "I will take Ijom you only what I can yield to you, — the love of a life. I do not want yaw: work, or your individu- ality. I refuse to accept any such saerifice from the 196 THE STOKY OF AVIS. woman I love. \ou are perfectly right. A mat ought to be above it. Let me be that man." Os- trander uttered this daring sentiment as ardently as if he had cA'cr thought of it before, and as sincerely aa if it had been the watchword of his life. He felt him- self at that moment in the radiation of a great truth tliat blazed from her ringing voice and her intrenched beauty. He seemed to himself to be the discoverer of a new type of womanhood, to which, as we do in the presence of all ideals, he instinctively brought his own natiure to the rapid test: he would have scorned himself if his manhood had not rung respon- sive to it. He ventured solemnly to say, — " Only let us love, and live, and work together. Tour genius shall be more tenderly my pride than my little talents can possibly be yours. I shall feel more care for your assured future than you ought to feel for my wrecked one. Try me if you will ; trust me if you can. I do not say that I am worthj'. But you shall make me so. If I did not believe you could make me so, before God, I would go out from youi" presence to-day, and never seek it again." He spoke in an agitation now, that extended itself, like the air they breathed, to her. She rose, and walked across the study-f oor two or three times, with something of her father's attitude, the long, nervous step softened to a sinuous grace in hei slinging dress. " I wish I had a different past and a different ruturo to offer you," pleaded Ostrander, thi-owing THE STOEY OF AVIS, 197 jne weak ann up over Ms head restlessly. "But the one has at least been clean, I believe ; and the other must be — what God and yourself will it." She stopped her rapid walk, and looked at 'h^n\ standing in the middle of the floor; and in what seemed? a half-unconscious tone, as if she had not been listening to his last words, she said, — " I have wondered sometimes if there were such a man in the world. I always knew," whispering, ' ' how I should feel. I knew it would be all over with •ne when I found him." Then, still softly, — " Oh, how pale you are ! All this excitement — is BO wrong for you ! I should be so glad to sec j-ou happy — to help you to get well! Oh, I thinlc 1 could make you happy! I would try — there is nothing I would not do, would not suffer " — With a swift motion she stirred towards him, saw liim reach his arms out dumbly, wavered and turned, then, — " Oh, no, no, no ! " she cried. " Help me to say no! Come another time. I must think. I must take time — because " — "Because what?" he demanded, sorely shaken by the prolongation of this strain. " Because I care too much for you to make j'on miserable. Every thing would be so hard for you ! Don't think it .s that I care so much about myself! T could bear it, — to grow poor and sick and worn- out, and never to paint, and to have to sew so much ' When you look at me, (oh, you are so pale !) I could 198 THE STOEY OF AVIS. bear it all. But I can't forgot how it would be — and the cofliie wouldn't be right. And men mind such things — you would mind: You would be sorry we had done it. It is not right for us to marry. Don't let me do what is not right ! You should see — you should be merciful to j'ourself and me." She seemed to slip and slide before his still ex- tended hands Kke a wraith, and he heard the door open and close, and the afternoon sun bent pla- cidly upon the rows of books, upon the portrait of Sir WUliam, upon the decorous mahogany sofa, and the dull figure on the carpet where she had stood. He took his hat, and crawled away in the bright sunshine. Avis up stairs held her hands upon her ears as if she were trjing to shut out the sound of her own words ; and the professor at the Alpha Delta Phi dinner sat discussing representative per- ception with that New- York clergyman who had written so intelligent a review of the Identity of Identity and Non-Identity; and aunt Chloe at the prayer-meeting poured out her good soul for the benefit of the country. He did not seek to see her after this, but wrote to her several times, expressing more fully both the burden of his love and the reason of his hope, crys- tallizing cahnljr all a lover's sublime conviction of the practicability of his wishes. He had no answers ; but he wrote bravely on. Perhaps a fortnight passed in this way. All this while, Ostrander had said rothing of his health. THE STORY OF AVIS. 199 One day Coy came in and said, — ' ' Poor Ml'. Ostrander ! He doesn't seem to get up. John goes over there, almost every day. He doesn't wallt out now, — hasn't for a week ; and the Aliens take hun to ride. But I hear his chum is very good to liim, and he won't go anywhere else. And John says he can't see why he doesn't gain. John is very good to him. And John says" — But Avis did not seem to be granting her usual tender attention to what John said ; and Coy changed the subject — to bias ruffles. It was when Ostrander was l^ing alone in the dusk, on his college lounge, the next day, that a little note was brought to him, the first he had ever received from her. With shaking fingers he struck a hght, and read, in her large, defined hand, this onlj' : — "My deak Mr. Ostkandee, — I should like to see you, if you are strong enough to drive to my father's house. Do not come till you are quite able. I have aothing to say that cannot be said as well at one time aa another. Yours sincerely, " Avis Dobell." His chum came in at that moment ; and Ostrander, who had not ventinred into the evening air for weeks, fiercely demanded a carriage and his overcoat, and got them. He usually got what he sought in that reverberating tone. Men were almost as pUable as women to the quality of Philip Ostrander's voice. As luck wouli have it, there was a Faculty meet- 200 THE STORY OP AVIS. ing in the study, and a City Relief Society in the parlors. He asked distinctly for Miss Avis, and was bidden into the long, empty dining-room. There, was faint iirelighi in the Franklin stove ; and the moon, which was full, looked in over aunt Chloe'a ivies. There was heliotrope in the room somewhere ; but it could not be seen. She came, before the lights, not knowing how it was, and stopped in the doorway, uncertain. He was standing at the other end of the room. It seemed as if he leaned against a column of straight moonlight. His height and paUor were thus both emphasized. I Avis, looldng in through the darkened room, lean- ing forward a little, hesitating, thought of the Har- bor Light, oddlj^ enough, and of the birds. The lamps came in while thej' were standing so : the servant went out and closed the door. Avis had on something scarlet over a thick white dress that blazed out with the lighting of the room. She spoke first, and she said gravely, — " Mr. Ostrander, I have decided " — " Oh ! do not dedde — yet." " It is quite necessary. I have tried your patience Dvermuch. I have decided ; and I praj' you pardon me for the lateness of the decision, and for aU the trouble I have been to you, and all the pain — but — I have decided that I cannot resign my profession aa an artist." He was hastening impetuously to remind her that Ihey had both decided she need resign nothing, when THE STOEY OF AVIS. 201 ae percoivei a tender merriment that lie had never »een before, dawning far within her eyes. His voice and face sprang towards her ; but she motioned Viim back. ' ' And — I forgot to tell you that I hate — with a fervent hatred — to keep house." " I did not ask you to be my housekeeper ! " "And," suddenly serious, "I make very sour bread.': "You will bring mo," ho said reverently, "the bread of life." He looked so wasted, standing trembling there, with his hand upon the long table, that his words seemed less the rhapsody of love than the cry of famine ; and the reply, which in the telling has almost a touch of the ludicrous, in the solemn sajing was almost sublime. " Come," he said feebly, " I am star\'ing. Come ! " Slowly at first, with her head bent, as if she resisted some opposing pressm-e, then swiftly, as if she. had been drawn by irresistible forces, then blindly, like the bird to the light-house, she passed the length of the silent room, and put both hands, the palms pressed together as if they had I'cen man- acled, into Mb. THE STOBY OF AVI& CHAPTER XI. * wine sweeter than flist wine She gave him drop by drop ; Wine stronger than seal could sign She poured, and did not stop."— H, H. "VTEVER was there sucli a wooing. So, with tha JJi simple assurance of that glorified time in which we seem to ourselves to be the originators of each new emotion that overtakes us, Ostrander thought. And, indeed, many a lover's sweet fallacy has been farther from the truth. Had she not been of a tissue to which caprice was as impossible as crime, he would scarcely have felt, for a day's space, confident of his new and dazzhng claim. Her betrothal fitted upon her impatiently, like the first articles in a treaty of capitulation only looking askance as yet towards a dreaded surrender in which a passionately defended lost cause was to ijo down. He felt his way painfully with her, care- ful not to startle her, as if she had been a bin; poised with tender, receding feet, and fluttering wing ancertain whether it would nestle at his heart. The abrupt and cavalierly form of wooing witl <\hieh he had at first, as was iue^'itable, shocked and temporarily esti-auged (but thus ultimately strength- ened) the leaning of her feeling towards Mm, had THE STOKY OF AVIS. 203 given place » a definite persistence, to be sure, but to one so tender and cautious, that she seemed to be scarcely more conscious of it than of the tempera- tare of the morning. For the first few days she received him with, a distance which would have disheartened a less per- ceptive man. Even her anxiety for his recovery seemed to have retired from the foreground of her thoughts. Neither the future nor the past, appar ently, occupied her imagination much more than they do that of the caged creature who has just become percipient of the existence and the nature of bars. She sat by him silently, or they tallied of matters of wide interest, or aunt Chloe came in. She had steadfastly refused so far to acquaint her family with the state of the case between them, say- ing decidedly, — "I must get a little used to it first." Secretly, Ostrander blessed the sturdy American sentiment which made this possible. It seemed to him just then as much as he could bear, that they two, they only out of aU the world, should know that the almost inconceivable future was possible to him, vhich would give him the right to call her his wife. To share the first blush of this knowledge with any human creatm-e was lilte bruising the velvet on the octal of an iris. "Aren't ycu sorry yet? "she asked one day, when this first mood had passed. " Don't you think we had better not di this? I can't do any of the things men expect." 204 THE STOEY OF A. VIS. " Oh ! " be cried, "you shall not be what other men expect. I don't want you like other men's wives. You Lorelei! sphinx! you Cassandra, yea' rebel- lious — beautiful " — "But they thought Cassandra was mad," irter- rupted Avis. ' ' Except ' ' — "WeU?" " The king loved her," said Avis softly. It was perhaps a week since he had received her promise, when one evening, as they were alone to- gether, he went resolutelj' yet gently over to the window where she stood behind the heavy curtains, restlessly shifting aunt Chloe's flowers about to no very definite end, that he could see, and said, — "Avis?" He had not called her so before. She started with leaping eyes, moved her lips as if she would have spoken ; said nothing. "Avis," he repeated, "do you know that wc have been engaged a week — a whole week? " When she looked up, he was smiling quietly, and he spoke in that unimpassioned, matter-of-com-se tone which most quickly disai-ms the dismay of such a woman ; as if that which he sought were as natiu-al as the drawing of the breath, and in no sense more suited to create an exciting scene ; or as if he dealt, indeed, with a thought too loft}^ and too grave to be reduced to the level of an excitement. '*A whole week, my darling. Ah, hush ! Can von not bear so much as that? And you have not THE STOBr OF AVIS. 203 j-et given mo one kiss. Don't you think it is a little hard on a poor wreck of a wounded soldier? " "I don't mean to be hard," she said, slowly re- ceding from him with unconscious steps that twisted In her long dress. •'But you are — very hard. It doesn't seem to me worth while exactly. Wliy should you mind so much, if you really love me ? " "I love you!" she murmured, standing quite still. " Ah, how much? Dear, how much? " "Do you thinlt I can — say, what I have not dared — yet — to " — Her voice sunli. "All the same," said Ostrander, shaking his head, obstinate with joy, " I'm tired of living on faith. I don't feel sure of 3'ou." She began to stir again, stiU receding, her outUne growing fainter in the shadowed corner of the room. He advanced as slowly, but with a reverent attend- ance on her wish, towards her. " You don't understand ! " she cried. " No man could. This is all so new, so strange, so terrible, to me. You don't remember- how it is. I never ex- pected to be in such a position as this : in all mj life I've never thought I could be ! If I am more foolish than other women, that is why. I don't mean jx.) be foolish. Be patient with me ! Ilovej-ou!" " If I had not been patient " — Tie began impul- iively, but checked himself. "I don't know what to do, how to act, how te 206 THE STORY OF AVIS, adjust myself to what has happened," she said in an entreating, childlike way, as if she sought his tolerance for some radical fault of hers. He was intoxicated by this peculiarly beautiful lowliness into which her unstooping spirit now and then surged over, and spent itself, lilie the foam upon the crest of a wave. " Only let me teach you! " he urged, drawing, unforbidden, nearer her. " Only say that you will try to learn!" He thought for a moment that she would have fled ; her hands held her very dress away; she seemed to draw even her breath back from him. There was a solemn deprecation, almost of the character of a rebuke, upon her face. But she did not deny him. A sense of sacramental awe, such as he would not have believed it possible for him to be so peneti-ated with at such a moment, — penetrated almost to the exclusion of the sense of joy, — possessed liim ; and his own hand with which he touched her seemed to the young man to alter, and become transfigured, like the hand of a spirit stretched to meet him across the kneeling room. T'len, indeed, he walked about with resplendent eyes. He trod on bounding au*. Then, at last, he felt that lie should win her. He was no longer ttfra'd of any mood , or re-action, or recoil of hers. She might withdraw herself as she would, or grieve (.vcr her sweet, lost liberty as she must: she waa THE STORY OF AVIS. 207 All 01 ir pleasure is said to be nothing more than the jonsciousness of some one or other of oui- per- fections. Ostrander wore the self-gratified smile of Kuccessful love. But one's personal share of acidity must be flavored with gall, if one would be untender svith this form of complacency. It was the next day after the little scene just re- lated, that she went to aunt Chloe. She had pre- ferred to go, and to ,go alone. Aunt Chloe heard her in silence, and rounded off her stocking (for the little feet of the State oi-phans, this time) , before she said, — " Mj' dear, he's consumptive! However," after a long pause, in which she knitted and winked with violent rhythmic harmony, " yom- father will be pleased. And in these days it isn't every talented young man who takes a decided stand. Mr. Ostran- der doesn't think he's too smart to believe the Bible, so far. Of course you wouldn't marry any ut a rehgious man. And he will go into the pro- fessorship as soon as he recovers. I don't see, on the whole, what could be better. You might take that house of the Perldnses on High Street. But I confess, I thought you'd tug away at that painting a whUe longer." " I do not intend this to make any difference with my painting," said Avis quickly: "my marriage, if I marry, is not to interfere with my work. Mr. Ostrander does not wish it." Aunt Chloe laid down the little stocking, and 208 THE STOEY OF AVIS. regarded ler niece with that superior mationly smile, under which, above all earthly afflictions, a young woman feels herself a helpless rebel. But all aunt Chloe's reply was a long, low, significant, "H-u-m-ph!" "Certainly not," repeated Avis very distinctly " I would not marry, if I must give up my profes- sion. That is understood." " When a — woman becomes — awife," said aunt Chloe, taldng to the Uttle stocking again with her generous, dogmatic hands, " her husband's interests in life are enough for her. When you are once married, you wiU no longer feel any of this youthful irritation against the things that other women do. Women," added aunt Chloe solemnly, " are not men. God made us." "Well, I," said Avis, laughing, "am like the boy in the Sunday school, whom God didn't make. We'll play that somebody else made me, auntie. — Aunt Chloe," — she suddenly changed her tone to one of grave and searching appeal, — " tell me now, — tell me the holy truth (for I need all the truth I can get just now, auntie) , did you never in aU your life want to be any thing else but my uncle's wife? Is there nothing in all the world that you, — a wo- man of overflowing energy and individuality, and ijrgauLzing power, — able to carry ,a Christian com- Biission or a national commissary on your shoulders, — ii3 there nothing that you ever waTited to be?" Tho little stooldng gently sank to aunt Chloe's THE STOBY OF AVIS. 20S Droad knee, and there was a pause, in which licr soft, bfown, benevolent eyes filled with a slow light. In the window-sOl the September sun fell upon her geraniums. They turned their burning faces to her solemnly, hlie visions which said, "We will never tell," Aunt Chloe arose, went over and stroked them, then came bacli. " My dear Avis," she said in a subdued voice, " I suppose all of us have times of thinking strange thoughts, and wishing impossible things. I have thought sometimes — if I could begin life over, and choose for my own selfish pleasure, that I would like to give myself to the cultm-e and study of plants. I should be — a florist, perhaps, my dear ; or a botan- st." Aunt Chloe uttered these words under her breath, tis she mighu have some beautiful heresy, then took to her- knitting with a fierce repentance ; and that one particular orphan had a pair of stone-china col- ored stockings before tea-lime. It would be difficult to foUow the precis') chain of uiental influences which led aunt Chloe to put in Tai-key- red toes. The interview between A ns and her father was, like all deeply-frauglt scenes between them, a brief one. She went in, and, sliding away Ms books, knelt beside him, and, without looking upwards, said, — " Father, I have promised to marry Mr. Ostrander. I never meant to raarry." The professor pushed toack his spectacles, then his lexicon, then his daughter; held her at arm's length for a moment. flO THE STOET OP AVIS. "The conceivable," he murmured, "lies always Detween two inconceivable extremes. Such we find in the law of the conditioned." Then gently, — "And so my little girl — has come to — that! I can hardly understand. It seems such a short time since you were playing about ; and your mother " — The professor laid his nervous, scholaiiy hand upon his daughter's head ; she felt it suddenly tremble. Bit he collected himself, and said, — " I have a high regard for Mr. Ostrander. I Uiiiilc your mother would have liked him — but it was not quite easy to prophesy whom your mother would lUie. She was a woman of rare penetration into human character. I wish she were here — just now. But there, my child, is the lecture-beU. I have mislaid the fifth lecture on the Cartesian dictum, somewhere. Avis : I think j'our aunt must have been dusting to-day. Look under those three volumes of Dugald Stewart. Try Eeid on Aiistotle. No, that is the refutation of Hobbes. Have you shaken the Duality of Consciousness thoroughly? " He dropped his hand once more upon his daugh- ter's head in passing out, but onl}' said, — " Et in Acadia ego. How like j'our mother you are looldng in these days, my dear ! " He strode away to lecture at a more jagged pftoe than usual. Across the Cai-tesian dictum, which he clutched with j everent tenacity under- one gaunt el- bow, the Duality of Consciousness (whatever was to be said of the argument) carried everj' thing before it THE STORY OF AVIS. 211 that afternoon . If hands had touched him, clinging 1 13- the sensitive finger-tips to liis lonely old arm — but the bloodless September air was wan and empty. If a voice had spoken — but there was only a sulky wind to say, — " Did you want any tiling, Professor f " And clearly only the DuaUtj' of Consciousness could reply, with the leaping pulse of eternal youth, — ' ' Only to see if you look well and happy, my dear;' while the boys upon the college-steps were shouting within his mild, objective ears, — " Here's the old feUow himself! " ITiat afternoon, too. Avis sent a little note to Coy. It ran thus : — "Dear Coy, — I have said, that, sometime or other, 1 will marry Mr. Ostrander. But, Coy, if you talk to me about this as most women do about such things, I'U break the engagement. Yours, " Avis.' And Coy answered, — " Dear Avis, — You'll streak his cake with saleratus. His biscuit will taste of yeast. His wristbands will be wrinkled. But you know, if I were a man, Avis, I'd live on johnuy-i3ake and paper cuffs to get you. You'd better be married Christmas, when we are. Yours, « Coy.' And now the marvellous medicine of joy began its subtle work ; and fast, with the glamour of the autumn days, the, wounded man T^axed strong. 4tis, looking up some(ui\es with jtimid, astordshed ai2 THE STORSr OF AVIS. eyes, tremblad to see the work that love had wi'ough) upon him. She was frightened that she could make him. so hai'py. Perhaps for the first time in her j-oung, untroubled stoiy, she had a glimpse into [hat mysterious truth which no story is long enough or sad enough to penetrate, — that joy is life, as misery is death, as the sun is organic warmth, or the night inherent blackness. There may be deeper signifi- cance than we alwaj's fancy in the sacred figures which familiarize our lips with the everlasting life of heaven and the everlasting death of hell. In brief, Ostrander, being in heaven, proceeded to immediate, and let us never say, amazing recovery. He received, and before November was able to accept, the renewed overtures from the university. He became the junior colleague of the old geological professor, whose death or resignation (and the Board of Trustees generously allowed htm his choice of these alternatives), undoubtedly to take place in a few years' time, would slip the young man into an assm-ed and commanding future. " I can hardly understand," said Avis : " a month ago you were a failing man. We thought — I thought, Philip, you would die." She had but just learned, slowly and hardly, to make music of his name for him iipon her bewildered lips. The "little language" in which lovers are jsu.illy profuse, he heard but scantUy. An exquisite eticence hung over her, which he would not, if h« L-ould, have shaken. Her expressions of endear THE STORY OF AVIS. 213 meiit, like her caresses, were rare, rapturous, and ricli. His hungry mood waited on them : they sur- prised his imagination lilie the discovery of a new art, which all time would not be long enough for him to malvc his own. " The man who has won you," he would answer, with that unconsciousness of possible exaggeration which makes the very folly of young love sublime, — " such a man could not die." Then, indeed, she turned her strong head towards him, in that way of hers, with a kind of lofty won- der at the new conditions in which she found herself, making it jpossible for her to sit and hear a radically feeble assertion without any intellectual revolt. Upon this grave wonder a gradual tolerance grew ; then, perhaps, if she were in her gentler temper, she rdelted into some sign of tenderness, which overtook him nice a beautiful stratagem of her nature, yet which expended itself as unconsciously as the smile of a child, or the nodding of an anemone. Or perhaps she sat wrapped in some maiden rev- ery of silence, or fear, or retreat, which he found it impossible to understand or to share with her : he sat shut out, as if he had tried to hft the veU of Isis, or to woo the Sphinx of the desert to open Lei: ^tone Ups. One day he asked her to play to him, for he had aerer heard her. She told him, what was true enough, that her execution,^ which was always \}0or, had not been improved by six 7ears of exclusive art 214 THE STOBY OF A.VTS. siudj'. But she went to her mother's old f iano, aud played for half an hour, — fragments from the An- danto of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, a serenade of Schubert's, the Adelaide, some Scotch melodies, 'and one or two improvisations, unscientific, pcwer^ fill, and magnetic. Ostrander threw himself upon the sofa, and lis- teneil, with his hand above his eyes, as if he were shutting out a light. " Oh," he said under his breath when she had fin- ished, " what a touch ! " Avis heard this gratefully. Ostrander's taste for music was highly cultivated : she would have felt it to be an unliind insincerity if he had said she played well. She was moved by the delicate and honest fervor of his tribute ; as if he — he first and only in the world -^ had recognized some dumb side to her nature. She cherished the memory of this recogni- tion wifh a peculiarlj' coy happiness, which she had afterwards occasion to remember. She long remembered too, and he — what lovers ■ would soon forget? — their first shared experience of the rapture of the dj-ing year. It seemed to her that the heart of spring could never beat to stir her own lUic this October pulse. What was the ^dgor of a violet ? the fire of a snow drop? "What did the j'oung grass know of hardly ■yielded and sternly-encroaching love ? One red leaf anderstood her better than they all. They walked one day far out of the town, into a forest of young THE STOEY OF AVIS. 215 oaks, Olid stood clinging together, awed by the sea of subdued color tliat broke against their feet, and down the knoll, to the crown of which they had climbed. In the violet distance the maples splashed .- into shallow tints, bold vemiilion and transparent' yellow, like emotions quickly stung and healed. Ijiit the infant oaks, mere shrubs yet, gathered themselves in deep shades, blood to the heart's core. All the gales of winter could not stir their leaves. They would cling lilie the unclasped fingers that death had overtaken ; they appealed to the imagina- tion lUie some superb constancy towering above all lesser storj', as strength must, perforce, tower ovei weakness, and unity above disintegration. Avis, standing with her straw hat thrust hanging down her shoulders, and her head bent as if she listened, turned suddenly, with an appeahng gesture, towards Ostrander, and said, — " I never loved another man. What should I do if you had loved another woman? " Instantly, for her only answer, she was swept to Ms heart, with an impuls'e more daring and authori- tative than she had ever witnessed in him, as if some impalpable power had been arrayed to snatch her from him, or as if her mad supposition were bo- _ neath the respect of articulate reply. The young oaks throbbed about them dizzily for i moment, before, moved by his continued silence, she drew her face back, that she might look up into (lis. She was a little surprised to find, for the see- 216 THE STOKY OF AVIS ond time, thai, look which she had maiked upon the June morning by the shore. He seemed to have be- come, for the moment, perfectly blind, and to regard her with the blank, narrow gaze of a person whose brain was stealthily diseased. Then swiftly it darted as before, and his deep eyes burnt it out before he said, — "Avis, never say that again! It frightens the man — who has won the right to hold you here — to remember that it might or could, but for God'i mercy, have been some other woman. And you — you would have stiU been in the world, — in the same world with him ! " Avis said nothing. A man, after all, was so differ- ent ! She, for instance, had never thought that it might or could have been some other who should have so much as touched her hand. One does not waste the fancy upon the incredible. It had not occurred to her as a special interposition of Provi- dence, that she should love Philip Ostrander. What man cometh after the king? Her great love was simply the condition of existence, like the action of her heart. She had never felt called upon to thank God for that. Just before his assumption of his new duties in the college, Ostrander left for a few days' ■\-isit in New Hampshire. He expressed much regret, in which Avis, with a tenderness which she shi'ank from ex- pressing, fuUy shared, that he had been obliged tc defer seeing his mother for so long. She felt sorrt THE STORY OF AVIS. 217 tltat this had been, and must have been so. Hej heart yearned towards that solitary old mother — Philip's mother. She did not care how mstic, or old, or ignorant she might be. (" My poor mother is not exactly a cultivated woman," Ostrander had said once in his tender way.) Her own motherless youth reached with a peculi£ix longing after tliis un- known woman who had borne the man she loved. She wondered sometimes if the old lady would not find it less lonely to live in Harmouth. But of course her son would be the best to know, and should be the first to speak of that. She contented herself with sending a timid but tender little message when Ostrander went, in response to the cramped, old-fashioned postscript — her only welcome from his only living kin — in which Mrs. Ostrander had once sent "her Idnd respects to the young ladj- of whom her son had written her." When he was gone, for the first time since the injmy to her hand, she resumed with stiff, strange fingers, her woric in the studio. It was not easy to estimate, perhaps, the precise effect which that dis- abled hand had borne upon her lot. Avis found her- self wondering, with a kind of terror, if she should ever have promised to be Philip Osti'ander's wife, if she had been through those idle, enthralling days doggedly at work. A stiflhess and strangeness Icepcr tlian a bniise(l muscle could strike, came upon her when she closed the door of the long-deserted place, and. strildng a 218 THE STORY OF AVIS. Ere in her little grate, sat down to warm her hands, The autumn sun stepped in, and stood cool and calm against the wall, like the friend who never forgets, or suffers us to forget, the resolve or the aspiration which we once expressed. The dust had collected upon her sketches ; the boughs of the apple-tree were bare ; upon the easel the sphinx hung, covered and dumb. Avis looked about her with a singularly self- defensive feeling, as if she were summoned by some invisible tribunal to answer for an impalpable offence. A radical confusion, such as her 3'oung hfe had never known before, obscm-ed her thoughts. She had something of the self-recoLl which a man has in turning to his books or his business after a night's dissipation. She went up and uncovered her sketch. The criti- cal, cool sunlight fell upon it. The woman and the sphinx looked at one another. Avis glanced at the ring that fettered her finger. Her whole figm-e straightened and heightened : she lifted her head, and out of her deepening eye there sprang that magnifi- cent li^ht which so allured and conunanded Philip Ostrander. ' ' What have I done ?" she cried . " Oh ! what have I done?" With an impulse which only a woman will quite respect, standing alone there in the sUcnt witness of 'lie little room, she tore off her betrothal ring. Then with one of her rare sobs, sudden and shai7 THE STOBY OF AVIS. 219 aa an articulate cry, she flung her arms about the in- sensate canvas, and laid her cheek, as if it had been the touch of one woman upon another, against the cold cheek of the sphinx; and solemnly, as if she sought to atone to a goddess for some broken fealty, Rhe whispered, — " I will be true." When Ostrander returned, he found her nervously at work. A marked unrest enveloped her. But she stood quite still, when, pushing open the studio-door eagerly, he met her with the accumulated fervors of a lover after a flrst separation. A chill crept over him even wliUe he touched her — beautiful, reluctant, mysterious — this strong, sweet woman, wooed, but not yet won. "Are you not glad," he pleaded, "to see me back?" " I did not think I should be so glad." ' ' And you naissed me — a little ? ' ' " I had no idea," complainingly, " that I should miss you so much. I can't understand it. I ought not to have minded. I have been at work." She spoke with protesting signtBcance, glancing at her hand, which he held — palette, brushes, and ah. — fast prisoner. He followed her glance, and changed color swiftly before he said, — " A^as, where is your nng? " ' ' I took it off. It made me uncomfortable." Made you uncomfortable — my ring — our en- gagement-ring? " 220 THE STORY OF AVIS. Ostrander released her hands, and stood looking fti her with a periy-sxity which struck, as mdeed it seemed to, the very core of his imagination. ''I do not understand this at all," he said with some displeasure. " Where is the ring? " " On the shelf, behind the Lake of Como, at the left of father's portrait, on the right of the char- coal newsboy," replied Avis, laughing. Ostrander brought the ring, and stood with it balanced between his thumb and forefinger, looking from her to it, thoroughly uncertain what to do or say. Turning with one of her sudden, supple motions, she saw how deeply she had pained him. She pijt down her brushes, and held out her firm finger at once. " Shall I put it on again? " he hesitated. " If you think I deserve it," she gently said. He put it on ; and they talked no more about it. Ostrander was thoroughly uneasy. He vcntiu'cd for the first time, that morning, to speak quite distinctly of their future ; said that he was- going with her father, when his inauguration was well over, to see the available houses in Hanrouth : spoke of his im- proving health, and of his desire to bo- quietly set- tled ; but more especially of his w ish to sec her at work more to the purpose than she could be, as iliings were at present, than she could indeed, he feared, well be until after their marriage. Avis, while ho spoke, painted busiij-. Still paint:- Ijig, and without looking round, she said below hei breath, — THE STOKY OP AVIS. 221 •' Philip, don't want me to marry you yet ! " But, when he left her, she crept up to him, timid IS a hare, and besought him to be patient with her ; for she was sorely tried in ways she said, that she knew she could not expect him to understand. He would have waited half a lifetime for the tone and the touch with which she said those words. After this she painted with great' steadiness. Oa- trander spent most of his spare hours in the studio. Aunt Chloe had an easy-chair wheeled out for him, and set beside the little grate. " Why not leave that picture," he asked one day, as he stood silently watching it, ".until by and by? " " Why do you want me to do that? " " I think you would make a greater picture of it after we are married," he answered, disregarding her disturbed expression. " You wiU have more lei- sm'e, more cahn. It is going to be a great work. Avis. I wish to be as proud of it as possible. I wish it to be grand and full, without deficiency. I want the world to know you by it, in some sense, — in its sense, — for what you are." She was touched by his generous interest in her •vork and fame. She thought how true was that «vise man's word who said that a friend is he who makes us do what we can : she pitied with the calm compassion of joy that woman, wherever she might be on the earth, who would not find in this beautiful uense a friend in the man whose wife she was to be. Dot through the years she suddenly saw herself 222 THE STORY OF AVIS. transfigured by happiness. She saw her whole na ture deepening, its lightest grace or deepest gifl Uluminated, herself idealized, by love. This man — so tender, and so noble above his fellows, so true that he could be proud of the 'woman he loved, so giaat that he could make himself small beside her, so anxious rather for her success in doing the thing God had made her to do than for his own, so simply and superbly recognizant of the truth that this thing was not done when she had become his wife, and or- dered his house, — this man brought her, she thought, that transcendent experience which is so often given to a man, but alas ! so unlinown to women, in which the sternest aspiration is strengthened by the sweetest joy ; in which love shall be found more a stimulus to than a sacrifice of the higher elements of the nature. Hand in hand with this man whose generous hu- mility had exalted him — as what else could ? — to the kingship of her, she should climb to see "how life looked behind the mountains." She longed to make herself worthy of so royal a love. She began to be glad with a proud pleasm-e that it was in the natm-e of things that she should sacrifice more for Philip than he for her. It seemed that, by slow and kind degi-ees, a reposeful spirit crept upon her. The inevitable conflict between hei urt and her love, which had diseased her happiest liours, shrivelled from an organic to a functiona thing She began to consider it now without alarm. THE STORY OF AVIS. 223 Sho began to understand how natural is joy. Her lequestered tenderness i^eered out more fi-equently. She betdme a radiant creature. Ostrander watched her in a kind of ethereal trance, which, for a long time, he guarded from the disturb- ance of his own more impatient moods as jealously as he guarded herself from them. He felt it a barbarism now to mar the unforecasting nature of ter sweet impulse, as it would bo to hasten mechani- cally the budding of a flower. He felt that he was living that which few men ever live at aU, and no man ever lives but once. He held the cup of his happiness to a delicate and slowly-tasting lip. But the rtutumn met its blazing death, and the calmer coiors of the winter set in. The tenser nerve and the clearer brain kept time to the strong step that crushed the flakes of flrst- faUen snow. Now, on nights when one's solitary feet rang upon the waUjs of the Httle town, shadows flitted on drawn curtains, and lights beamed out from the hearts of deeplj'-colored rooms. All the sacraments and sacrifices that go to make up human homes, began to gather upon them the vigorous Bolemnity of the winter. On Christmas Coy was married ; and the two young people began, with the touching confidence of the young and the very happy, the sacred work which we are wont to call " saving souls." The phrase is ireU-rasped, not to say worn, but iudestructitle as ui atom, ani poetic as a fossil. 82i THE STORY OF AVIS. It was not long after this, that aunt Chloc began [n a vague and abstract manner to drop a variety of remarks upon the family ear, which Avis failed to find interesting, but did think singularly inconse- quent. •'What is it," she said to Coy one day, sitting in the cheerful parsonage-parlor, " that has happened lately in the cotton-market? Aunt Chloe keeps telling me how cheap unbleached cotton is. I think it is twenty-live cents, — or really, perhaps it was five. Is that a fact so vital to the interests of the country, that I ought to care about it? " " My dear child," cried Mrs. Eose with her most matronly smile, " it is the servants' sheets ! " " Servants' — sheets? " ' ' Why, yes. Avis — Avis Dobell ! Who but you would be so divinely dull? I suppose you expect your servants to huve sheets, when you go to housekeeping? " " I never thought," said Avis faintly. " And ia that what she meant, too, about towels? She's been exhausting the subject of towels, Coy. Tliere is something very remarkable about them. I think you cut the fringe, or else you fell — let me see No, I thinlt you overcast it. I think it was very ill-mannered in aunt Chloe." "A roller-cloth would do, dear," suggested Coy sootliingly. " And no New-England servant would mind camping out. I wouldn't trouble myself, if I were you." THli STORY OF AVIS. 225 But Avis sat looking at licr with wide eyes, like tn injured goddess. Women upon whom domestic details sit with a natural, or even an acquii'ed gi'ace, mil need to cultivate their sympatMes with this young recoilicg creature. Across her pictm-e or her poera, looking up a little blindly, slie had listened to the household chatter of women, with a kind of gentle indifference, such as one feels about the habits of the Fee-jeeans. Unbleached cotton, like x in thn algebra, represented an unknown quantity of oppres- sive but extremely distant facts. How had she brought herself into a world where the fringe upon a towel must become a subject reqmring fixed opinions ? She bade Coy good-by abruptty, fled to.her studio, and worked tUl dark. But, when she went into the house, she found aunt Chloe advancing a new theory about comforters. In Vsrmont they were quilted at home. But there fvere advantages in pm'chasing them outright, not to be undei-estunated, unless — as in the ease of Miss Snipper, a worthy young woman who had put two brothers through college, and one into the Hawaiian field (he died in six months, poor fellow!) — you really felt it .1 duty to employ a seamstress ; and the professor made so much less trouble about having lier at the table ; which was thd more to his credit, IS her teeth were set by so .nefllcicnt a dentist, and did make that peculiar noise, especially with biscuit. But aunt Chloe thought milk-toast would remedy she difficulty. 226 THE STORY OF AVia CHAPTER Xn. " It should bo remembered that the p'tng is a ' callina ' or ' exclain* ing' tone; theeh^nglsa 'questioning' tone; thekiiisa "despairing' tone; and the Li^p'lng, an 'assenting' tone; the j^-shung is ac 'abrupt' stop." — Chtnese Grammas. IT was in the heart of the happy winter that Os- ti'ander, sitting one day by the study-fire with Avis, after a long walli over the frozen beach, said quietly, as if resuming a broken conversation, — " But, Avis, is this to last forever? " ' ' Tliis ? ' ' She turned to catch his meaning, dull with happiness. " It is pleasant enough to last for- ever, I thinlr," she said, thi-owing herself back in her deep chau-. She sat drowned in her furs and partially loosened cape: her cheek had the -vivid flush that a winter-night paints upon 3'oung faces, and the fine excitement which accompanies it, hovered in her eyes. " But our own home would be like this alwaj-s," persisted he, with the vague and blessed fatuity of a lover' ig imagination, which, while it may perceivfi the trail of the serpent over Adam's Eden, or Tom Smith's, or j'ours, or mine, hears in its own only the rastle of the leaf upon the tree of life. Avis, who had now lost her brilliant cola:, and sat quitfi dull and stUl, said, — THE STORY OF AVIB. 227 " I wish a man and woman could be always en- gaged ! "Wtat are you laughing at, Philip ? " " Should you reaUy like it to be so — for you and me?" asked Ostrander, with a smile that was grave enough. " Certainly," said Avis promptly. " Of couise I should. I am perfectly happy as we are. I think most women would be." "But I," suggested Ostrander, "am not happy. I am tired of a homeless life ; I have lived one so long ! " He had never so distinctly urged his own need upon her before. Avis listened attentively. Her precious freedom — wild rebel that it was ! pet- ted, perhaps, and over-indulged — took on to her mind for the first time, faintly, the aspect of a self- ish delight. To be sure, Phihp had no home, like herself, no consonance of household repose and love let into his life. She had not thought sufficiently of jhat. " I do not wish to press any claim or want of mine unduly," he went on gently ; " but there is my work, I have my future to make ; I don't want it to be one uhiit my wife shall be ashamed of. Situated as 1 am, I cannot command my best conditions. Witt his home an^d his wife, a man must develop him- self, if he ever can. With you. Avis, with you," he paused, much agitated, "there are no bounds but those of my own nature that will prevent my life from becoming at least a worthy if not a noble deed." Long years after, these words came back to Avis !i28 THE STOUY OF AVIS. Dobell's memory, like the carven stone into which time has wrought meanings that the sculptor's mind or hand was impotent to gi-asp. "Come, now," he continued more lightly, "an honest word for an honest word. Avis ! Do you sup- pose, if I let you go on just as you like, you would ever make a definite step towards our wedding- day?" "No," said the woman, after a long pause. ^^ Never!" She threw back her wrappings with a suffocated look, and paced for a few minutes back and forth before the brilliant fire, a silhouette in her falling feather and dark winter-dress. Ostrander watched her with compressed lip and guarded eye. He was prepared for a long and serious contest, in which he had fuUy made up his mind not to be worsted. By gradations as fine as the shades in a woman's fancy — too fine for any man but a deter-, mined lover to be patient with — he expected her to taunt, torment, allure, baffle, but jield to him now. He had not understood (what man ever understood a complex woman?) the immortal element of sur- prise in her nature. He sat dumb with delight under the look and the motion with which she presently uurned to him. As beautiful is the pliability of a torrent meeting its first unconquerable resistance ; it surrenders as mightily as it defied. " You are perfectly right," she said with a grave, sweet dignity ; " and I have been very foolish. If yon leave me to myself, I shall never make any changt THE SIOKY OF AVIS. 229 m any thing. If I am ever to become your wife, let It be all over with as soon as possible." They were married in three weeks. If ever the Christian character deepened under dis- (;ipline, aunt Chloe's should have been that ciiaracter at the end of this memorable time. "We are all of us a little incredulous of our neighbor's affliction ; but among the radical trials of life, who could fail to rank the rearing of a motherless child to a marriage in which neither the trousseau nor the upholstery com- manded the proper respect of the bride? Unless, as some one has told us, deficiency of charity be defi- ciency of imagination, we must feel sorry for aunt Chloe. A^-is positively refused, at the outset, to investi- gate the deeps beyond the lowest deeps that under- lay the nature of unbleached cotton ; asked why, if 11 woman had money enough to buy blankets, she must sit an hour discussing the wadding of a com- forter ; and failed utterly to see why the marriage- certificate would not be valid without the interven- tion of Miss Snipper and the miUi-toast. There was a compromise upon these fatal questions. Aunt Chloe retained the privilege of seeing to it that Avis entered upon the holy estate of matrimony as a lady >ught, with a dozen of eve^ thing, upon sole condi- ii ■'n that Avis herself should not be consulted. lu- Btead, tb.erefore, of a heavy-eyed, exhausted woman, vhose everj' nerve was stitched into her clothes, Avis r.ame to her wedling-daj brilliant with health, and calm as the sky. 230 THE STOBY OF AVIS. This little fact was tlie more memorable because it left her to her instincts, and no one knew quite how those led her to dispose of these three weeks. She was much in the open air, pacing the shore and the snowj' fields; or she worked intently in the studio ; or she sat alone with unshared, inscrutable moods. Ostrander would have said that he scarcely saw her in all that time. She received him quietly, but with a withdrawal which he dared not disturb. It was evident that she preferred her solitude to himself. He left her to her fancj'', not altogether, perhaps, without some comprehension of it. A man does not live a celibate till thirty-one without be- coming fuUy as conscious of the perils as of the pleasm-es of a wedded future. Ostrander would not have thought it possible, however, that he could put his broad shoulders beneath this sweet j'oko with so slight a protest. His feeling that he accepted a sacrifice radically' so much deeper than any he could ever make, overswept the superficial shrinking fi-om change, which perhaps all but the youngest lovers feel in more or less degree upon the immediate eve of marriage. He felt impressed by his dim concep- tion of the strong individual struggle in the nature jf this woman whom he loved. His whole soul con- centred itself, with a unity not habitual to biTn in aU thii gs, upon the effort to adjudge himself worthy of lie acquiescence of her life with his. He tried to '<1I her so the day before theii- marriage. But she ?ave him one look which stopped the breath of hii Willi, for joy ; and he tried no more just then. THE STOliY OF AVIB. 231 It was the simplest of weddings. Mr. and Mrs. Jolin Rose were there, and Barbara ; but her brother was out of town on business. Barbara looked at Ostrander, and remembered the tea-rose. Ostrander looked at Barbara, and forgot it. Poor Chatty Ho- garth was got over with her wheeled chair ; and Fred- erick Maynard came to see what he was known to have pronounced " the bmial of the most promising artist in New England ; " and at Avis's request the family servants came in ; and her father (who, as is BO usual with tlie collegiate instructors of America, had begun life in the pulpit) married them ; while aunt Chloe, with a mind at peace with God and man upon the subject of the wedding-cake, which no New- York caterer had been allowed to handle for her niece, protected her silver-gray silk from her honest, sparse tears, and made it clearly understood among the guests, that Mrs. Ostrander's health had not permitted her attending her son's marriage, and that the young people would visit her in New Hamp- shire upon their brief Uttle wedding-tour. They had a relenting February day, in which the *>rophecy of the near spring was audible, as the whisper of one dear to us across a darkened room. The windows were flung open in the house, and the Well-worn path to the studio was without frost, yield- ing timidly to the touch of the foot that loved it. Avis sUpped away somehow, and was missing ufter the wedding : her husband went in search of Qer. He found her, as he had expected, in the 232 THE STOKT OF AVIS. studio. The disarraj' of packing put a chill deso- ;atiou into the room. The pictures were bosed or gone ; the easels folded against the wall ; only the sphinx was left. There had been no fire in the building that weelc. Avis, in the middle of the cold little neglected place, stood shivering in her wed- ding-dress. He held his anns out, smiling, but with an emo- tion which he found it diflicult not to caU sad even . at that moment. He was so sorry to startle, to grieve, or distress her, by the inevitable presence of his feeling. There seemed to Mm just then some- thing inexorable, lUto a Pagan Fate, in the natm'e of a mighty love. They two, standing there in the j-ielding winter sunshine, seemed like children swept and lost within it. " TeU me," he said, seeking to dissipate the almost oppressive solemnity which the moment had assumed for him, and coming up behind her where she stood before the still incomplete but now Strongly-indicated and impressive jjicture, " what *-ould you do if you had to choose now between us, — the sphinx and me? " " A man cannot understand, perhaps," said Avis, after a long silence, "or he would never ask a woman such a bitter question." "Oh! wc will have no bitter questions to-day,' tic -.nurmnred, talcing a step back to look at her. The-o seemed to him something strangely select and levGje in her unornamented dress. Only an artisj THE STOET OP AVia 233 could make such a bride. Her silk drapery hung about her like the marble folds upon a statue. " Oan you understand," continued Avis, ignoring or unconscious of his look, ' ' that I might — perhaps — choose to stay with the sphinx to-day — and not mind it much?" "I think I can," he said, hesitating. "No, I ■ will not mind. I can't be jealous even of the sphinx just now." "And then," she added, turning sharply, so that she stood with her face averted from him, " another day,"- " Oh ! and what the other day? " A™ did not answer. Impetuous words bounded to her lips ; but they were checked by an instinct that she herself did not comprehend. Her nature recoiled on itself in the discovery that she had begun to tell him that she could thinii of no price too costly by which to purchase her waj' back to him. She stood in her white dress with burning cheeks. She wondered if, when a woman had been for half a lifetime a happy wife, she could let her husband un- derstand how much she loved him. Her love seemed to her an eternal secret. Her soul spoke to his in whispeiB. It were urivromanly, unwifely, to lavish herself. After a silent moment, she glided to him like a goddess, and for the first time of her own unguided, :r it might be unguarded will, bjs wife lifted her lips '■o hLS. 284 THE STORY OF AVIS. They passed out together into the pliant air ; and aunt CUoe came callii^ about the carriage and the people; and the sky, when they looked up to it through the garden trees, lifted itself, a'nd widened, like a joy whose nature knows no end. They passed on through the golden weather, in the solemn separ- ateness from all our Uttle common cares and pleasures, which to have known is to have lived, and to have missed is to hope for life beyond. THE STOEY OF AVIS. 265 CHAPTER Xm. "JCn tbo opirion of the world marriage ends all, as it docs in ( comedy. The truth is precisely the reverse. It begins all.'— Mke. DB BWETOBXNE. " Who hath most, he yeameth most. Sure as seldom heretofore, Somewhere of the gracious more. Deepest joy the least shall hoast, Asking with new-opened eyes The remainder." . . . — Jeam Inqblow. THE reluctance with which we turn from any in- tense feeling, whether of pain or pleasure, to a lower leveF of emotion, is a psychological study for which the curriculum of Harmouth University un- questionably finds a proper place in the lecture-room, where aU weU-classified feehngs go, but strictly in view of which, it does not regulate the academical year. Granting that the corporation agreed to honor him by the offer of a chair,. Harmouth would have Bummoned Adam out of Eden, had the Lord chosen to create him in term-time. It lacked stiU some weeks to the spring vacation, and Ostrander's bridal tour was necessarily com- pressed almost between two sabbath sunsets. They did not get up into New Hampshire, after all. He found himself suffering somewhat from the capricious weather ; and it would be really worth more to hig mother, he said, to see them in July. 236 TUB STOBY OF AVIS. The two young people came dreamily to their own home. The afternoon that they were to come, Coy and aunt Chloe held confidential counsel in the expectant house, a passable place, which had been selected in the perplexed patience with which we adjust ourselves to aU depressed ideals. Avi* in the town was like a bird that has flown through a window by mistake. The sea could be heard, but not seen, from her chamber-window. The noise from the street interrupted the library. It was not quite clear where the studio was to be, unless in the attic. But there were elms in the yard, and crocuses in the garden, and the house stood at three minutes' walk from the college green. This, in view of the New- England winters, and the delicate health of the young professor, was decisive. " I can arrange about the studio somehow," Avis had said. " Certainly," said Ostrander, " that must be man- aged." He meant to manage it, of course. There should be no trouble about the studio. And aunt Chloe said approvingly, — "You do quite right, A\i9, my ilear, to ooiisK.t Air. Ostrander's interest first." Avis vaguely resented this, she could not have told why. She had no principles but the instinctive code of daily love, about deifj-ing her husband's interests, and had found women singulaiiy weak upon this point. But it was quite reasonable that l^hiiip should be ueai' the college : she though! she kad done uo more than good manners required. THE STORY OF AVIS. 287 "Poor Avis," said aunt Chloe plaintively, as she gnd Coy put tlie last touches to the smaiU dining- room, where tea was spread for the travellers, " inould have pink doyleys. Of coui-se, the first cooked hucklebeny will ruin them. And I told her they never could be used with English breakfast-tea, and they fade in washing beyond all belief." "Yes, they fade like a sumise," said Mrs. Rose demurely; "but Avis is preciselj' one of those women of whom you can say that she never will be mamed again. And salt sets them. Is this the china she painted ? How lilce Avis ! At first j'ou don't understand it, then it bewitches you. See, every piece has a feather on it, — a different feather ! She has wrought some fancj' about her own name into this tea-table, I'll venture. Oh, I see! No, I don't ; I don't see. I suppose we're not expected to see. That rose-eurlew on the creamer is like ^- a singing-leaf, I think." " Perhaps so," moaned aunt Chloe. "But ':.ave you seen the vegetable-dishes ? Not a handle that a servant could get hold of if her thumbs were all fingers. And that rep in the parlor, poor child, may last her through the summer. And when I told her how easy it was to slip down newspapers — and I'm sure you can get them up again whUe the door-bell rings, and a housekeeper can't begin by counting a little trouble lilre that — but if I'd proposed plated spoons it couldn't have been worse. Not that I've •aid much about it to her father ; for he is so over* 238 THE STOBY OF AVIS. worked, and it never does to worry a literary man : they weaken down under it like a baby under the wbooping-cough. But when I come into this house, and think of those two, I am — I am very mucli troubled," said aunt Chloe, stiffening suddenly at the discoverj' that one slow tear had roUed into the Japanese tea-pot. "Now, whUe she was painting aU this china, she might have learned to set white- bread, at least with milk ; and the j'east I could have looked alter. Mr. Ostrander may dine off painted feathers a wMle ; but he's too literary to like it long. No men are so fussy about what they eat as those who think their brains the biggest part of them, though my brother is very patient, and easy to pacify. And poor Avis knows no more what is before her than if she were keeping house with little stones and broken crockery in a huckleberry-pas- tm-e on a Saturday afternoon." "There's a baker," said Coy soothingly, "and Mr. Ostrander is very much in love with her." But in her heart she shared aunt Chloe's anxieties more acutely than she found it worth whUe to allow. Coy had a delicate loyalty about expressing them. She did not taUc much about Avis, even with John himself: she wished to spare A%is the sting whicli pricks the brightest hours fate yields to some of as, — the knowledge, that, behind the shield we hoW before om- dazzling happiness, a r>rudential commit- tee of our friends sits indorsing — whether in our temper, health, income, complexion, or the nature THE STOET OH" AVIS. 239 of th_ng3 — a grudge against our delirium. Coy rcv- erenced the severe old canon wMch bids us rejoice In the joy of the soul we love. Ulr. and Mrs. Osti-ander came with the laggard March sunset. Avis moved about the house radiant and unwearied as a Hebe : even the dust of travel seemed to glitter on her. Coy and her husband, the professor and aunt Chloe, remained, at her wish, to dedicate the pleasant tea-table. Certainly there was never a pleasanter. And the bread was aunt Chloe's. Avis presided dreamily. The room was alive Yfith color. She felt rather than perceived the rose-tint of the linen, the bronze prism on the pea- cock's plume which encii-cled the cup that she lifted lo her lips, the Pompeiian red upon the walls, the mellowed meaning of the Japanese coloring upon the lamp-screen, the flutter of the bright ribbon at her own throat, the luminous presence of her hus- band's face. She lifted her eyes to him timidly for the first time across their own table. Life put a finger on its lips lilse a child with a secret to tell. Love was a mystery that went deepening before her. She stood with one foot on an untrod' path thai broadened to the sun. She shranic from the ad- vance, nay, even from the existence, of unexplored joy. She was afraid to be so happy. He found her, when, at an early hour, their friends had left them to themselves in the silent house, in a ilaycbeam in the middle of the parlor, just where she had bidder her father good-night. He r;ame 240 THE STORY OF AVIS. and stood beside her ; but he, too, found it difficult to speak. He was silenced with joy: to find worda for it was a taslt sacred and slow, like selecting an earthly lily for an angel to carry into heaven. He did not try, it seemed, and for that she lilied him better ; for he said only presently, — ' ' Are you too tired to go over the house to-night, Avis? Will it not be pleasant to see how it all looks at first ? And in the morning I must get to college earlj'." She felt grateful to him for the easy commonplace words as they wandered up and down, hand in hand,, through "that new world which is the old." She wondered how women ever became used to theu' husbands, and spoke of them indifferently, as Sir. Smith or Mr. Jones. This home — their home — lifted its waUs gravely about her like a temple ; and this man whose wife she was, ministered therein a high priest, before whom her soul trod softl3^ She had never perceived before how solemn a thing it is to found a human home. Most of those experiences which make the whole world kin must become personal to become interesting. The truism was now the discovery. Avis had contrived, it was impossible to say how, — for never did a bride take possession of a house, knowing so little what was in it, — to stamp her individuality with a delicate but distinct definition upon her home. "It is like going from flower to flower," sai* Ostrander, as they strolled from room to room. THE STOKY OF AVIS. 241 On certain points Avis had been stringent. Wliat- ever tlie vague necessities in tbe matter of tin-ware, aunt Cliloe should not put a scarlet cricket or a purple tidy in the same room with a maroon curtain . His library was a hai-mony in gi-cen and gray. TLo little room upon whose windows the buds of the elm-tree tapped was a melod}' in blue. In her own room AaIs had gathered the shades of the rose. The little house was a studj' in color. To the young man, coming out of the cold spaces of so many homeless j-ears, it seemed, that night, lilie a neir and glowing science, which it would take him as long to command as to possess the mysterious natm-e of his wife. Both awed him. He watched her with held breath as she moved, gentle with the new domestic touch and stir, that sat so strangely on her. She breathed color, he thouglit, as other women breathed pale air. Avis left him presently to look over some matters for his morning class, and herself strolled about the house alone. It was one of the small sm-priscs of life to her to find herself stroking the ciulains, and patting the pillows, like other women whom she had seen in other new houses ; to see that her hand lin- gered upon her own door-knobs even, with a caress. The thrill of possession, the passion of home, had awaked itself in a sleeiring side of her nature. In her own room there was a very fine East India ham- mock, woven of a lithe pearl-white cord, much fa- rored far tliis purpose by people of ease in tropi- 242 THE STORY OP AVIS. cal countries. Avis put it there, because, against the color of the walls and drapery, it had a peculiarly delicate and negligent effect, grateful to her in the confined house. Above it, against a deeply-stained panel, stood her own Melian Venus. She flung herself into the hanunock, and yielded to its light motion idly. As idly she thought of hei future, of her work, of the sphinx in the cold, closed studio. Not to-morrow, perhaps, but some day, she should convert her dehght into deeds. It seemed to her a necessity simple as the rhythm of a poem, or the syntax of a sentence, that the world should be somehow made nobler or purer by her happiness. By and by she should know how to speU it out. Her husband called her presently from the foot of the stairs, and she stole down to him with a beautiful timiditj'. She did not teU him what she had been thinldng : she felt as if he understood. This is what it is to be happy, to believe that our thought is shared before it can be spared. She had exchanged her travelling-dress, while she was up stairs, for a loose wrapper, over which she had thrown a shawl — a crape shawl — that he had never seen. He j)ut his hand upon it, and said, — '.' You do not often wear this color, Avis. Whal do you call it? " " It is carmine." " It looks like a live thing." " It is one of the colors made from the cochineal.' THE STORY OF AVIS. 243 said A.Tis. " I have always fancied that they throh with the life that has been yielded to make them Do j-oii like it, Philip?" . ' ' Like it ? How should I know ? You are in it. " She blushed gently: she was glad he thought the carmine suited her ; she loved it too well to wear it at hap-hazard. One of those subtle fancies which the happiest woman does not expect to share with the man she loves, came to her just then. She would not wear this color except for him. Her soul seemed filled with fine reserves, winding corridors of fancy, closed rooms of thought, deep recesses of feeling, which she curtained from him by a lofty instinct. The nature of the wife withdrew itself with a deeper than maidenly reticence. She feared lest her great love should put into his hands the key to a fail' palace in which she would that he should be forever an expectant guest. "What are you thinking, Avis?" he asked her suddenly. A certain contraction of her forehead which he did not know, and the familiar throbbing of the temple, arrested him. " I was thinldng," she began, and hesitated. " Are not your thoughts to be mire, love? " He drew her to him slowly. In the rich color of her loose drapery she had the poised, reluctant look of the fine Jacques rose. " I was only wondering," she said. "I was thinking that there are women in the world whose husbands have ceased tc love them I can think of nothing else like that." 244 THE STOEY OF AVIS. • " You could never, under any conditions, be me of those women," murmured the young hustand rapturously. •'I?" said A\ns, looking for the moment per- plexed. "I was not thinking of myself. I waa sorry for the poor women. But I would rather be such a woman than such a man. I begin to be sorry and glad about many things, in many strange ways, new waj's of which I never thought. Phihp, two people who love one another might almost make the world over, it seems to me. Joy is so sti-ong — we are so strong. God will ask a great deal of us." "If he asks he shall receive," said the young man solemnly'. He was impi'cssed with her reverent mood : he assimilated it so perfectly, that he could have thought it was an impulse of his own which she rather had perceived and reflected. He asked her for a Bible, and himself suggested that they have prayers. With an agitated voice he sought God's blessing upon their liome and upon their love. They talked no more of lesser things after this. Avis moved about hushed and happy; she stiiTcd, putting his books and papers in order upon the table. He watched her with eyes beaten faint bj' love. " You must not tire j-ourself to work, dear love," Bhe said. She had never called 'lim so before. Shivering like a crcmona upor which a discord had been struck. Avis started, when at the newlj'-paintcd door of the new httlc gleaming room, tliere fell a sud- den knock. It was the new "gu.]." Ostrandor h.id THE STORY OF AVIS 215 foigotten that there was anybody in the house but .themselves. Avis looked at her in gentle perplex ity. It seemed to her a remarkable breach of good manners, that the woman should have come at aU ; and when she said, — " An' what is it yez would lave me to get for your breakfast?" Mrs. Ostrander could have dismissed lier on the spot. Pidlip Ostrander now plunged into his life's work with the supreme vigor of joy. ' His ambition took on the colors of his emotion, and fired feverishlj*. He assumed the drudgeries of his position with the fervor of a far more conscientious temperament ; and its excitements took on the cliaracter of a thrill. His really brilliant but phosphoric nature strength9ucd into honest flame. He was at that time in liis life a marked and splendid illustration of the cohesive power of a great love. His own wife failed some- times to fathom the almost pathetic movement with which, in those days, he would turn to her, when he iiame home from the lecture -room over-wearied, holding out his still thin hands, and ask her to strilce a few chords for him upon the piano, saying, iis he did so, — "Hai-mony, harmony! Avis, I am spent for a touch of harmony." And when her eyes onlj' asked him what ho meant, when she had satisfled him as she could, frith her repressd, rich touch, he wnuld answer that UG THE STOEY OF AVIS. the boys had tried him, that something had jarred, that there was a discord in him. " And you," he said, — " you quell it all." And tLcn he spoke no more; but to himself he said, bowing his forehead on her yielding hair, " Who am I, that I should win her? " He was then, at least, as that man should be who has gained the allegiance of a strong wife, — an awed and humble man. Then his professional work began to partake of the gravitj' of his happiness. Professor Dobell brought to his daughter from the green-room of the university a report of her husband's present popularity and pro- spective power in the college, which excited her like fine wine. For a little while that seemed to her, addefl to all the other elements of deep emotion in her new life, as much excitement as she could sanely bear. Her own work she deferred resuming from day -to day, but neither from that syncope of the will, nor fever of feeling, which threatens the integral purpose of a woman first intoxicated hj the deification of herself, that gi-ows from ministry to the man she ioves. She reasoned herself through her honeymoon and its succeeding weeks with a steady eye. The studio was not in order ; and she chose not to put into her pictm'c — this one picture, at least — any element less permanent than repose. She decorated the dados in her hall contentedly : the splunx could waH, A tender sense of justice, possibly, mingled itself THE STORY OF AVIS. 247 with this course. She had not treated Philip sc well before their marriage, that she need accentuatt tier haste to pursue her personal aims and wishes now. Each lingering sign of physical weakness in him smote her with a rich revenge. She watched the lessening pallor of his temples with a hidden remorse of which she dared not trust herself to speak. Sometimes she stole up, and kissed the still promi- nent and beating vein across his forehead, darting like a vanished thought then from Ms outstretched arms, and. silent afterwards for a long time. One day, sitting beside him in the fuU light, she lifted his hand, which was whiter than her own, in both her sensitive, healthful palms, and brought her Hps to it with her slow and delicate, deepening touch. Then, when he restrained her, she sat crimson. She could not have said whether she was more afi-aid of, or more savage with, herself. .She had never thought before that she could care to Mss her hus- band.' s hand. But in these days she felt herself wasted with unsatisfied sorrow for all that she had cost him. For him, he sat blessed and blind with love. He remembered when his daring fancy had first asked itself, " What will her tenderness be? " Her light- est endearment, he thought, meant more than the ibnegation of other women's souls. A little thing chanced at this tune which gave A.vis a deep pleasm-e, and which threw a certain glamour, even in her husband's own eyes, ovor his brightening iwpularity in the college. 248 THE STOBY OF AVIS. Dunug the two years of travel and study which had preceded Ostrander's connection with Harmouth, it had befallen him, one Leipsic vacation, to find himself so exhausted with the term's work, that his German physician ordered an immediate sea-voyage. Ostrander, never loath to yield himself to a new sen- sation, readily threw aside the laboratory life marked out for that summer, and joined a feUow-student on one of those aimless expeditions so alluring to a young, unanchored fancy, shipping on a trader, which, for aught they cared, might have been booked for the Chinese Seas or the River Styx. It chanced that they were driven by gales out of their expected course, which skirted the South Seas, and found themselves in the Paumotu Archipelago, somewhere in the track taken first by the Wilkes Expedition, and thereby opened since to navigators and missionaries. They anchored for some cause, one day, off an island to the north-east of Tahiti, — a small coral island uninhabited by man. Osb-ander and his friend rowed out, overcome by an emotion which thej'' were still young enough to try and express to one another, and beached their boat upon this maiden shore. But Ostrander, after the first thi-ill had spent itself, wan- dered away into the heart of the place, finding him- self as unable to share the impression it produced uix)n him as he would have been to share the heart of a woman with another man. He plunged on from beckoning thicket to beckoning thicket, reeluig tiko an intoxicated creature. When he came U THE STORY OF AVIS. 249 himself, he was in a wild place alone. It was on the bank of a small stream, fair but fearful to him. The virgin repose of the trees, the startled look of the strange flowers, the retreat of unseen and un- known creatures rusthng through the undergrowth at his approach, solemnized the nature of his de light. Suddenly, as he sat reverent there, a bii'd — the island was peopled with rare bu-ds — settled slowly over his head, and ahghted on a cactus near him. It was a large creature, snow-white, and dropped like an angel from the burning sky. A tide of feeUng half terror, half joy, overswept the young man, sitting there with upturned face, gone white to the lips' edge. Perhaps there was not a young scientist in the world but would have risked years of his life to be in Ostrander's place at that moment. The name and nature of that bird were unknown to science ; and the young man knew it. It seemed to him as if Nature laughed in his face. She held out this one sequestered, shining thought of hers, this white fancy that she had hidden from the -world, and nodded, crying, " Catch it if you can! Oas- sify my unwon mood in your bald human lore. Many my choicest tenderness to your dull futui-e if you win. See, I have waited for j-ou. I have kept ay treasure back from the eye and hand of other men. Yom-s it sha.i be, yo'u-s only, 3'ours, youis ! " As for the bu-d, it stirred circling on the scarlet 250 THE STORY OP AVIS.v cactus. Ostrander grasped his gun, dropping to hi* bands and knees. The bounding of his heart de- layed his shaking aim. He sought to cahn himself. His future lay bal- anced upon that long, shining, shuddering barrel To capture that bird was fame : so at least the situa- tion presented itself to the young man. T^en we are young, nothing seems quite so likely to happen as glory. He grew pale, with faint finger on the trigger. The bird stood perfectly still. One day in the class-room it occurred to Osfxan- der to teU this story. When he had reached this point he paused,, shaken by the retrospect of one of the most muscular emotions that his life had known. " Gentlemen," he said, " the bu-d stood still. It turned its head and looked at me : its eyes shone with a singularly soft, i)lcased light. I lowered the gun. How could I fire ? I crept towards it. It was a beautiful creature. It did not move : I thought it was gratified at the sight of me. It acted as if it had never seen a man before : I do not suppose it ever had. I crawled along; I stretched out my hand: and j'et it did not fiy. I touched it — I stroked it. With this hand I stroked that magnifi- cent, unknown creature. It did not shnnk. I took out my knife, opened it, laid it down. Tlie biid looked at me confidingly. I put the blade to its throat; but it would not stir. It trusted me Gentlemen, I came away — I could usit kill th« oird." THE STORY OF AVIS. 251 For a moment after the yomig professor told this story, his repressed feeling extended itself, lilie the shade of a powerful cloud, upon the class ; and then the boys broke into a passion of cheers that out-rang till the old college walls trembled like a being sm-piised by something in its own nature that it had never perceived before. Ostrander had be- come the demi-god of the term, He came home to his wife, that afternoon, much moved bj* this little experience. He called her sev- eral times, and, receiving no answer, sought and found her in their own room. She was in the ham- mock under the Venus. The weather was warm, and she was lightly covered with a white muslin neg- ligee. The instinct of the English tongue has done no better yet than to level the artistic possibilities of this gaiTaent to the word "wrapper." As she lifted her head at his knock in her poised way, and, slipping from the hammock, stood to receive him, holding the long white folds of her dress, he looked ',t the Venus behind her, and said, — " How like you are to one another ! And I have known you so long, and never thought of it till this moment. Turn your head — so. There. Yes. — What were you doing love, when I came in ? " "I was at work." "At work?" " Thinking where I had better put — what I shall iiO about the studio? " said Avis. " Oh the studio I — yes. We must attend to that 252 THE STORY OF AVIS. to-morrow, immediately, " said Ostrander lightly, He was tliinlring about the bird and the boys. He began at once to tcU her about it. Her face flushed with a divine light. Nothing could have happened to her which would have so kindled her tender ej-es. If the sphinx, standing with her patient face to the wall in the closed studi), had herself put on the wings of immortality that sxunmer afternoon, would the woman have tiu'ned her proud head to see her fly? They sat down side by side, like children, in the hammock. A-\ns touched the floor with the tip of her slender long foot ; she lifted her arms timidly, and wound his hau- about her finger ; thej- looked in one another's eyes through a sweet distance, like Cupid and Psyche through the dark. Philip Ostrander that day saw his future as the people saw the face of Moses, shining so as it must be veiled. They had been four months manied, and his wife was as sacred a man'el to him as on the day when he fii'st touched her reluctant hand. Not one charm of the bud was missing from the glory of the floWer. Deeps beyond the lowest deeps in her nature were yet unwon. His manhood gathered itself to be worthy of their masterj'. He felt himself to have taken a supreme lien upon an exliaustless joj. THE STOBY OF AVI& 258 CHAPTER XIV. • "Ibe primal dntiefs BUne slofVU^e gtam."— Thi Ex