A WOMAN
OF TO-DAY.
MARGARET CRAWFORD JACKSON.

THE LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY
SITY OF
OF THE
REGENTS
CLASS
BOOK
MNISUS
FARI
MINNESOTA
812 J136
OW
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY
BY
MARGARET CRAWFORD JACKSON.
EDITED BY
JAMES CLARENCE HARVEY.
UNIVERSITY OF
NEW YORK :
JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY,
150 WORTH STREET,
Copyrighted
Margaret Crawford JACKSON
1889
MAR 15 '40
8125136
OW
DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY
OF
ANDREW WILSON
BY
HIS DAUGHTER,
923676
M. C. J.
INTRODUCTION.
In the fiction of to-day, where authors seem
to think the heroine must needs pass through
countless dangers, both moral and physical,
before becoming a subject of interest to the
public, it has occurred to me that there may
be some who would find a pleasant relief in
the simple story of an every-day woman,
in rural surroundings, among well known
friends.
With this idea in mind, there has been no
attempt to introduce startling situations.
The high lights and deep shadows of life
have simply been suggested.
It is the sketch, not the finished picture,
and if eyes, that have grown weary over
sensational vermilions and literary blues,
shall find here an hour of rest, I am content.
M. C. J.
PART FIRST.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
"Oh, that a song would sing itself to me,
Out of the heart of nature, or the heart
Of man; the child of nature, not of art,
Fresh as the morning, salt as the salt sea,
With just enough of bitterness to be
A medicine to this sluggish mood and start
The life-blood in my veins and so impart
Healing and help in this dull lethargy."
LONGFELLOW.
IT was on the second day of May, 188-;
the Victoria was steaming rapidly into port.
New York was already dimly outlined ahead,
and it was evident to the two men, who were
silently smoking at the rail and watching
the outlines, as they grew clearer, that they
would lie at the dock some hours before they
were due.
Finally the younger one of the two inter-
10
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
rogated: "You'll have no objection to going
up to-night, will you, Erle?"
"No, Paul, there is nothing to keep me
here, you know."
There was something suspiciously like a
sigh, following the reply, but Paul Bronson
was intent on his thoughts again and Erle,
otherwise known as John Erle, M.D., turned
back to his study of the sea.
"I haven't said much about my cousin
Marcia, Erle, because I don't know whether
you'll like her," said Paul after a pause.
"I don't know what you call 'much,' Paul,
but if ever a woman's praises were well sung,
Miss Hunt is that woman, and a better singer
than Paul Bronson does not exist."
(6
Now, Erle, don't chaff; of course I like
Marcia; we grew up together. Hard pull it
was too, this time, going off without her, but
you see, she does not strike all people the
same way, and I didn't want to disappoint
you."
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
11
"Hear him,” said Erle, apostrophizing the
sea, then he continued, "I am not a lady's
man, Paul, perhaps I don't want what other
people do.”
Paul looked up at the handsome man.
beside him. A tall, strong, well-moulded
figure, crowned with a perfect head, hair
dark and close cut, honest eyes of dark blue,
under a magnificent brow, and a good straight
nose. His soft moustache curled slightly,
and his chin was so delicately rounded, yet
so firm, that many a woman had at one time
or another fallen in love with this feature of
his face alone.
Quiet, reserved man as he was, he never
seemed aware of any interest he might have
created in the opposite sex. Altogether he
was a man to whom his superiors in office
naturally turned with a loving dependence,
sure that his clear head, keen intellectual per-
ceptions and executive ability were always
ready to lighten their heavy load of hard
12
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
work and responsibility. While the younger
men always respected him, a few, like Paul,
loved him with a love so tender and unselfish
that it was like that of a woman. He had
been two years in the Vienna hospitals and
absorbed in hard work. He had sought to
find, in the love for his profession, a certain
compensation for the absence of all home ties
in his life.
His father was dead and his step-mother
and two half-sisters were uncongenial. He
was virtually homeless, save for a faculty he
had of investing his quarters, wherever they
might be, with an atmosphere peculiarly his
own.
When Paul had sought him out, three
months before, Erle had not allowed himself
to think much of what his life might be,
after his return to New York. There was no
definite prospect ahead and he did not wish
to think of the inevitable loneliness, which
would, most likely, fill in the break between
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
13
this old-world life and any settled living in
the new. Of course he would find some-
thing, somewhere, and if it should be near
old friends, so much the better; but he had
formulated no plans. Then Paul entered his
life, with constant references to his home
and his cousin Marcia, and took undisputed
possession of him, and linked him in the
most natural way with all his future arrange
ments.
Paul did not know it, but Erle had made a
few little purchases which might please the
fancy of some woman, and as he dropped
them into his trunk he had said to himself:
"Perhaps I may find some one to give them
to." And though he did not say so, he
vaguely hoped it would be Marcia. If he
had analyzed his feelings, he would have
found that a certain indefinite ideal, which
he called, “Marcia," was taking a firmer hold
upon his thoughts of the new life, than any
other person or thing. He was boyishly
14
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
intent on the meeting, now so near, and more
eager for it than he would have cared to
acknowledge even to himself; he was rest-
less; he walked the long deck from end to
end, over and over. The steamer seemed to
creep over the miles still between them and
the dock. He began teasing a group of chil-
dren, whose friend he had been all through
the voyage. He was pitiably impatient to
tread again the stones of his native city;
pitiably, since it was not a home-coming for
him, as it should have been; for his family
knew nothing of his movements and Erle
was aware that both mother and sisters were
out of town for the season.
At last they reached the pier. The two
young men went through the usual routine
of securing their baggage; lunched and
then having ascertained the time of their
probable arrival at Jones' Point, High
County, where Marcia spent much of her
time, they telegraphed ahead, and spent their
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY,
15
surplus energy in various excursions here
and there for things which Paul thought
might be needed to make their stay in the
mountains, so early in the season, endurable.
At last, as the result of all this activity of
brain and muscle, sundry odd-looking pack-
ages were visible, suggestive of long days
out of doors. A lot of paper-covered books,
not necessarily novels, for one can get any.
thing in that shape now. A knot of ham-
mocks, a heavy cane, with which came printed
instructions for its evolution into an artist's
stool; artist's paraphernalia, in all shapes
and sizes and guises; a guitar, which Paul
had taken to playing of late and countless,
nameless odds and ends. These the young
men finally stowed away and found them-
selves en route for Jones' Point.
66
'Here you! Tom Turner!" called the
agent, coming out of the telegraph office in
Rocton, the nearest railroad station to
Jones' Point. A half-grown boy came lazily
16
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
over from a freight car, which was standing
near.
"Here, you take this yere message up to
James Burns on the mountain; near Jones'
Point, don't you know?"
"You guess I do? You 'spose I'm goin'
up there this time o' day? Why it's a three
mile climb through the gully, straight up, and
seven round the horseshoe, way most people
goes. It's nigh on to five o'clock now."
"Get a horse then and be quick about it;
they'll pay." And the agent went in leaving
the boy to ruminate.
"Guess I'll get James' colt, I can ride
him;" he finally concluded gravely, and
started slowly off.
Marcia Hunt, sketching in the little clear-
ing, half a mile from the house, down the
gully toward Rocton, saw the sunlight fad-
ing away across the open slope. The shadows
crept, inch by inch, over the short green
grass. The long stretch of wagon road, run-
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
17
ning off through the woods on each side, had
lost its enticing lights and shadows and was
quite dark before she put up her sketching
materials and rose to go home. She heard
the sound of a horse's hoofs on the bridge,
further down the gully and hastened her
steps. It might be a neighbor with the mail.
She walked on slowly, up the mountain, and
soon the horse and rider came in sight. She
did not know the boy, but he, half knowing
and half guessing who she was, and glad to
save the steep climb to the house, called out
to her: "Say, you folks lookin' for a tel'-
graph d'spatch?"
"I don't know," said Marcia.
"Jest look and see ef this is yourn, will
you?" And Tom handed her the dispatch,
directed to herself. She tore it open, read it
and turned to go.
"Guess I'll want a dollar, Miss, for this here
colt." Marcia, without a word, handed him
the money and again hurried on. When she
=
18
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
came out at last, to the edge of the cleared
land where several small farm houses were
clustered, the lights were already beginning
to shine in the windows. She passed the
first house and paused a moment to look
over at the great wall of rocks on the east.
They were already indistinct in the twilight,
but she gazed intently as though she would
pierce the gloom. She loved those rocks,
with a strange, wild love, as though they hid
some human thing behind their impenetrable
fronts. Her imagination was fed and her
soul strengthened by them. After a moment
she turned and her eyes swept slowly along
the horizon. For three miles below ran a
deep, wild break in the hills toward the town
of Rocton. To the right, the fields rolled
gently over to the west, dotted with orchards
and houses. The settlement was one of the
oldest in the country and many a story was
told of the days when the Indians brought
terror to these homes.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
19
The long, hard ascent from the village
below seemed to have exhausted the energies
of the few who lived and died and were buried
here. It had checked the possibility of any-
thing like enterprise; even the little grave-
yard on the knoll, in the meadow to the left,
indicated respect for the dead at the least
possible exertion.
Nor had these people lacked the spirit of
industry; there was a primitive simplicity
about them and their ways of living which
made them a study of never-ending interest
to Marcia. They presented a wholesome con-
trast to the side of life of which she knew the
most, and while she was gracefully tolerant
of their lack of worldly wisdom she loved
their inherent goodness.
The road where Marcia stood ran between
the grassy bank and a long line of old un-
painted sheds and buildings which had been
added one to another as years brought the
need for them. A cooper's shop, a black-
20
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
smith's forge and a wagon shed, jostled each
other with a wonderful lack of perpendicu-
lar and horizontal lines.
And Marcia found delight in studying the
old structures, and peopling them with fancies
which set them astir with a quaint, idealistic
life.
As Marcia approached Mr. Burns' house,
which was beyond the terrace, where her
rooms were located, she found him seated on
the frame of the grindstone, under the wood-
shed, evidently awaiting her, and over his
good Scotch face beamed a smile of welcome.
The orphan lass was dear to him. Many a
time he had wondered why he was not blessed
with a daughter and whether she would have
been like this girl. He, like the rest of the
men up here, had fallen into contemplative
habits of mind as the natural outgrowth of
the slow life with its enforced quiet. He
would sit by the half-hour near her, in the
fields or the house, and watch her as she
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
21
worked, speculating on what her future would
be. Sometimes he would say a few words,
which would show the drift of his thoughts.
"I would like to see you mistress of a big
place, with plenty to do your bidding, Miss
Marcia," he would say. Then she would
laugh and reply:
"Oh, it will be all right. I know very well
that I will get what I deserve, and when I
am equal to it all, it will come, no doubt.”
Such was her cheerful, optimistic view of
things, and results always bore her out in her
belief.
But she could not live without being loved.
Had she failed to get affection and the ex-
pression of it from the hearts of those good
people she would have felt that there was
something radically wrong with life.
"O Mr. Burns, Paul and his friend are
coming to-night. Here is the despatch.
What shall we do?" she said going over and
giving him the message.
22
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
"I will go. I have time yet to meet the
train." He moved off, then stopping abruptly,
he turned and mysteriously beckoned her to
him.
"Miss Marcia, may be he'll be taking you
off with him, when he goes, who knows?"
"How do you know I'd go with him?" a
half happy, half defiant look on her face.
"To be sure, may be not, why no, may be
not," and he walked away smiling.
"Here, wife," he called at the side door,
“Mr. Paul and his friend are coming to-night,
could you get me a bite to eat, while I hitch
the team ?"
Marcia entered the house and began to aid
in putting the meal on the table; a fresh
vivacity, born of anticipation, bubbling over
in countless attractive little ways and
speeches.
"Must not the lord of the house have the
best?" "Is not the wanderer returning to
us?" "And then, too, the stranger that is to
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
23
be within our gates; shall he not have the
best?" "And aside from all this I am hungry
as a savage myself."
Mrs. Burns, a keen little woman, full of
life and energy, with wonderful, wavy, red-
brown hair, softened and subdued by the
gray which had but recently asserted itself,
laughed, and nodded, and smiled, and brought
out her best Java and began to make a pot
for the supper. She was always responsive
to Marcia's moods.
"You delicious little woman," said Marcia,
"you mean to brace me up well for this oc-
casion. Oh! yes, thank you, you may count
on two cups for me. And this bread and
butter of yours-well! rest assured they
haven't tasted anything like it over there
among their macaroni-loving Italians, their
tea-drinking Russians and their beer-consum-
ing Germans. Let us surprise them to-night.
Give them your best silver and cut glass.
And that lovely damask, and, Busy Bee,"
24
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
((
which was Marcia's name for her, you
shall not turn me out for a drone. I shall
help."
In the sunshine and love of this delightful
home nook, Marcia had planted herself and
taken root, to grow, unhindered.
"How your dear father, the doctor, did like
a strong cup of this coffee, my dear," said
Mrs. Burns as she poured out a second one
for Marcia. Yes, that he did," she con-
(6
tinued, "and he said that it never seemed to
hurt people up here."
"How could it,” replied Marcia, “in such
a charmed atmosphere, where nerves are
always strung in tune."
"Many a time," went on Mrs. Burns, tak-
ing pleasure in the memory, "in the long
rides he was called to take over these hills,
he used to stop for a few moments' chat with
us and I generally managed to have a cup
ready before he left."
'What a friend we all lost in him."
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
25
"Ah! Marcia, we loved your father. He
was a good man.”
Through the open window the genial face
of Mr. Burns appeared, questioning;
"Come, Miss Marcia, don't you want to go
down with me for the lads?
He hoped to get her to share his lonely
ride.
"Now, James how can you want that child
to take that long jaunt," said Busy Bee.
She was able to do it twenty times over,
but Mrs. Burns had plans of her own. She
wanted her to appear at her best before the
stranger.
"She must stay home and get ready. Go
along, you'll be late." Mr. Burns turned
away reluctantly, and the two women, left to
themselves, began at once the many prepara-
tions they had yet to make for the guests.
They had hardly expected Paul and Erle
till the morrow.
"I will light the fire in the parlor and set
26
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
the table, and-" began Marcia, but Mrs.
Burns broke in: "No you won't, we will do
it together. What shall I get for their
supper?"
"Oh, eggs and toast and some cold ham
and coffee, and milk and cake, and—well—
what more could a prince want?”
At last Mrs. Burns dismissed Marcia, send-
ing her home to dress.
She went out of the door leading to the
porch.
A hammock was swinging to and fro be-
tween the side of the house and one of the
outer posts of the porch. Marcia felt rest-
less. At another time she would have gone
home immediately to make a careful toilet;
but to-night she threw herself into the ham-
mock and turned her face toward the stars.
She swayed nervously back and forth, catch-
ing great deep breaths of the pure fresh air.
It soothed her with its touches and yet
poured into her throbbing veins a new life
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
27
current. She had never been stirred by any
great passion. All the charms of her rounded
womanhood were latent, unclaimed and ap-
parently unnoticed.
Theories were unsatisfying things to live
with alone, day by day, and to-night her
heart seemed to beat warningly. She had
felt before the possibilities of life in a broader
field, but had put them away as not for her.
The men she came most in contact with
were so far below the man she had known
best and loved devotedly, her father, that
they did not often stir her admiration to a
marked degree, and when they did they were
always men so busy in the work of life that
they had no time to allow any attraction she
held for them to ripen into more than cordial
liking.
She could not help wondering what this
friend of Paul's would be like. Of course she
would be kind and gracious to him, because
he was Paul's friend. Perhaps he would be
28
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
a man to be patient with, because of his in-
ability to see and understand things except
from a superficial standpoint.
It was not likely there was any good she
could do for him. She would not think of
him at all, if it were not to please Paul. He
might be very tiresome when brought to the
test of every-day companionship, for a whole
month, the period Paul had suggested as the
probable length of their stay.
Perhaps,--yes, it was very probable he was
the kind of man who would call all her
thoughts "bosh" and wish her--well-any-
where-so be it he was not there
She would soon know.
For more than an hour she had been swing-
ing in the hammock, and her thoughts, like
it, had been swaying to and fro, now ap-
proaching a conclusion and now receding into
uncertainty.
She went down the road to her rooms, up
the stairs, changed her dress and put some
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
29
blossoms in her belt, then she came down and
stood in her cozy parlor by the little old-
fashioned centre table, in the centre of the
room, with its square-cornered leaves, and a
cover which was one of Marcia's heirlooms; a
fine old chintz, tinted in all the spring greens
and sprayed with quaint designs of intensely
erratic impossible flowers.
The shaded lamp was painted in the same
tints and Marcia's household gods lay close
around it.
A copy of Emerson's essays, a volume of
Longfellow's poems, another of Mrs. Brown-
ing's and what to her is first and best, a New
Testament. Some would have criticised un-
pleasantly at once at catching sight of this,
for it was the new version.
A book of clever sketches, a bit of sewing
and a bowl of beautiful wild orchids com-
pleted the ensemble which pleased the eye
while yielding a sort of insight to the soul of
the possessor.
30
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
The little yellow and brown jackets of the
orchids filled the room with a perfume as
delicate as that of violets, and as they lay in
their bowl of India-blue china, they suggested
a handful of materialized day dreams.
Marcia was beautiful to look at, with her
dark eyes, her brows uplifted, her luxuriant
hair, her fresh bright face and in her figure
a beauty of repose which was really its chief
attraction. Her black dress was relieved
only by a cluster of delicate hepatica blos-
soms, extending from her belt to her throat,
tinted like the storm clouds of an April
day, from which they always seemed to have
sprung.
She took up her Longfellow almost caress-
ingly, and held it a moment, then laid it
down lingeringly, as one might release the
hand of a friend.
Her thoughts drifted again to this stranger,
upon whose coming she had allowed her
mind to linger so much. Again she wondered
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
31
how they would impress each other, and
whether, as her Emerson says:
"Jove would nod to Jove from behind them.”
Would she like him well enough, for Paul's
sake, to find the real man in him, and would
he care to know the real woman in her?
It was not likely. As for her, she could
not show her true inner self readily, and few
had attempted to look for or ask it.
As she listened, a far-off dog barked, then
all was still. Suddenly she heard the rumble
of wheels on the little mountain bridge, and
went quickly out into the night; hurrying
over to the Burns', where Paul and Erle were
to room, and where she took her meals. She
glanced into the large shed which served as
a summer kitchen and called: "Busy Bee."
Mrs. Burns came forward and Marcia took
her hand and drew her out. Together they
stood, waiting. In a few moments the car-
riage came in sight, and Erle took his first
こ
​32
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
glimpse of Paul's cousin. With that first
glimpse came the question: "Is she more
than a cousin to Paul?"
He watched closely the meeting in the
moonlight. The lovely laughing face with
its frame of soft, curling, rebellious locks,
did not seem to have changed its exquisite
color for a deeper shade, if he might depend
upon the moonlight, and Marcia had turned
from Paul's salutation instantly, to greet
him.
She met him in a happy, cordial way, turn-
ing up her face to scan his, frankly allowing
her curiosity to satisfy itself. Each seemed
to divine the thoughts of the other, for both
were laughing before they had exchanged a
word.
"It was very good of you to come with
Paul; he loves you so," said Marcia, as she
went toward the porch with Erle, where Paul
and Mrs. Burns had preceded them, and
cpened the door into the room which served
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
33
as a parlor, and in which a fire burned
cheerily on the hearth.
66
See! here is our ingleside and there are
your rooms," she said pointing to the doors
opposite," as soon as you are ready, come out
and have some supper. Mrs. Burns is wait-
ing."
She went into the next room and busied
herself about the supper table.
"Paul, where are you and what are you
doing?" she called at length.
"Here, Marcia, talking with Busy Bee;
she wants me to tell her all my travels in a
breath. How sweet you look to-night. It
never struck me that you were pretty before."
(C
Joy at your return has beatified me,
perhaps, temporarily. I never was pretty,
you know, Paul," laughed Marcia.
Erle, coming slowly from the inner room,
heard the last words. He looked at her in
the stronger lamp light and thought: "No,
not pretty perhaps, but something better."
34
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
She was still slight and girlish in figure,
though she had reached twenty-five; Erle
was thirty. Paul had said much, but after
all he had never touched on what struck
Erle now as her chief attraction, the beauty
of her expression, which played over her
face, ever varying, yet ever revealing a more
potent charm.
Erle, scientist and almost agnostic as he
was, acknowledged the presence of an en-
nobling element which was more than mental
superiority; it was a beauty of the heart, and
he felt curious to know more of the depths,
which he felt must exist in the nature before
him.
What experiences of life had brought that
refined beauty of expression into her face?
Had she given a woman's wonderful love to
some man, not half worthy of it? So many
lovable women make that mistake.
No one was saying very much to Erle just
now. The others were busy over happy little'
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
35
incidents of Paul's trip, and though they
tried to draw him into the conversation, the
effort was a failure, for he was absorbed in a
mental scrutiny of Marcia and was trying to
fit his preconceptions of her to this living,
breathing reality before him.
He had fancied she might be brusque,
almost repellant perhaps, from Paul's sug-
gestion that he might not like her.
Did he not say she did not strike all people
alike?
And Erle felt a thrill of gladness that
she did not. She would be surrounded by
suitors, did they all see her as he did.
She was simply radiant, with that sweet,
tender smile, those bright, laughing eyes, that
tempting color, now cooling, now glowing in
her cheeks, and the entire absence of any
apparent egotism.
He had begun to lend himself rather gladly
to his first idea of her, and now to find it so
completely swept away by this real creature,
36
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
so much above his dreams, abashed him. He
had almost assured himself of success in win-
ning the regard of that other one, the girl he
had thought she would be.
This Marcia was a revelation to him. He
felt the limitations of his past, and could not
rise beyond its level, all at once.
And yet she inspired in him a strange,
sweet hope. Perhaps near her with her
always in sight, always close at hand, to
stimulate him, he might attain possession of
that faith, hope and love, the belief in which
he had almost thought best to put aside, with
other childish things; but in losing which he
began to see that all color and glow would
vanish from his life.
It had once occurred to him that no agnos-
tic could become a sailor and yet retain his
agnosticism. Contending daily with winds
and waves, he would hope and believe in
something, before he had sailed one trip out,
and now he realized that Marcia's words
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
37
might be to him as wind and waves, encour-
aging or defeating him.
"Dr. Erle,” Marcia broke in upon his rev-
ery, "your photograph hardly tells the truth
about you."
"My photograph? I did not know you
had seen one." And Erle smiled such a
pleased surprise that Marcia, glancing across
at Paul, saw in wonder that there was a
mystery.
The truth was, Paul had never said much
to Marcia of Erle and Erle knew it, and that
he had taken the trouble to forward his pho-
tograph did not look as though—well he did
not know yet, whether they cared for each
other with the usual cousinly regard or
something more. But the pleasure of this
discovery, that she had thought of him at
all, made him happy. And, though they
exchanged only commonplaces now and then
through the evening, when he bade her good
night at her own door and caught a glimpse
38
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
of the lighted table within, he felt all chance
of dulness at Jones' Point had vanished.
And Marcia, what of her?
She had found a man whose power of
pleasing her was not limited to one evening.
She had no wish to look further now. She
would take the future on trust, happy in not
having, as usual, measured the man's limita-
tions in a few hours.
As Erle walked back to the house, he
smiled at the vigorous mental catechism to
which he was subjecting himself, and when
he asked himself why he did it, he found a
ready reply in the fact that Paul was his
friend and Marcia-Paul's dearest relative.
Yet that did not seem to explain why he
wished morning were already come that he
might atone for his apparent listlessness. He
had taken so little part in their evening's
talk, that now, when it was too late to redeem
himself, he realized that he had probably
made an unfavorable impression and he did
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
39
not quite know why he regretted it so much.
Such things heretofore had been, compara-
tively, matters of indifference.
"Ah! Well!" he said, "I have a month for
penance, if need be," and then walked up the
steps into the house.
The next day, as Marcia went down and
out into the morning, she lingered a moment
at the steps. Standing there, in her gray
dress and hat, against a background of lilac
blooms, with the delicate color and perfume
of apple blossoms around and above her, she
made the sweetest of pictures, not purposely,
but because she was naturally and uncon-
sciously a part of the picturesque.
Erle, who had been astir for an hour, saw
her and felt the spring-like beauty of the
picture.
"Oh, for the skill of an artist that my
future might be assured, by reproducing the
picture I see before me," he exclaimed.
"I should insist upon a postponement of
40
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
the first sitting, Dr. Erle," she replied smil-
ing. "Doesn't breakfast find any place in
your thoughts this morning?
"Evidently there will be no opportunity to
practice my profession while such appetites
prevail," said Erle. Marcia smiled again and
breaking off a wee spray of the fresh lilac
blossoms she came down the steps from the
bank on which the low, long house stood.
"The little spray is intended-?" ques-
tioned Erle.
"For your button hole," answered Marcia.
With the shadows from the old, black-
walnut tree playing over them, they stood
together while she fastened it for him. Then
they sauntered slowly up the road to the
little white house with green blinds, where
breakfast was waiting for them.
For a half-hour they chatted over the
fresh rolls and butter, the fragrant coffee
and cream, and the tempting morsels which
look so unpalatable when ordered from a
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
41
bill of fare, but which whet to its keenest
edge the appetite, when served in a country
house where the mountain breezes blow in
through the open windows, laden with the
scent of wild flowers and woodland blossoms.
The door opened and Mrs. Burns came in.
She sat down opposite Erle and turned her
face, with its keen, good-humored eyes full
upon him.
66
"So you have come up here to stay a
month, doctor?"
"That is the intention, Mrs. Burns, if you
don't turn us out."
Mrs. Burns gave an emphatic nod and
then she said with a smile, and quaint little
turn of the head peculiar to her: "What do
you think, Marcia? Will we turn them out?"
“Time alone can tell," laughed Marcia.
Mrs. Burns was a woman of fine percep-
tions, good judgment and an experience of
life not always measured by her present sur-
roundings. She had already formed her
42
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
opinion of John Erle, as correctly, in a gen-
eral way, as though she had known him a
year. Had any one asked her for it she
would have answered briefly: "He is gen-
uine."
No higher praise could be given by her
than this. In this crucible of honesty did
she melt all people and things, and if dross
was there she soon found it and while she
covered it with the broad mantle of Christian
love, a
insincere nature could never find
itself installed in her household on any foot-
ing of friendship.
This little, middle-aged woman, for twenty
years at home upon this lonely mountain,
was a woman of genius. She possessed the
faculty of drawing into her home, by some
magnetism of her own, people of talent, of
taste, of culture, and once having entered,
they found themselves appreciated, their
fancies charmed and their minds fixed in the
desire to return and find renewal of vigor in
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
43
this bracing moral atmosphere, which some
way partook of, and was a part of the clear
sky, pure air, fresh breezes and health-giv-
ing nature of the mountain itself.
Her character was partly the outcome of
long communion with the glorious nature
around her.
Her "genuine" meant real, everlasting-
like the rocks-therefore God-like; the only
thing to be desired.
Erle, though a man of the wo and a
traveller, was full of wonder at this peculiar
bit of thoroughly American atmosphere and
its odd mingling of foreign culture.
He could not understand fully the child-
like delight and happy abandon to the pres-
ent of Marcia's bright face and light laugh.
He was tingling with the longing to turn the
tide of this bright nature toward himself,
but how?
He was far off from her. Paul, Mrs.
Burns, the birds, the trees, the skies, all held
44
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
a share in her, but he, none. He would be-
guile her into showing him her inner self;
perhaps he could meet that with a sympathy
all his own.
66
Come," said Paul at last, springing up,
"let's go somewhere."
Marcia, toying with a great Saint Bernard,
sitting beside her, rose slowly, with her hand
still upon the dog's head. She lifted her
finger warningly at Paul, and said:
"We must husband our resources if Dr.
Erle would tax them for a month. So it
must not be the Point we seek to-day."
"Oh, no, that can wait. I want some views
from South Hill. You and Erle can do the
picturesque for me, if you will. I want to
try my new camera."
This was an undeveloped amusement with
Paul, as yet, and when he thought he had
found just the spot for a good stand and had
drawn the others after him, with much diffi-
culty, he was sure to abandon it in a few
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
45
moments and rush off in a manner which
some would have called a reckless expendi-
ture of energy.
They had wandered for hours, led by Paul's
vacillating fancies, assisting him in all his
efforts to secure good views of favorite nooks,
and obeying all his impetuous directions
with most praiseworthy diligence, when they
were joined by one of the neighboring
farmers. His primitive imagination running
wild with him, he had mistaken them for a
surveying party, and visions of a new rail.
road and a rise in the price of land had
drawn him to them. Erle and Marcia drew
to one side and left Paul to explain, while
they quietly made the most of the moment,
and sank down, one on a fallen tree the other
on a ragged rock, and lost themselves in the
mutual delight of question and answer.
"Miss Hunt," said Erle as they watched
Paul striding here and there in the distance,
"this running away from home as I did,
is
46
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
not just the thing for us young Americans
who mean to be good citizens, is it?"
"Do you regret it?" asked Marcia.
"If I had the choice again, I would stay
here," replied Erle.
(6
Why," said Marcia, turning suddenly.
"Oh, there is everything we need at home,
now, and a man gets out of sympathy with
too much."
"Have you?" she asked, so directly that
Erle looked away and not waiting for his
answer, she added:
"We will try to bring you back again.”
"I wish you would," he responded and
then he pulled a cigar out of his pocket,
looked at it absently, and put it away again.
"Oh, I will forgive you if you smoke. The
wind is blowing away from me," Marcia said,
laughing at his unconscious hint.
So he lit his cigar and smoked lazily, puff-
ing up clouds of rings and watching them
disperse.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
47
Marcia drew a little book from her pocket
and with a few rapid strokes and touches
caught the lazy pose of his figure with the
cloud of smoke above. Holding it before
him she said gayly: "There, that is Dr.
Erle, minus home sympathies-by-and-by I
will make you a companion sketch-when
you have reformed."
"Ah!" cried Paul joining them, "I have
caught you both in a capital bit; don't
move now. If that rock and tree, behind
you, come out in good tone, I shall be
happy."
Then seeing the sketch Marcia had made:
"You have a characteristic thing there; how
much better you work than you did when I
went away."
"I enjoy it; so much goes into a few
touches," said Marcia as she slipped the book
back into her pocket.
"So much goes into a few touches," re-
peated Paul and he nodded as he settled his
48
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
camera, and exposed the negative. "Now
let's go home."
66
Here, I'll help you, old boy." And Erle
shouldered a portion of Paul's load and to-
gether they moved slowly homeward.
"This is the laziest atmosphere I was ever
in," said Erle turning to Marcia. "I feel as
though I had not an idea left which was not
a sleepy one."
"That is always the way at first," she said.
"You will recover after a while; but I love
even the sleepy days. Life is very sweet up
here."
To Erle's praise be it said that he was a
novice in all the little arts of pleasing women.
He had lived only for his profession, as yet.
All he asked from the other sex was that
they should let him alone and when they
had proved unreasonable he had left them
and gone stolidly on.
The time had now come when he would have
liked to feel that he could charm if he chose.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
49
When love's awakening reaches a certain
point, with men like Erle, it acts like an in-
spiration, producing, on the instant, all the
trivial by-play of the affections and shaping
each action to itself until the glorious out-
burst of all the faculties makes the happy
lover more than the ordinary man he has
been till then.
Erle had not advanced far enough for this,
and as day followed day he only felt his way
slowly toward a knowledge of what would
please and attract Marcia. Had any one
confronted him with the question: "Are you
in love?" he would promptly have denied
it even to himself.
Paul would have answered differently
before five days had passed. He and Erle
were always off together somewhere or
seemed to be so, yet Paul often strayed to a
neighboring house or found some work which
separated them for an occasional half-day.
So Marcia, true to her first determination
50
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
and also to something else which was new, set
herself the not unpleasant task of entertain-
ing Paul's friend.
Excursions to one place and another had
been planned and carried out, yet Marcia had
never taken Erle to the Point, from which
she had so often watched the sunset and
where she had built so many castles. Some-
how she felt that she must save that place
for a particular mood which had not yet
come to her since Erle's arrival.
One afternoon he said: "Miss Marcia; "
sometimes it was Marcia, now, but always
hurriedly and half-forgetfully, as though it
arose from hearing Paul and Mrs. Burns
address her thus--"Miss Marcia, is the time
not yet ripe for a sunset view from the
Point?" Marcia hesitated an instant, then
held out her hand to him and led the way.
PART SECOND.
"Thine was the prophet's vision, thine
The exultation, the divine
Insanity of noble minds,
That never falters, nor abates,
But labors and endures and waits
Till all that it foresees, it finds,
Or what it cannot find creates.'
LONGFELLOW.
THE buzzing of the bees in the flowers, the
soft gurgle of the little spots of moisture, as
the warm earth disturbs them in her breath-
ing, the slight sound of movement on every
side, which one never hears after early
spring; all this sweet commotion which
nature makes as she brews her nectar for
spring's uses; all this imparted its spell of
fresh living to these two, as they went on in
it, as in an enchanted land.
►
"Miss Hunt, what do you and Paul find to
draw you to this lonely wilderness?" said
Erle.
54
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
"Fresh air, solitude and tender associa-
tions. Is not that sufficient?"
There was a dainty, harmless coquetry in
her manner as she answered, which melted so
charmingly into the earnest, that what she
said acquired new interest as one watched
her.
(6
Yes, but why should you wish solitude?"
persisted Erle, bent upon making her talk.
66
'Because life, Doctor, has been made a
very serious thing for me." She smiled as
she spoke and was silent.
"Why more serious for you than other
women?" he asked, looking at so much of
her face as was toward him.
"I often ask myself that question and can
find but the one answer. It is just. The law
of compensation must be met."
"What must be compensated for?" said
Erle, smiling.
"God has given me the power of seeing
what others do not always see and He re-
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
55
quires more from me.
I have dared to hope
I may make the world a little better for hav-
ing lived in it."
"But what do you see which others do
not, that so much should be asked from you
again?"
Erle was astonished to find himself ques-
tioning Marcia boldly in this way. But she
was unlike other women he knew.
He did not care to decide in just what way
this difference existed, but he felt and yielded
to it.
There is a craving in every well-regulated
nature for a sympathetic help at certain
periods of one's development, at certain
crises in one's life, at the strongest or weakest
moments of all the varied phases of growth.
And Erle was in a transition state. His
character had not yet crystallized. He was
aware of a disturbance of some kind, but he
did not know just what it portended.
Marcia's personality happened to be more
56
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
real to him at the time than that of any
other woman, and any one with a knowledge
of human nature could have surmised the
result. Erle craved her as his friend. Again
he was unaware of himself; nothing was
clear in his sense, of either his needs or his
desires. It is the glorious possibility of life
which gives it its greatest zest, while the
command to work remains; it is not so much
the attainment of an end as its attaining
which delights us.
"What do I see?" repeated Marcia. "Dr.
Erle, if you question me in this way, I must
answer you truthfully and I do not like to
talk of myself. I am over sensitive in this
respect perhaps; whenever I have thrown my
soul into words, it has only been to be mis-
understood, and to find what has been sacred
to me profaned by others from whom I hoped
it would command respect, so that now I am
slow to speak. Had we not better talk of
broader subjects, the flowers, the birds or
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
57
these helpless young moths just out of
bondage?"
As she spoke she turned her eyes, full of
such sweet, earnest questioning upon him,
that he forgot the light sarcasm lurking in
her tone and words, and answered only the
spirit of the look.
"No, Miss Hunt, I promise you at least
respect, if you will answer me.
What are
these things you see?"
As he spoke their eyes met. She had
sought his face to know how far she might
give utterance to that which was crying out
in her. A steady light shone in his eyes.
now, unknown perhaps to himself, but which
flashed out, merged its life with hers and
made it impossible for her to withhold her
confidence, though how much she might or
might not say she was not sure.
"I read secrets in the book of life which
are appalling. If I live with people a little
while, the very motives of their souls are as
58
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
apparent to me as are the marks upon my
hand," she said, turning her palm up to look
at it. "If there is evil I see it. If there is
good I know it and all without direct volition
on my part. It is truth, I cannot turn away
from it."
She gave a little sigh.
Erle saw that Marcia spoke with effort. It
had not been easy for her to confide even that
much of herself to him. His profession had
forced him to feel that the evil in life pre-
dominated. The constant contact with its
different phases had almost killed the ideal
in him.
He had not that strength, drawn from a
higher source, which alone can make the
ideal brighter and purer, as the fight between
the evil and the good goes on.
He thought
such fresh sweetness as this which he saw
before him now was not to be reconciled with
his views of life, as formed from his experi-
ence.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
59
"Miss IIunt, you cannot know life as I
know it, or you would feel you had under-
taken a hopeless task when you think to
better this world of ours, all alone."
Marcia wondered if it were well to ven-
ture the only answer she could honestly give.
Should she again drop down the sounding
line into the heart of this man, whom she
felt she would rather not fathom so soon?
It was so pleasant to look at him and fancy
he might be the friend for whom she had
longed. She might put an immeasurable
distance between them if she showed the
heights of her hopes. She dared not think
he would divine her meaning at the very
first, even though he might in the aftertime.
At length she said: “I am not alone; help
is always given me when I need and ask it."
They were entering a narrower stretch of
road running between borders of witch hazel,
birch and other young trees and shrubs, and
the enticing sunlight, dancing in their tops,
60
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
surprising and beguiling anew at each turn,
entered like wine into Erle's spirit, intensify-
ing, each moment, his interest and his plea-
sure in the hour. For the present all doubts
of Marcia's freedom had vanished and he
gave himself up to his impulse to follow
where she led, let the consequences be what
they would. He might, at least, come to
know himself the better, and establish him-
self on a better footing with her.
"You have not told me yet why you choose.
solitude? Can you not work just as well
among others? Better indeed?"
"I only come here at times." There was a
long pause. Erle feared to speak lest she
might not continue.
"I am not always strong. People draw on
me and weaken me once in a while. Human
nature cannot bear the constant strain upon
it in the crowded world; it must escape to
the mountains."
A comradeship was already established be-
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
61
tween these two, born of the fresh intense life
of the one and the real need of the other.
Erle, instead of being repelled, as most mon
might have been by the intense earnestness
he had succeeded in arousing, rejoiced in it.
It had cost something for her to show it to
him. It was a glimpse at her inner nature.
and this was what he sought.
Suddenly he said to her: "You have told
me much of yourself to-day, but you have
only awakened a desire to know still more,
Miss Marcia.”
"How?" she asked with a real wonder in
her wide shining eyes.
"I am curious to know what it will all end
in.”
"If I live it will end in some good done.
In nothing mean," she said.
"You show me grand fancies, purity and
breadth of nature, and high hopes for the
success of too much, but experience, and-"
he paused here as if in thought, but she
62
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
66
urged him to go on- and a few years more
of life will find you bereft of your illusions,
as have been so many other dreamers, unless
you are made of rare stuff," he added, half
reluctantly.
"My illusions have faded already," she
answered.
"I know now that truth lies in the mean
of life," he said. "I no longer believe that
people are either all bad or all good, there is
always a mingling of the two elements, and I
must be strong enough to see and be content
with life as I find it. You all indulge in
theories which are beyond the power of
human nature to fulfil.”
"Ah!" she said, "now you have touched
my secret. It is not human nature in which
my dreams find fulfilment."
66
'Pardon me, but indeed I do not under-
stand you,” he answered, turning and look-
ing at her.
He had been talking in an almost listless
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
63
way until now, looking off over the hills and
country down below them and seeming to
express his thoughts lazily as one does with
a child when helping to lay out a simple
block puzzle often made before.
"I dream and work now for the divine, for
the kingdom which is to come upon the
earth, is even now begun and is with us;"
she replied, without turning her head or
moving her gaze from a rift in the clouds,
through which the sun, now quite low, half
looked at them.
"Still I don't understand," he said.
They were on the top of the cliff now; she
was sitting on one of the ramparts of this
stronghold of the rocks; Erle half lay, half
sat upon the level stone beside her. He
must keep close to hear what she was saying.
Up there the wind was always strong and
somewhat noisy. Her presence sent a thrill
through every fibre of his being. Never
before had the simple fact of a woman's near-
•
61
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
ness moved him so. He would not seek to
keep back anything she might unconsciously
demand of ìim.
"Is human nature the only force you find
working in this world?" questioned Marcia.
"Do you rot find something which is not in
your own nature, cropping up an influenc
ing your actions now and then? Have you
not seen people do noble things from motives
you could not fully understand but yet ad-
mired?"
"Yes, I have, Miss Marcia, but not often;
such people are rare.”
"Was the world any better for what they
did, Doctor?"
"Y-e-s," assented Erle very slowly. He
began to see now, how she meant to better it.
"Have you never been stirred by a great
love, so great that you would give all you
hold dearest if you could, by so doing, bene-
fit the one you loved?"
As she spoke she met his eyes fastened on
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
65
her in a questioning way. There was a hun-
gry, appealing look in them which startled
her. She looked away and continued. "I
see you have not yet learned this lesson. I
cannot tell you what I mean, I fear. Only
the knowledge of such a love could explain
what I mean. You must be touched by a
power, not of earth, else you could not com
prehend it."
She sighed as if over a hopeless task and
looked at the rift in the clouds.
"I might feel a love like that some day.
Will you not go on and explain?" asked
Erle seriously.
"Might you?" she queried and once more
the possible sweetness of life flashed over
her. "Then I will try. It would be foolish
for one to go to you at such a time and for-
bid you to do actual evil to the person you
loved, because you could only think and
wish to do good. Is it not so?"
"Yes, of course, it would be very foolish."
66
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
"Well, don't you see that, for the time
being, you would have become a part of the
eternal goodness, in a certain line incapable of
wrong. To love thus is unconsciously to
fulfill all law. You do all that could be
asked from you and you are on the borders
of the heavenly kingdom. Now, if you could
only lift up this love from the creature to
the Creator then you would have entered in.
You would thenceforth dream and work for
the Divine. Do you see?"
66
"Half way; as we see the sun there. You
mean that such love transcends and expands
human nature."
"Yes, it proclaims a power peyond which
is the Divine, the power which is to rule by-
and-by."
66
Why do you not write a book and tell
people what you wish them to know?"
"My time has not yet come. I dare not
write till I have first lived more nearly as I
would wish them to. The world is already
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
67
too full of books spun from men's fancies.
There is plenty of brain and muscle afloat
among the writers and printers, but too little
of the purity and beauty of spirit animating
it all. When I have proved myself, then and
only then may I turn and share with the
world that which is worthy of sharing. Then
I shall feel surer I have something to give
which it needs, until then I must keep silence.
Shall we go home?"
This girl, as she rose up and looked at him,
was unlike any one he had ever seen before,
and he questioned himself vainly for the
secret of it.
She had been as full of changes, during
this spring day, as had the clouds in the soft
sky or the tints upon the landscape, or the
vanishing shadows which the sun and clouds
had kept varying each moment.
Marcia had allowed herself to be wrought
upon by some unknown element in this new
nature until, without being aware of it, she
68
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
It
was under an intense strain, such as nature
never bears long at a time without resenting
it. Hers was an exceptional nature.
took a long time to produce and mature its
buds to a certain point, then suddenly, when
the time was ripe, they would bloom into
perfection with wonderful rapidity and glori-
ously, like the flowers that reach perfect
development in a single night; astonishing
herself even more than another, because she
alone knew the long and weary, almost hope-
less waiting which had been necessary before
any tangible result was attained.
To-day had been a blossoming day for her.
She had wondered lightly how she was to
touch this new soul. She found now that
she was to reach it only by and through her
best and fullest confidence. Unconsciously
he had led her up to express herself in a
clearer, stronger light and more perfect detail
than she had even thought in before, and
thus a new beauty and enthusiasm had en-
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
69
tered her soul and had left an impression
upon her which would not fade with the
rising of to-morrow's sun, but which would
remain and be a part of her.
In her answer to the question, "What will
it all end in?" she rang out the key note of
her character. "In some good done, if I
live." An ideal once formed, she never rested
until on the way to attain it.
Idea and action, dream and reality must
link themselves for her, no matter what sac-
rifice stood in the pathway.
Two weeks had gone by almost unheeded.
Alarmed by the expressions into which she
had been betrayed that first day on the rocks,
Marcia had tried to put the unusual serious-
ness of her character as far off from her pres-
ent as possible; and the happy, careless part
of her nature had since been allowed full
sway.
Unlike most women of the day she had not
grown to question the conclusions of life, so
70
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
far as they pertained to herself, beyond a
certain frontage of the possible, which had
come to loom up before her consciousness ac
the rocks loomed up over there against the
sky; and the unalterableness of which she
had accepted in the same way.
She had found there were certain un-
changeable conditions of her mental and
spiritual structure which made it impossible
for her to sin against the ideal, without first
sacrificing an inherited perception of right.
She had made her choice with an instinctive
shrinking from the necessary hardships at-
tending it.
Young though she was at the time when
she met and conquered her fate (if one may
so say), she was only a girl on the threshold
of life; her victory had been entire; she had
chosen to yield herself to all the forces for
good which had lent themselves in the form-
ing of her being; she had joined herself
determinedly to the unseen world, out of
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
71
which she had sprung, and with which she
knew her relations were more sure and real
than any she might ever make in the material
world about her. In short she had chosen
an allegiance to the ideal which she knew
was at direct variance with many conditions.
of the world and society around her, and
through which her way led.
It was the truest heroism which entered
into and led this young soul, quivering in
every delicate, sensitive, gracious womanly
fibre.
She might never swerve from the highest
in her purpose. That she should be mis-
taken in her perceptions of this she felt
would be impossible, if she but held close the
divine hand stretched out, to her. That she
might be mistaken in her methods of attain-
ing it she knew to be probable, and that her
world would be often against her was a fact
which fell crushingly upon her from the first.
But child as she was, in soul, she yielded
72
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
herself to the requirements of the Everlasting
One and went forward.
Erle was coming slowly to a nearer percep-
tion of her than had any man before. Instead
of finding, as he first supposed, the outlines
of her being clearly set and defined, he began
to perceive that they could not be measured
by any mere earthly vision. They were like
those of other heavenly bodies, to be discov-
ered only by long and patient investigation
and then through a spiritual lens, as it were.
It had become the all-important question
with Erle as to whether he might so purify
his vision as ever fully to attain a perception
of her life in all its varied phases.
There had come a certain veil of material-
ism across his instincts which now shadowed
all his perceptions.
He had until now
thought it the inevitable result of knowl
edge.
But he began to see it came because he
had set too close a limit to his knowledge.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
73
He had not given his facts field enough.
Science itself was often being enlarged by
marginal notations. Suddenly he caught a
glimpse of his possibilities, running beyond
the finite.
If any one thinks this isolated mountain
life was limited in its opportunities for
dramatic action, so necessary in romance,
they must consider that the most interesting
dramas of life are lived first in the world of
ideas. Is it not in the formation of motive
that our keenest interest centres?
Thus neither Erle nor Marcia had found a
lack of interest in the life of the past two
weeks. Erle in the early and late mists,
which drew away the mountain from the rest
of the world around, began and ended his
days in an atmosphere of continual consecra-
tion to this new search for the highest possi-
ble in him.
He was seeking to regain, if he might, his
instinctive perceptions of things. It had
74
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
become a matter of course for Marcia and
Erle to watch the sunset from the hills, and
Erle had come to look forward to this as the
best part of the day.
He had gotten in a way of lying near her,
stretched by her side, his gaze, perhaps, on
the clouds, but all his thoughts centred on
her.
To-night they were looking out upon a
realm of purple and golden splendor. There
were English violets in Marcia's belt, redolent
with sweetness. Erle was lying near enough
to catch each wave of fragrance as Marcia
turned to see some new bit of changing color.
He had brought them to her from the mail
that day and she had not said who sent them,
but such a flood of light had illumed her
eyes that he was jealous of the sender. Even
though the sender were a woman, he be-
grudged that look.
Marcia, turning suddenly, saw the figures
of two men coming up through the long
C.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
75
stretch of rolling pasture between them and
the house, up through the little marshy spot
where the stepping stones led from the birch
trees to the path beyond, on over the sugges-
tion of road, narrowed by sweet ferns and
huckleberry bushes, with the grass. almost
filling up the wheel tracks, still on, through
the gaps between what was once a rail fence,
and as soon as she could distinguish their
faces, she started up quickly, excused herself,
and hastened to meet them.
Erle could see her give a hand to each and
turning, draw them toward him.
"Doctor Erle," Marcia said as they met,
"the Reverends Dean and Dearing." Then
she turned her face to Dr. Dearing. "Some-
thing is wrong. I have felt it all day. What
is your message?"
Her face had become white and intense;
the laughing light had all gone out and her
eyes seemed burning.
"You always know," he said. "Mrs. Dun-
76
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
can has been thrown from a carriage and
hurt. She is unconscious. Mr. Duncan tele-
graphed for you and Dr. Erle."
Then turning to Erle he added: "Dr. Gold-
waith, the family physician, is too old to trust
himself in a delicate operation, and such is
needed; he says it is concussion of the
brain."
Erle felt keenly alert in an instant. He
was somewhat excited by this unexpected
summons from strangers. He knew Mrs.
Duncan was Marcia's close friend and the
husband a connection of hers and Paul's,
and through them, no doubt, had learned of
him. But he was astonished that he should
have been chosen at such a moment. Had he
known it, Dr. Goldwaith had heard of him
through an old friend in the city and to him
he owed the choice.
Serious as the news was for Marcia and
sympathetic as Erle was, he could but think
how all this delicious idleness must now be
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
77
left behind; but he rejoiced in the thought
that Marcia would still be near him.
She had been swept past commonplaces
and completely overwhelmed by the news,
she walked on with Dr. Dearing silently for
a while, that intense look upon her face, then
she asked:
"Is the little mother with you, Dr. Dear-
ing? I would like so much to see her."
"Yes, she is waiting for you at the house."
"And you, Dr. Dean; do I lose the treat of
seeing you?”
"My dear, I fear you must go at once,"
said Dr. Dearing. "We think you had better
take our carriage and we will wait here until
its return to-morrow. It is too important
that you should reach there, to allow of your
waiting for the morning train. Samuel
knows the horses he will drive, and we think
you should reach there before midnight."
They were by the house now, and Marcia
waited to hear no more, A little, calm faced,
78
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY,
gray-haired woman stood with Paul awaiting
them.
Marcia went to her and put her arms
around her and kissed her.
"Little mother, you were
come."
66
so good to
Mrs. Dearing kissed her lovingly and said,
I thought you would be glad to see me; but
oh! I wish I might have come without such
sad news." And she drew Marcia away with
her toward the house.
There was a hasty supper, a hurried pack-
ing, and Erle found Marcia close by his side
and Paul seeing to the robes, for the evenings
were chilly, and then amid a chorus of
friendly voices the carriage was driven off.
No apology is needed for the fact that
these two young natures in less than one
month had come to love each other. It was
in the natural order of things, their mutual
love for Paul had revealed them to one an-
other before they had met, though as yet
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
79
neither of them had awakened to the actual
existence of love.
In all true love the intellectual and spiritual
elements rule. Marcia, as Erle now knew, was
a woman of no mean intellectual powers, but
they were subservient to the spiritual in her.
This it was which put her in sympathy
with all honest, simple natures and led them
to say of her that she was not only a woman
of strong intellect, but also that she possessed
a great heart.
Yet now, this woman, with her intellectual
perceptions all quickened, sat beside him,
blind to a love she would have recognized
quickly enough, if it had not touched herself.
Why does the natural inborn coquetry of
a woman lead her to repel when she longs to
attract? May it not be because so much
more hangs on a woman's "yes," which seals
her final surrender, than ever attaches to a
man's offer of marriage?
With the best of men there is an uncon-
80
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
scious reservation of thought and feeling, in
every picture they form of themselves after
marriage. But a good woman feels that the
very fountains of her thoughts may be
changed by the nature of the man she
chooses.
The old driver on the front seat knew and
loved Marcia well, and he prudently deter-
mined to turn a deaf ear to anything which
might be said throughout this long night's
drive, however he might be tempted to catch
the drift of their conversation. Was it not
already well known to those who had seen
them together, that this talented young
doctor was very much in love with their
Marcia ? She might not know it, no one
thought she did yet, but every one else
knew it; as for her, they were not sure that
she would care for him, even by-and-by
when she should learn it from him. Of
course it was expected that he would care
for her. Who could help it?
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
81
Old Samuel chuckled to himself, "I
wonder if he thinks nobody knows it? I
know it. What's an old body like me? He
didn't care if I did see him looking after her
the last time I was down there, the day she
took the wild roses from him over the fence.
Oh, but I have eyes if they are old ones.”
Samuel's thoughts were suddenly inter-
rupted; they had jolted over a rolling stone
and the road grew rapidly worse. Samuel
had no more time for speculation, for an
hour.
Erle and Marcia had tacitly consented to
put away for the time any expression and,
as far as they might, any thought of the sad
mission on which they were bent and to
enjoy this unexpected ordering of things as
a sort of fortification for the days of care
and anxiety to come. They had put them-
selves in possession of all that was known of
Mrs. Duncan's case and were prepared to
meet any emergency.
82
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
These few hours lying in between, before
any possible help could be rendered, must
be spent together and that fact brought to
Erle a greater ecstasy than he would have
thought possible under such circumstances.
As for Marcia, her intense mood had so far
relaxed that she was aware of herself once
more and knew she was being taken posses-
sion of by a potent force which was delight-
ful. As to what it might portend she was
all uncertain as yet.
What did that strange thrill mean that
seemed to link his presence to hers? Did
she love?
It had crept slowly into Erle's conscious-
ness that this exquisite woman had entered
every recess of his nature, and that life
would not be life without her love.
They talked easily enough about anything
or nothing for a while, then they sang softly
song after song together, until Samuel, over-
come by the charm of the music and the
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
83
lateness of the hour, nodded drowsily on the
front seat, while the well-trained, intelligent
horses, who hardly needed his guiding hand
upon the reins, kept steadily onward.
They quoted thoughts here and there from
books they loved and then a silence fell upon
them. A silence during which the lingering
color in the sky dropped suddenly back into
the darkness behind it, and the gloaming
vanished into the night, and the stars
gleamed brightly.
Marcia was seeking some new way of
escape from the soul of this man, which she
felt was pursuing her. Another woman
might have tarried for him, but, as for Mar-
cia, her spirit must be seized and mastered
by the sweet force of the man who was to be
her lord, before she would rest contentedly
beside him.
The fragrance of the laurels swept up to
them, as they rode. The leaves swayed
gently around them. The stars were glori-
84
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
ous above them, yet no word found utterance
upon their lips.
Erle began to sing again.
"Now the danger's past," thought Marcia.
But what are these words? Yes, she knows:
'Through the leaves the night winds, moving,
Murmur low and sweet."
How exquisitely true is his voice!
All the way through he sings it, never
turning to look at her, sitting so still beside
him, yet with each new note full of such
tender passion that she must feel it is for her.
"All the stars keep watch in heaven,
While I sing to thee, while I sing to thee,
And the night for love was given,
Dearest, come to me."
Now he is looking at her; he is reaching
out his hands to her; he is waiting for her
eyes to meet his own; he is folding her hands.
in his as he sings:
"And the heart for thee is yearning,
Bid it, love, be still
Bid it, love, be still."
The song has ceased and he is murmuring
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
85
to her words which forever bind their souls
together, for the clasp of his loving hands,
and the tender pleading of his voice has
revealed to her how truly, how deeply, how
sincerely she has grown to love him, while
wondering just what name to give to her
emotion.
The time was passing quickly and they
would soon go out of this tender, love-lit com-
panionship, teeming with happy fancies and
emotions, and lose for a time their hold on
each other in the sorrow of this household
into which they were going.
A late moon was coming up from behind
the soft clouds as they drew rein beside the
old home of the Duncans.
Marcia led the way softly toward the back
of the house, and trying the latch found it
still unfastened, and so, deftly opening and
shutting the massive door of heavy oak
plank, which had swung back and forth upon
all the daily going in and out, for genera-
86
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
tions, she took Erle into a quaint old square
room where a fire of smouldering logs burned
upon the immense hearth, and flitting noise-
lessly through one of the many doors, left
him alone.
He had seized her for a moment and pressed
a hasty kiss upon her lips before, blushing,
she had hastened away from him. He gazed
into the glowing depths of the fire before
him. It was not long before she came back
bringing Mr. Duncan and Doctor Goldwaith
with her and after introducing Erle, she stole
to her own room and putting on a soft gown
took her place by Hester's bedside. In pass-
ing she had looked in to see if the children
were asleep and determined that the morrow
should see them safe with their grandmother.
Duncan.
The case was one which required all of
Erle's hard-earned skill. But at last the
danger was over. The operation had been
successful and after five days of constant
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
87
care and watching, Hester Duncan was con-
scious, but it would be months before she
could take up her duties again, and Erle and
Doctor Goldwaith were imperative in saying
all care must be laid aside.
Marcia was the only one to assume the
vacant position in the household, and this
she consented to do, but not without keen
pangs of disappointment. She had looked
forward to the return to the happy life on
the mountain, when Erle and she would learn
to know and understand what this love
meant which had come thus into their lives,
and now, it could not be. And they had not
seen each other alone in all these days, but for
a few moments, and Erle had not spoken
again of love, though he had looked it and
every touch of his hand had been tender.
Marcia had grown somewhat cold, for fear
she had yielded too readily, and Erle was
silent because he fancied she regretted what
had passed, and so things went all wrong, as
88
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
they always do when two people love each
other in a first, sudden passion.
Now that Hester Duncan was getting
slowly better, Marcia would steal out into the
old haunts of her girlhood, trying to deter-
mine just what had gone wrong. But these
self-communings only ended in a burst of
tears which brought no enlightenment. She
always chose a time when Erle was safe in
the library with Mr. Duncan, because he
might think she wanted him to go.
""
"He need not go if he does not want to,
she would say to herself, as though he had
any choice in the matter, not knowing her
mind. Perverse womanhood!
Mr. Duncan would not hear of Erle's leav-
ing, although it was the first of June. And
he was glad to linger, hoping for some
further chance of a better understanding
with Marcia. He had been too morbidly
sensitive until now to do as he would once
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
89
have advised another to do-request an in-
terview and learn the turth.
But at last his stay reached a limit-he
could not go away in this uncertainty. He
went up to Hester's room and asked for
Marcia. She had gone for a short row,
Hester said, surprised that he was not with
her. He surely could not miss her if he fol-
lowed; the landing was so near; so, happy in
his hope of clearing up all doubts, he hurried
down the hill to the smooth green bank, with
its grand old trees gnarled and twisted by
the growth and floods of centuries, and there
he stood watching anxiously for some sign
of the boat or Marcia. By-and-by it came in
sight, around a bend. He would go to meet
her; he would beg her to be her own sweet
self again. But she was not alone. A fine-
looking young man in a blue flannel suit
was pulling the oars, and as Erle stood watch-
ing, said something to Marcia and took a
bunch of wild flowers from his hat and gave
90
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
them to her. She put them to her lips in a
careless happy way and fastened them to
her belt. Erle did not know why, but the
scent of English violets seemed to rush over
him. He felt his face growing pale, and his
teeth set tight together and then in a mad,
blind way he turned and walked away. But
Marcia had seen him.
"Dr. Erle," she called, "are you wanting
me? Is Mrs. Duncan worse?"
"No thought for me," thought Erle, “fool
that I have been."
Well, he would end it now. To kiss that
fellow's flowers. Those violets, too, of long
ago. He had sent them of course. He met
her as she came up the bank with such a
hard, cold look upon his face that Marcia
quailed for a moment, then a stricken, fearful
look came into her face, appealing mutely to
the man who had so lately won her. But
Erle was too blind with imaginary wrongs to
see it. In a cold, strained voice he said:
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
91
66
Good-by, Miss Hunt, I leave to-night."
He had suddenly determined to take a
night train for the city.
Marcia equally proud and sensitive, paled
perceptibly, but said coolly:
"Shall we see you again soon, Doctor?"
She too would be ice.
66
'No, I think not. Pray do not let me
detain you from your pleasure," he said and
strode up the bank.
"O Mark! he saw me kiss these flowers.
I know he did, that is what it means." And
Marcia flashed such a look of desperate dis-
appointment on the face before her, that one
might have pitied the man.
"Well, why shouldn't you kiss my flowers,"
said Mark; "I love you, don't you love
me?"
“Oh, yes, but not that way." And the
utter hopelessness of the man's love was ap-
parent to him as it had never been before.
His face blanched, but in a moment he said;
92
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
"No, of course not that way, but I did not
know, you did not tell me."
66
'Mark, you do love me," she said, tears
filling her eyes. She sat down upon the
bank wearily, and Mark stood beside her;
his hand being close to her, she took it in
hers and laid her cheek upon it. The man's
control was great, but she was taxing it too
far; she had long taken his love for granted.
He was yet a boy to her. Year after year
they had been together.
The two Marks they were called, in token
of the almost boyish comradeship between
them. Every action of his life was weighed
in the scales of her friendship.
His mother had been long dead; he lived
with his father, William Barrow, on the farm
adjoining the Duncans'.
Marcia of late years had demanded much
from him. He must give up his old ways,
his old thoughts, old associations, if he would
keep her friendship. In fact, she had taken
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
93
it upon herself to keep uppermost that which
was noble in him, repressing by her counsel
those tendencies which were for the worse.
He had been grateful to her for this. It was
more than any one else would have done for
him, and he loved her for it.
Not as Erle loved her. Mark felt it a re-
ligious duty to restrain any expression of
his love, she was so high above him, she
would not understand that he was a man
with the same passionate yearnings as other
men. Never mind, she should not know.
He had conquered himself before, he would
do so now.
Marcia, unconscious of his struggle, at last
looked up. The white purity of his face
astonished her.
"What is it, Mark, why do you look so?"
She sprang up beside him and placed her
hands upon his shoulders, "What is wrong,
Mark?" she asked tenderly.
94
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
by."
Everything is wrong," he said. "Good-
He stooped quickly, kissed her hand and
in a moment was gone.
She turned and climbed the hill to the
house; she could not believe that Erle would
go without seeing her again, but she waited
in vain for a message from him, and as the
hours crept by she at last realized that he
had gone.
Oh, the dreary, dreary dragging of the
days in the week which followed!
Erle wrote to the Duncans, but never a
word for her. It seemed as though she could
not live through it. She could not eat. She
did not sleep and such a sad pained look had
come into her eyes that the Duncans won-
dered what had occasioned Erle's sudden
departure.
Hester Duncan knew that all was not well
with her, but she knew also that it was not
best to intrude with words upon any mood
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
95
of Marcia's. It was a belief of hers that true
friendship needs no such medicine for ex-
pression.
And in all their love they had proved it to
each other. Hester, weak as she was, saw
and felt for her friend. She knew that some
great grief was upon her and she guessed the
cause.
Marcia felt she was of but little value to
any but these three, Paul, Hester and Mark,
and strove to yield a more perfect service of
love to them, that, in their appreciation, she
might regain her lost self.
But at last she wrote:
"Oh, Erle! what have I done?" That was
all. She thought; "Now he must speak," and
perhaps she might make him see things in
the true light.
She was Mark's friend, and that because
he needed her. There was no one else to
help him if she took her love away, and she
was sure it was only the love God com·
96
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
manded for one's friends. Surely Erle would
see this. If she took this love away from
Mark, what then! She dared not think; she
knew the restraining power she exerted over
him. She knew too well just what his life
would be without her. Certainly not good.
He had never made friends among the best
people, under the best influences. He had
always yielded to a certain mistrust of him-
self, which had led him away from good
women, when they would have befriended
him, and out among the men of the neigh-
borhood, who could boast but little height of
soul or purpose. There would be nothing
but horses, betting and drinking to fill up
the restlessness of his goings and his com-
ings. Could she but keep, a little longer, her
hold upon him, she might see him fixed in
new tastes, new associations, new attachments.
All this was very near now, she thought.
Mark was letting himself respond more to
the friendly notice of some of the good
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
97
women who knew him, and he had mingled
with the church folks once or twice on public
occasions of late.
After long days of waiting came these
words from Erle:
"The scent of violets had grown dear to
me. It is now hateful. You must know the
reason. I can say no more.”
Marcia struggled with her pride for a day
and then wrote:
"I had given you so much, Erle, that what
I gave him seemed nothing. He understood.
I am his friend, nothing more. He needs me.
Do not take me altogether from him. I may
not let even you do that, just yet.
you no faith in me?"
Have
A little note neither dated or signed. She
sent this out on its mission.
And Erle blind with his unreasoning jeal-
ousy, saw but one sentence. These words
alone meant anything to him:
"I may not let even you do that."
98
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
The end had come then. He would go
back to Europe; he would give volunteer
work in the worst fields. He threw the poor
little missive aside, without a second read-
ing. This is what he sent back:
66
'Keep your friend. I will not try to take
you from him.”
It was Mark who gave Marcia this missive.
In the neighborly fashion of the country, he
had brought the day's mail and this hap
pened to be in it.
He had chosen to see but little of Marcia
since that day on the bank by the water. A
few notes had passed between them. Marcia
urging him to be always true to his best.
He, promising to try, and, speaking of some
business proposition which had come from a
distance and which he thought of accepting.
The idea had come to him, and he could
no longer put it aside: "If Erle has lost
Marcia, may I not win her?”
He felt that her love would give him
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
99
?
strength to become whatever she would
desire and he knew his weaknesses. Poor,
poor fellow; He hardly knew how high
were the limits of possibility which Marcia
had set for him, and even those were nowhere
near the nature she could link herself to.
Looking at her now as he handed her the
letter he saw the eager, hungry eyes she
turned upon it.
"Read it," he said and turned away, gazing
down from the porch steps where he stood,
over the Eden-like beauty of the wooded
fields and hills stretching for miles before
him. At last he turned-she was holding
fast with both hands to the old-fashioned
door, the upper half of which was open. Her
eyes were shut and she was swaying as
though she would fall. In an instant he
forgot his own hurt. She was the best of
life to him even if she was another's.
He sprang across the porch and taking her
in his arms guided her to the sofa in the
100
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
square old hall. He disliked a fuss. He did
not know whether to call any one or not.
He thought she had fainted, but no, she
opened her eyes and closed them as though
reluctant to become conscious again. Ten-
derly he smoothed her hair back from her
forehead. He took her hands and chafed
them-by-and-by she smiled.
"It is all right, Mark. I am your friend
yet. You know—now go.'
99
He will never know the sacrifice she is
making to help him to the best that is in him.
Mark was in one of those bodily and spirit-
ual states wherein strong impressions are
sometimes given and received by some
strange power of magnetic currents. For
days after leaving Marcia he was haunted
by the look in her eyes when she took that
letter. Then that white face and those closed
eyelids and "your friend yet.”"
He began to see how much she had done
for him. Erle had demanded that she should
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
101
give him up and she had refused. Could he
permit this-was he so weak that he could
let her spoil her life and Erle's when she
could never complete his?
No, he would indeed prove to her his love.
He would go far away, among new scenes
and people and work out a new life for him-
self, and then she would be free, and in some
way Erle would know of it.
Erle had written to the Duncans telling
them he expected to sail soon, but Marcia
had not yet been told.
Mark, coming unexpectedly one evening,
learned all this when he reached the house.
He went into the cool west parlor, off the
square hall, fronting south, and lay down on
the sofa near the window opening to the west.
Soon he heard Marcia coming. He rose
and went out to meet her. She stopped just
inside the half-open door, where she had
stood that day when he had brought her the
letter.
102
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
"Marcia," he said, standing in front of her
with his hat crushed under his arm and hold-
ing out a handful of wild daisies, which she
took silently, smiling her thanks,—“I have
come to say good-by. I am going to-morrow.
You have been my salvation. It is no fault
of mine if I love you too well for my own
peace of mind. I have not let you know it
before by words, but I cannot help it now.
too, am a man like that other, jealous fool
that he is."
66
I
Hush, Mark, no more. He was right. I
have been blindly mistaken perhaps. Good-
by. You
You will make yourself worthy of
some good woman and God will send her to
you. Don't forget me, and remember that I
shall always love and pray for you.'
""
Marcia turned aside into the parlor, in
which all was dim in the twilight. She threw
herself on a chair by the window and put her
face on her arms across the sill.
The ideal had been very clear before her
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
103
and had shut out all hope of any personal
happiness from her. She had done her duty,
yet life was bare and empty.
Something
like this flashed into Marcia's consciousness,
as she sat there. By-and-by she said to her-
self: "Does He not say, 'Lo, I am with you
alway.' I will not despair, I will work."
She could not think Erle was lost to her
forever, and, even had she known that, she
would not have sent Mark from her.
She faced all the possible consequences of
her decision. She knew she loved Erle with
a love precluding such a love for Mark. Erle
had chosen to throw out the full strength
of the best in him to win her, and through
his determined, conscious presentation of his
spirit to her he had aroused an enduring and
life-giving love.
A nobler spirit might have won her; a
purer spirit have mated with hers more
equally, but none of these had come to her.
None had even recognized, with the peculiar
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recognition Erle had shown, the possibilities
of her soul.
Men-yes, good men, had asked her in mar-
riage, but they had not known what they
asked. She was a lovable woman and they
sought her, but they had not come as Erle
had come, showing her how the contact of
souls might lift, inspire and purify, should
she permit the ripening of friendship into a
deeper emotion.
She believed God had created for each soul
an affinity, that somewhere she should find
hers, and as soon as she was fitted to join
him, God would reveal him to her.
With Erle she felt a need of all her power.
She felt that, beside him, she would grow
and strengthen, and not last, with her, was
the knowledge that he needed her strong
perception of the unseen, to purify and en-
noble him.
She accepted the fact that Erle alone, of
all men, had awakened the most intense emo-
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY,
105
tions of her being. Knowing and feeling all
this, her decision was heroic. The courage
which led her to stand firm in her support
of Mark, in his weakness, because that sup-
port was a work accepted before she knew
the possible sacrifices involved, was the same
courage which has made heroes ever since
the world began, by self-sacrificing devotion
to the duty of the hour in the face of all
possible consequences. She was fulfilling the
promise of the past. She had said, “If I
live, my life shall show some good done.”
She believed all good done in the world
was by the passing from one to another of
the bread of life. The individual good of
one in contact with another.
If Erle was not willing to take his place
beside her, without disturbing her relations
already established in the spiritual world,
then the time was not yet ripe for the union
of their lives.
She rose and began to pace back and forth
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through the long room. Sad, lonely and
unhappy, yet clinging with all the strength
of her soul to the ideal, she felt that the
foundations of life were swaying beneath
her. She threw herself upon her knees and
prayed silently but passionately that God
would speak to her; that He would help her
to understand the right.
Again she was on her feet pacing up and
down in the effort to escape from the dark-
ness around her, but the confusion of
thought which beset her, threatened to en-
gulf her in its hopelessness. An hour passed
as she sought thus to regain that mastery
over herself which would enable her to meet
Hester as usual, and Marcia shrank even
from her kindly inquiries. Never before had
the sorrow of life assumed for her the guise
of actual anguish as at present. Trials she
had borne, to be sure, and tears were not
unknown, but she was taking upon herself
her first burden of actual misery.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
107
She felt the need of solitude to regain that
mental equilibrium which made self-con-
trol a possible thing. She must escape
notice for a time and regain her wonted
composure. She went up to her room and
sat down at the table on which her portfolio
lay open. She touched her pen and yet did
not take it up.
There are times, as we all know, when
under intense excitement, we find new powers
revealed within us. Thought plays over a
subject with a power of penetrating discern.
ment hitherto unknown to us. We feel that,
were we put to the test, even a fine creative
power would be ours. Were the task de-
manded we might bear some great bodily
fatigue or accomplish some great mental
labor. At such moments are revealed for
our encouragement the true capabilities of
our individual souls. And if we would but
accept the revelation as an actual goal and
press on patiently we should eventually
108
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
attain to all that has been so suddenly fore-
shadowed, but not until long after the com-
ing of the revelation.
In the average mind, thoughts do not
shape themselves easily into words. The
more complex and varied the suggestions
which arise the more difficult it becomes to
find clear expression for any one idea.
Thus it was that Marcia's soul seemed
yearning to express something, but could not
find relief in ordinary words. The crowd of
new thoughts, old memories and throbbing
emotions seemed a burden too great for her
to bear.
The impulse was strong within her to
express the rhythmic throbbings of her aching
heart, but she remembered former failures
and hesitated; unfinished attempts at the
expression of emotion in words less coldly
joined than in ordinary prose. To-night she
felt that passionate longing for expression
driven back upon itself, rising again only to
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109
be forced back while she walked to and fro
in her room, with white lips firmly closed
over her set teeth. Her hands clasped each
other convulsively; now and then her long
fingers twined together back of her head,
which pressed back against them, as though
she were bracing herself for a struggle. Fin-
ally she sank down upon the edge of her
bed, her hands still clasped, hanging idly
between her knees.
(6
Gone, gone forever," she sobbed. "I know
it, I feel it. He has gone to those men across
the sea, to live in an atmosphere of disease
and death. He will try to forget me. He
wishes to forget me. He thinks me like all
the rest, save that the sin, the deceit is not so
open. He believes that in me too are the
evil passions which he thinks rule the world
to-day. O God! How can I stand it," she
gasped, rising and pacing up and down the
long room again.
"Why do I love him! Why did I think
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he loved me! Where is the strength which
was to prove a safeguard until true nobility
should teach me love at its best! I despise
myself! I love a man who flees from me be-
cause-because-" she stopped in her rapid
walk and pictured again the scene as it must
have appeared to Erle. For an instant she
softened toward him, then recalling his de-
parture without one last word she gasped:
"I hate him! I am stifling! I must have air!"
Quickly she let herself out, ran to the
shore, sprang into the boat and pulled down
the stream with short, impetuous strokes.
Only when her blistered hands pained her
did she drop the oars and, sinking down
among the cushions in the bottom of the
boat, she looked up at the moon shining
calmly upon her. Then closing her eyes she
prayed for that peace which passeth all un-
derstanding, for that heavenly calm which is
promised to souls aweary and wrung with
anguish.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
111
Had God forsaken her? What had her
life been that she should merit such suffer-
ing? Must this ache remain forever?
The hush of the night, the wan moon shin-
ing so peacefully upon her, the lapping of
the water against the boat-all seemed to her,
at last, like the voice of nature saying to her
as it had been said long, long ago, “Peace,
be still."
And Marcia realized that a quieter mood
was stealing upon her; she was grateful and
felt that once more it was her privilege to
draw from the holy springs of comfort, which
for a time seemed to have been denied her.
Gently she lifted the oars and with quiet,
regular strokes pulled back to the landing.
Lighting her lamp she seated herself at
her table and after toying for a few moments
with her pen wrote:
"O Love! To thee, with ceaseless yearning,
My soul goes out, where'er thou art,
Each tender thought to thee is turning,
And fervent prayers fill all my heart.
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A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
"To God's good work life may be given,
Both thine and mine, and though the sea
May roll between, the goal of Heaven
Shines ever bright, and shines for thee.
'O'er us hath rolled a wave of feeling,
Too Heavenly dear, too sweet to last;
Our inner lives to each revealing;
The present closes o'er the past.
"But tears are vain and vain repining;
The clouds that lower above to-day,
To-morrow show their silver lining;
Good deeds shall chase all gloom away.
The cup from which, at fullest measure,
Thy soul, athirst, drank long and deep,
Still holds for thee its priceless treasure,
If ye the Master's precepts keep.
"Peace in my soul then rests forever;
I know and feel that love divine
Shall fill our lives with high endeavor,
And bring still closer thy soul and mine."
Marcia laid down her pen, glanced over
the lines she had written, folded the sheet,
placed it in an envelope, sealed it, and open-
ing her portfolio dropped it into a pocket
and turned the key.
Moving to the window she stood for a
moment looking up at the stars, pale and
worn, but on her face a spirituelle expression,
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
113
which made her radiantly beautiful, and told
of the victory which she had gained through
that faith in Christ which had seemed so far
away but one short hour before.
PART THIRD.
The longing, the delay and the delight,
Sweeter for the delay; youth, hope, love, death,
And disappointment-which is also death,
All these make up the sum of human life."
LONGFELLOW.
As a rule, women of this age are apt to
come to an understanding of their own mo-
tives earlier in life than men. The statement
that they never know their own minds is a
false one. They know only too well what
they want, and because of this knowledge
they develop into individuals much sooner
than men. The calibre of the woman, even
though it may be small, is fixed earlier in life
than with man.
Erle, though five years older than Marcia,
was much younger in development. As has
been indicated, the tendencies of the man
were, on the whole, toward the good, and he
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A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
had rested upon this knowledge in an in-
active way.
A superb self-assurance had apparently
been the out-growth of this belief of his,
that, given tendencies being right, the man
would be good enough.
Since knowing Marcia, there had often
been very troubled depths in his thoughts,
and this self-assurance was not as deeply
rooted as it seemed. He had come to ac-
knowledge an unexpected and rather un-
welcome element in himself; an unbidden
questioner, as it were, had arisen and chal-
lenged him to a reconsideration of questions
long since dismissed from his mind. He no
longer felt himself securely anchored in the
stream of life. He found that, would he
regain his former ground of careless repose,
he must first grapple with and overcome cer-
tain questionings which had seized upon him,
and would not let him go.
Being without vicious tendencies, he was
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119
all the more apt to fall a victim to certain
temptations, because he was not actively on
guard against them. If at last he succeeded
in ennobling this nature, which is common
to all, by the reception of something better,
and purer, and stronger, the story of his
struggle and attainment may aid and en-
courage others in what all will admit is
inevitably before them.
Young men may intrench themselves be-
hind a bulwark of fallacies regarding each
other and suppose they have sufficiently pro-
tected and supported their individual rights
as men, but the spirit of truth which is en-
lightening this age is stronger than all the
accumulative force of tradition and custom.
Because one young man says of another:
"Oh! he's all right." "Let him alone."
"Men are men." "He is good enough as the
world goes," or some such evasive answer,
which is intended to stand as a screen be-
tween the weak and disappointing struggles
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A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
with temptation and the world; it does not
follow that, unknown to the world, the spirit
of truth is not making evident to the indi-
vidual combatant the far-reaching and mo-
mentous issues of each battle. They may de-
ceive others, but few are themselves deceived.
All, sooner or later, learn that there is good
and evil in the world, and that, sooner or
later, choice must be made, and that the
choice is attended with a decided effort in
placing themselves in an environment of
good, or out of an environment of evil.
The stronger the tendencies and the more
sensitive the nature of the man, the less he
cares to feel that his battle is perceived by
indifferent or critical eyes. Yet, even to
such, the suddenly revealed and silent sym-
pathy of some good friend, man or woman,
comes like a breath of life from heaven,
strengthening and encouraging to renewed
effort.
A man, whose reputation for unselfish de-
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121
votion for the good of his sex may not be of
the best, will, at times step out of his way,
unobserved, as he thinks, to restrain from
and draw out of an alluring temptation,
some man whose knowledge of life is less.
extended than his own.
He might not seek to avoid temptation in
his own path, because he deemed that the
sweep of the current, through habitual yield-
ing, had become too strong for him, but he
would so far acknowledge what had once
been possible to himself that he would wish
success to attend the efforts of another where
he had failed. To such a man the possibility
of resistance is still open.
Erle's nature was the result of a peculiar
combination of elements, which, while con-
tradictory in themselves, were coming to
modify and regulate each other in him, until
a certain Herculean force showed itself, when
his energy was once fairly aroused. Joined
to an ardent, sanguine temperament, he had
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an inherited, lazy love of that beauty which
appeals to the senses; harmony of color and
form, and sweet sounds, with all that desire
of ease which a love for the beautiful tends
to develop in one.
His career would probably have been vis-
ionary and unpractical had not his puritani-
cal training served in the double capacity of
check and spur.
All that generations of such training could
bring him, through heredity, from his
mother's side of the house, was necessary to
restrain the pleasure-loving impulses derived
from his father, in whom these impulses
might have become lawless had not his natu-
ral integrity and purity of principle been
strengthened by an iron will. But after all,
what is the use of going back thus into what-
ever may be the why and wherefore! Let
each debt to heredity stand out, distinctly
charged to its proper source, and we are yet
confronted by the sum total of all, in the
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123
person of the same man with possibly an
added touch of individuality at the last,
which, by its presence, gives us a new prob-
lem in humanity.
In Erle it would have been a difficult task
to trace all the motives for his various
actions. It is enough to present a truthful
picture of the man as he would have appeared
to any close observer during this period.
Once taken possession of by this passionate
jealousy, the very reaction from the usual
sluggishness of his nature only made it still
more furious. Since, through its influence,
the senses were carried to extremes from
which it was more difficult to regain their
normal tone than might have been the case
with a man of less intensity.
Erle was more or less a man of the world.
There is a saving clause in the statement, in
the fact that he knew enough good men who
were not of this sort, to have acquired a firm
belief in, and admiration for their kind. But
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A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
they had not yet led him to believe in their
views of things. The opportunity for mak
ing a trip in the company of such a man led
Erle to hasten his departure from New York.
He had known Dr. Jacob Flagg as a prac-
tising physician, when he was a medical
student. Flagg was, like many in his pro-
fession, a philanthropist, in that he gave a
great deal of work to people from whom he
would never take pay. It was, he thought,
the tithe he owed. Some men would have
ended the sentence by saying, "to humanity,"
but Dr. Flagg, if he finished it all, would
have added simply, "to the Lord.'
It was said in the matter of fact way which
another man would have used if he had sub-
stituted my employer" or "the company."
(6
The man seemed giving an out and out work
to the world and not caring greatly how
much return he got for it just now.
It was this earnestness and a happy assur
ance that the return was sure to come, some
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
125
way or another, because the Creator's ways are
equal, that had drawn Erle to him, years ago.
His only child, a daughter, had married.
His wife was dead and his own health was
better at sea than elsewhere; so he had
become the surgeon of a ship, on one of the
regular lines. Then, too, there was the chance
of extra work among the steerage passengers
and sailors. He did not always wait for
people to tell him they were ill, but when he
saw an ailing young mother or a too devoted
daughter or an over-tried, sorry-hearted man,
he would greet them in a kindly, sympathetic
way, and with a tact very rare in men, draw
from them their troubled stories and, with
some little anecdote, in their own tongue,
leave them with smiles upon their faces or
tears in their eyes.
It was next this man that Erle took his
place at the long table, in the saloon, at the
first meal on shipboard. Across the table
and a little further down, sat two women,
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A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
evidently mother and daughter. The younger
one called the other "Mrs. Moss," and Mrs.
Moss in turn called the younger one "My
dear" or "My child." Other evidence of the
relationship was wanting. Though the lady
addressed as Mrs. Moss was much older than
the other, her color was so fresh, her laugh
so gay, her manner so girlish, her face so
free from care, that, but for a set of teeth a
little too dead white and even, and an inclina-
tion to grow stout, she might easily have
passed for a woman of thirty and a sister
instead of a mother.
But if the mother's face was free from all
trace of care, her daughter's was not so.
There was an anxious uplifting of the eye-
brows, a slight knitting of the brow between
the eyes that betokened a constant state of
anxious expectancy.
This daughter's name was Clara.
Dr. Flagg was speaking to Erle and had
called him by name, when the attention of
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
127
the two men was first drawn to them by an
exclamation from Mrs. Moss.
"Erle?" She repeated, turning to her
daughter. "Can it be possible? Do you
suppose that he can be the son of my dear
friend Mrs. Erle, of whom you have heard me
speak so often?"
There was a still higher lifting of the eye-
brows, as Miss Moss caught the remark, in-
tended not alone for her. She was very sure,
if there ever had been any Mrs. Erle of her
mother's acquaintance, she had never called
Mrs. Moss "dear friend." Ladies of culture
were not apt to speak of her in that way, and
Erle looked as though his mother must have
been one.
Still she said nothing. Mrs. Moss was a
woman of strong fancies, swayed by impulse
rather than reason, and her fancy had been
attracted toward Erle rather more than
toward any other man at the table. She had
once met a Mrs. Erle, to whose politeness she
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A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
owed one of the pleasantest half-hours she
had ever spent among her own sex. They
had met at a country sewing society to which
Mrs. Moss had ventured, because she hap-
*pened to know she would encounter a certain
gentleman there whom she wanted to see.
Mrs. Moss had fastened upon Mrs. Erle as
the most attractive person in the room, and,
Mrs. Erle being a stranger, did her best to
entertain one to whom she saw the others
were none too kind. After the meal was
over, Mrs. Moss worked her way to the door
before Erle could reach it and extending her
hand to him as he approached, said:
"I am sure your dear mother and I were
friends, if I heard your name correctly. Erle,
is it not?"
"Yes," assented Erle.
"How much like her you look!”
Now Erle knew his likeness to his mother
was not strong, but it pleased him, as Mrs.
Moss knew it would, to hear her say so.
1
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
129
He did not feel like denying the claim she
made, because he was so lonely that any one
who could speak of his mother to him was
welcome. She walked beside him, chatting
gayly, he responding in monosyllables, until
she turned suddenly and drew her daughter
into the conversation.
"You see, doctor, how I can feel for you
since your mother's death, for I said to
myself as soon as I made up my mind who
you were, 'suppose he were my Clara;' I
mean, you know, suppose she, poor child,
were left all alone. Clara, I really think you
would die." Clara looked rather indifferent
and acknowledged Erle's bow a little too
gushingly he thought. She took his hand
in both hers and said, “I am so glad to know
you, Doctor Erle."
She concluded she might as well accept
the dear-friend theory, since it did not seem
incongruous to Erle.
"Dear Mamma has so often told me of
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A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
your mother that I feel I too knew her.
What a charming person she must have
been!"
Up to this time Erle had not been un-
pleasantly impressed by the two, but at this
unhappy attempt at conversation, he re-
coiled. Could his mother have been a "dear
friend" to a woman like Mrs. Moss; an
unrefined, uncultivated, vain woman? He
hardly thought so.
The daughter was not entirely displeasing,
but he wished she would discriminate better
in her manner of speech.
No one more companionable had yet ap-
peared, and Erle allowed himself to be
dragged on, until he found himself arranging
seats for them and was actually offering his
services in one way or another.
Very soon Mrs. Moss sent Clara on an
errand to her stateroom and used the oppor-
tunity she had made to say: "My darling
Clara is so sensitive and she is seldom at ease
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
131
with strangers. I am so glad we have met
you. Her trip be will so much more charm-
ing."
It was well Clara did not hear this, as she
would have found it difficult to look her
part.
This was the first time her mother had
adopted just these tactics. However, Mrs.
Moss was not lacking in discernment, and she
saw Erle must be carefully baited before he
could be caught for any kind of easy com-
panionship as she intended.
He excused himself after a time, and went
in search of Dr. Flagg.
"An old friend of your mother's is she?"
said Flagg when Erle joined him.
"I believe so."
"See here, Erle, I never knew your mother,
but I don't think she would have chosen a
woman like that for a friend."
Why, Flagg, perhaps she is not so bad--
needs toning down, but good enough at heart,
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A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
I guess. My mother may have been sorry
for her."
"Take my word, boy," said the doctor with
a twinkle in his eye, "she needs the sorrow
of any good woman."
'Oh! come on, Flagg. Let me go down
below with you.”
Doctor Flagg was only too glad to let Erle
make his round with him among the steerage
passengers.
There were some babies quite ill and it
was hot and stifling down there. The two
men soon forgot the matter, busy with their
charitable work. When they once more
went on deck they had it to themselves.
They smoked their cigars for a while, rather
silently, and then: "Let us turn in" came
from Dr. Flagg, and Erle, because he hoped
he might forget, for a few hours at least,
Went too.
The next morning, at breakfast, Erle was
surprised and not too well pleased to find
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133
that, in some way, Mrs. Moss had effected a
change of seats at the table and now settled
beside him, saying: "Doctor, Clara is so
homesick that I brought her over here where
she would feel a little more among friends."
However, it was not Clara who sat beside
Erle, but the mother. There was a new face
across the table now, and as Erle looked up
and saw the quiet repose upon it, the frank,
questioning eyes, beneath the widow's cap,
he felt for one moment that his own mother
was before him. And then too she smiled so
sweetly to him when he showed her any
slight courtesy, that he felt drawn out toward
her at once. However, he could not be rude
to these women who had made the first claim
on him.
He answered Mrs. Moss' questions as
pleasantly as he could, all the while hoping
that her coarseness might escape the notice of
the lady opposite, or at least that she might
not associate him with them as a relative.
134
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
He was glad when at last the meal was
over.
(6
'Doctor, we shall see you soon!" they
exclaimed together as they left the table.
"I am afraid not this morning, ladies,
Doctor Flagg has some work for me," said
Erle with cool politeness.
"Oh! I hope there is no serious illness on
board, is there?" Mrs. Moss exclaimed.
"Some little babies among the steerage
passengers are quite ill and the mothers are
tired out, poor things."
Erle said this in hopes of hearing some
offer of help from the two which would have
pleased him, even if it had not been ac-
cepted, but the offer was not forthcoming.
"Oh, we thought it might be something
serious, something contagious," said Mrs.
Moss, as she and Clara passed out. Yet this
woman was not void of good, generous im
pulses; they bent her to themselves at times,
as they do all people; but they failed to
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
135
govern her life for lasting good. Impulses
always do fail one sooner or later, if there is
no pure actuating principle back of them.
These two in most things worked for each
other's interest, excepting that there were
times when Clara, doubtful of her mother's
policy, remained non-committal, till she knew
how the other's advances would be received.
She was always ready to tack and apologize
if necessary. One day when her mother had
boldly stopped at the door of the captain's
room and intimated her desire to enter and
examine its various appliances, packed with
such skill in so small a space, "yet all so
business-like, so cozy," as she termed it,
Clara was quick to discover the rebuff await-
ing her if she persisted. The captain's brow
knit ominously and he stood with scant
courtesy, silent, his pen suspended and his
attitude threatening, till Clara, seeing there
had been a mistake made, said:
"Oh! Captain, mamma is so interested in
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A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
all scientific works, you know, you must
excuse her."
Then she piloted her mother off with the
adroit suggestion that she thought she sav
Erle on the other side of the vessel and
perhaps he was looking for them.
Erle had discovered how very slight must,
have been the ground on which Mrs. Moss
based that "very dear friendship." That
device had long since ceased to attract him,
yet there was a careless, inviting freedom in
their company which was not without its
charm to a young man, and Erle felt at lib-
erty to make their companionship a con-
venience without a troubled conscience.
The mother was old enough to take care of
herself and the daughter too, if she chose.
There was no danger of his marrying either
of them. Oh! dear, no. Every one knows
how pleasant it is to receive the attention of
a gentleman one likes, but most people would
rather go without it than to make the strife
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
137
after it apparent. This is only a little matter
of training and disposition perhaps, but it
cannot be overcome. Mrs. Moss and her
daughter were not burdened by any inherited
or acquired prejudices of this kind. They
wanted to be amused and waited on and were
willing to sacrifice such slight considerations
as delicacy or truth, or other people's con-
venience, without for a moment thinking of
them. As for Mrs. Moss, even Clara did not
fully understand the mood upon her.
Erle's strong, young, magnetic beauty had
drawn a more genuine admiration from this
woman of fleeting attachments than was
usual with her; and this woman, day after
day, consumed by her selfish vanity, strove
to draw Erle into associations from which all
that was best in him shrank with distaste.
The poor young mothers down below had
learned to welcome Erle's coming, for often
he would take the poor, little, suffering,
moaning babies up in his strong arms and
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carry them up and down the narrow passages,
or rock them back and forth till they slept.
in his arms, but in spite of the attention, on
the fifth day out, one of the babies died.
It was the mother's only child and she was
alone. Erle stood looking at the broken
hearted, sobbing mother as the little body
sank forever out of sight, in the sea. He was
thinking how beyond control were so many
of life's affairs, and feeling how gladly he
would have changed places with that little
dead baby if he could. He cared so little
what came next, and the restoration of that
child would bring so much happiness to the
mother's heart.
It was starlight when he went up on deck,
and as he stood smoking at the rail, a touch
was laid upon his arm. Very close beside
him stood Mrs. Moss, who said, laughing and
pouting:
"Really, Erle, I fancied those women with
their dead babies had quite won you from me.'
""
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
139
O ye good women! forgive her if you can.
O ye mothers! like the one whom God had
given to Erle, find pity for her in your
hearts, if you can. You whose true, tender
faces, as they pass through a crowded room or
along the busy street, make the whole world
cleaner and better for the passing glimpse,
have mercy upon her in her unfaithfulness
to the daughter she had borne.
But she failed signally in her part just
here. She could not guess the battle raging
in the heart of the man beside her. In the
stern silence which followed, she saw that
she had erred.
She turned her face away and loosening a
handkerchief from the folds of her dress, she
feigned the tears, which she hoped would·
move the man's nature.
It was a little thing to turn the current of
this strong man's life, but as she held the
filmy stuff against her face the breeze caught
from its folds the delicate scent of English
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violets; brought it to Erle's senses and for
the moment stunned him, as though a hand
had been laid upon his heart.
The memory of a strong, pure, beautiful
face, full of love, rose up before him. The
breeze of the hills blew over his brow and
whatever influence the woman at his side
may have gained, it was gone forever. She
had been playing a skilful game, but she had
lost.
At that moment, Erle realized how the
meshes of the net she had spread for him
had been one by one closing around him, and
gasped at the possible consequences had not
his awakening come at the right time.
He uttered no reproaches; he spoke no
word of the evil she had almost brought upon
him. He was an American and Americans
are slow to utter the thoughts which shape
their actions; slow to reveal the motive power
behind their actions; still slower in permit-
ting the purity of their souls to look up
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141
against the evil which would drag them
down.
With scant courtesy, Erle almost staggered
away from the side of the woman who was
tempting him to forget all that was possible
for good in his life. He reeled and almost
fell. He steadied himself and went on over
the long, silent deck, to the companion way.
As he drew near to the door of the cabin,
Doctor Flagg met him.
"What's the matter, Erle?"
a woman's figure pass outside.
he muttered to himself.
Then he saw
"That devil,"
He took Erle's arm and led him into his
own stateroom.
“Now boy, it's all right," and he drew his
hand gently across Erle's forehead, standing
beside the berth on which he was lying.
"All right? I wish to Heaven it were," and
Erle, at the touch, gentle as a woman's, and
the tender tone, turned upon his face and
unrestrained by the presence of others, shook
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with convulsive sobs. Who shall say, but
that in this hour of contrition, the angel
face of his mother bent over him in tender
compassion! Who shall say that Marcia's
spirit did not stand beside him, to encourage
and strengthen him. The spirit from the
future, and the spirit from the present met,
perhaps, beside the soul they loved and the
powers of evil fled before them.
You, who would challenge the truth as it
stands, have yet to learn that it is not the
full truth of a battle fought and won, of a
spirit tempted but victorious, which can
harm the world, but the petty cavilling, which
would keep such struggles unrevealed. The
poor half-truth which pretends to hide while
it reveals the weakness of our natures, but
denies the glory of the victory which seeks
to voice itself.
You, who would say the truth has not
been told as it is, have yet to learn that there
are yet unrevealed depths in God's truth,
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143
which only your own poverty of spirit shuts
you off from entering into and beholding.
And you, blessed mothers, God aid you in
giving to the world those treasures, precious
above the price of rubies, good, true, tender,
loving men and women.
It was well on in the night, when Erle,
with the look upon his face that long sick-
ness sometimes gives, and a contest of the
spiritual and earthly always brings, rose up
and bade Doctor Flagg good-night.
Before Erle went out he said: "To think
that I should have set myself up as Marcia's
judge.”
"My boy," said Flagg, looking at Erle
searchingly and kindly, "if you have learned
your lesson, go back to her as soon as you
can. The love of a truly good woman is not
easily won, but once gained it is not easily
lost. Before taking steps of vital import-
ance, it is well to be sure you have certainly
lost that love,”
144
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
The
His
It was not principle which led Erle to
resist the fascinations of this woman.
resistance came at last involuntarily.
mood had changed. He was in that blind
whirl, beyond the limits of reason, where his
only rescue lay in an appeal to the senses.
The appeal came and it did for him what
cool reasoning would have failed to do. It
led to a victory; but if temptation again
should beset him it would be reason which
would resist it, because of the assurance
gained of what was possible for him, and
after a time reason would grow into a fixed
principle which would shield him so that at
any time he might withdraw from it, through
the ever-open way of escape, into an environ-
ment of truth and divine love.
The next day was the Sabbath and Doctor
Flagg, who often read the service, was re-
lieved by the young clergyman who had
read the burial services for the dead baby.
He was on his way with his wife to visit
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
145
her family in Germany, and as there were
but few passengers, they had come to know
and be known by nearly all on board. Mr.
and Mrs Perry were a noticeable couple;
he, for a physique strikingly proportioned,
large, powerful and well developed, a noble
head and a face with as sweet and pure a
soul looking out of his fine eyes as a man
ever bore; she for a captivating loveliness of
manner and far-reaching sympathy which
penetrated to every heart. She had been so
full of devices for the general comfort and
amusement of the passengers, so full of
bright laughter, and general good cheer, that
the Captain had said he would run ten trips
to carry one such passenger.
Erle was curious to know what this young
divine, who looked the man, might have to
say to these different souls. A few plati-
tudes probably, a few trite thoughts of no
new import to him.
It was too much to expect that this man
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should have anything to say which might
affect him, yet he was craving anew that
purifying spiritual atmosphere he had left
behind him with Marcia, and his voice
attracted him.
Erle drew up to the outside of the group
where he could watch the play of his features
and catch each word. The singing had
already stirred him. At sea, thus, in the
open air, with the men's voices (even his
own) joining so heartily, he felt the spirit of
the hour moving him to an almost involun-
tary and instinctive act of worship. Mr.
Perry lifted his hands in an attitude of
prayer. Erle bowed his head.
"Father, Thou who holdest this ship in
thy hand and dost permit her to ride in
safety upon the bosom of the vast ocean,
Thou in whose hands are the issues of life
and death; bless us now.
"Thou who didst create us in thine own
image-Thy sons-Sons of God; Thou who
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
147
hast taken of Thy divine nature and made it
ours; who hast enshrined in the temple of
our bodies Thy soul, lean now down to us,
in tender pity and love.
“In pity that in ignorance we oft defile and
profane these bodies which should be Thy
dwelling place. And in that everlasting,
tender love Thou hast made possible to us,
draw us unto Thyself, that we may partake
of the privileges of Thy sons once more, and
so receive anew by acts of faith and love Thy
gift of inheritance.
"Bless us, cheer us and forgive us this hour
for Jesus' sake. Amen."
Was it the speaker's magnetism or a
homelier way of putting things than is usual,
that drew Erle into complete sympathy with
the mood of the man? He began to see
clearly what had, until now, been a con-
fused mass of mental and spiritual sugges-
tions.
The living truth began to formulate itself
148
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in his mind and his soul to become a known
quantity.
He listened eagerly, yes anxiously for that
which was to come. Then this young clergy-
man, simply, earnestly, and without a trace
of the mannerism so apt to mar the truth,
began to speak.
"Friends, has it ever occurred to you why
we men enter the ministry? Why we, who
are your brothers, dare to stand before you
to instruct?"
Yes, that had often occurred to Erle. He
fell into a reverie and for a while heard, but
did not listen to the words of the preacher.
When at last he aroused, Mr. Perry was
saying in those clear tones:
"If we are pure in heart, what does it
mean? How shall we know if we are pure in
heart? It is known by its singleness of
purpose, by the desire for truth and upright-
ness above all else. A desire so strong that
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
149
all would be sacrificed which might come
between our souls and God.
"Any soul which has reached this point of
self-renunciation must attain to a knowledge
of the truth; must see God, who is truth, and
through Him become pure in heart, for so
God has promised."
Then Erle lost the thread of the talk again
as he looked down into the depths of his own
heart.
A year before he would have turned in-
differently from any statement which could
have affected the basis on which any action
of his rested. Now his whole heart was
enlisted in this spiritual quest. It had
always been the negative side of spiritual
things which had been presented to him,
now the positive appealed to him.
"The soul, fed with the Bread of Life, can
rend the veil, and at last man stands, forget-
ful of the flesh, confronting God.
"Let us purify and make heavenly, the
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aspirations of our souls by worthier sacrifices,
by the sacrifice Christ made, the sacrifice of
the will of the body to the will of God.
When the will of the body would draw us
into the commission of some sin against the
life of the soul, let us sacrifice the will of the
material to the will of the immaterial in us.
This is what has been made possible to us by
the death of Christ."
Thus he spoke and as the words fell from
his lips, the veil which had so long hung
over Erle's soul, began to drop away, his
instinctive perceptions of the good began to
return, and he felt that in time he might
come to know the divine as Marcia knew it.
This knowledge no longer represented the
undesirable in life, for, through it, all things
became ennobled and life was transformed
into a glorious day. Then came this, in
closing:
66
Every one of us may enter into the holy
communion with God which he has vouch-
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
151
safed, by doing this day His will. Holding
to the truth because it is truth, according to
each one's own individual perception of it.
And believing that as surely as you would
receive an invisible current of electricity,
when in the proper relations, just so surely
will you receive this promised current of
divine life-vitality of body as well as soul—
if you will but touch, by your acts, that ever-
lasting fountain of all life, Christ the truth.
"The world has learned how to handle and
control the many invisible material agencies
abroad in it, so by constant endeavor it must
learn how to utilize the immaterial. He,
who has made all else, stands ready to renew
both body and soul, and make us again sons
of God. Amen.”
One after another they quietly turned and
walked away. Silence fell upon the long
deck; not a sound was heard, save the wash
of the waves against the ship's sides.
To Erle, in those few moments, had come a
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revelation. He sought his stateroom and fell
upon his knees. He asked for that divine
light which should make clear his path. He
prayed for that purity of heart which should
make him a worthy laborer in the field of
the Lord. It was not that Mr. Perry had
been so impressive, for there were others who
had heard him and who had not heeded, but
in Erle's case the soil was ready for the
seed and it had brought forth an hundred
fold.
God often draws his ministers on to speak
even wiser than they know. And so it had
been this day. When Erle went again to
the steerage with the doctor, the poor young
mother who had lost her baby looked at him
in vague wonder.
Was the man with those determined, shin-
ing eyes, the same who had turned from the
sea, when the water closed over her baby,
with a look of tired indifference, dishearten-
ing to her, to whom he had tried for days to
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
153
give a hope? She thought it could not be.
66
"The hidden man of the heart" had already
sprung into life and was visible in Erle's
face. Marcia's dream of bettering the world
was being realized.
When a man like Erle passes through an
experience in life which disturbs all his pre-
conceived ideas of himself; when all the fresh
tenderness of his heart has been revealed to
him as Erle's had been, if it has been because
of some fault of his own, he finds an impulse
of penitence seizing upon him, which shows
how the child still lives in the man. Erle
wanted to go back and throw himself down
on his knees by Marcia and beg her to for-
give him. He felt this when he left Doctor
Flagg that night; but when morning came
the man's way of looking at things had par-
tially returned to him. He said to himself,
"I will wait awhile and see what this new
impulse means. I will recover myself before
I go back to her."
154
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
So he ran up to Scotland and then went
here and there, yearning to return to Marcia,
yet striving vainly to revive the old anger
against her, though he did not admit this
even to himself.
All the time he found himself thinking
how sweet and happy had been those weeks
on the hills, among the rocks, and the sweet
ferns, across the sea, where the spring sun-
light had seemed to draw all the best of him
to the surface, where new life and expression
had burst forth just as the buds and blos-
soms do, rejoicing at the return of the life-
giving atmosphere.
At last he could bear the restraint no
longer. He said "good-by" to every one
and returned to New York.
Doctor Goldwaith had written that he
would be glad to see Erle filling his place.
He wanted to retire gradually, and a partner-
ship for a year would give Erle an oppor-
tunity to see how the life suited him and yet
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
155
not involve the labor of the entire practice
all at once.
This idea was welcomed by Erle. It seemed
a legitimate excuse for returning. He would
go up to St. George, the railroad station
nearest the Duncan's and Doctor Gold-
waith's, and discuss the subject with the
doctor before he asked any questions or
sought to see Marcia.
He would ask a little time to think over
the matter and then he would go over to the
Duncan's and see her.
The old doctor was just coming out to his
buggy as Erle walked up to the door. Put-
ting both hands on Erle's shoulders the doc-
tor greeted him heartily, then turned back
and led Erle out of the hot sun into the cool
rooms within. "Thought you were on the
other side. When did you get back?" said
he looking kindly at Erle.
Yesterday, Doctor, and I came up to see
if that partnership is still open."
156
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
"Yes, indeed! When an old man takes a
fancy into his head, it is not easy to get rid
of it again, and I have wished every day you
had stayed with me."
"Well, Doctor, I think if you want me I
shall try the experiment!"
"All right, my boy; of course you'll spend
the night with me and we'll talk it over. I
was going down to see a bad case, as you
came up, and it's near the Duncan's; I sup-
pose you will be going there to call? We
will have tea first, then you can go along."
The house at which they called, half an
hour later, was John Barrow's, but Erle did
not know it.
His time for recreation, while at the Dun-
can's had been so limited and his walks had
been so often alone, it very naturally hap
pened that he knew nothing of the father of
the man who had roused his jealousy. Ho
did not learn this until they were in the
house and Dr. Goldwaith said: "This way,
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
157
""
please, one moment. If you will excuse me,
I will see how Mr. Barrow is and call you.
He showed Erle into a little low-ceiled room
on the left of the small hallway and went
across the two steps that measured the entry,
as it was called, and softly opening a door
opposite, went in and shut it after him.
The room Erle was in was a parlor, but
showed signs of being principally cared for
by men. Odds and ends, slippers and piles
of old newspapers lay on a chair near the
head of the long, black, haircloth sofa by the
window, where it was evident some one was
in the habit of lying to read. The shutters
were all closed excepting at one of two front
windows which opened upon the long, high
porch, with a flight of wide steps leading
down to the stone flags below. These were
more or less covered by the droppings of
buds, leaves, blossoms, and seeds from a
gigantic balm-of-Gilead tree, which rose
directly at the foot of the porch and towered
158
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
up, overshadowing the little low house,
making a picturesque place out of the small,
plain, unassuming little farm house. It was
set high on the side hill and the stone wall
which terminated at the foot of it made a
tempting corner in which to sit during the
early evening. Presently Doctor Goldwaith
came back and beckoning Erle to follow him,
led him into the other room, where Mr.
Barrow lay tossing in pain and delirium.
He was a man of sixty, large and gray, and
showing the ravages of disease. Over him
bent Mark, trying to still his restless moan-
ings. Mark turned and bowed as Erle came
forward, but said nothing.
Erle examined the invalid critically and
then turned to Dr. Goldwaith.
"Doctor," he said, "one of us, you or I,
must stay. I will do so if you like, he needs
close watching."
"Very well, I have something I must attend
to first. You stay now and I will come later,"
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
159
Then he went away, leaving these two to-
gether, whose hearts were so embittered
against each other, to keep their silent watch.
"Marcia! Marcia!" called Mr. Barrow.
Mark endeavored to quiet him. He would
have preferred that Dr. Goldwaith should
bring any man but Erle just now to hear
his father's raving.
"Marcia, why did you go without coming
to see me?'
66
""
Father," said Mark, hoping to quiet him,
"Father, you know she had to go. Dr.
Goldwaith sent her, she will come again be-
fore long."
There was silence for a while, then the
same sad call. Erle could only think that
he had come too late; that Marcia already
belonged to these men, and he thought, “How
can I bear it to lose her now!" The full
force of her influence over him became ap-
parent to him.
He ran back over his intercourse with her
160
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
from the first night he saw her. He began
to feel again the charm of her bright presence,
to feel her leading him up into her own
world of love and peace. Again he felt her
purity, her strength of purpose as she had
revealed it to him in those afternoons on the
rocks, especially that afternoon which had
burned itself into his very being and he be-
gan to know his own unworthiness of her.
He saw that he might never hope to deserve
her love, but all the more passionately he de-
sired it. He wanted to tell her of this new
worship for her which had come to him; but
he had put himself beyond the power of so
doing. He had deliberately, cruelly, he now
thought, repulsed her love, at a critical
moment. He had flung her into the very
arms of this man he knew nothing of; this
man who might even now perhaps call her
his own; who might be hating his presence
because it prevented him from sending for
her at once.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
161
Thus he tortured himself. He remem-
bered how she had asked him if he had never
known a love so strong it would give all it
held dearest, if by so doing it could benefit
the one he loved. He could hear his own
answer now. How he had said to her, “I
think I might feel a love like that some
day." Was his love really as strong as that
now? Could he give her up and be content
with making himself worthy of her friend-
ship only?
He asked himself these questions, not wait-
ing for the answers. And Mark, what could
he do or say to tell Erle the truth? He was
ignorant of how matters stood between them
and was afraid to say too much. Had the
two men but known it, Dr. Goldwaith had
taken matters into his own hands, and Marcia,
with Mrs. Lang, Mark's aunt, was on her way
to St. George, bringing with her both joy
and sorrow.
In the face of all the world's philosophies
162
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
these two elements go hand in hand, some-
times strengthening, sometimes weakening
the moral courage and making or marring
the inner lives of most of God's human
creatures. That joy and sorrow which, with
mystic power, plays upon the hidden springs
of daily action in the lives of the masses,
lives untouched in any direct way by the
world of letters and urged only to a little
stronger play of the emotions for good or
evil by the reflex action of the same.
This is a wonderful age to live in. One
hundred years ago, who would have thought
that on every seventh day, so large a propor-
tion of the souls upon this globe would be
occupied with the same thoughts, upon the
same subject. And what is portended by
this silent flashing of the light of the Holy
Spirit into the hearts of an expectant, recep-
tive humanity?
What does this coming of the gospel of
regeneration, of love, of peace, to hungry, dis-
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
163
satisfied, restless souls all over the world,
mean?
Simply that, ere long, those that hunger
shall be satisfied; they will no longer spend
their labor for that which satisfieth not and
their money for that which is not meat.
Old people who thought years ago that
their lives were past all change, suddenly
seem to grow young again. They develop
new ideas.
One must speak thoughtfully of the
American type. There is an individuality of
character among Americans which is apt to
lead one astray.
I do not think that Marcia is of any pe-
culiar type.
She is only one among ten
thousand, but she represents a phase of de-
velopment which is not the less to be desired
because it is becoming less rare. There was
an effort in her life to balance the component
parts of her nature. In other words, she
strove to harmonize mind, spirit, and body,
1
164
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
and get as even a life as was possible from
the constantly recurring warfare between the
intellectual, the spiritual and the material.
Her nature was intense and earnest, but too
well trained to reach extremes. The mental
and spiritual perception of the highest good,
as indicated by her in the lines written on
that night of passionate farewell, brought her
temporary rest but not permanent peace of
mind. There is the systole and diastole of
life as well as of the heart. Expansion and
contraction, action and reaction, giving and
receiving.
Marcia emerged from the darkness of that
night fresh and strong, and beautiful. It
was because of the perception of what might
await her, after faithful, patient years of
endeavor; but after this expansion of her
faculties to their widest, fullest point of
tension, then the systole recurred; the con-
tracting, the narrowing again of all that ful-
ness of life. Then, following this, the more
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
165
even running of the currents of thought and
feeling.
Mark and Erle were aroused at last from
their silent vigil by the opening of the outer
door. As they turned, Marcia entered the
outer room.
Erle drew back into the shadow, a flood of
opposing inclinations playing with his self-
possession, as the wind plays with a leaf in
a storm. Mark, with a sigh of relief, went
out to greet her, as she advanced slowly
toward the open fire on the hearth, which
had been the one bright and shining feature
of the little sitting room and the sight of
which had made Erle happier, lending a tinge
of hopefulness even to the past hours of un-
happy musing.
"Who sent for you, Marcia ?" Erle heard
Mark say.
"Doctor Goldwaith. Mr. Duncan is here
He has gone to speak to O'Neal
with me.
and his wife.”
166
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
Mark knew Marcia was out of Erle's sight,
as she now sat in a low chair by the fire, and
looking down at her, he said in a low tone:
"Do you know that Doctor Erle is here?"
pointing to the little inner room.
Oh! that sudden glad opening of the eyes,
that happy quickening of the breath.
"Here?"
Mark saw the hope spring up anew, which,
generous as he was, was pain to him, but he
left her there and went in to Erle.
He only motioned silently toward the
outer room, and as Erle rose, took his place.
Erle did not go out at once. He stood, think-
ing deeply, trying to master himself, before
meeting those eyes. It was hard that he
must go out to her in this uncertainty, not
knowing his relation toward her; not dar-
ing to speak until he did, and not able to
speak as he would were they entirely alone.
Had he not hesitated for this short moment
his misery must have ended with one look
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
167
into Marcia's eyes, but before he reached her,
Marcia, impatient at his delay, too proud to
linger and hearing the low cry of the sick
man, entered the room.
She bowed to him as Mark had done, ex-
tending her hand in silence and then bent
over the bed.
"Mr. Barrow, I am here. Do you know
me? I have come to help nurse you."
Mr. Barrow smiled faintly and at the cool
touch of Marcia's hand upon his forehead
seemed to grow quieter at once.
Erle was now free to take a few moments of
rest. Mr. Duncan was coming in. He would
go out and explain his presence to him. He
sat down in front of the fire in the outer
room, and waited. Had he been free to es-
cape, which he was not, until Dr. Goldwaith
returned, Erle would very likely have done
SO. And yet perhaps not, for Marcia's pres-
ence in the house had a fascination for him
in spite of the coolness with which she had
168
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
greeted him. Marcia, in the reaction of her
first strong emotion, had already determined
to await events. The sad desolation of the
present had been upon her when she entered.
Erle was always near her in thought, but this
only served to make the separation harder.
However calm might be her face and man-
ner they were so only from pride. Within,
all was wild confusion. She had no philoso-
phic thought to steady her; she was simply
a very human, loving woman, glad, and hurt,
and sorry all together, and crushing all ex-
pression of her emotions down with iron
pride.
She stood blindly trying to see the fea-
tures of the man before her. All was black.
She would not swerve or falter, she would
wait there for her self-con rol to return
again, and she forced her body into mechani-
cal action, taking Mr. Barrow's hand and
stroking it with hers, all the while conscious
only of gaining time to understand it all.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
169
Mr. Duncan had come and was talking to
Erle, insisting upon his going home with
him. Then she heard Dr. Goldwaith's voice
and then another's and still she seemed
asleep.
Then Dr. Goldwaith came in and beckoned
her to come to him, but Mark had to tell her
she was wanted before she moved. She went
to the old doctor, who had been her friend so
long.
"He is quiet now. I see Mrs. Lang is here.
I will go now and come again to-morrow,”
she whispered.
Not a word more, but Dr. Goldwaith let her
go.
"Shall we go now?" she said to Mr. Dun-
can. He touched Erle on the shoulder and
said: "Come." Erle arose and went in to
Dr. Goldwaith, while Marcia put on her hat.
“If you do not need me any more to-night
I will go home with Mr. Duncan," he said.
The Doctor nodded in reply, and when
170
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
Erle returned to the outer room Marcia had
gone. He stepped to the door and at some
distance he could see a slight figure before
them. Erle turned to Mr. Duncan, a pained,
inquiring look in his face, but Mr. Duncan
had no explanation to offer. Marcia had felt
that she could not face him again now. The
sting of that delay had taxed her self-control
too far. Once she stopped, realizing how
strange her action must seem to Mr. Duncan.
Oh! could she have known the cause of
that delay! Then she fled on hastily again,
not stopping to look back until she reached
the house.
She opened that same low door where she
and Erle had entered after that night's
drive, and closed it softly behind her. One
moment she hesitated as she recalled his
words of tenderness, then she hurried on and
turned aside into the music room where she
had left Hester playing, an hour ago. She
was reading by a soft, shaded light near the
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
171
fire, when Marcia entered. The softened light,
with a faint glow, shone through the rose-
tinted shade and brought into relief the little
old-fashioned piano, across the corner of the
room, which had given place practically to
the newer upright, now open, and on which
Hester's music yet stood.
The usual supply of wild flowers which
these people, both men and women, were
always bringing in from their walks, were
piled upon the unused instrument.
Pausing only to tell Hester that Erle was
with Mr. Duncan, Marcia passed out into the
square hall and ran up the low, broad stairs,
stopping for a moment at the first landing
where another mass of wild flowers filled a
niche in the wall. She bent eagerly forward
to listen for a sound of that voice which had
so overcome her a short time before. There
was no sound but the slow dull ticking of
the high clock in the hall below. Just so had
its giant pendulum beat out the seconds as
172
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
drama after drama had been enacted within
that old house in years gone by.
The old moon, looking through the dial
had smiled long years ago upon another girl-
ish figure, bending to listen from that very
spot where Marcia was standing now.
A tall, graceful, beautiful young creature,
with silky brown locks curling exquisitely,
as they strayed from the tortoise-shell comb
and fell upon her forehead and neck. Her
slender foot had pressed the very step that
Marcia's rested on now, but her face, spark-
ling with mischievous laughter, had bent to
catch the tones of a stranger's voice.
The afternoon sunlight played over her
three sisters spinning and chatting merrily in
the hall below. Outside the door, with its
lower half still shut, stood the stranger, a
straight, well formed and handsome man,
with dark curls as silky as her own, as bright
a color in his cheeks, as merry a twinkle in
his eye.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
173
He was just out of her sight and was mak-
ing his errand known to the three maids be-
fore him. They had been warned against
listening to that manly voice.
The young officer's luxurious habits had
been pictured to them, only to excite new in-
terest. And now he had come, on some mis-
sion, from his own acres, not far away, and
was begging attention.
She wondered if he wore his gold laced
uniform, and if those stupid sisters would
forget to ask him in?
Then she felt a spirit of mischief taking
possession of her and pushing her onward.
Lightly she tripped down the broad stairs
and, full of charming witchery, slipped the
bands upon each wheel as she fled past them,
and turning with a mocking little courtesy,
as she reached the further door, flashed such
a glance upon the handsome young Captain
that he loved her even before he fully realized
that she had come and gone. But even that
174
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
love, true, and sweet, and lasting, had not
flowed smoothly. Mischief had sobered into
earnest impulse; had been tested by princi-
ple, and the loving maiden with the devotion
of friendship, had kept her faith and almost
lost her lover just as Marcia had done.
But he had returned at last and had grown
up to her standard and she had said to him
"Yes" and they had lived and worked hap-
pily together.
Now Marcia heard the voice she waited for
and hastening to her room flung herself upon
her bed, with convulsive sobs.
Oh! the strange heart of woman, fainting
for the comfort of one kind word, yet with-
holding that smile which would insure it.
Hester, quickened by the glad surprise of
seeing Erle again, rose as the men entered,
and full of a gracious welcome, stood smiling
upon him as he approached. There was that
exquisite grace in her manner which in its
attractiveness far exceeds mere beauty, and
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
175
which American women sometimes attain,
but rarely.
Erle, who had only seen her pale and worn
upon her sick-bed, was surprised to see the
happy smiling woman before him, who was
saying:
"Doctor Erle, I am so glad, so happy
to welcome you. Look at me! See what
you have done for me and measure your
welcome by the evidence I give of good
health."
Erle smiled and bowed over her hand say-
ing: "I did not know so hearty a welcome
was ever possible for mortals."
"Surely you do not think there is no such
thing as gratitude in the world, Doctor?"
66
Very little, that is as genuine as yours,
I fear," he answered, still admiring the fresh,
cheerful face before him.
66
'Harry, tell him again we are glad to see
him," said Hester as they were parting for
the night.
176
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
And there was no mistaking the tone in
which Harry Duncan answered.
"I guess I've made him understand; if
not, I'll begin again to-morrow."
Once in his old room, Erle felt like a differ-
ent man from the one he had been a few
hours before.
It was impossible not to see that he was at
home in this house and welcome to these two,
at least. As for his questioning of Marcia,
it had vanished like an unpleasant dream.
He had felt a strange elation taking posses-
sion of him on entering the house. Perhaps
it was an intuitive feeling that things would
adjust themselves in this atmosphere.
Marcia, once alone, found that the whirl-
wind of emotions in which she had been
caught had thrown her down from the calm
heights on which she had expected to stand
in her intercourse with Erle. And strive as
she would she could not attain to them
again, at once.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
177
She entered the breakfast room next morn-
ing with a forced composure which chilled
Erle's new confidence and led him to won-
der whether he had done wisely in coming
back.
Mr. Barrow was out of danger; Mark had
gone back to his business and Marcia and
Erle, swayed, as yet, by impulse and that un-
reasoning instinct which so often leads us
aright, though blindly, had tacitly agreed to
continue in the existing attitude, each feel-
ing a return of hope once more, since they
were beneath the same roof. Any hour
might bring the adjustment both so longed
for.
Before Mark went away, Marcia and he
had met for a few moments in the little par-
lor across the hallway. By a few touches,
Marcia had transformed the bare little room
into a bright, cheery spot, and flowers rose
high, from a quaint old jar of dark stone-
ware, against the bare white wall, and books
178
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
and papers lay on the table, which was drawn
out into the room, and the sofa had been
placed opposite the open fireplace, away from
the windows, where easy chairs now stood.
Thus in a few moments the refinement of the
woman's nature had come in and shown how
bare had been the life of the household with-
out it.
Mark had stood there in the twilight just
before going and had said to her:
"You shall not have all your trouble with
me for nothing, Marcia. I am going to give
you something, in return for all you have
suffered through your friendship for me. I
am going to let right living and better
thoughts prove my gratitude."
(6
"O Mark! I am so happy now. This-
this is worth it all.”
The simplicity of Marcia's nature was such
that she made no attempt at concealing the
sacrifice she had made, when she saw it rec-
ognized thus by Mark. Though to have first
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
179
revealed it to him would have been an im-
possibility for her.
As she stood, her hands clasped before her,
all the old tempting brilliancy of the girl re-
turned and for a moment seemed to mock
his purpose, so great was the temptation to
pass the bounds she had set to his love, and
which he had accepted and intended to abide
by. But the next moment the sense of the
purity of her love for him checked him, and
never before had the beautiful strength of
this woman's character so asserted itself as
now, when bestowing on one lover all the in-
tense passion of her nature, she yet appeased,
and almost satisfied, with the divine enthu-
siasm of her friendship, the other.
Marcia's happiness in this victory over the
powers which had so desperately beset the
soul of one she loved, was sufficient to sug-
gest to her that Erle would return to the old
relation; he must recognize and seek her
better self. He must not expect her to lower
180
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
her standard of the ideal, even for his love.
And Erle was seeking with his whole heart
to touch the ground on which she stood. He
might not walk beside her as her husband
but beside her he must be if only as her
friend.
So time went on. More than a week had
passed and yet Erle had not dared to offer
himself anew to Marcia.
The house and the neighborhood was full
of guests. Paul Hodaviah Crandle, the
young artist; Edmund Oldstory; Rev. Dr.
Dean and his wife and Dr. Keen, a professor
in a college, where he held an enviable place in
the hearts of all; a young poet and a charm-
ing girl who had been christened by one of
the children "The Beautiful Lady."
There had been much delightful inter-
course between the friends, and Erle found
himself suddenly lifted by his late struggle
into complete sympathy with a new world of
ideas.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
181
Heart and brain had passed beyond all the
old landmarks, and he saw in himself a new,
a better man.
As Erle entered the breakfast room, one
morning, he found an animated discussion
waging over the coffee. It was the day the
Duncans were to give a lawn party, with
music and dancing in the evening. As the
door opened, Marcia exclaimed:
"Oh! Dr. Erle, you are just in time, I need
Come-you
some one to support my cause.
know you are an idealist."
"Oh, no!" he replied; "
he replied; "you mistake, I
am not an idealist. I am intensely practi-
cal."
"Yes," said Marcia, "I anticipated your
denying it, and I know why you do so. 'Tis
because you are like the school boy who
always proves his sum backward. The ideal
is the highest truth and must have a real
practical outcome or it is not a truth at
all."
182
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
"Do you know, Miss Marcia," said Edmund
Oldstory, laughing, "that you fail to agree
with the great majority which makes the real
and ideal totally apart; one fancy, the other
fact. Do you know that the great majority
would credit you with insanity. I can put
my finger on a passage from the pen of a
college president to corroborate me.
It hap-
pens to be handy and he is considered good
authority."
"Oh, no! Don't trouble yourself. I am
not affected by the opinion of a college presi-
dent any more than by that of a professor or
a tutor."
"Do you mean to suggest a new philoso-
phy, Miss Marcia," said Hodaviah Crandle,
turning his strong, sweet face to hers.
"Philosophy!" she repeated. "That word
must include a science of the harmony of
truth, before it will apply to my philosophy."
(6
"Ah," he said, "nowhere else in the world
is there the slightest hope for it. America
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
183
being barren of any philosophy of her own,
has at last the opportunity for it."
"Take care how you talk of America and
philosophy," interrupted Hester. "Dr. Keen
is present, and don't you know that he is an
authority on the subject? He has set all
Europe agog and actually made the Germans
enthusiastic over his work on philosophy.
Think of that glory for America.”
66
Yes, I know it," said Marcia; “but what
greater proof of our love can he ask than to
find that we are forever losing the great
scholar in the good man?" And she looked
up at him so ingenuously that his face lit up
with an indulgent smile, and the dark eyes
beamed beneath the heavy brows. One could
tell that the corners of the mouth relaxed
their gravity beneath the iron gray mustache
as he stroked his beard sagely like the phil-
osopher that he was. No word was spoken
for a moment.
“I am the truth, the way and the life,'
184
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
said Dr. Dean at last. But he looked up at
Marcia's glowing face
easiness in his heart.
with a growing un-
What did it mean that young women
should be so nearly abreast with men like
himself in seeing and uttering the truth ?
Were men to lose the leadership by-and-by?
Edmund Oldstory, watching the good man
keenly, saw the thought flash across his mind
and he uttered it.
"I know what you are thinking, Doctor,
and I don't know how we are to help our-
selves," he added a little maliciously.
"You wonder if they will take all our
honors away from us. They are running us
so very closely."
Hodaviah turned to Marcia again. "If you
have thought thus far, you have gone further.
What will it be?"
"Ask me no more," she said. "The only
one who has a right to speak keeps silence."
"Perhaps I can interpret his thought,"
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
185
said Hester as she seated herself opposite Dr.
Keen. "It is that he feels the only philoso-
phy which can better the world is the phil-
osophy of the spirit and Christ; and that it
must germinate in our hearts before we can
attain to any clear mental perception of it.
Am I right?" And she glanced lovingly up
at the man whose heart she felt she knew.
"Yes, you understand," he said, and rising
put an end to the discussion.
As they moved away the poet appeared in
the doorway.
"My greeting to you, sir," laughed a friend
of Marcia's, Jeanie Carleton, a bright-faced
giri of twenty-two. "Have the Muses given
you a recess? Are you at liberty to remain
away from them and among us mortals long
enough to accept of a little earthly cheer?"
Very deliberately the poet took his seat by
the side of Mrs. Duncan, who had returned
to the coffee urn as she saw him approach.
Then he slowly turned an expressive counte-
186
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
nance full of mock reproach upon the aggres-
sive maiden.
"6 'Miss Jeanie, I do not deserve this out-
burst of jealousy, I am hardly on speaking
terms with the Muses, owing to my fealty to
you."
"Hear! Hear!" cried Edmund Oldstory.
"Peace, my children," commanded Hester;
but Miss Jeanie would not lose the last word,
and as she fled upstairs she retorted: "We
often get more than we deserve, down here.”
The preparations for the evening, the dec-
oration of the house with flowers, enlisted the
volunteer service of the guests, and with a
general air of good humor pervading the
household, all hands were busy.
"Miss Jeanie needs some help I fancy," said
Hester to Paul; "she has gone to hang the
portiers Edmund has painted for the South
and West rooms."
Paul followed Miss Carleton, and Hester
said to the "Beautiful Lady:" "Madeline, if
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
187
you and Dr. Erle will adjourn to the gar-
den and gather some flowers, I will join you
later."
Marcia drew a stand before Edmund Old-
story and put a vase upon it with an armful
of flowers.
"Master of ceremonies, allow me to pro-
vide you with an occupation," she said laugh-
ingly and went to gather more blossoms.
Edmund, leaning back upon the sofa
cushions smiled contentedly. His lameness
often caused him great pain, and could never
be ignored for more than a short time, yet it
never seemed to affect his bright spirits.
"Ah! Here comes one of the terriers,” he
exclaimed, a moment later.
"A terrier?" said Hester. "Is it black?"
"No, white, madame."
And leaning forward he called: "Here,
Ted, come in and tell your mother what
cousin Paul called you children last night."
His little namesake, a boy of five, came in
188
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
with his hands full of daisies and put them
down before Edmund.
"Marcia said you were to have them.”
"Yes, but tell your mother what you and
Gretchen are."
"Holy terriers, mamma; cousin Paul says
SO."
Hester broke into a peal of laughter and
remarked to the poet, who was studying the
child's face, an amused expression in his
own:
"To think that my children should be
called terrors."
She kissed the boy fondly and sent him to
look for Gretchen.
66
Edmund, you and Paul will spoil those
children, if spoiled they can be," she said
with a pretty reservation, "for you don't
seem to care what you say to them."
"Gretchen assured me yesterday 'I'm Mr.
Edmund's beautiful angel, with the heavenly
eyes he says so-' if you can reconcile
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
189
'heavenly angels' and 'terriers' it is more
than my ideas of Paradise will allow."
Here Marcia returned with her hands full
of flowers and the poet rose and joined in the
work of arranging them. All aided in the
decorations, and sometimes it would be Erle
and Miss Jeanie, or Erle and the Beautiful
Lady, who found themselves together in the
garden or in some corner which was being
transformed into a sylvan bower, but never
by any chance was it Erle and Marcia.
The poet had been gracefully attentive to
Marcia. Erle began to think his admiration
was taking a serious aspect, for he detected
an unusual desire on his part to make him-
self useful and an evident reluctance at being
separated from Marcia, as she went to and
fro between the garden and the house.
Erle had watched Marcia's manner jeal-
ously, but from a distance, and she had not
noticed his surveillance, and as yet he had
seen no sign, however trivial, to make him
190
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
think the poet held more than the place of a
friend in Marcia's thoughts.
He was still confirmed in the mistaken idea
that Mark was first in her heart. But at
last he fancied he saw more than the usual
ingenuous kindness in Marcia's tone and
look.
Hodaviah Crandle and Mrs. Dean had de-
clared that more moss was needed for the
miniature bank of ferns upon which they
were busy, and the poet had said "Oh, Miss
Marcia and I know where to get it!" Then
to Marcia he had said quietly: "You will
come?"
She had nodded an assent and together
they had gone away, laughing like two
children, lightly swinging a basket between
them. Erle heard Marcia say, as they went
down the path:
"The preparations are as pleasant as the
affair itself will be, are they not?”
"Oh, I hope not," the poet replied. "I
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
191
beg you will not forget that the first waltz is
mine; you promised it, you know."
It was this suggestion of a previous under-
taking which stung Erle. He had been con-
tent to serve out his penance silently and
patiently while he thought that it was Mark
who was between them.
But surely Marcia must begin to know
why he was back there, and if Mark no
longer held her love she might find some way
to let him know; while Marcia began to
think that if he still loved her he should be
the first to take some decided way to tell her
So.
As for the poet, he had an insight into
the hearts of these two, and fancied a little
action on his part might bring things to a
crisis. He was attracted toward Marcia and
took good care that she never felt he ex-
ceeded the bounds of mere good fellowship,
while his manner was calculated to make a
very different impression upon outsiders,
192
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
This little side scene embittered the day
for Erle. He grew coldly cynical in manner
and speech, and became useless in the little
services demanded of him, because of his
preoccupation of mind. In the early evening
he drifted into the library, where the older
men were discussing serious questions, but
he could not forget this new pain, this new
doubt in his heart, and talk as he would, he
found himself listening for the one voice
which was music to his ears.
Marcia stopped at the door as she was pass-
ing, just in time to hear his last remark to
Dr. Dean. He would not have made it in
that bitter tone if he had known she was
there. He had said:
“Dr. Dean, you clergymen must learn to
come closer to the every-day needs of the
souls you would save before the kingdom of
Heaven comes on the earth. You must com-
fort the hungry hearts oftener and let the
inds alone. There must be some great
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
193
change in your methods of feeding the hun-
gry before you get down to the level of the
daily needs and temptations of the average
man, and are able to show him how to meet,
resist and overcome evil with good, and that
is the method which will do the work of re-
generating this world.”
He had turned as he finished and saw her
standing there. His eyes had met hers
almost defiantly for a second. Then her lids
dropped and she moved away. Her look
had been a searching one and Erle felt over-
whelmed with remorse that he should have
allowed himself that bitter moment. Yet
there was only plain truth in what he had
said, though he had spoken it bitterly. If
more men knew how to touch the "heart of
man" as Mr. Perry had done in those never-
to-be-forgotten words, on board the vessel,
then many men who were indifferent would
begin to see and understand.
Leaving the library, Erle went into the
194
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
room where they had been dancing and talk-
ing to one another, not remembering what he
said a moment after it was spoken, and striv-
ing in vain to keep his eyes and thoughts
from her whose manner so bewildered him.
He had watched her dancing, rather too fre-
quently, he thought, with the poet and he
knew she was unusually beautiful.
Her dress was some soft gray fabric, with
an effect of silver here and there, and her
flushed cheeks seemed to have caught their
color from the great cluster of nodding car-
nations at her waist. She did not seem
happy, and he longed to feel the touch of her
hand upon his arm.
She was coming down the broad stairs in
her stately way and he hastened to meet her.
66
Marcia, shall patience be rewarded? Will
you dance with me this time?"
She smiled her consent, and for a few
moments Erle gave himself up to the one
thought that his arm was about her. He
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
195
tried to imagine that nothing had happened,
that they were the same as of yore. Marcia,
too, was thinking in very much the same
vein, and before they realized it, the music
ceased and not a word had been spoken. He
led her to a seat, just as Paul claimed her
for the next dance, and the evening held
nothing more of pleasure for him after that.
Unnoticed, he sauntered out into the garden
and lit a cigar.
After the guests were gone, Paul and he
stood for a moment in the deserted parlor.
66
Erle,” said Paul, rather abruptly, “what
is the matter with Marcia? She is preoc-
cupied and altogether unlike herself. What
have you people been doing to her down
here?"
Erle answered, "I am hardly the one to
ask. I had fancied her perfectly happy since
Mr. Barrow's recovery.”
66
Why, what has that to do with her?”
said Paul in astonishment.
196
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
"You should know better than I," replied
Erle.
66
'Well, I don't; but I know some one else
who is changed, quite as much as Marcia;
and I tell you, old boy, I don't like it.'
(6
""
Happiness usually proves a good tonic,"
said Erle, without attempting to hide the
bitterness of his feeling.
(6
The supply of tonic is sadly lacking,
then, I should judge," said Paul, looking up
frankly at Erle.
"If I could only believe that were true!"
said Erle, starting to leave the room.
"I tell you that it is," said Paul, detaining
him; "and now I think you had better take
steps toward securing a comfortable night's
rest. Marcia is waiting to see me in the
other room, but she will forgive me if I say
good night through you."
Erle understood him. He looked in his
eyes for a moment, then took his hand and
pressed it earnestly.
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
197
Paul left the room, and for an instant Erle
stood irresolute. He could not bring himself
to humble his pride with no encouragement
at all from Marcia. He had hoped to win her
back to an understanding without putting
his repentance into words. But this crucial
test of his love was not to be spared him.
He passed slowly through the rooms until
he reached the one in which he had taken
Marcia in his arms for that brief moment at
their first arrival.
Marcia, expecting Paul, did not turn her
head. Her feet, in their dainty slippers,
were stretched toward the fire of logs, for the
evening was chilly, and she half reclined in
the corner of the old-fashioned lounge which
had been drawn up before the fireplace.
(6
Paul," she said, and she reached ner
hands back over her head, "stand there while
I tell you something."
Erle felt his heart beating wildly. He
took her hands saying:
198
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
"It is I, Marcia, not Paul; will you listen
while I tell you something?"
She did not withdraw her hands, and
Erle bent over her saying:
"Marcia, is your heart closed to me for-
ever? Has a single error closed against me
the gates of happiness which once seemed
opening for me? Marcia, tell me, have I re-
turned in vain? Has my penitence come too
late?"
The flames blazed up suddenly from the
logs on the hearth, and lit up her face show-
ing the tears which had gathered in her eyes
while he was speaking.
Erle misconstrued the tears and prepared
himself to consummate the sacrifice of his
own hopes.
"Your life, Marcia," he continued, his face
pale with suppressed emotion, "is bringing
the fulfilment you foretold; you are making
people better and happier, are you happy
yourself?"
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
199
66
Happy?" she repeated with a sigh.
"Yes, happy as you were when I first
came to know you and-love you," said Erle.
Marcia's eyes sought his inquiringly,
almost searchingly.
“Did you love me, Erle ?"
66
Marcia, I loved you then, I love you now,
shall always love you, whatever may be its
return."
"O Erle! If you would but understand
me," said Marcia, rising and impetuously
placing both her hands in his. Her action
rather than her words flooded Erle's soul with
a radiant hope and joy.
"I understand you better now," he said,
tenderly leaning over to look into her eyes.
She met his look saying: "You think you
understand me, yet you do not trust me?"
The yearning cry of her soul seemed speak-
ing through her eyes to the heart of the man
before her.
66
I trust you, my darling, now and forever,
wholly, completely, utterly."
200
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
His strong arms drew her, trembling, close
to his breast. Her head nestled against him
like that of a weary child. Their lips met,
and all the pain, the doubt and misery of
those weeks and months took flight like
clouds before the morning sun.
Gently leading her to the lounge, Erle
seated himself beside her, and there, in that
dimly lighted room, told her the story of his
love and the new life which had dawned for
him, while Marcia listened, filled with the
delight which only they that are pure in
heart can know. The last few embers were
smouldering on the hearth when Erle arose
and taking her once more close to his breast
said:
"You have taught me my lesson, my dar-
ling, I am ready to work for the divine.”
He kissed her eyelids, almost reverently,
then holding her face between his hands
looked steadily into her eyes as he asked:
Marcia, what words will you give me, to
fill my dreams to-night?'
A WOMAN OF TO-DAY.
201
"These, Erle," she said: "that I love you,
have loved you through all, shall always love
you."
The last word was lost in their good-night.
The last spark was dead upon the hearth,
but a new life would dawn upon the morrow.
Light had come from the darkness and out
of the trial had come that peace which
passeth all understanding.
X-
X
*
*
As time goes by, he who runs may read
the story of these two.
It is written in the hearts of those by whom
they are surrounded. To the sick and sorry
come help and cheer. To the unseeing
comes a new light. Love grows in the stead
of hate, and peace in the place of dissension.
The dreams of the morning have become the
reality of the day.
THE END.

812 J1 36
OW

wils
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
812J136 OW
Jackson, Margaret Crawford.
A woman of to-day / edited by James Clar
3 1951 002 117 282 D
WILSON
ANNEX
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