The story of Avis

LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY O

DAVIS

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J

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THE

STORY OF AVIS.

BY

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,
AUTHOR OF "THE GATES AJAR."

Now, all the meaning of the King was to see Sir Galahad proved.'

BOSTON :
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,

(Late TICKNOB & FIELDS, and FIELDS, OSGOOD, & Co.)
1877.

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
DAVIS

COPYRIGHT, 1877, BY
JAMES K> OSGOOD & CO.

ALL BIGHTS RESERVED.

Franklin Press '

Randy Avery, and Company t

//7 Franklin Street^

Pray you, say nothing; pray you, who neither feel
nor see the rain, being in't."

THE STORY OF AVIS.

CHAPTER I.

" And all I saw was on the sunny ground,
The flying shadow of an unseen bird."

WHAT was it about her ?
Coy Bishop at the Poetry Club that night,
while a theological student with a cold in his head
was declaiming from the second canto, sat per-
versely wondering. It was becoming to Coy to
wonder ; she did" not very often, — being a blonde,
with a small mouth and happy eyes.

She changed the accent of her thoughts as they
pursued her ; out of irresistible sympathy, perhaps
with the reader, who experienced some elocutionary
difficulty in changing his ; though, indeed, she found
her own revery so much more to the purpose just
then than her desire for literary culture, that she
conceived a distaste for the 3roung gentleman as a
tiresome interruption, and hoped that some of the
girls would refuse him before the winter was over.

7

8 THE STORY OF AVIS.

What was it then about her? There was more
sense than sj^ntax in Coy's question ; at least a
sense perfectly clear to herself, who, as the only
person concerned in this mute discussion, had obvi-
ous rhetorical rights therein.

This was in the days when young ladies had not
begun to have " opinions " upon the doctrine of evo-
lution, and before feminine friendship and estrange-
ments were founded on the distinctions between
protoplasm and bioplasm. Yet, even fifteen years
ago, the resemblance of the human face to different
types of animals was no novelty to any thoughtful
fancy. So, too, the likenesses in the human body
to forms of life incident to the vegetable world, were
surprising only to people ignorant of the anatomy
of the nervous and arterial systems.

Coy was not ignorant. Harmouth girls never
were. Her mind was stocked with facts sufficient
to bring these correspondences before it. But there
she stumbled upon a dense idea across which neither
the diploma of the Harmouth Female Seminary, nor
the " course of study " in which all Harmouth girls
engaged, could strike a light. Had anybody ever
said that people resembled metals ? Was it Galileo,
or Socrates ? Newton perhaps. Or — or — could it
have been John Rose ?

The theological reader at the other end of the
room just then, suddenly observing Miss Bishop's
averted face, floundered into an acute embarrassment
upon seeing that she blushed swiftly, and wondered

THE STORY OF AVIS.

if he had read from the love-passages too long. His
mind gathered an immediate accretion to the convic-
tion that light literary work was unsuitable to the
preparation for the gospel ministry.

Coy was not blushing about John Rose : young
men are too common in Harmouth to be easily
blushed about. She was aware of a certain incon-
gruousness in that fancy about the metals. What
was the use of reading-clubs, and suffering such anx-
iety about the coffee, when one took one's turn, if
one could not tell whether one owed an idea to an
old Greek, or an evening caller? That she could
have originated it, Coy never for an instant con-
ceived. She left ideas to Avis.

What she meant about the metals was this. All
people in their plrysical natures are akin to some
form of inorganic existence. Some, for instance, are
clay, sheer clay, mud. Certain metals enter into the
composition of certain temperaments : brass or iron,
gold, silver, or steel, stratifies in the nature, and
gives character to body and soul. " Who knows, "
Coy would have said if she could, — "who knows
but a skilful soul-geologist may learn to detect these
metallic traces in men and women, and can act
upon the character of a soul's topograph}7 accord-
ingly, can map it with some accuracy, can fathom
its wealth, or measure its barrenness, indicate the
presence of its mines, discover its fossils, account
for its deluges, prophesy its earthquakes, its volca-
noes ? " It was surely in the old creed of the alclie-

10 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

mists, that metals were endowed with sense and
feeling, and possessed of either masculine or femi-
nine qualities. Then why not the man or the
woman with the sense or the trait of the metal?

Now, Avis was a magnet.

Coy's metallic theory had by this time rather run
away with her. But of so much she was sure :
when Avis was a baby, mother-earth 3delded pure
perfect magnet up into her composition. Shrewd
Nature, never to be cheated out of her control over
her children, held back her gold, her gems, her sil-
ver, and her fine, dumb pearl, and wrought into
Avis just the one thing more precious than they all.

People, to be sure, were artificially magnetized to
a certain extent. Barbara Allen, for instance, turn-
ing the exact intellectual pose of her head (there
was but one intellectual pose to Barbara's head)
towards Philip Ostrander, while he read his paper
on Spenserian metres, was a species of electro-
magnet.

But Avis was, without alloy, loadstone. In
Avis there existed that attribute — no, that quality ;
which was it ? Coy remembered hearing one of the
Professors say at a supper that there was a difference
between these two things ; but she did not remem-
ber which was which : she seldom did. At all
events, Avis had that one particular coloring about
her (Coy decided to call it coloring), which is, in a
woman, powerful above all beaut}r, wit, or genius, —
that subtile something which we name charm.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 11

Now, it was true and tender in Coy to sit thinking
this about Avis. That was a wise word which said,
that, when we have ceased to enjoy the superiority of
another, we have ceased to love him. Hence it may
be the self-defensive strategy of affection, that we
feel our friend's advantage long before we allow
ourselves to perceive it ; nay, in proportion to the
depth of our feeling under it, are we not apt to
have a frost-bite of the intellect, which makes its
distinct acknowledgment a matter of hard thawing ?
And Coy was not by any means a girl of liquid
moods. She sometimes felt it proper to judge Avis
very severely ; else what was the use in having grown
up with her?

For instance, she had reproved her for staying
so much by herself since she had come home. Bar-
bara, now, thought that affectation, it was plain to
see (and affectation it would have been in Barbara) ,
though, of course, she was too well bred to say so.
Coy knew better than that. It was only morbidness.
Coy had the glibness of most unaccentuated natures
in the use of this convenient word, which is with-
out a rival in its adaptability to cover all forms of
character differing from one's own.

There had been a ripple of surprise when Avis
came into the club that night. The club met at
Chatty Hogarth's. Chatty was the president's
daughter, and an invalid. Avis did not like to
refuse poor Chatty. It was the first time that Miss
Dobell had appeared in Harmouth society since her
return from Florence.

12 THE STORY OF AVIS.

At this rate, it was plain that Miss Cora Bishop's
Spenserian culture would be very deficient. Coy,
with a pretty change of mental attitude, which had
a pretty bodily expression down to the very tips of
her fingers, tightening, like growing shells, about the
covers of her book, brought her intellect to bear
severely upon the business of the evening.

" But fly, ah ! fly far hence away, for feare
Lest to you hap that happened to me heare."

A low and singularly musical voice was pronoun-
cing these words as Coy looked up ; not the catarrh-
al theologue, surely? He had finished his contri-
bution to the evening's entertainment, thank the
Muses! and Mr. Ostrander was reading, — Philip
Ostrander, the new tutor. There was always a new
tutor to be considered in Harmouth University : he
had not always, however, a musical voice.

" And to this wretched lady, my deare love ;
O too deare love, — love bought with death too deare I "

Clearly Mr. Ostrander was an effective reader ;
"a cultivated reader," Coy said. Miss Dobell, from
her corner opposite the gentleman, sitting a little in
the shadow, and giving equable and earnest atten-
tion to the performance of each member of the Poetry
Club, in turn, said only, " an effective reader," but
hesitated at the word, and listened thoughtfully.

" With sudden feare her pitcher downe she threw,
And fled away,"

Bang on the reader.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 13

"Full fast she fled, ne ever lookt behynd,
As if her life upon the wager lay."

Musical was the word assuredly. Mr. Ostrander's
voice held rather melody than harmony, but music,
beyond a question. There was a modesty and sim-
plicity about its accent not common to young men
in those stages of growth in which Harmouth knew
them ; perhaps a little uncommon in any young
man. It suffused a penetrative sense of pleasure,
of unexplained organic joy, like that of Nature in
her simpler moods : it had an effect not unlike that
of an unseen brook or a flying bird. Though the
brook chanted, it ran ; though the bird sang, it
flew ; its sweetness was measured by its evanes-
cence. People often noted Mr. Ostrander's voice.
Young ladies had been heard to declare that it was
"like Mozart."

Avis Dobell, sitting in the shadowed corner of the
president's parlor that night, had happened to place
herself against some very heavy drapery, which
clasped two warm arms of intense color across the
chill of a bay-window. The color was that called
variously and lawlessly by upholsterers cranberry,
garnet, or ponso ; known to artists as carmine. The
material held a satin thread, which lent to the cur-
tains the lustre of jewels in a dark setting, or of water
under a flaming sky. In the gaslight and firelight
of the room, the insensate piece of cloth took on a
strange and vivid life, and seemed to throb as if it
held some inarticulate passion, like that of a subject
soul.

14 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Coy or Barbara would have kiiown better than to
have ventured their complexions against this trying
background. Avis went to it as straight as a bird
to a lighthouse on a dark night. She would have
beaten herself against that color, like those very
birds against the glowing glass, and been happy, even
if she had beaten her soul out with it as they did.

She had a fierce kinship in her for that color, of
which she seldom spoke. She did not expect it to be
understood ; she did not care that it should be ; per-
haps she imperfectly understood it herself : she only
knew that it made her happy to be near it. To-
night, for instance, though she had felt this Poetry
Club rather a bore, a positive wave of pleasure
flowed to her from the sight and contact of that
curtain, which she felt in every sense of soul and
body.

Avis was affected by color as the more sensitive
musical temperament is by sound. Color divorced
from form, crude and clear, was to her what the
musical notation is to the composer, who, without
striking a note, reads the score by the hour as other
men read printed text.

Besides, she knew perfectly well that the curtain
became her.

Against this background of the passion of car-
mine, Avis, sitting silently the evening through, had
a solitary look. There was a certain aloofness in
her very beauty, if one chose to call by the name
of beauty the kindling of her face : it was somehow

THE STORY OF AVIS. 15

unlike that of other handsome women. It cannot
be said that she was quite without consciousness of
it ; no woman could have been : it might be rather
that she made no effort to appear unconscious of it.
SI ic had nothing of that wide-eyed, infantile look of
distraction, which, in a grown woman, indicates the
very quintessence of egoism.

She carried about her an indefinable air of having
been used to the love, or admiration probably, of men
.as well as women, which the most exquisitely modest
women will sometimes wear, and which is as unmis-
takable as it is alluring to the eye. Her dress, made
in the fashion of the time, fitting closely, and without
trimming, was of a negative tint, something toning
upon black, else she should not, and so would not,
have sat by the carmine curtain. She wore, as all
well-dressed women wore at that time, a very full
white undersleeve, which completely concealed the
outline of the arm. Over her shoulders a shawl of
Fayal lace, white, and very delicate, hung like a
thistle-down. She had a fresh but fine and restless
color, and brown, abundant hair. She had a gener-
ous mouth and a delicate ear. Her profile, when the
carmine curtain took it, had the harmony of a strong
antique.

"•Avis," said Mrs. Hogarth, when Mr. Ostrander
had finished his canto, and the little party of young
people had fallen into that general discussion of the
topic of the evening's stud}^, which was usual in
Harmouth " Clubs," — " Avis, my dear, are we to
hear nothing from you to-night ? ' '

16 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" Oh, yes, Avis ! " urged Chatty.

u You must excuse me," pleaded Avis in a voice
more timid than one would have looked to hear from
a young lady of so much presence. She spoke
faintty, like a shrinking child : indeed it made her
feel like one, coming, from the strange changes of
her life, suddenly back here among her old pla3^fel-
lows ; being called out by Mrs. Hogarth so, as if
she were to recite a lesson. Mrs. Hogarth was one
of those people who always made her feel as if she
were a little girl, always would : it would not matter
to Mrs. Hogarth if she had painted the Sistine
Mary.

There were others, however, in the Spenser Club,
strangers, across whom stirred a visible wave of
interest when Avis, speaking for the first time,
drew all the eyes in the room towards the carmine
curtain. Coy remarked it, and felt proud of her ;
for Avis had got into the newspapers. It was seldom
that a Harmouth woman got into the papers. It was
only men — men at Harmouth : indeed, the Univer-
sity existed, she supposed, for the glorification of
men. This was all right and proper. Coy had never
been conscious of any depressing aspirations towards
the college diploma ; but she took an aromatic en-
jo}Tnent, after all, in the fact that one of the pro-
fessor's daughters had adopted " a career." She
was glad it was precisely Avis, and not Barbara, or
some of the other girls, who had painted a good
picture, and sold it in London. She enjoyed having

THE STORY OF AVIS. 17

it thoroughly understood in Harmouth that people
who knew about such things (Coy was not quite sure
who ; but that did not matter) had predicted a
" brilliant future " for the modest young lady who
made that picture.

"May I not be pardoned," repeated Avis, " if I
do not bring my share of the work to-night? I
have been busy in other ways so long, it is not pos-
sible that I could find an3r thing to say worth your
hearing, on a subject which the rest of you have
been stucVpng all winter."

4 ' Avis ! ' ' said Coy suddenly from across the
room, " if I had done a real mean thing, should you
want to know it ? "

"No," said Avis : " if anybody I cared for could
be mean, I should rather never know it." She
spoke in the graceful surface-tone through which the
serious instinct of an earnest nature can no more
help penetrating than the sun can help shining
through ornamented glass.

" You have turned over two leaves, Mr. Ostrand-
er," said Barbara Allen, who was looking up foot-
notes with him. "And do }^ou incline to Upton's
conjecture? It seems to me, if we grant the Henry
VIII. theory, then Una " —

"It's about Una that I've been mean," said
Coy rather loudly. "Avis, I brought your sketch
of Una that you gave me. I know j-ou'll let me
show it. You never were a bit of a shirk, now,
Avis ; and this is just your fair contribution to a
Spenser evening. Please, Avis? "

18 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Avis did not please, that was plain ; but she con-
sented without any fuss ; and the young people
gathered about Miss Bishop to see the sketch.

It was a sketch in charcoal, strongly but not
roughly laid in, and preserved by a shellac, which
lent a soft color, like that of a very old print, to the
paper. It bore marks of the artist's peculiar style ;
for it was already recognized in art-circles that Miss
Dobellhad "a style."

The sketch was expressive of the lines : —

" Ere long he came where Una traveild slow,
And that champion wayting her besyde.

. . By his like-seeming shield her knight by name
Shee weend it was, and towards him gan ride:
Approaching nigh, she wist it was the same;
And with faire fearefull humblesse towards him shee
came."

Miss Dobell's Una was a spirited figure ; did not
ride the lion like a donkey, neither did she pat him
like a dog, in the approved manner : he followed her
in a shadow almost as heavy as that which hides
the Jupiter in Correggio's lo, — dark, vague, and
inscrutable as fate. She had been walking swiftly :
the lethargy of collapse from motion had settled on
every limb. Arrested in the full light, the woman
curved one fine hand inward, like a shell, as if to
warn the creature back. It was impossible to look
upon t'lis woman, and not say, " She sees the man
she loves." Her eyes leaped to him; her lips
leaned to him ; her whole being gravitated to him.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 19

"Pretty girl," said John Rose, who dared say
any thing to anybody; and, besides, he used to
know Avis in college, — " very pretty girl ; but how
she holds her head ! Put her into a Harmouth Sen-
ior party now, she'd freeze a fellow into a sherbet."

"Was Una so easily won, my dear ?" asked
Mrs. Hogarth, with a little matronly smile.

" Easily won ! " A voice behind the young artist
repeated these words in a protesting whisper ; then,
gathering distinctness, said, —

" My dear Mrs. Hogarth, do you not see ? Every
nerve and muscle is tense for flight. She will turn
and run before that clumsy knight gets up to her
— if she can."

Avis, turning with a grateful look to see who had
interpreted her picture, felt Coy's hand laid upon
her arm.

" Avis, may I present Mr. Ostrander? "

Avis very ceremoniously bowed. As she did so,
there flitted across her eyes, like the shadow of an
unseen object, an expression which Coy found it so
difficult to understand, that she even made up her
mind to ask her afterwards if she had objected to
the introduction.

But probably Avis had met far more interesting
men in Florence, where it was understood that she
had been much sought.

"May I?" urged Ostrander with hesitancy,
putting out his hand for the sketch. On the back
of it was written, with a brush dipped in a crimson
water-color, these words, —

20 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" She speakes no more

Of past : true is that true love hath no power
To looken backe; his eie be fixt before."

"I am glad not to have blundered," he said
simply in handing the picture back.

The weight of talk had by this time slipped from
the picture, and he and the two young ladies stood
slightly apart.

" But, after all, you see,'* said the young man
musingly, " your Truth is subject to Love, om-
nipotently subject . ' '

"I am not responsible for Spenser's theology,"
said Avis, laughing evasively; "and an artist has
such gloriously lawless moods ! Why should I
trouble myself to think about Una every day? I
had a pretty girl to draw: so I drew her. But
I put the lion in, so people shouldn't make a mistake.
4 It is better to be dumb than to be misunder-
stood.' "

" Who said that? " asked Ostrander, with a fine
smile. But he was conscious of feeling some curi-
osity over this superficial little speech of Miss
Dobell's. There was not a superficial stroke in the
picture, — nor in the speaker, to his mind.

' ' How do you know that I did not say it ? " re-
turned the young lady.

"Mr. Ostrander," said Coy, "Miss Hogarth
wants you to bring Miss Dobell the oysters. Do it
gracefully. She'll sketch ^ou while you are gone ! "

When Ostrander returned, Coy had been called

THE STORY OF AVIS. 21

away, and Avis was alone. As he handed her
plate, their eyes met in a long, full, grave look.
Avis's eyes were neither brown nor black, yet they
were very dark. One sometimes sees in the lining
of waves on which the full sun shines, and in whiclr
the bright weeds are thick, a color that resembles
them.

Philip Ostrander said, —

u I have seen you before."

Avis hesitated : she hesitated perceptibly before
she answered.

"Yes."

" Had you forgotten it? "

Now Ostrander spoke with hesitation : he felt a
little alarmed at his own intrepidity. This young
lad}r in the Fayal shawl, with the slightly disturbed
carriage to her head, had suddenly acquired through-
out her face and figure a beautiful protest, which he
felt it would be the easiest thing in the world to
mistake.

Should he go on, or stop exactly where he was ?
After a moment's silence, he said, with an accent of
renewed decision, —

"Had you forgotten it? "

Avis lifted her eyelids very slowly, and in her
honest, even voice, said, —

" No."

THE STORY OF AVIS.

CHAPTER H.

" We rejoices in hunting Truth in company as in hunting game." —
THEMISTIUS.

" For mervaille of this knight him to behold,
Full besily they waiten, young and old." — CHAUCER.

COY and John Rose walked home together in the
dear, old, foolish country-fashion, which Har-
mouth was too full of young people to outgrow.

It was a night of many stars. The two, as they
stepped out into the April weather, in deference to
the constitution of the Spenser Club, at the stroke
of half-past ten, had involuntarily stood for a mo-
ment with uplifted faces in the thin, half-frozen
snow. Great pulses of light beat before the eyes,
where stars that our Northern atmospheres know
onty in their happiest moods, were aflame that night ;
and arteries of fire ran along wastes of space, quiv-
ering as they ran : the very ether in which they hung
seemed to be crossed with fine lines, shadow drawn
on shadow, like the nerves of a mute and infinite
organism, whose heart only — beating somewhere,
impassioned, imprisoned — was hidden from the
sight.

But Coy and John Rose did not talk about the
stars : it was not their way. The young man, if he
had said any thing, would have wrenched a pun out

THE STORY OF AVIS. 23

of them perhaps, or propounded a conundrum, for
no better reason than that the sight of them had
moved him. And the first thing that Coy said
was, —

" Avis wishes us all in Guinea.

" But why?"

" She hasn't seen so much astronomy since she
was in Italy. She wants to be by herself, and re-
duce it to Prussian blue and Naples 3Tellow. I think
it must be very uncomfortable to be an artist.
You're always looking at Nature with a professional
squint : }'ou can't put yourself on any sort of terms
with her, I should say, more than a photographer
can with a complexion, or a dentist with front-
teeth."

. It was true enough, that Avis, coming out of the
close room into the freshening April night, had
thrilled beneath the sudden throbbing of the stars,
with an impulse which those only know whose life
in its more poetic stages has been passed under the
ardors of a Southern sky. Some slight disturbing
element which had entered into the evening for her,
served only to make the coolness and calm and
vastness more marked and reposeful. She had
drawn a deep breath as one does in re-adjusting
one's self to a momentarily suspended action.
She would have liked Mr. Ostrander better if he
had not exclaimed, " Almost Florence!" as he
turned to take Barbara home. She was glad it was
nobody but Barbara's brother, poor fellow ! who was

24 THE STORY OF AVIS.

to walk with her, and that he did not expect her to
talk about the stars, and that Coy and John Rose
seemed so very comfortable together just in front of
them. Her mind was pre-occupied in ways to which
the little inner life of a Harmouth reading-club was
as foreign as — ah, well ! — as foreign as the carmine
curtain to the cold north star. She felt no less
annoyed than perplexed by the slight pressure of
circumstances which seemed to have drawn her
to-night into the exact atmosphere of that half-
expressed life. She longed for the poise which soli-
tude only can give, and half wished that she had
not invited Coy to spend the night with her, and see
the Venetian views to-morrow.

Her fancy about the curtain and the light-house
came before her with a strange, pictorial vividness,
as she walked on, talking common-place to Barbara's
brother.

Out bejrond the little sheltered town the great sea
swept. She could hear the far beating of the tide
upon the receptive April air. While the currents of
these delicate human lives swept softly on in their
elected channels, long waves thundered against the
Harbor Light. Miles away through the night,
some homeless bird took wing for the burning bosom
of the reflector, and straight, straight — led as un-
erringly as instinct leads, as tenderly as love con-
strains, as brutally as Nature cheats, with a glad
fluttering at the delicate throat, with a trustful quiver
of the flashing wings, like the bending of a harebell,

THE STORY OF AVIS. 25

like the breath of an arrow — came swa}rmg ; was
tossed, was torn, and fell.

She had been out when she was a child, after many
a storm, and seen them dead there by hundreds on
the rock. The light-keeper gathered them up into a
bushel-basket once, for the scientific professor.

They had strewn the shores of her young thought
with untold and ungathered suffering, — those birds.
No one thing had been more responsible for the
attack of universal scepticism which she had success-
fully weathered at eighteen, in common with the
existing senior class of college-boys in her father's
lecture-room.

Sometimes in Florence, on a radiant night, when
across the roofs, against the setting sun, the sparrows
stood twittering in Italian (no New-England sparrow
could have rehearsed in that accent if his engage-
ment for the season had depended on it) , and the
voices of children, whose parents' eyes had never
questioned Fate, poured their pliant chirrup into the
Arno's monotone beyond the studio window, — then
suddenly, like a drop of sleet upon a flower, would
fall a vision of the Harbor Light at home, and to-
wards it, through the freezing night, a bird fly to its
death.

She had not thought about the light before, since
she had come home.

But Coy and John Rose were walking together
oeneath the April stars. They did not talk of the
Spenserian metres, nor the Uptonian theory. They

26 THE STORY OF AVIS.

discussed the oysters and the last engagement, the
coming concert and the impending battle, the hazing
scrape, and the Mission Sunday school.

Then they talked a little about Barbara, and a
little of the new tutor, and then about Miss Dobell,
and then a little about art and life, and earnestness,
and about a man's understanding himself, and about
the beauty of high purposes, and the preciousness
of sympathy, and the uncertainty of the future, and
many other original and impressive themes. And
the young man made no conundrums now, and grew
so grave, that Coy took fright, and asked him, Was
he going on a mission? But he answered, gravely
still, Did she think him fit? To which she told him
promptly, No ; that he would set the cannibals to
making bad puns before a week was out ; and then
he said he was afraid he should, and that he must
be content with some obscure position among edu-
cated Americans who read the charades in the reli-
gious weeklies Sunday mornings. And by that time
they were at the gate of Professor Dobell' s old-
fashioned silent house, and stopped to wait for Avis.

" Poor Mr. Allen ! " said Coy, turning the curve
of her cheek in the starlight.

" I don't know about that," said the young min-
ister perversely.

" But Avis will never, never " —

" I wouldn't grant that any woman I cared for
would never, never, as long as she allowed me upon
terms of friendship at all," persisted the young
man.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 27

"But," said Coy hurriedly, "Avis is not like
other women. She never was."

" Then you admit " — began John Rose.

" I admit that I'm cold, and here she is," shiv-
ered Coy. Coy was half frightened. If Mr. Rose
had said anymore about sympathy and friendship
just then, she would have gone into the house with-
out waiting for Avis. The color had heightened
in her young face. Her foot tapped the snow
sharply in her impatience for Avis to come up. It
seemed to her as if she and John Rose, standing
there in the professor's snowjr, shaded yard, had
been left alone, the only two people on the breathing
earth.

" I never saw a woman have a latch-key before,"
said Coy, as the two girls, having dismissed their
escorts, lest so many voices should disturb the pro-
fessor, stood together upon the door-step.

"Father is in the study," said Avis; "and I
begged aunt Chlpe to go to bed ; and the girls are
tired, poor things ! Why shouldn't a woman have
a latch-key?"

This was one of those propositions of which the
burden of proof certainly lies with the negative ; and
Coy replied only by an amused smile as they passed
into the large and silent house. It was lighted only
in the halls ; for aunt Chloe was of an economical,
old-fashioned temper, and thought it rather snobbish
to waste good kerosene, when there was not brandy
enough for the soldiers in the hospitals. Aunt Chloe

28 THE STORY OF AVIS.

had attacks of benevolent parsimony very peculiar
to herself. When these overtook her, she resolutely
denied herself her cup of Oolong tea at night for
months at a time, and relinquished butter on her
buckwheats of a morning. It was never quite clear
to the rest of the family exactly how the United-
States army was the better for that tea or butter.

' ' But aunt Chloe has that sense of superior per-
sonal sacrifice, which is the most useful element in
our charities, beyond doubt," laughed Avis, as she
and Coy went directly to her own room, treading
softly past the study-door.

It was abundantly light and warm in Avis's room.
The fire was in the grate ; the curtains were drawn ;
Avis's easy-chair and slippers were before the hearth.
It was a plain, rather a grave place, that little bed-
room ; would have been prim with Avis out of it ;
such a room one would look for in a house of which
Professor DobelTs sister had been the mistress for
eighteen years. Aunt Chloe believed in good blan-
kets and towels, and a plenty of them ; and, when
you bought a piece of furniture, bu}' "the real"
always ; but, as long as there were home missionary
boxes to be made up spring and fall, she could not
see that the New Testament recommended a fashion
in carpets, or that St. Paul could possibly have been
sensitive to any lack of harmony in upholstery or
mantel ornaments. There was one fine bit of marble,
— the Melian Venus. This, with the few foreign
trinkets and engravings which Avis had scattered

THE STORY OF AVIS. 29

about the room, seemed to be there only by tolerance,
till she herself came into it. Then a fair congruous-
ness settled upon the air. Every thread of color
left in the old rug, and antiquated chintz, and faint
wall-paper, seemed to shake itself, and begin to
shine. The firelight leaped to her feet like a lover.
All the room budded and opened like a flower about
her, as the two girls threw themselves in lithe atti-
tudes upon the old rug to " toast their feet " like
children at the fire.

I find that I am talking rather lawlessly about
these ' ' girls. ' ' Avis Dobell was a woman of twenty-
six, and Coy not many years the younger. But
they were girls still to each other by that pretty trick
of speech and fancy common in the comradeship of
all women before marriage. Sometimes we find it in
our way to smile at this illusion ; but, like all illu-
sions, its pathetic side is its deepest and its truest
one. Within the soul of every unwon woman abides
eternal youth. Though the snow be on her hair before
the King may claim her, yet shall he not find violets
and the birds of spring, when at last, at last, his
coming feet shine beautiful upon the mountains of her
ungarnered heart ?

It was quite the proper thing in Harmouth, as I
have intimated, for young ladies to be somewhat
seriously intelligent ; and so when Avis had got her
long hair down over her white merino wrapper, and
Coy, with a gay silk shoulder-robe thrown across her
night-dress, was crimping her short front-locks be-
fore the deepening fire, she began, —

30 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" What do you think about the Club, Avis ? "

" I thought you called it a Chaucer Club," said
Avis.

uOh! so it is," said Coy. "We've been the
whole mortal winter poking over Chaucer. We only
got into Spenser last week. For my part, I hate him. ' '

"Which?"

" Why, Chaucer ! I never did like old-fashioned
poetry, and I never shall. I'm a terrible modern,
Avis. I like Tennyson and Whittier and Long-
fellow, and the Brownings, and so on. And that
Scotchwoman, Jean Ingelow, cultivates me more than
two Spensers. I've just had to set to on the old
fellow like a Latin prose-lesson all winter. We've
really worked very hard," said Coy, with a sense of
high literary virtue. "I never worked so hard in
a club in my life. That is Mr. Ostrander's doing.
They say he's very talented. But, then, talented
tutors are so common in Harmouth ! I wonder we
don't hear more of them afterwards, don't you?"

Coy wound her small fingers in and out of her
crimping-pins with a sinuous motion ; her two lifted
bare arms enclosing a face as innocent of sarcasm
as a mocking-bird's. Coy was one of the immortal
few who can look pretty in their crimping-pins.

" I suppose you've gone on having clubs," mused
Avis, leaning her head back against the seat of the
easy-chair, and clasping both arms above it, " every
winter, just as we did when we were girls."

" Just the same," said Coy, " as we did when you

THE STORY OP AVIS. 31

were at home six years ago. You know how it is
with people : some take to zoology, and some take
to religion. That's the way it is with places. It
may be the Lancers ; and it may be prayer-meetings.
Once I went to see my grandmother in the country,
and everj'body had a cand}*-pull : there were twenty-
five candy-pulls and taffy-bakes in that town that
winter. John Rose says, in the Connecticut Valley,
where he came from, it was missionary barrels ; and
I heard of a place where it was cold coffee. In Har-
mouth, it's improving your mind. It comes hard on
me," said Coy plaintively. "It comes rather hard
on me. Generally I have an intellectual conviction
that I ought to improve my mind. But nothing
comes of it, you know, till there's a club. Then
I groan ; but I go in for it hardest of them all.
Improving your mind is as bad as old poetiy. I
don't take to it," said Coy mournfully. "I ought
never to have been born in Harmouth. If I'd been
just a downright society girl now, I could have been
a dunce, and nobod}^ ever have known the difference :
I know I could. But the amount I've read this last
four 3'ears ! It positively makes my head swim to
think of the titles of the books. And, strictly speak-
ing, I'm not in the Faculty either, you know, Avis ;
for father resigned when I was — Why? it was
the j^ear I was going on with Jim Snowe : I couldn't
have been fourteen. I wish, when he took to patent-
ing his discoveries, he had taken me with him. I
think I could have patented a crimper that would

32 THE STORY OF AVIS.

make a simpler system of punctuation in your finger
than this."

" And so," added Coy, turning one bare foot
slowly around from side to side, before the deep-red
fire, as if she were baking an exquisite bit of porce-
lain, " and so we run to reading-clubs ; and we all
go fierce winter after winter to see who'll get the
1 severest.' There's a set outside of the Faculty
that descend to charades and music and inconceiva-
bly low intellectual depths ; and some of our girls
sneak off, and get in there once in a while, like the
little girl that wanted to go from heaven to hell to
play Saturday afternoons, just as you and I used to
do, Avis, when we dared. But I find I've got
too old for that," said Coy sadly. "When you're
fairly past the college-boys, and as far along as the
law-students" —

" Or the theologues? " interposed Avis.

" Yes, or the theologues, or even the medical de-
partment ; then there positively is nothing for it but
to improve your mind."

Coy pathetically turned the other foot to the fire,
and watched it with an attentive air, as if there were
danger of its being overdone.

" And so we have the clubs. Sometimes it's old
poets served hot, and sometimes it's plain history cut
cold, and it may be a hash of the fine arts, or even
a ragout of well-spiced science. One winter it was
political economy. I had my first gray hairs that
winter. But the season we took the positive philoso-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 33

phy, they thought I was going into a decline. And
we all fight, to begin with, in the politest possible
way, every year, as to who shall be in, and who
sha'n't, and what we shall be allowed to have for
supper. And the wrong people are always let
in, and the right ones are always left out ; and we
have the usual number of flirtations, and the usual
set of jokes ; and we get off the old one about Bar-
bara Allen's name regularly, for each new club.
And there are about so many engagements, and the
usual number of offers ; and so it goes. I think I
must be growing old. I only had two last winter."
Coy drew both feet back from the ardor of the fire,
and folded them in the plaid-silk robe. There was
a silence, which she broke by saying, —

" Mr. Ostrauder is tutor in Latin."

"Is John Rose going to settle over the Central
Church?" asked Avis.

" Probably. Father says he will have the call."

" It seems unspeakably funny to me to see John
turn into a minister," said Avis. " He was such a
little scapegrace in college ! I remember his telling
me he should like to preach ; but it would never do,
he was too fond of slang ; should say, ' Wot larks,
my brethren ! ' before the sermon was over."

" Oh, yes ! Well, he's got past that," said Coy.
" He's very good, I think : he's a great deal better
than I am. J'm not good at all. But I think my-
self he'll make a peculiar minister, he is so much
like other men. Did you know there was talk of

34 THE STORY OF AVIS.

making a professor of Mr. Ostrander? — professor
of geology."

"But I thought he was teaching Latin," said
Avis.

" So he is ; but there's no vacancy in Latin, and
he is said to have a very versatile mind. He was
once educated in medicine, besides. Father says he
has a very broad grasp."

" I should think so," said Avis, with an inscruta-
ble look. " How old, pray, is this Mr. Ostrander? "

" Oh, he's very old!" said Coy: "he's almost
thirty. He teaches German too," she added per-
suasively, after a silence. " He has a class of young
ladies. Barbara is in it, and I'm going to join when
I get round to it. I should think you would like to
go. What pretty arms you have, Avis ! "

Avis had risen from the old rug, untwining her
arms from the locked position above her head, which
they had steadily retained while Coy was talking.
The sleeves of the white wrapper fell away in the
abrupt motion.

" They're not fat, like mine," said Coy, with a
critical air. ' ' Did anybody ever tell you they were
like the arms of Mme. Recamier, in David's pic-
ture?"

" Yes," said Avis : " I have been told so. Let us
go to sleep now, Coy."

Avis was a light sleeper, and she lay long awake
that night, watching the glow within the grate, and
listening to the beat of the surf upon the shore, al-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 35

most a mile beyond her father's house. She lay,
rather she sat, perfectly still, bolstered against aunt
Chloe's generous pillows, with one hand thrust
through her long hair, and her strong young eyes
fixed undazzled upon the white-heat of the coals, till
it had died to a delicate blush of color, until the
blue ashes had crept like the hue of death upon a
human cheek across it. The window towards the
sea was open, and the rhythm of the tide beat a
strange duet with Coy's gentle, happy breathing on
the pillow at her side. It seemed to her a great song
without words, full of uncaptured meanings, deep
with unuttered impulse. She would have liked to
fit expression to it ; but Avis never wrote u poetrjV
never had, even when she was in her teens. That
was not the baptism with which she was baptized.
Certain words, as sleep overtook her, adjusted them-
selves in a disjointed fashion to her thoughts ; but
when, starting, she roused and wakened, staring about
the darkening room, from which even the starlight
was now gone, she found that they were only theae : — •

" Full fast shoe fled, no ever lookd behynde,
As if her life upon the wager lay."

36 THE STORY OF AVIS,

CHAPTER III.

" By nature a philosopher, spirited, swift, and strong." — PLATO.
"Young, and a woman; 'tis thus she was mine." — GOETHE'S PAN-
DORA.

WHEN Hegel Dobell, Professor of Ethics and
Intellectual Philosophy, thirty-five years old,
and a bachelor, brought home one day to the old-
fashioned house set apart for the incumbents in his
department a bride of nineteen New- York summers,
all Harmouth shook its highly intellectual head.

In the nature of things, it was argued, a man of
years and reputation, a man pre-eminently a scholar
as well as a student, a man capable of writing the
celebrated brochure, "Was Fichte a Mystic?" to
say nothing of the correspondence with the Berlin
professor whose name Harmouth never could re-
member, on the subject Harmouth always found it
difficult to recall ; even throwing out of the question
the pamphlet on the c ' Identity of Identity and Non-
Identity," which that other celebrated German
(name also gone for the moment) was understood
to have discussed at one of his Sunday dinners, be-
fore his mind gave way, — such a man, it was
urged, must find a slender stock of conjugal promise
in the choice of a society girl known to have been
gay, and understood to be peculiar. Any man, in

THE STORY OF AVIS. 37

fact, filling the metaphysical chair in Harmouth
University, must discover that he had mistaken the
premises of his syllogism in marrying a spoiled
child, whose parents had experienced difficulty even
in restraining her within polite circles at all.

This pretty young thing, who peeped shyly as an
anemone out of her stylish hat at the congregation
in the college chapel, looked demure enough, and
delicate, as if a waft of wind or sun would wilt her.
Yet it was distinctly understood, below the bated
breath of Harmouth, that the great professor had
won this little lady but just in time to prevent her
from running away to go upon the stage.

Perhaps, indeed, it was a trifle gossipy to call it
"running away;" and Harmouth never gossiped.
Miss Mercy had suggested as much as this, and the
phrase was decorously amended. Miss Mercy was
a mild and matronly power in Harmouth always,
even before her marriage. In fact, Harmouth had
privately selected her as the proper Mrs. Dobell long
before the New- York girl was met or thought of.
Was she not a lacty of unexceptionable antecedents,
whose family had been ' ' professional ' ' for as many
generations as a good American could conscientious-
ly count at all? Could it be denied that she was
healthy, handsome, and thirty-one? Could one fail
to recall her marked (and lucrative) success as prin-
cipal of the Harmouth Female Seminary? and if you
chose to consider her known interest in the university
scientific endowments ? — And where else was there

38 THE STORY OF AVIS.

a woman who had read the professor's lectures on
Spinoza through ?

It was not for a long while, indeed, not until Miss
Mercy had become the second Mrs. Hogarth, and
the president's wife had avenged the spinster, that
Hannouth was comforted for this highly-educated
lady.

But perhaps she was right. The little bride had
not exactly run away. Yet there was certainly a
freak for the stage, intercepted somewhere. And
clearly she was a restless, glittering, inefficient
thing, like a humming-bird turned radical. Would
the great professor bend his well-salaried powers
happily now to investigating the varieties of honey
which his quiet garden-roses might have and hold
for a petulant beak ?

At all events, it was as clear as the Law of Ex-
cluded Middle, that the great professor — like any
small man who delays marriage till he has reached
the age when his neighbors should choose for him —
had made a serious blunder.

The professor, however, like every other genius,
had a touch of obstinacy about him, and persistently
delaj^ed, as time ran metaplr^sically on, to discover
that he had blundered at all, was an inexcusably
tedious while in beginning to be disappointed in his
marriage-venture, and ended by flatly refusing alto-
gether to be miserable. This was an unscientific
evolution from precedent, which tried Hannouth to
the soul's depths. We can forgive our friend much.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 3S

All true allegiance deepens in geometrical proportion
to his deserved misfortune, and a crime can only test
the temper of sound loyalt}^ ; but who can pardon
him for not being unhappy when we have foretold
him that he would be ?

If the professor's little wife were a humming-bird,
she was a very tender and true one : she loved the
great hand that had lured her from the fields on
which the wild dew lay, and sipped his grave domes-
tic honey with happy, upturned look.

Once in a while, when the professor, strolling
about the house in the play-hour which rigorously
followed meals, saw through the window Mrs. Ho-
garth walking intelligently and plumply by upon
the president's arm, a fine scintillant gleam of fun
twinkled in his deep-set eyes. Pie said nothing, —
he never said any thing of any matter which kindled
that rare spark under the cavern of his brows, — but
he strode across the room to where his wife was
sitting, pulled his nervous hand out of his pocket,
and bending his gaunt, awkward shoulders, gentl}r
laid a finger under her chin, and turned her young
face up to his ; and then she said, —

" Do you want any thing, Professor? "

And then he said, —

" Only to see if you look happy and well, my
dear."

Perhaps after that they looked into one another's
eyes a moment with something of the gravity which
is inseparable from all deep happiness, before she

40 THE STORY OF AVIS.

stirred, and put up both lithe arms to be caught, to
be clasped, to be devoured against his he&-rt.

For it was the old imperious story that we know
so well, — this story of the scholar and the woman :
who can explain the witchery by jvhich it pulls at
the heart-strings of us all ? As ah* ve as Faust, as
old as Abelard, as tender as Petrarch, as eternal as
Dante, it keeps pace with our calmer passions and
our serener time.

In the sweep of pre-eminently well-regulated af-
fections that eddied through the real life of that
decorous university town, there was probably none
more constraining, there certainly was none more
controlling, than the love which had settled upon
the quiet home where the rebellious little society
girl had passed her honeymoon, and begun to ex-
tract from joy the elements of rest.

It was the same old intense, delirious story, — the
overwrought mind captured by the unused heart,
the monarch will bent to the subject emotion, the
great purpose gone suppliant to the great passion,
— a wise man become as a fool for a pair of velvet
arms ; and the author of the Identity of Identity
and Non-Identity was the elected priest or victim of
the ancient and honorable experience.

That was as one chose to look at it. Harmouth
might call him a victim ; but, in the glamour of his own
vision, he was the awed priest chosen for an imposing
and sacred service.

No college-boy in his class-room, struggling with

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 41

his first fancy, struck wilder currents than this grave
man in his late, impetuous love. There was no girl,
dreaming with shy eyes in the twilight before a folded
and glorified ideal, who had a simpler or more ro-
mantic faith in it than the metaphysician held in his.
In his pure and studious life Hegel Dobell had been
blessed above his own deeming or dreaming in this, — •
that he had never spent his nature upon unworthy, or
even mixed or insufficient feeling. The great passion
of his life was one with its great love. The forces of
both overtook him with the swiftness of a freshet.
He yielded to the torrent with the childlike and
ecstatic surprise that he would have felt at the dis-
covery of a new axiom.

It was Eden in the old-fashioned house ; and the
tremulous amazement of the first man and the first
woman filled it. To them was given dominion over
a world as unreal to souls incapable of sublimation
by a great love, as the Paradise of Milton, or the
Palace of Kubla Khan.

They were not of dull fancy, after all, who nick-
named the professor's wife. There was something
bird -like in her ; in her buoyant attitudes, in a way
she had of turning her head sidewise to look at her
husband as she perched upon the arm of his chair,
in the cooing tones of her clear but uninsistent voice,
and especially in a certain reserve that was very
marked in her.

We are apt to think of a bird as rather an open-
hearted, impetuous creature, telling all she knows,

42 THE STORY OF AVIS.

pouring out her private affairs to the whole world's
hearing by simple force of her nature. In fact, per-
haps no creature is more capable of concealment.
Naturalists load us with stories of her little strata-
gems. "We have but to look intently in her eye to be
made conscious that she has her mental reservations
about many matters ; in particular, opinions about
ourselves, which it is not worth while to explain.

The robin at your door on a June morning seems
to be expressing himself with lavish confidence ;
but, to a patient listener, his song has something of
the exuberant frankness which is the most impene-
trable disguise in the world. The sparrow on her
nest under }~our terrace broods meekly; but the
centuries have not wrung from one such pretty pris-
oner a breath of longing for the freedom of the
summer-day. Do her delicate, cramped muscles
ache for flight? her fleet, unused wings tremble
against the long roots of the overhanging grass?
She turns her soft eye upon you with a fine, far
sarcasm. You may find out if you can.

It was in memory, perhaps, of some of the sweet
nonsense of her honeymoon, that Mrs. Dobell had
selected for her little daughter the name of Avis.

"Mamma," said the child one day, not coming
to her mother's knee, but sitting in the sunlight at
some distance from her on the floor, " what shall I
be?"

" What shall you be, Avis? "

" Drayton Allen is going to' keep a dog-store ; and

THE STORY OF AVIS. 43

Ben Hogarth is going to be president of some col-
lege. What shall /be?"

" What will Coy be, my dear, and Barbara? "

" Coy is going to be a lady, she says, mamma."

" Very well," said mamma.

" And Barbara is going to get married."

Mamma made no reply.

" I think I'd rather keep dogs," said Avis grave-
ly, after a silence. After some moments, receiving
still no answer, the child rose to her feet, pushing
back her thick hair from her eyes, starveling in the
full sun.

" Mamma, did you run away? "

" Barbara says you ran away. She says j^ou ran
away in a stage."

" Barbara told you a very wrong story, my child.
Come here."

Avis threw down her plaj'things, and went slowly
to her mother's knee. The mother put her arm ex-
pressively about the child ; but still she did not

44 Mamma," began the little girl again, " I have
never seen anybody in a theatre."

" Some day you shall, when it is right and best."

" Mamma," slowly after a pause, " did you ever
want to keep dogs? "

" Not exactly, Avis."

"I thought not. You know you didn't like that
dog I had who drowned himself. Now, what I'd

44 THE STORY OF AVIS

like to know is this : if you wanted to keep thea-
tres, why didn't you? "

Mrs. Dobell, with some signs of agitation, laid
aside her sewing, and drew her little daughter upon
her lap. She looked into A vis's eyes for a long
moment, with that instinctive assurance of sympa-
thy and impulse of confidence, which, from the hour
when the baby's face is first upturned to hers, a
mother feels at times in the presence of a woman-
child.

" Avis," she said gravely, " I married your papa :
that is why I never acted in the theatre."

" Oh, yes ! Well, I didn't know. Did you never
want to run away after you had married papa ? Did
you never care about the theatre again? Mamma,
what is the matter ? Are you cold? I don't want
to go away and play. I haven't talked enough. I
had a great many questions to ask you. I like you
better than I do Barbara's mother. You're so much
prettier, mamma."

But long after that, after her pretty mother had
become a thin, sweet vision, like a fading sketch to
the young girl's heart, she recalled with incisive
distinctness the way in which she had been put
down from her mother's knee that morning, then
impulsively recalled, snatched, kissed, and cried
over with a gush of incoherent words and scalding
tears. She never saw her mother cry before or after
that. But all that she could understand of what
she said was, —

THE STORY OF AVIS. 45

" Oh, my little woman ! Mother's little woman,
little woman ! ' '

This glimpse into her mother's heart, the child,
held by some blind and delicate sense of honor,
never shared with any other human eyes. When
she was herself a woman grown, and not till then,
she asked her father once, if he supposed her mother
to have possessed genuine dramatic talent.

" Unquestionably," said the professor, lifting his
head. " My wife was not like most women, given
to magnifjing every little aesthetic taste into an
unappreciated genius. She had, beyond doubt, the
histrionic gift. Under proper conditions she might
have become famous."

"Why, then, should she never have cultivated
such a gift? " ventured Avis.

"Because," said the man simply, "she married
me."

" But do you not suppose," persisted Avis, " that
in all those years, shut up in this quiet house, she
ever knew a restless longing in that — in those — •
in such directions ? ' '

Avis faltered beneath the old man's sharp and
sudden look, bent upon her in a kind of deep, in-
dignant pity.

" Your mother was my wife," he said superbly;
•s and my wife loved me."

One other morning spent in the sunlight with her
mother became pictorial in Avis' s memory, — one
other only ; and whether the first threw the more

46 THE STORY OF AVIS.

powerful focus upon the last, or the last against the
first, it were difficult to say. Avis was nine years
old that morning. It was winter; and her father
waked her in the freezing dawn, while as yet only a
single feather of gold flecked the east, where snow-
clouds were piling high.

Her mother had been ailing, ill : none knew ex-
actly why. It was quite certain that she had no
disease ; only the waxing and waning and wasting
of a fine, feverish excitement, for which there seemed
to be neither cause nor remedy.

Last night they told her she was better.

They had called her now in hot haste. Swift feet
passed to and fro across the halls ; and voices broke
and whispered at the doors.

The child, in her little night-gown, pattered across
the entry, shivering with cold ; but, when her mother
asked her why she cried, she said papa had hurt her
hand when he took hold to lead her in.

The light had broadened when she climbed upon
the high, old-fashioned bed, and pulled aside the
clothes to get in upon her mother's arm. Some one
objected to this ; but some one else said, " Let the
child alone." The color in the east unfolded, and
hung against the windows like a wing, she thought,
as she lay down, and curled against her mother's
heart.

4 ' Mamma," began the child, "I am sorry you
are sick. Sha'n't I bring you a little picture that I
drew last night?"

THE STORY OF AVIS. 4?

But her mother answered only, " There, my
daughter ! Mother loves her ; there ! "

"It is a picture of a bird, mamma, with trees.
I thought you'd like to see it. And — O mamma !
the wing ! — see the wing the sun has made upon the
sky ! It looks as if it meant to wrap us, wrap us,
wrap us in."

As Avis, leaning on one little arm, uttered these
words in the dreamy monotone of an imaginative
child, the sun-burst broke full against her face.

It was then that there rang throughout the room a
tense and awe-struck cry. It was not in any sense
a cry of pain ; rather surcharged with a burden of
wondering joy. Then there followed words resonant
and vibrant : —

4 ' Under the shadow of His wing shalt thou
abide."

But when Avis, dazzled by the sunrise, turned her
head, some one came from behind, and swiftly laid a
gentle hand across her eyes. And though she begged
them, till the day was dark again, to let her go back,
just for once, and hear mamma say, " Mother loves
her," none would give her leave.

The professor's sister was a homeless widow, of
excellent Vermont intentions, and high ideals in cup-
cake. In the course of a severe and simple life she
had known one passion, and one only, — the refined
passion for flowers, which makes the sole poetry of
many a plain, prosaic story. She accepted her call-

48 THE STORY OF AYIS.

ing and election conscientiously, when she was sum-
moned to that most difficult of human tasks, the
training of another woman's child. When Hegel's
letter came, beseeching her to bring the presence of
the " ever- womanly " into the desolated house of
a heart-broken man, she prayed over it for a week.
And then she spent another in wondering what it
would be her clear duty to do by that child in regard
to pickles and hot biscuit: her poor mother had
never attended to her diet. She held it to be the first
business of any woman who undertook the manage-
ment of a literary family, like her brother's, to attend
properly to its digestion. And then she wrote her
brother simply — saying nothing of either prayers
or pickles — that she would come and do the best
she could. Her sole stipulation was, that she might
be allowed to bring her geraniums.

Her best- — to her glory be it said, from the day
when she first unpacked in the professor's house
the rather rural-looking trunks, to which Avis's town-
bred sensibility immediately objected — aunt Chloe
faithfully, evenly, and nobly did ; and what could
angels or mothers more ?

Yet when she had been in her brother's family a
year, she came to him one day with a sunken look
about the temples, — a family look, indicating sternly-
repressed feeling, in which she bore at times a mar-
vellous likeness to the professor.

" Hegel," said the childless woman, with a quiver-
ing lip, " I should like to have your little daughter
love me : but I'm afraid she never will."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 49

" What's the matter now?" The professor
brought his black brows together, looking up from
the copy of Hamilton's Logic, in which he was try-
ing, with the "patience of genius," to keep six
places open witn five fingers.

" Nothing very new," sighed aunt Chloe. " The
same old story. She had to rip her seam out in the
— the undergarments, and she would not stir the
jelly. And, when I went to ask her why she had not
made her bed, I found her putting tinfoil over the
medallions that you brought from Mantua ; making
impressions of them with her finger-nail. And the
noses, Hegel! ItVill displease you very much to
see the noses. The Laocoon is as black as the
register ; and the Apollo ' ' —

The professor strode across the room, and into
the parlor where Avis sat, deep in the broad cush-
ioned window-sill, with the medallions on her lap.
A vein on the child's temple began to throb as she
looked up.

"Papa, I never meant to hurt their noses! I
didn't know they were so tender, — just like sugar.
I wanted to make a statue out of the tinfoil. Poor
Apollo, papa ! He's just a snub."

Avis brought the medallions to him with a swift,
sweet gesture of appeal, which too frequently con-
verted her clearest faults into her most irresistible
claims upon one's sympathy ; or, as aunt Chloe put
it, "turned her from a sinner into a sufferer" at
once.

50 THE STORY OF AVIS.

"Never mind the noses!" said the professor,
irritably tossing the medallions to one side. " Avis,
don't you love your aunt Chloe? "

" Wiry, yes ! ' ' said Avis, with wide eyes. " I like
aunt Chloe. It isn't aunt Chloe that I hate."

'"What do you hate?"

Her father looked at her across the great black
Logic, as a depressed garrison might look at the
progress of an enemy whose movements it was ut-
terly unable to forecast.

" Aunt Chloe says it's unladylike to hate," said
Avis. "If it is, then I'd rather not be a lady.
There are other people in the world than ladies.
And I hate to make my bed ; and I hate, hate, to sew
chemises ; and I hate, hate, hate, to go cooking round
the kitchen. It makes a crawling down my back to
sew. But the crawling comes from hating: the
more I hate, the more I crawl. And mamma never
cooked about the kitchen. I think that is a ser-
vant's work. I'm very ugly to aunt Chloe some-
times, papa. And then I'm sorry. But I don't tell
her, unless I think of it. On the whole, papa," add-
ed the child gravely, "I have so many sorrows in
this world, that I don't care to live."

" But," said her father, with rather a gymnas-
tic sternness, "it is shirking not to attend to your
work. There's nothing meaner than a shirk."

"I'm not a shirk, papa! " cried Avis, with hot,
indignant eyes. " It isn't'the work I hate. I raked
up the leaves for you last fall, and you said I did

THE STORY OF AVIS. 51

it most as well as Jacobs. And I go to the post-
office every day. It's not the working, but the
hating and the crawling, that I mind."

" It is proper that little girls should learn to sew
and cook," said the professor of intellectual philoso-
phy faintly. He turned the leaves of the Logic ; he
groped blindly among the marginal annotations. His
two hundred unruly boys in the college class-room
he could manage ; but all the wisdom of Sir William
was as the folly of a fool to teach a great man what
to say to a little girl who did not like to sew.

There was a vein of broad tolerance in Hegel
Dobell's sturdy nature. He knew that it would give
him " a crawling " to sit for fifteen minutes at that
slow, nervous, precise drawing in and out of the
needle, at which his little daughter, with flushed
cheeks and twitching fingers, sat by the hour at a
time. " A crawling? " Call it a brain-fever.

Yet it was unquestionably proper for all women,
certainly for all women belonging to himself, to be
versed in those domestic accomplishments to which
the feminine nature was created to adjust itself
happily at some cost. So he only said, —

"Well, well, my dear; do as aunt Chloe bids
you, and hate as few things as possible. And now,
if 3^ou want to make statues, spare my medallions,
and put the tinfoil on your dolls' faces in the pla}r-
room."

" My dolls ! " said Avis. Her color came swiftly :
she lifted her little head with the helpless look of

52 THE STORY OF AVIS.

one who receives a perfectly unavengeable insult.
" Why, papa ! I haven't had a doll since long before
mamma died. You know I buried my last one under
the tool-house, and Coy came to the funeral."

But papa and Sir William the Wise were gone.

"It is an admitted principle in all systems of
education," said the professor plaintively to his sis-
ter, " that some concession shall be made to the
moulds of individuality. In point of fact, all theories
cool off in such moulds at last. There certainly is
this element of justice in the electoral system which
is in danger of becoming so threatening to our
universities."

4 ' Do you want Avis to give up learning to cook ? ' '
asked aunt Chloe, with a puzzled face.

" Certainly not," said her father, retreating
promptly and safely behind the cover of the Logic.

Aunt Chloe sighed. In her heart she thought,
that if Avis failed in the end to grow up like other
girls, and be a credit to her, it would be owing chiefly
to her poor mother's city-bred, unthrifty s}Tstem of
allowing servants to manage their work with so little
personal supervision.

It has been said that every human opinion is
strong enough to have had its martyrs. Aunt Chloe
would have gone to the stake cheerfully for this con-
viction.

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 53

CHAPTER IV.

"Yet thoroughly to believe in one's own self,
So one's self were thorough, were to do
Great things." — TENNYSON.

THE illuminated hours of life are few ; but those
of our first youth have a piercing splendor which
neither earlier nor later experience can by any chance
absorb. Avis was, perhaps sixteen, when one of
these phosphorescent hours flashed upon her.

To the day of her death she will recall the last
detail that expressed it to her. As most of us re-
vive the sunrise of love, or the first assault of grief,
it is given to a few to individualize the moment when
aspiration lays a coal of fire upon our young dumb
lips.

She was down in her father's apple-orchard, where
the low, outskirting branches yield the outlook to the
sea. Between her and the shore swept placidly the
expanse of the farm, for whose sake the professor
clung with syllogistic precision to the old-fashioned
house so far from the centre of the town. The ripen-
ing grain had a sinuous, feminine motion under the
light wind. The stalks of the young corn turned
their edges in profile towards the sun ; and the short
silk hung like the hair of babies, tangled and falling :
it seemed to Avis that she could see a stir now and

54 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

then, and tiny green hands put up to push it out of
winking eyes. In the meadow the long grass rioted ;
and black and brown and yellow bees made love to
crimson clovers. How they blushed ! She should
think they would. They were too lavish of their
honey, those buxom clovers, like an untaught country
lassie with a kiss. But the daisies that skirted the
old gray stone walls — the slim, white daisies with
the golden hearts — looked to the young girl's fancy
like the virgins in the Bible story, carrying each a
burning lamp.

She had climbed into the highest, airiest branch of
the highest tree in all the orchard, principal!}7 be-
cause aunt Chloe said it was unladylike to climb.
Any thing, every thing, that aunt Chloe did not want
her to be, she would like to become that morning.
It was purely because all things had gone narrowly
wrong in doors that da}r, that she had taken her
little blue-and-gold girls' copy of " Aurora Leigh,"
and rushed out fiercely with it into the wide June
weather. Because aunt Chloe had made her late
to the drawing-lesson to get that parlor swept ; be-
cause she had been rude and wrong about it, and
aunt Chloe had been polite and right ; because aunt
Chloe had said she would never grow gentle and
womanly like other girls, and she had retorted that
she hoped she never, never, never should ; because,
too, she had told aunt Chloe hotly, to that good
lady's extreme perplexity, that " carpet-dusting,
though a pretty trade, was not the imperative labor

THE STORY OF AVIS. 55

after all" and so had run up to get the poem, and
see in secret if she had her quotation right, — because
of all this, here they were, she and Aurora together,
tossing like feathers in the apple-bough, high, still,
safe from all the whole round, rasping world.

Besides, aunt Chloe never could find her, and
would have to make the pudding by herself.

So near our pettiest motives do our largest in-
spirations lie !

She had easily thrown off the annoyance of the
morning, with the blessed, elastic temper of her
young years ; flinging herself upon one elbow, in
that way of hers, pressing her fingers against her
temple and under the girlish fillet of her closely
braided hair, balancing herself dexterously by her
feet upon the tremulous bough, and so plunged into
that idyl of the June, that girls' gospel, which will
be great as long as there are girls in the world to
think it so.

As few poems are ever read, as only an imagina-
tive girl can read those few, Avis in the apple-bough
read on and on. She had always meant to take just
some such June morning, and find out to her satis-
faction what the woman really meant to say who
wrote that book, but had only nibbled at it hitherto
indiscriminately, after the manner of girls.

Full of the vague restlessness which possesses all
healthy young creatures, and the more definite hun-
gers natural to a girl of her temperament, Avis was
ready to be fed with any full, rich nutriment which
seemed to promise fibrine to a growing soul.

56 THE STOEY OF AVIS.

Poison or nectar, brimstone or manna, our lipa
slake at the nearest, be it what it may, in the crisis
of that fine fever which comes but once in life.
Avis was not without capability of relishing a certain
quality of poison, not too fully flavored, of prismatic
tints, and in a lily's shape, like hyacinths. But it
was silent as a convent in the apple-boughs ; the
growing day drew on a solemn veil of light ; upon
the sea the steps of unseen sacred feet were stirring
— and so the manna fell.

I like to think of this young, thing, coiled there,
like an oread, in the apple-tree, with the shadow of
a leaf set like a seal upon her parted lips, and her
eyca leaping now and then, dumb prisoners, from
her book to the horizon of the summer sea ; her
heart arising with the sweet imperiousness of girl-
hood to solve the problem of her whole long life
before that robin yonder should cease singing, or the
next wave break upon the shore, or the lamp of one
of the virgin daisies go out under the shadow of the
overflying cloud that swept across the meadow.

" The June was in her, with its nightingales; "

and are there not those of us who would yield our
lives to know their Junes once more ?

Avis, long years after, used to remember with a
positive thrill how she said aloud that morning,
throwing back her head, and turning her eye through
the close leaves to the vivid sky, —

" I am alive. What did God mean by that? "

THE STORY OP AVIS. 57

And then was frightened lest the very orioles should
understand her. It seemed to her to be the first
time that she had ever really thought she was alive.
But no one could understand : no one should under-
stand. She sat up, and looked at the birds with
her finger on her lips.

Despite our most conscientious endeavor to " go
on cutting bread and butter," it is on ideals that
the world's starvation feeds. And to most of us
who must perforce live prose, there is a charm be-
yond all definition in the development of a poetic
nature. In the budding of all young gifts, in the
recognition of all high graces, in the kindling of all
divine fires, we feel a generous glow upon our own
colder and serener fates, like the presence of the late
evening light upon a drift of snow. When the pas-
sion of our lives has long since wasted into pathos,
and hope has shrivelled to fit the cell of care, we
lean with increasing ardor on the hearts of those in
whom purpose and poetry were permitted to be one.

On Monday when the fire smokes, on Tuesday
when the bills come in, on "Wednesday when the
children cry, it is not more smoke, more debt, more
tears, we want : tell us, rather, how a statue grew,
or how a poem sprang, or how a song was wrought,
or how a prayer conceived.

Avis climbed down from the apple-tree by and by,
with eyes in which a proud young purpose hid. It
had come to her now — it had all come to her very
plainly — why she was ah' ve ; what God meant by

58 THE STORY OF AVIS.

making her; what he meant by her being Avis
Dobell, and reading just that thing that morning in
the apple-boughs, with the breath of June upon her,
— Avis Dobell, who had rather take her painting-
lesson than go to the senior party, — just Avis, not
Coy, nor Barbara.

She climbed down, and went straight into the
house to her father. The orioles looked kindly
after her ; and the maiden daisies held then: lamps
aloft to light the going of her impetuous feet ; and
perhaps either birds or flowers came nearer to the
young girl's heart just then than our tenderest
imagination can ever take us.

Aunt Chloe had made her pudding alone, and the
professor had eaten it. Avis thought of it as she
went into the study. Very well. Other women
might make puddings.

She went straight to her father's knee, and, stand-
ing with her straw hat hanging by the strings be-
tween her crossed hands, said as simply as if she
had been asking for a kiss, —

" Papa, I should like to be an artist, if you
please."

The professor looked up from the " Critique of
Pure Reason" with a faint, appealing perplexity,
like a child waked from a nap in a strange room.

11 O Avis! you have come. Your aunt missed
you at dinner. I am sorry that you have made her
more trouble about your domestic duties."

Avis stood for a moment perfectly still. She

THE STORY OF AVIS. 59

seldom entirely lost the delicate, fluctuating color
which lighted her face. At that moment she be-
came, for one of very few times in her life, abso-
lutely pale.

" But, papa," she stretched out both her hands a
little towards him, — " papa, 3^ou do not understand
me.

' ' I have decided this morning that I want to be
an artist. I want to be educated as an artist, and
paint pictures all my life."

"Poh, poh!" said the professor. " Nonsense !"

Ah, well ! we must forgive him. "What should he
know of the apple-trees and the orioles, the daisies,
and the blue-and-gold poem, and the way of a June
morning with a young girl's heart?

" Nonsense, nonsense! " repeated Professor Do-
bell. " I can't have you filling your head with any
of these womanish apings of a man's affairs, like
a monkey playing tunes on a hand-organ." He
spoke with a rude irritability not common with him
in his treatment of his little daughter ; and under
that cavern of his brows glittered the rare spark
which his wife had known so well.

Avis, by some subtle law of association, thought
at that moment of her mother, and wondered if papa
were thinking of her also ; but she said nothing, only
turned miserably away.

"But my child," called her father more gently,
" come here, come here! What is all this about?
I don't understand. If you want to go on with

60 THE STORY OF AVIS.

your drawing-lessons, nothing is to prevent, that I
know. Make yourself happy with your paint-box, if
you like. That was a very pretty little copy which
JTOU made me of Sir William. The likeness was
really preserved."

Still, still, and forever, Achilles will have his one
little vulnerabilit}'. When he was a young man,
Hegel Dobell had been told that he resembled Sir
William Hamilton. Perhaps he did : at all events, it
was the pride and delight of his gentle life to think
so. A portrait engraving of the great philosopher
alwaj's hung above the study-table. To be invited
into that study was to be expected to observe with
more or less promptness that remarkable likeness.
His college-boys understood this so well, that he
used frequently to remark, after a visit from some
more than commonly promising young man, how
much that resemblance seemed to be thought to in-
crease with years.

"It was a very pretty little copy," repeated the
professor.

" I do not want to make pretty little copies," cried
Avis with quivering lip. u ' J who love my art
would never wish it lower to suit my stature.' '

The professor of intellectual philosophy, not being
well read in u Aurora Leigh," stared at this alarm-
ing quotation. But Avis went headlong on, —

" I want to be educated. I want to be thoroughly
educated in art. Mr. Maynard told me, when 1
drew the Venus, that I should go to Florence."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 61

" Certainly, " said her father, "you shall go to
Florence in due time, like other educated young
ladies. And, when you have had enough of Mr.
Maynard, I will send you to the Art School, if that
will make you happy. But fret no more about ' be-
ing ' this or that. Your business at present is to
4 be ' a studious and womanly girl. Now kiss me,
and run and beg aunt Chloe's pardou for being late
to dinner."

So lightly do we dispose of the instincts of the
young thing lifting the first startled, self-concentrated
eyes to ours. We pat the sleeping lion at our feet as
if it were a spaniel, offering milk and sugar to the
creature that would feed on flesh and blood, and
settle, after the trifling disturbance, to our after-
dinner nap.

There was little enough of the lion in poor A vis's
composition. She had all the self-consciousness of
the artistic temperament with but a small share of
its self-confidence. After this little scene with her
father, she shrank and shrivelled into herself for a
long time. She must be spurred, applauded, to her
possibility, or it was possible no longer. It seemed
to her an arrogance not to measure her belief in
herself by the belief of others in her. Above all,
she craved at this time the daily stir and stimulus of
an idealizing love. She wondered sometimes, if in
the feeling that other girls had about their mothers
lay hidden the wine which she found missing from
her youth. For a soul which loved her so that it

62 THE STORY OF AVIS.

could not help believing in her, Avis could have dared
the world. But only mothers, she supposed, ever
cared for a perplexed and solitary girl like that.
Still, because her hour had come, and because u the
June was in her," she bent blindly to her young pur-
pose, in her young and groping way.

But she quoted no more Mrs. Browning to her
father ; and, if he praised her crayons, she sat politely
silent. It is possible that this poised reserve excited
in the professor more respect than a man may natu-
rally be supposed to feel for the mental processes of
his daughter at any age.

'When Avis, being nineteen, and having finished,
as one was careful to say in Harmouth, her school
education, thus delicately expressing the true Har-
mouth compassion for those types of society in which
post-graduate courses of reading were not added to
a young lady's accomplishments, — when Avis was
sent to Europe with the Hogarths and Coy to stay a
year, she kissed her father good-by as innocently
and quite as charmingly as any young lady who was
travelling to improve her accent in French. But,
when the year was out, he received from her a serious
proposition, that her friends be allowed to return
without her, and that she be permitted to remain for
an indefinite time, and study art.

" She hasn't underclothes enough," said atmt
Chloe decidedly. "I only fitted her out for a year."

When the professor, with a slow smile, suggested
that possibly this was a difficulty which time and

THE STORY OF AVIS. 63

talent could overcome, aunt Chloe looked very much
depressed. If Hegel were going to give in to Avis
at last, after all the good sense that he had shown
in managing her, the poor girl would never be a
credit to her, never, and her life's work would sim-
ply be thrown away. Aunt Chloe was of quite as
unselfish- a temper as the most of us ; but she found
it hard sometimes to trace the exact distinction be-
tween Avis's good and her own glory.

4 'Besides," urged aunt Chloe, " what is to become
of her when she is married? " Aunt Chloe held it
to be impossible that any woman could make home
happy without being able to make good Graham
bread ; and Avis's last remarkable experiment in
this direction was yet vividly in mind. How a
course of instruction in oil-colors was to help the
matter, it really was not immediately easy to see.
But the professor strode about his study a little
while, and then sat down and wrote, —

" It is the custom, in the training of carrier-doves,
to let them all loose from their places of confine-
ment into the upper air; but those which do not
return readily without interference are cast aside as
too dull to be worth the trouble of further education.

"I let you go, my dear daughter, not without
misgivings ; but omnipotent Nature is wiser than I.
I should be duller than the dullest bird among them
all, if I could not trust you at her hands."

Avis had now plunged into a life which extremely
few women in America, twenty years ago, found it

64 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

either possible or desirable to lead. Those who
know any thing of art-circles in Italy at that time
will recall the impression made upon them by her
superb perseverance in mastering the difficulties of
her position long before her gift had been distin-
guished from a grace. The shy American girl of
the unquestionable breeding and the yet half-blos-
somed beauty, trod the mazes of Florentine life with
an innocent rapture which protected her like a shin-
ing veil.

The prospect of commanding proper surroundings
to her venture had seemed, at first, a hopeless one ;
but one day her friends looked about to find that
the little Yankee girl had brought her circumstances,
like spaniels, to her feet. She had even provided
herself with a chaperone of Mrs. Hogarth's own
selection. She had then armed herself with a new
palette, Coy's last kiss, and a single introductory
letter, and, with the sublime assurance of twenty,
gone headlong to work.

With a dumb joy, such as some world-sick soul
of us may feel in the actual, long-delayed presence
of death, this young thing now began in soul and
sense to live.

Now, indeed, she knew that she had never lived
before. She read her life backwards, like the Chal-
d leans, translating all its suppressed text by the
light of her aspiration, as happy lovers view their
past by the illumination of their love, grudging to
time every hour they have spent apart. We find that

THE STORY OF AVIS. 65

most of the traits of a great affectional passion exist
in the young genius which is making the first use of
its antennae.

Her letter, over the signature of Frederick May-
nard, was addressed to Alta Mura, once — as the
Harmouth drawing-teacher was used to say with
lifted head, — once his master.

" Go over to Naples," said the scrutinizing artist
to whom the young lady had been advised to carry
it; "go and ask Alta Mura what he wants done
with you."

Avis went to Naples, and Alta Mura sent her
back again.

" Are you ready, young lady," he had said, " to
spend two days copying a carrot that hangs twenty
feet awa}T from you against the wall? "

" Two hundred, if I must," said Avis.

' ' Then throw away every thing in your very pretty
portfolio. Ma}*nard has taken to copying from the
flat. Go back to Florence, to a man whose name I'll
give you, in a street that I will tell you. Do exactly
as he bids you for two years ; then come back to
me."

" She will get tired of it in six months," said aunt
Chloe ; u but I'll knit her some woollen stockings,
for I'm told the Italian winters are quite rheumatic."
Aunt Chloe was still so old-fashioned, that she would
not say, " neuralgic," even of a young lady's bones.

And the professor paced the silent study, beneath
the portrait of Sir William, wondering sometimes,

66 THE STORY OF AVIS.

when the sun got low, where it was he found that
rather touching anecdote about the carrier-doves.

A\> is, in the little bare studio, — high, high, so
high that it seemed, by putting her hand out of the
window in the roof, she could touch the purple wide-
ness of the Florentine sky, — had her own thoughts
about those doves, perhaps.

But she stooped to her task with a stern, ungirlish
doggedness. In the little attic studio, Pegasus
kicked at the plough now and then, but, on the
whole, behaved himself somewhat remarkably. She
was young to have been so docile ; but she thought
nothing about that. She did not know that she was
in any sense unusual in coining the fervors of twenty
to secure that most elusive of human gifts, — a dis-
ciplined imagination. The self-distrust which had
shrunk at the first rebuff of ardor was her preserva-
tion now. She abandoned herself to the grating
drudgeries involved in mastering the technique of
art with a passion of which it were not discerm'ng
not to say that it added to the fire of the artist
something of feminine self-abnegation.

In short, Avis shared the fate of most American
art-students in Italy at that time. She simply spent
two years unlearning, that she might begin to learn.

When these two years were over, she went back
to Alta Mura. He said, —

" Now I will see if you can be taught," and took
her, with her chaperone, into the atelier, under his
protection. She went to her place on the front

THE STORY OF AVIS. 67

settee before the students entered, and left it after
they had gone.

When two years were gone again, Alt a Mura sent
her to Paris ; and Paris sent her to Couture.

When she was in Paris, her father came out to see
her.

" I think I would let the dove fly/' he said, " a
little longer."

One day Couture came into the studio, and said, —

" Mademoiselle, I will give you two years to make
a reputation."

Avis, standing with her slender thumb piercing
her palette, and her brushes gathered with it, thrust
out her empty hand with a gesture which the great
artist admired more thoroughly than he understood.
Her magnificent, rare pallor swept over her face, and
the quality of her features heightened. Her face
and head looked larger when she was pale. She
reminded him at that moment of Soddoma's Roxana,
in the Alexander's marriage at Rome. Copies from
the fresco sometimes had that colossal look, and her
face had taken on the tints of a deep engraving. If
the Archangel Gabriel had said, "Mademoiselle, I
will let you into heaven, be but so good as to wait
an hour," Avis might have looked at him with just
that widening of the eyes and parting of the lips.

She went back to her apartments that morning
with a dazzled face ; but she walked weakly, and
for the first time for nearly six }Tears of hard work
and hard homesickness, burst into a passion of hys-

68 THE STORY OF AVIS.

terical tears. She had worked so gently and so
humbty, with such patient service of her possibility,
that success overtook her with more the grip of a
paralysis than the thrill of a delight. For two
days she lay actually ill upon her bed. For a week
she did not enter the studio, but wandered about
Paris like a spirit in a vision. The monarch of her
young future had turned lover, and kneeled at her
feet. His resplendent promise humbled her. Like
the beggar-maiden in the story, she stretched no
hand out towards her crown, and stood with down-
cast eyes " before the King Cophetua."

It was under the glamour of these blinding days
that she found herself one afternoon wandering into
the Madeleine. The blessed Christian habit by which
an over-full heart relieves itself in prayer to an un-
seen God, was on her.

But just then the tropical Catholic atmosphere
came more kindly to the New-England girl than any
other could. In the college chapel at home, perhaps,
she would have found an audible public prayer at
an arctic remove from the seething necessities of
her mood. She kneeled at vespers in the Madeleine
in that temper when a religion of emotions assumes
a sacerdotal authority over the intellect, and even a
superstition takes on the sacredness of faith. Avis
often found in such hours a certain positive physical
repose, which only the reverent can understand, or
even, perhaps, respect. It seemed to her that these
prajTers, which bore the burden of centuries of half-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 69

inarticulate human longing, surrounded her like ever-
lasting arms ; and upon the chant which held the cry
of ages she leaned her head, as John did upon the
bosom of his Lord. It would be impossible, of
course, to explain to any other than a believer that
this was something as much deeper than a physiolo-
gical effect as the soul is finer than the body.

It was when Avis rose from her knees, with the
halo that John himself might have worn upon her
face, and was about turning, with the few stray
Parisians who surrounded her, to leave the Made-
leine that afternoon, that she found herself arrested
by a pair of eyes fastened upon her in the twilight,
across the nave.

They were the eyes of a fellow-countryman, as it
took but the flash of an instinct to see.

Avis, in that flash, said, u There is a remarkable
face ! ' ' Perhaps any one would have called it a re-
markable face : certainly, in the impressive back-
ground of the dim-lit church, it blazed like an amber
intaglio.

We see occasionally in women, but very rarely in
a man, that union of the Saxon and the Southern
which weds the fair hair to the dark eye. This face
was set in a nimbus of bright hair, which, in a boy-
hood not too long departed, must have been of deep,
unusual gold. A beard which had never known a
razor quite concealed the outline of what seemed to
be a sensitive mouth ; but of that it was impossible
to tell. The young man wore his hair a little long,

70 THE STORY OF AVIS.

perhaps with either the carelessness or the affecta-
tion of a student. Avis liked the shape of his head,
which her artist's glance had caught simultaneously
with the color and character of his eyes. These
were black, with a large iridescent pupil, which she
felt concentrated upon her — upon her lifted face,
her arrested motion, her responsive attitude — like
a burning-glass.

The telegraphic signal-system of the human soul
runs now and then in a cipher blank to the most
imaginative of us all. It is not easy to explain, but
most of us will admit, the effect which people may
produce upon one another by the outleaping eye in
the prison of a chance crowd. I do not think that I
am overstating the case, in saying that these two,
man and woman grown, going out from the Made-
leine that afternoon to the world's wide ends, would
have thought of one another, as we think of an
unread poem, or an undiscovered country, as long
either lived.

In Avis this was very natural. The artist's
world is peopled with the vanishing of such mute
and unknown friends ; and the artist's eye is privi-
leged to take their passports as they come and go.

But when, standing with her gloved hand upon a
column, her face, draped in the dark veil of her
little Parisian hat, bent slightly forwards and up-
wards, and her eyes gone rebel to ah1 but the in-
stinct of the moment, starting, she stirred and
turned away, she felt a great tidal wave of color

THE STORY OF AVIS. 71

surge across her face. If the eye of that amber
god across the Madeleine had caught an artist, it
had held a woman.

Avis became aware of this with a scorching,
maidenly self-scorn. She dropped her veil, and hur-
ried from the church.

72 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

CHAPTER V.

" My saul, ye maun blythe-bid the Lord, ettlin' his carriage the cluds;

on the wings o' the win' making' speed:

Errand-runner he make o' the blasts, and loons o' his ain, the
bleeze o' lowe." — SCOTCH PSALMS.

0

IF Philip Ostrander expected Miss Dobell to join
his German class, he was doomed to what it is
not exactly correct to call a disappointment. Proba-
bly he did expect it. The other young ladies had
all joined. Young ladies were apt to join any
classes which he chanced to open without undue
reluctance. He had been in the frequent way of
this sort of thing, in the natural course of that
griping struggle with ways and means which had
brought the keen-eyed, poverty-ridden boy from an
uncultivated New-Hampshire home to one of the
most brilliant positions which New England had
then to offer.

For it was now considered, as Avis heard from her
father when she had been at home a little while,
quite assured that Mr. Ostrander would ultimately
take the geological chair through the probation of
the assistant professorship. True he was not a
Harmouth graduate, this the professor regretted
keenly ; but his shining talents burned the more con-
spicuously for this disadvantage. And that he had

THE STORY OF AVIS. 73

refused a position in his Alma Mater to compass
those two years in Germany, by which a promising
3roung man expected, with some confidence, fifteen
or twenty 3Tears ago, to become immediately " dis-
tinguished," had naturally recommended him to the
Harmouth perceptive Faculty.

Coy was right when she said that Mr. Ostrander
was thought in Harmouth to be remarkably versatile.

At all events, a versatility which can be converted
into a dollar an hour is not to be despised by a
Harmouth tutor ; and Ostrander held the rudder of
his yet unanchored craft with a very easy hand.

In this matter of the German lessons — which,
requiring but the sh'ghtest type of attention, left
him space for a good deal of revery, — he was con-
scious of watching narrowly to see what Miss Dobell
would do. During the afternoons which he spent in
the sunny parlors of the Harmouth ladies, with the
prettiest girls in the city chirping gutturals at his
feet, or in the evenings which he devoted to Barbara
Allen's fine renderings of Schumann, he made no
attempt to deny that the young artist occupied cer-
tain large untravelled spaces upon the map of his
fancy. It is more than possible, that if Avis had
.drifted into the German class ; if there had been
established between them that time-honored relation
of master and pupil, which, always fraught with the
sweetest possible perils to man and woman, is more
stimulating to the imagination of the pupil than of
the master ; if Avis, too, had sat and chirped at his
feet, then — well, what then?

74 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Possibly Ostrander assumed that then the delicate
poem opened one day at vespers in the Madeleine
would hardly have been found worth the reading,
and the radiant, undiscovered country would have
scarcely compelled the explorer over the threshold.

Possibly, too, both nature and experience would
have taken his brief, had he been tried for this
assumption. Ostrander, at this period of his life,
protected himself against the ambuscades of his
own temperament with that forethought which an
unmarried man of thirty is clearly expected to have
acquired. But he experienced a singular sense of
relief and expectancy, when several weeks had
passed, and Miss Dobell did not join the German
class.

That sib}7! of the Madeleine perhaps possessed
the fine old classic instinct which every year he
thought grew rare and rarer among women. She
must, it seemed, be absolutely sought.

Some pressing Faculty business took him, before
the vacillating April days were quite over, to Pro-
fessor Dobell's house. He called at dusk, and aunt
Chloe invited him to tea. He hesitatingly refused ;
but when she said, —

"Then come next Friday, Mr. Ostrander: it is
a long time since we have had the pleasure, and I
notice my brother is always in good spirits when you
have been to see us," he accepted the invitation at
once. He did not in the least attempt to wrestle
with his motive in this innocent bit of scene-shifting,

THE STORY OF AVIS. 75

but allowed himself to be led blindfold by it. His
wish to see that girl again had become imperative.
Ostrander had the deepest respect for whatever he
found really imperious in himself.

With Friday, the New-England April weather had
assumed one of the caprices which we tolerate so
tenderly in any born coquette ; and snow fell heavi-
ly. The day before had been as gentle as a baby's
dream. Avis worked in the studio in the garden
without a fire ; and one of the college-boys brought
Ostrander a tuft of saxifrage from the pale-green
promise of the meadows. That morning the wind
lay in the east sleepily enough ; but by noon the air
was blurred with the large, irregular spring flakes,
as if Nature had taken a wayward fancy to fold her-
self in a Japanese screen. In the afternoon, when
Ostrander had strolled out of town, and down the
shore to see the surf, the drifts were already piling
high. He tramped through them lightly enough, in
the rubber-boots which are the chief end of man in
New England, and with his soft silk cap drawn over
his eyes, and his powerful figure bent a little with
the first languid action of a wrestler upon it, yielded
himself to the intoxication of the winter shore.

Few greater passions pass more readily into the
permanence and fidelity of love than the passion
for the sea. Ostrander had an elemental kinship
with it in himself, which every year of his life
had intensified. He sometimes wished that he was
quite sure he cared as much for any human creature

76 THE STORY OF AVIS.

as he did for Harmouth Harbor. He struck off
down the drifted beach toward the Light. The wind
was in his face. Through the opaque air he could
see rudely denned, like the values of a vast, unfin-
ished sketch, the waves leap and slip and fall upon
the glazed cliffs, and across the narrow reef from
which the light-house shot sheer against the sky.
He pushed on down, perhaps a mile, to find a shelter ;
and there, with the tide at his feet and the spray in
his face, flung himself upon the freezing rocks, pos-
sessed with a kind of fierce but abundant joy.

The Light stood just across the bay where the
Harbor widened to the sea ; it might have been a
dozen rods or so from where Ostrander sat. The
reef, traversable at low tide, ran from it to a gorge
within the cliff. The well-defined metallic tints com-
mon to the New-England coast — the greens and reds
and umbers, the colors of rust, of bronze, of ruins
— covered the reef. The gorge was a vein of deep
purple lava, which to Ostrander 's educated eye told
the story of a terrible organic divorce.

The wave that tore its heart out at his feet was
throbbing green ; but, beyond that, the inrolling
tide, the chalky outline of the Light, the harbor-
mouth, the narrowing horizon, the low sky, all the
world, lay gray beneath the footsteps of the dizzy
snow. The wind was rising from the sullenness of
a blow to the anger of a gale ; and the crash of
the breakers which he could see had a shrill, petu-
lant sound set to the boom of those unseen across
the bay.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 77

Was it the lawlessness of all this, or the law of
it, that thrilled Ostrander? Was it the passion, or
the purpose, which commanded him? Was the
eternal drama of unrest an outlet, or an inlet, to his
nature ; an excitant, or a sedative ? It were hard
to say. The young man asked himself the question,
but found a shrug of his fine shoulders the most
intelligent answer at his command.

Or perhaps we must admit that there was as much
rheumatism as philosophy in that shrug. It certainly
was growing very cold, and darkening fast.

Ostrander had been somewhat sheltered by the
cliff at whose feet he sat ; so much so, that he was
quite unaware of the extent to which the wind had
risen. A man does not sit very long upon an ice-
covered rock ; but a few moments will suffice to let
loose the prisoned temper of an April gale. When
he turned to get back to the beach, he found the
wind racing through the lava-gorge at the rate of
perhaps eighty miles an hour, and the snow seeth-
ing under his feet before the first oncoming of the
heavj^, breeze-swept tide.

He stopped to pull up his coat-collar, as he would
now have the storm at his back ; as he did so, the
fog-bell began to toll from the Light, and he turned
instinctively at the sound.

At that moment he saw a figure between himself
and the light-house, moving slowly shorewards along
the reef. It was the figure of a woman — it was
the figure of a lady, slight and delicately dressed.

78 THE STORY OF AVIS.

It was not so dark but that lie could see that she
moved with great difficulty. The reef was jagged
as a saw, and glare with the thin, blue, cruel ice.
It ran at an angle to the northward, and took the
whole sweep of the easterly gale.

Ostrander, as he watched her, felt the blood tingle
about his heart. He believed that there was but one
lady in Harmouth who would have taken a walk to
the light-house on such a day. Did Miss Dobell
know that not one woman in one hundred could get
across that reef in a blow like this? The light-
keeper must have been mad to let her start.

It seemed that the light-keeper himself was coming
to that late and useful conclusion. Dimly through
the snow Ostrander saw the flash of the lantern with
which he had accompanied her to the reefs edge.
There was still much sickly light in the air, and the
lantern shone pale and ghastly. The man gesticu-
lated violently, and seemed to be shouting unheard
words. Ostrander remembered suddenly how shal-
low the rocks grew in sloping to the little island.
The rising tide had probably cut between the keeper
and the lady, and by this time distinctly severed
them.

Ostrander hesitated no longer, but ran swiftly out
upon the reef.

She was making her way valiantly enough, per-
haps without any more than a vague and not un-
pleasant consciousness of possible peril. The gale
took the heavy drapery of her skirts and long water-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 79

proof cloak in a cruel fashion, winding them about
and about her limbs. She looked very tall in the
waning light, and there was a certain grandeur in her
motions. She stood out against the ice-covered rock
like a creature sprung from it, sculptured, primeval,
born of the storm.

As Ostrander ran along the reef, he saw her stop
or stagger, hesitate, then stoop slowly, and take to
her hands and knees. She rose again in a moment,
and stood cowering a little, afraid or unable to stretch
her full height to the force of the gale, which seemed
to Ostrander something satanic, now that he was in
the teeth of it upon that reef. Could a blind, insen-
sate force of Nature, so many feet of atmospheric
pressure to the square inch, obedient to a powerful,
and, on the whole, kindly-disposed Creator, set the
whole weight of its brute organism to work with this
devilish intelligence, to beat a delicate woman, blow
by blow, to death ? There seemed something so pro-
foundly revolting to Ostrander 's manhood in this idea,
just then, that it did not occur to him, that he was
not the only man in the world who had ever experi-
enced his first genuine defiance of fate in some
stress of peril sprung upon the woman whom he
would have given — What would Ostrander have
given to save her ?

It seemed to htm at that moment that he would
have given his young life ; for as he crept along the
reef — now swiftly, that he might reach her, and then
slowly, that he might not startle her — she threw up
her arms, and fell.

80 THE STOEY OF AVIS.

He came leaping from rock to rock, and would pos-
sibly have plunged into the water ; but through the
dusk he heard her voice.

She said, " I have not fallen into the water. Can
you get over to that great purple rock? "

She spoke so quietly, that he was completely re-
assured about her until he crawled over under the
pounding of the gale, and, dashing the snow out of
his eyes, looked down. She had slipped from the
edge of the reef, and hung at full-length along the
slope of a huge bowlder. The slope was perhaps
twenty feet long, and very gradual : it was covered
with ice. The spray froze in his face as he looked
over. The water was breaking across her feet. She
clung with both hands to the polished edge of the
bowlder : there was blood upon the ice where she
had clutched and beaten it away. But perhaps the
fact which came most distinctly to Ostrander's con-
sciousness was, that the tips of her fingers were
absolutely without color.

The first thing which he did was to tear off his fur
gloves, and, leaning over the reef, stretch both his
warm hands upon hers. The water sucked between
the reef and the bowlder in a narrow, inky stream.

" You are right," she said: " they were getting
frost-bitten. There. Now I can hold myself easily
enough as long as I must. Mr. Ostrander, do you
find it very slippery upon the reef ? "

4 'Not in the least," said Ostrander grimly, grind-
ing his heel into the ice.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 81

"Can you brace yourself sufficiently to put one
foot against the bowlder?"

"I should hope so."

" Only one foot, please, and only one hand. Do
not try to get upon the bowlder, and do not step
between the bowlder and the reef. Do you under-
stand?"

"Miss Dobell, give me one hand now — slowly.
Raise your fingers, one at-a time, and put them into
mine.

uDo you understand that you are not to come
upon the bowlder ?

"If you do not give me your hand immediately, I
cannot possibly answer for what I shall do."

" Promise me, that, if I slip, you will let go."

" I promise nothing. Give me your hand ! "

" Promise that you will not let me drag you after
me."

" I promise any thing. For God's sake, give me,
this instant, the fingers of your right hand ! "

She gave them to him with that, obediently
enough. She lifted them one by one from the ice ;
one by one he slipped his own under them, slid the
palm of his hand slowly under the palm of hers ; so
cautiously, but with the full prehensile force of her
own supple touch to help him, reached and grasped
her wrist. Avis had firmer fingers than most women ;
but they were as supple as withes.

"Now, the other!"

They managed it with the other more nervously,
for the water was now dashing freely in their faces.

82 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" Now I am quite firm upon the reef. I shall
draw you easily up. Do you trust me perfectly that
I know what I am about? "

" Perfectly. Do you remember, that, in case of
an accident, only one must slip? "

" I remember."

" Very well."

" Are you ready? "

" Quite ready."

It seemed to Avis but a moment's work ; and they
sat crouched and panting side by side upon the
broad surface of the reef. She could not possibly
have said how she came there. Her most definite
thought was a perfectly new conception of the power
of the human hand. Ostrander 's controlled, intelli-
gent grasp challenged the blind mood of the gale :
it was iron and velvet, it was fury and pity ; as if
the soul of the storm had assumed the sense of a
man.

As soon as might be, for the tide was rising fast,
they made their way across the reef, and sat down
for a moment's breath upon the shore. Neither had
yet spoken. Ostrander had not, indeed, released
the grip which he had of Miss Dobell's hand. Avis
was the first to break the silence which had fallen
upon them. She said, —

" I am afraid I have killed the bird."

" I beg your pardon? " said Ostrander, staring.

" I went over to the Light to see about the birds
that are brought by the storm," said Avis, exactly

THE STORY OF AVIS. 83

as if nothing had happened. " The keeper gave
me a little blue-jay that he picked up under the
light-house. He thought it might live ; and I
wrapped it in my cloak-pocket. Ah, see ! No : it
is alive."

" Give it to me," said Ostrander, adopting the
young lady's tone very quietly. "You are too
much chilled to keep it. And now are you able to
get on a little ? The tide is becoming really trouble-
some ; and the walk is longer than I wish it were."

He took the bird, and, unfastening his coat,
wrapped it in his breast. Avis, looking up through
the dusk, thought how tenderly the little act was
done.

"The poor thing nutters against my heart," said
Ostrander in his exquisitely-modulated tones. He
had one of those voices into which all the tenderness
of the nature flows readily, like the meadows which
are the first to receive the freshet of the river. And
then Ostrander was really sorry for the bird.

Avis made no reply. She took his arm in silence,
and in silence they passed through the lava-gorge,
and out upon the drifted beach. There she stopped
and looked back. The fog-bell was tolling steadi-
ly, and under the gray sheen of the snow the grayer
mist stole in.

' 4 1 have always wondered exactly what made this
gorge," she said, quite as if she and Ostrander had
only come out on a little geological expedition.
" What was torn out of the heart of the rock? "

84 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" Nothing was torn out," said Ostrander. " The
two sides of that gorge are thrust apart by flood or
fire. They were originally of one flesh. It was a
perfect primeval marriage. The heart of the rock
was simply broken."

Avis stood for a moment in the purple shadow of
the cleft, into which the water was now bounding
high. A certain awe fell upon them both as Ostran-
der spoke. Instinctively they glanced from rent
side to rent side of the divorced cliff, and then into
one another's faces. Stirred by the strain of peril
and the thrill of safety, Avis's excited imagination
took vivid hold of the story of the rock. It seemed
to her as if they stood there in the wake of an awful
organic tragedy, differing from human tragedy only
in being symbolic of it; as if through the deep,
dumb suffering of Nature, the deeper because the
dumber, all little human pains went seething shal-
lowly, as the tide came seething through the gorge.
In some form or other, the motherhood of earth
had forecast all types of anguish under which her
children groaned ; had also thrilled, perhaps, beneath
all forms of joy. Suppose the bridal gladness or
the widowed pathos of a rock. Suppose the sen-
tient nature of a thing adapted to its reticence.
What a story, then, in sea or shore, in forest, hills,
and sky, in wind and fire, in all things whose mighty
lips were sealed ! Suppose she herself, gone mute
as the mutest of them, cognizant of their secret,
joined to thsir brotherhood, were dashing on the
tide across the lava-gorge.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 85

As they turned away, she leaned rather heavily
upon his arm, and tremulously said, —

"I suppose, Mr. Ostrander, if it had not been
for you" —

uAh, no, no!" interrupted Ostrander quickly.
" The light-keeper would have got out the boats. I
have only saved you a pretty cold bath. Pray let
us not talk of that. — But indeed," he added,
abruptly changing his tone, " I begin to understand
why the people in the novels always are saving each
other's lives. It is just another instance of the
absolute naturalness of much that we are all used to
call unnatural in fiction."

"And why?" asked Avis, without the least ap-
parent awkwardness.

"Because nothing acquaints two people like the
unconventionalities of danger. It seems to me —
pray pardon me — as if I had known you for a long
tune."

Avis made no reply ; and they struck out upon
the drifting shore. They seemed to have been taken
up now, and driven by the gale behind them, as if
they had been scooped into the hollow of a mighty
hand.

"And nothing isolates," continued Ostrander,
' ' like the interchange of emotions which any such
experience involves. See now," added the young
man, looking about the desolate shore, "how lonely
we seem. It would be easy to think that there was
no other life than ours in all this world."

86 THE STORY OF AVIS.

He turned as he spoke, and would have stood to
face the wind ; but the mighty hand which had gath-
ered them swept them imperiously on, as if it con-
ceived them to have been bent upon some terrible
errand of its own.

Perhaps Ostrander, too, had received quite his
share of the excitement of that April afternoon.
He was in some sense rather a guarded man in his
habit of speech among women, sufficiently cautious
not to involve himself in those little ambiguous
sallies of the lip to which young ladies attach an
importance which a man reserves for affairs. He
caught himself in thinking that he did not know
another woman in the world to whom he could have
made that speech without a savage and humiliating
fear of misinterpretation.

With a little of the madness of any rarely-tasted
license, he plunged on, —

" How like you it was, in the midst of all that,
to tell me to get upon the purple rock ! "

"How do you know it was like me?" laughed
Avis, as they struggled through the snow.

" I think I have always known what would be like
you," said the young ,man in a lower voice, " since
I saw you in the Madeleine."

There is a certain shade of expression peculiar to
a man's face, which every woman knows, but few
understand. It falls as far short of the flash of
over-mastering feeling on the one hand as it does
of self-possession on the other. Its wearer is at

THE STORY OF AVIS. 87

once constrained to admire, and predetermined not
to love ; and precisely in so far as he is unconscious
even of that predetermination does this delicate
play of the features take on the appearance of the
strongest emotion.

It was not so dark but that Avis, looking up
through the storm, saw that sensitive expression dart
across Ostrander's face. Then the lines about his
mouth subsided, his eye cleared, he lifted his head,
and it was gone. She need not be a vain woman,
only an inexperienced one, who reads in such a
facial change a tenderness which it by no means
bespeaks. Avis, being neither the one nor the other,
suffered nothing more than a slight feeling of sur-
prise.

" I suppose," he added, after a few minutes' pro-
found attention to the problem : given darkness, a
lady, and a snow-drift four feet high, how to floun-
der through the latter with that grace which it will
be a pleasure to reflect upon to-morrow, — "I sup-
pose you now went home, and thought what a rude
American you had seen. I was glad when I saw
you come into the Chaucer Club. I have always
felt that I owed you an apology for that stare."

_He said this with the manner of one who is con-
scious of having said an uncommon thing, and has-
tens to wrench out of it a common-place signifi-
cance.

" Not in the least," said Avis with composure.
" I owe the making of a very satisfactory little

88 THE STORY OF AVIS.

sketch to you. I put you into sepia, on a neutral
gray. Couture took a great fancy to that sepia/'

1 i If I have been in any sense the cloak across
which 3rour royal feet have stepped upon the muddy
road to glor}', or the n^al road to glory, or — my
metaphor is gone mad, and I give it up," said Os-
trander, with the carelessness which conceals rather
than expresses meaning. "At all events, I am
glad you made the sketch. We are getting along
bravely. Are you very cold? "

"Not much. Only my hand which I bruised.
Thank you ! No, I should be very unhappy to take
your glove. How is my bird, Mr. Ostrander? "

" I forgot the bird!"

He sought for it very gently with his free hand,
and said, —

"It lives. It is quite warm. But it does not
stir."

"Why," said Avis as they drew in sight of her
father's house, — " why should we disturb my father
loy telling him about that slip upon the rock ? ' '

"Why, indeed? You are very wise and right.
We will not talk of it."

"I have been away from him so many years,"
said Avis in the almost timid way she had when her
gentlest feeling was aroused, ' ' that, now I am come
back, I find I like to spare him all possible pain,
even a little one like this. And now, Mr. Ostrander,
how is my bird ? ' '

The light from the hall fell full upon his face

THE STORY OF AVIS. 89

when they stopped without the door. The snow lay
lightly on his beard and bright hair. He looked like
a young Scandinavian god.

He slipped his hand very tenderly under his shaggy
coat as he stood there looking down at her.

" I hope all is well with the poor thing/' said he.
But the bird upon his heart lay dead.

Avis was in no possible sense what we call a
woman of moods : her mouth and eyes were too har-
monious, and her chin too broadly cut. Yet she had
as many phases as the moon. So (as unconscious
of the lack of originality in his fancy as most excited
young creatures to whom all earth's dull, old figures
are sublimated by the moment's fever) Ostrander
thought, when she came down to supper that night,
gone, by some ten minutes' magic, out of her wet
wrappings into a wonderful warmth and delicacy.
Even the scent of her dress as she swept past him —
a fine French perfume, but one which he could not
associate with any pretty Parisian whom he had
ever met — added to this impression. At once she
had become a housed, sheltered, hearth-loving crea-
ture. The soul of the storm lingered only upon her
hair and eyes. There was a certain native daintiness
about Avis, distinct from the inevitable elegance of a
young lady recently returned from Paris, and hardly
to be expected of the artistic temperament. She
had her mother to thank for that, aunt Chloe said.
It was still well remembered in Harmouth that the

90 THE STORY OF AVIS.

professor's wife wore colors that no reading-club
would have thought of combining, and laces of a
very unintellectual character.

Ostrander did not recollect having seen any other
woman in such a dress as Miss Dobell wore that
evening. It was of white French flannel, very fine
and soft, somewhat loosely worn, and unornamented.
She was standing by her father's open fire when he
came back from his room at the college, and was
ushered by aunt Chloe into the study. Her eyes
only moved to meet him. She looked slender and
shining as a Doric column.

" Ah," said the professor, " I am more than glad
to see you here. I do not recall, Mr. Ostrander,
whether you have been in my study before. So?
Then you will have seen my engraving of Sir Wil-
liam,— Avis, be good enough to turn on the gas a
little, — the only copy from that plate, sir, to be found
in this country, I believe."

Ostrander was hastening to say that there was, he
fancied — or was it fancy? — a remarkable likeness,
when Avis interrupted him by saying, with an irrele-
vance which surprised the professor in a girl of Avis' s
really coherent mind, that aunt Chloe had sprained
her wrist ; had tried to lift her great ivy-jar. Aunt
Chloe tended her flowers as if they were all orphans,
and loved that ivy like her own soul.

"I hav^e never thought myself lacking in the com-
moner forms of humanity^" observed Avis, her eyes
electric with merriment ; 4 ' but I certainly could not
sit up nights with a sick ivy."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 91

"It was a German ivy," said aunt Chloe plain-
tively; "and I thought it would freeze. I can't
sleep warm if I know my plants are cold. Did you
never notice, Mr. Ostrander, how an arbutelon, for
instance, will shiver? It will shiver like a thorough-
bred spaniel at a draught of air. But the ivy was
heavy. And Avis, I think you must pour the tea,
if you please, my dear."

Ostrander was not sorry to see Avis pour the tea ;
but he recommended an arnica bandage to aunt
Chloe with much graceful sympathy, discussing the
continental pronunciation with the professor, mean-
while.

Ostrander had no deeply preconceived repulsions
to women with " careers," holding it the first duty
of an educated man to cultivate a tolerance of
opinion, especially in matters in which opinion most
unconsciously cooled into prejudice ; but he had,
without doubt, his preconceived ideals. Among
these he found that he had never placed a young
woman in a white French evening-dress, pouring tea
at a cultivated table, with a singularly pretty arm.

After tea — for the simple habits of the Christian
family were not often disturbed for a quiet guest,
and especially not for any pet of the professor's,
like this young man, — Avis went to her accustomed
seat upon a low cricket at her father's feet, and, sit-
ting in the full firelight with bent head, read the
Psalm for evening prayers . A beautiful womanliness
was upon her. She seemed to be wrapped in it like
a Naiad in a silver shell.

92 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Ostrander yielded himself to the domestic spirit
of the evening with the rare relief which a homeless
and restless man alone can know. He sat with his
hand above his eyes, and listened to her reverent
young voice.

After prayers, the professor monopolized the con*
versation, to the exclusion of the ladies, — a liar-
mouth habit of which his wife had nearly succeeded
in breaking him ; but aunt Chloe supposed that was
the way in ah1 literary families, and a lady could
always take her work while gentlemen talked.

Ostrander did not object to this form of parlor,
etiquette, however, just then. He would have been
quite satisfied if he need not have exchanged another
word with Miss Dobell that evening. It suited his
mood to steal a look at her now and then in silence.
Even to watch her, almost reduced his thought of
her to garrulousness. In the beautiful scholastic
sense which wise men give to our common phrase,
he had become conscious of her. He was made
aware of the variations in her voice, her attitude,
her glance, as he was made aware of the fluctuations
of his own breath. He felt her presence in the room
as he felt aunt Chloe's rose-hyacinth in the atmos-
phere.

"Was the repressed excitement of a shared and
unspoken experience upon her as upon himself? She
spoke but little, and wandered about the room,
when aunt Chloe, from over her knitting, recom-
mended some light crochet-work, which she was sure
Mr. Ostrander would excuse.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 93

How superb she was in that white wool! as if
she had wrapped herself in a snow-cloud ; as if the
very soul of the storm, gone mad as a lover to in-
fold her, turned warm as the June to win her, had
followed her in from death and the freezing sea.

She was standing with her face bent, and buried
in the hyacinth, when aunt Chloe presently called
her: —

" Avis, Mr. Ostrander wants to get a portrait
done for a birthday present to his mother."

"Mr. Ostrander, then, is a devoted sou?" said
Avis, lifting her face.

" So I was telling him. And we have so few!
Good sons have gone out of fashion, like hollyhocks.
I hope you will be able to give him the sittings,
Avis. The studio will soon be quite comfortable
with the May sun."

11 How is it, Avis? " said the professor, thrusting
his hands into his pockets, and stopping in his walk
across the room to look at her. " Can you gratify
Mr. Ostrander, my dear, do you think? "

It was when Ostrander was wading back to his
rooms, beating his way through the damp and
heavy drifts with the good temper of a man who has
passed an exhilarating evening, that he saw, turning
the sharp corner upon the college green, a slight
figure struggling before him in the snow. It stag-
gered with the helplessness of a creature encum-
bered by heavy swathing of the limbs, as only a

94 THE STOEY OF AVIS.

woman mummied in her skirts can stagger. The
poor soul was slightly dressed, and carried a little
bag such as is carried by agents or female peddlers,
— a sight much less common fifteen years ago than
now. As Ostrander approached, she tripped, and
fell heavily across the snow, bruising her head, he
thought, against a lamp-post as she fell. Inwardly
wondering of how many more damsels in distress he
was elected to be the knight-errant before that
storm was over, with a lurking smile upon his lips,
but instant pity in his eyes, he sprang, and lifted the
young woman to her feet.

As she turned to thank him, the light from the
street-lamp fell full upon her face and his. They
looked steadily at one another before she spoke.

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 95

CHAPTER VI.

" The clearest skies are those

That farthest off appear
To birds of strongest wing.

The dearest loves are those
That no man can come near
With his best following."

K. K. WEEKS.

THE subtle footsteps of the spring stole on.
The Chaucer Club adjourned till the "months
with the r " should reinstate the oyster-suppers.
The German lessons — since now a yachting-party
offered its own peculiar type of culture, and a little
wider variet}^ in those forms of stimulus which no
intelligent young lady is ashamed to admit receiv-
ing from the masculine mind, — the German lessons
flagged. The deepening sun upon the picture of
Sir William wandered through the open window by
which the professor had wheeled his study-chair.
Aunt Chloe's geraniums were promoted to the gar-
den, and aunt Chloe's soul to the seventh heaven
of tender garden cares and hopes and fears, which
those only know whose nature bourgeons with " the
green things growing,-" and with these alone.

And in the studio, Couture 's pet pupil sat paint-
ing the very successful portrait of her first American
sitter.

96 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Her great master, if he might have strolled through
the old-fashioned garden, and into the snug summer-
house which Avis had levied for her uses, would
possibly have said, with a keen glance from face to
face, —

" Tres bien ! You give Mademoiselle a long-
haired student. She gives you Thor, Odin, Balder.
Mademoiselle idealizes . Mademoiselle has a future . ' '

It seemed to Mademoiselle, meanwhile, that in
strange senses, tingling as an unmastered science,
and blinding as an unknown art, and solemn as an
untrod world, her future, through the budding of that
spring, advanced to meet her.

She became electrically prescient of it. She
throbbed to it as if perplexing magnetisms played
upon the lenient May air. It was as if she held
it in her young hand as she held the violet-buds
that Ostrander brought her. He brought her only
buds.

" I am so glad to be at work ! " she said, — "so
gravely, greatly glad ! "

She said this to herself. It was necessary to say
something. She did not remember to have worked
so excitedly before. She thrilled to her task as the
violet thrilled to the sun. Never had she seemed to
conceive or to construct, with her imagination so re-
cipient and docile to her inspirations. Never had
she seemed before to be in such harmony with the
infinite growing and yearning of Nature.

She stood like the child of the desert, with her ear

THE STORY OF AVIS. 97

at the lips of the sphinx. The whole world_had
leaped into bloom to yield her the secrets of beauty.
She spread the spring showers upon her palette, and
dipped her brushes in the rainbow.

As for her sitter, he served as well as another to
pass the mood of the May weather ; better, perhaps,
with that stimulating, legendary type of beauty.
She found much beauty — and more, the better she
knew it — in Philip Ostrander's face. She told him
so one day, with a naivete which enchanted him.

"I rarely meet," said the young artist, "with
beauty in men. I have known several beautiful
women."

"And other women, it seems, know beautiful
men," urged Ostrander, gracefully evasive of the
compliment, though he felt to the bottom of his soul
the utter absence of that which would have given it
a distinct value to him. This }^oung woman re-
garded the contour of a man's face precisely as a
ph}Tsician regards a hectic flush or a bilious eye-ball.
It was the intricate strife of the artist with the
woman in her which had been the bewitchment of
that look surprised in the Madeleine. He rather
hoped some sudden, abashed consciousness would
overtake her calm, professional scrutiny : he had
often wished so while the portrait had been in prog-
ress. Just now he would have been glad to see her
blush, perhaps. But she went serenely on.

11 1 know, I know ! But I never could understand
it, When I was a girl, and the other girls talked

98 THE STORY OF AVIS.

about the handsome college-boj'S, I was greatly
puzzled. I did not know but I was color-blind
about it, or that my eyes were made with different
lenses. I am afraid I am not just like other
women," added Avis simply, dipping her brush with
deep absorption in the madder-rose.

" Thank Heaven ! " said Ostrander, in a low, de-
lirious tone.

Avis lifted her eyes with a startled change of ex-
pression, holding the tube of brilliant color like an
arrested thought upon the air.

" I did not understand you," she said gravely.

" I said you were in danger of dropping the mad-
der-rose. There ! Allow me. Do not stir : it will
hit the hem of your dress."

He stooped to pick it up, her dress, as he did so,
falling with a faint electric touch against his hand.
Raising his head suddenly, he surprised her eyes
upon him. They were wide, grave, imperious.
They made him think of a Juno that he knew, and
thought the grandest in the world. Was it the sen-
sitiveness of a young man's wounded vanity that led
him to fancy that her lips parted with something of
the dumb and delicate scorn that the lips of that
Ludovisi Juno, alone of all sculpture that he had
ever seen, commanded?

In truth, Avis had come home with large segments
of her nature not altogether occupied by young Scan-
dinavian divinities ; and it is doubtful if all the gods
of Olympus would have appealed to her sensibilities

THE STORY OF AVIS. 99

on any sustained scale, just then, other than as af-
fording more or less fresh material for " a charcoal,"
' ' a memory , " or "a sienna. ' '

As the souls of the dead are said, in the hideous
fable, to suck the heart's blood of the living, so,
without doubt, a great purpose sprung too early upon
a young life may dehumanize it, — sometimes does.
It is impossible to over-estimate the effect of substi-
tuting an intellectual for an, emotional pagsion in the
absorbent phases of a woman's life which are cov-
ered by the decade from sixteen to twenty-six. Such
an experience may prune the nature, as we are told
that hardship does that of certain savage races, re-
tarding their tenderer impulses. While the other
girls talked of love and lovers, Avis sat and sketched
their shy, expectant faces. Yet nothing could be
more fatal to horticulture than to mistake the re-
tarded for the stunted or the sterile growth. Avis' s
auundant being had suffered no depletion. She
was alive to the nerves of her soul. She was
still an unwon woman. She felt even glad some-
times, that there were men in the world who loved
her. She liked to think that they loved her
because they could not help it. She wondered
why it was, that, the swifter the retreat of her
nature from them had been, the surer had been
the advance of theirs. Shb was sorry about it when
it happened ; but she had no coquettish conscious-
ness of having been in fault. And she thought very
humbly of her power to mar the music of any other

100 THE STOEY OF AVIS.

life. Men usually married. And it was pleasant to
remember that she was not unlovely or unlovable.
Sometimes, when she sat before her easel, forecast-
ing her fair future, she felt suddenly glad, with a
downright womanish thrill, that she was so sure of
the beauty and patience of her purpose ; that she
was not to live a solitary life because no other had
been open to her. Perhaps the woman does not
live for whpm the kingdoms of earth and the glory
of them could blunt the tooth of that one little
poisoned thought.

And Avis did not mean to marry : that was a
matter of course. It was not necessary to talk
about it : young women were apt to say something
of the sort, she believed. She had never meant to
many, and she knew that she had never meant to.
She acted upon this consciousness as reticently as
she did upon the combinations of her palette, and as
naturally as she did upon the reflex motion of her
muscles.

But the silent footsteps of the spring crept on.
It was pleasant in the garden studio. The square
little building with the Gothic door and porch, and
long, low windows, stood within call of the house,
yet was quite isolated by the budding trees, an
island in a sea of leaves. It gave a sense of soli-
tude to the fancy, which was rather heightened than
lessened by the close presence of unseen life. When
aunt Chloe, who had the best intentions in the
tforld in the matter of matronizing Avis through this

THE STORY OF AVIS. 101

portrait, trotted in and out in her short garden-gown,
it seemed somehow only to deepen their isolation.
When she suddenly remembered that the lilies were
to have been bedded this morning, or wondered if
Jacobs had let the cows into the corn-patch, or was
afraid the newspaper over the wisteria had been
blown away, or was sure Julia would get the dum-
plings underdone, or the professor get home from
lecture before the study was dusted, and, begging
Mr. Ostrander to excuse her for a minute, van-
ished for an hour, Avis, looking gently after her,
used to think of some odd, old words: " Then she
departed into her own country by another way."
Turning to Ostrander, she would find his eyes upon
her; but his lips said nothing. The robins came
and peered at them with curious glance upon the
window-ledge ; a ground-sparrow who had built her
nest just beneath the wooden doorstep twittered in
a tender monotone ; the boughs of the budding apple-
trees hit the glass with slender finger-tips, and red-
dened if one looked at them ; the dumb sunlight
crawled inch by inch, like a creeping child, across
the steps, and in upon the floor ; the air was full of
the languors of unseen buds ; far and faint upon the
shore summoned the rapture of the hidden sea.

lie could understand, Ostrander thought, why i*
was given to the first man to woo the first woman
in a garden. Out of all the untried moods of the
new heavens and the new earth, — the gloom of the
forest, the strength of the hills, the stir of the moors,

102 THE STORY OF AVIS.

or the glory of the sea, — what could have taught
that perfect primeval creature the slow, sweet lesson
of love's surrender, like the temper of one budding
flower ?

Eve, he had always fancied, was rather hard to
win.

And now the hurrying footsteps of the spring
swept on.

In the ripening grass the clover-buds appeared,
bursting into color impetuously, like kisses that a
child throws to the sky. In the' pansy-bed beside
the summer-house, aunt Chloe's old-fashioned lady's-
delights lifted their impressive faces, and sat like
philosophers in the sun, asking forever a question to
which no man could reply. The imperfectly defined
scent of bads faded from an ah- gone drunk with
yielding blossoms. One day, as Avis sat painting
busity, there came a stir upon the apple-tree, as if a
spirit had troubled the soul of it. A fine, almost
inaudible sound, like a murmur of appeal or remon-
strance, crossed the boughs ; and a shower of blos-
soms fell in upon her.

"Every petal is a perfumed shell," said Avis,
drawing her breath.

44 See how they drift to their places, drawn by the
currents, compelled by the currents, of an unseen
tide ! " answered Ostrander.

His voice had the tense resonance which precedes
tremulousness.

"This means," he said, as he stooped to gather

THE STORY OF AVIS. 103

a leaf which had fallen from her hair, and was sink-
ing with a reluctant motion to the floor, — ' i this
means that May is past, and June has come to us."

He said this in his penetrative undertone, — that
tone which may mean any thing or nothing, but which,
in Ostrander, gave one the impression that he spoke
in a delicate, spiritual cipher, to which it were a
dulness amounting to grossness not to find the
key. He thought, as he spoke, that a faint flush
stirred across A vis's listening face ; but, if so, it was
transparent as the color of the petal in his hand,
and as swift to fade.

" I have been very slow about the portrait, "
returned Avis, hastening to speak. " I worked
more rapidly with a master. At the first plunge
into a solitary struggle, a self-distrust, which I can
neither explain nor avoid, comes upon me now and
then, like the cramp upon a swimmer ; yet I am
quite sure I am doing better work. If we had mul-
tiplied the sittings a little, the picture would have
been — should have been — finished before the apple-
blossoms fell."

"Pray do not misunderstand me," urged Ostran-
der gently. "How could .you for one moment
think" —

" Mr. Ostrander," interrupted Avis, with a sud-
den piercing candor in her eyes, " I did not mis-
understand you."

"Then tell me," pleaded Ostrander, caressing
the apple-blossom which lay quivering across his

104 THE STORY OF AVIS.

hand like a thing that might fly, — " tell me what I
would have said. I am struck dumb to-day."

" I think you meant to say that there is a calendar
for all kind thought that people acquire of one an-
other," said Avis quietly. "All friendliness is a
progression. A friend is a marvel, a creation, a
discovery, a growth like a year; and June will
follow May."

"A friend, a friend!" said the young man,
bringing his hand slowly across his eyes. u How
often do you find the June in the soul of a friend? "

" I am not sure," said Avis, laying down her
brushes, " that we either of us quite know what we
are trying to say. Strictly, since you ask me, I
must think my life has been barren of that which, it
seems to me, a friend would put into it. Of course,
one is always giving and receiving a sort of service
and tenderness. But I see many women find the
closest sympathies and the deepest comfort. Per-
haps I have been necessarily too much absorbed in
my own affairs to cultivate that divine self-oblivion
which is the first condition of friendship."

She took up her brushes with a solitary look ; but,
before Ostrander could answer, it had turned into an
expression which deterred him from speech, like an
outstretched hand. He had never seen her look so
seriously annoyed, nay, disturbed. He had heard
women talk about friendship before : he had never
seen one who did not mellow under the subject like
a September afternoon. But Miss Dobell froze
before the sunbeam fell.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 10o

In truth, Avis was bitterly annoyed with herself.
She recoiled from her little innocent impulse as if it
had held the compromising power of an imprudence,
and felt the scathing hurt which a delicate nature
receives from the re-action of all misplaced ardor.

She had not reached the age — perhaps with those
serious eyes of hers would be long in doing so —
when we can catch only the ludicrous angle in the
sight of a woman talking friendship with a man.

But a friend, — a friend. She had ah1 owed this
man a momentary privilege, sacred and mystical to
her as her maidenly dim vision of the rights of
plighted love. He had overtaken her upon the
boundary of a country holy as heaven, and human
as Eden. Avis Dobell, in her nurtured, loved, and
eventful, but, as she truly said, most solitary life,
had dreamed of the heart of a friend with more
passion and more reserve than most women dedicate
to the lover of their young ideal. But, like Frigga,
the wife of Odin, who foreknew, but never foretold,
the destinies of men, she had the silence of her
inspirations.

She had never told anybody that she felt solitary
before ; she had never chattered about sympathy, or
cackled about being imperfectly understood ; an
obstinate weakness in people, which she hated
as she did some of her tubes of paint, always
telling on the colors of character, killing superior
values by its terrible encroachment. All forms of
self-pity, like Prussian-blue, should be sparingly
used.

106 THE STORY OF AVIS.

A friend? Her friend? What was this that she
had done?

She felt a sudden sick emptiness of soul, as if an
artery had been opened there, which no human
power could ever bind. Her whole nature crouched,
as if it would spring upon this man who had severed
it.

She had returned to her painting quietly enough.
Ostrander watched her between his half-closed,
guarded eyes. " Beautiful leopardess ! " he said;
but he did not say it aloud.

And now it was June in the garden studio.

Coy was privileged one day to come in when Avis
was working alone, and criticise the picture.

" I suppose I must make a fish-horn of my
fingers ? ' ' said the young lady plaintively. ' i I never
knew an artist who didn't go about the world with
one hand curled up at his eye like the tin fish-horns
that we find in galleries to see the pictures through.
I always use them devoutly, of course ; but I never
knew what they were there for. — Yes, Avis, that is
a likeness. His eyes are too big, and his nose is
too little, and there's too much — what do you call
it ? — action ? in the left mustache ; but it is a very
good likeness. How much you have improved ! As
Mrs. Hogarth says, 'It will be quite a step for
Avis.' "

"I do not mean to paint portraits," said Avis,
coloring slightly, "though Couture said I probably
must, in America. But I have different plans : at

THE STOE.Y OF AVIS. 107

least I have different hopes. Is the hair too highly
lighted, Coy?"

"No." Coy uncurled her hand like a long spiral
shell, and bent her two keen, unaided eyes upon
Avis. "No: your portrait is alive. Flattered, of
course : that is the first duty of a portrait-painter.
I didn't know before, that Mr. Ostrander had a
mother. I wonder if she gave him his light hair.
He looks like the people with the horrid Norse
names in the poems Longfellow's taken to writing,
— Frigga, and those."

" Wasn't Frigga a woman? " suggested Avis.

" Oh, well ! it's all the same. He has the antique,
Icelandic style. Mrs. Hogarth is much interested
about it."

4 'Ah!" said Avis.

' ' And Barbara, " added Coy. < c'But then Barbara
isn't in the Faculty."

Avis made no reply.

" In fact, Avis, I may say that the greater part of
Harmouth is familiar with the history and progress
of this portrait."

"Oh! I suppose so," said Avis wearily. "It is
just so if a woman writes a poem, or does any thing
less to be expected than making One-Two-Three-
Four Cake. I must submit to that : I work so
busily and so happily, that I seldom think about it.
But I suppose the woman never lived who would not
rather work in the shelter of a desert or a star."

"Very true," said Coy with her most motherly

108 THE STOEY OF AVIS.

air, u And you know, Avis, you never even knew
till you got home, that Harmouth had engaged you
in Florence to two sculptors and one artist — no,
two artists and a sculptor, besides the Italian
count."

" You are wrong : it was a German baron," said
Avis in a tone of scientific precision.

"At all events," said Coy, with a swift glance
from the portrait to Avis, and back again to the
portrait, " it is a good subject. Mr. Rose says they
call him the beauty of the Faculty, — the belle of
the Faculty, I think he said. Isn't that good? The
Antinous of a college Faculty ! I should as soon
look for a Belvedere in the third tertiary strata.
Now, there's my father. If it hadn't been for moth-
er's kind interference, I suppose I might have
looked like him ; probably should have been propor-
tionately intellectual. Brains and beauty, as some
one was saying the other day of the critic and the
creator, — but I don't tJiirik that was Mr. Rose, —
seem to be born enemies."

" O Coy ! " cried Avis, lighting. u Schiller and
Goethe and Burns ! And see that print of Robert-
son behind j^ou."

"Very likely," insisted Coy. "Indeed, I know
girls who are more in love with a photograph of
Frederick Robertson to-day than they ever were
with a live man. But all the same I stake my point,
and refer you to any good album of the poets — or
the clergy. As a rule, a man can't cultivate his

THE STORY OF AVIS. 109

mustache and his talents impartially. There's apt
to be something askew or deficient in handsome
men. They don't do great things, I think, more
than flowers do — or women."

So, with a pretty ingenuity that she had, Coy
worked out the chance barbs which had annoyed
Avis. She knew. Avis never sat so still with just
one vein throbbing in her temple, unless she were
annoyed. And yet the June budded in the garden
studio ; and one day the portrait was done.

Avis, feeling the inevitable strain which falls upon
the portrait- artist with the completion of a work,
had slept lightly and little for several nights. The
moment when the subject and the picture are first
brought face to face, she thought no experience
could ever make other than one of refined nervous
trial to her. She had often heard artists speak of
this ; and some of them never outgrew it, as some
great orators are found never to outgrow the sudden
sick bounding of the heart, and trembling of the
muscles of the face, which the first sight of an audi-
ence produces.

The artist's public, narrowed for the moment into
one pair of human eyes, acquires a kind of omni-
potence, like that of the sliding wall in the old story
of martyrdom, which, towering higher as each day
brings it nearer, creeps to crash the victim at the
appointed hour.

She once heard Alexander say that he could tell
across the studio, by the look of a man's back,
whether he liked his picture.

110 THE STORY OF AVIS.

She would have been sorry not to have Mr. Os-
trander like the portrait, but more sorry, she thought,
if it failed to please that lonely old mother in New
Hampshire. Mr. Ostrander had said that he was
not able to visit his mother as often as he would
like ; the state of his health requiring a different
climate in the brief vacations which an over-worked
man cannot afford not to expend to the best physi-
cal advantage. He had said this so sadly, that Avis
felt very sorry for him. It did not occur to her till
afterwards to be very sorry for the old lady.

As the day drew on when she was to show him
the picture, her repressed excitement deepened.
She must have lost more sleep than she had sup-
posed, so taut a tension seemed to have been sprung
upon her nerves.

During the night she lay with wide eyes, seeing
the souls of unwrought pictures, like disembodied
spirits, sweep by, vision upon vision, electrotyped
upon the darkness with the substance of wine or
opium fantasies ; an experience which chanced to her
only in her most fertile moods. When day broke,
a strange buoyancy overtook her. Her veins seemed
filled with a fine fire, like an intoxication which she
had seen follow the use of certain rare liqueurs
among Parisian women, — juices expressed from
subtle fruits, or the flowers of fruits, after which
the LachrymaB Christ! seemed gross.

Ostrander came after tea to see the picture. Her
father and aunt Chloe had just been in, finding them-

THE STORY OF AVIS. Ill

selves sufficiently pleased with the work : but a
Faculty meeting, involving a pet quarrel with the
Theological Chair, absorbed the professor ; and aunt
Chloe had an oleander to water before the sun had
set. The artist and the model were left alone.

It was still quite light. The birds, in unseen nests,
were singing themselves to sleep with a lessening,
crooning cry, as children do, one by one falling
smothered in silence. The surf upon the beach had
died ; only a slight sob came from the Harbor, like
that of a creature in whom a great struggle had worn
to a peaceful close. There was not wind enough to
take the pollen from a lily. But the bees were awake,
and hummed dizzily among the flowers.

' ' My picture must be the final cause of this even-
ing/' said Ostrander lightly, as they approached the
easel; for he felt her strained nerves beneath her
quiet manner, as sailors feel the prophecy of a storm
upon a sleeping sea. ' ' Such a coloring will define
it like a frame. . . . Ah ! There. Do not move it.
The light is perfect — and so is the portrait. Miss
Dobell, my mother will be satisfied."

" You are very good to think so," said Avis, draw-
ing her breath. " But shall you be satisfied? "

"More than satisfied," said Ostrander, after a
pause. He stood for a few moments, silently looking
at the picture, before he added in a lower tone,
" Much more. Do I really look like that? Out of
the kind eyes of a friend? . . . Why!" turning
suddenly, no that his eyes swept her face and figure,

112 THE STORY OF AVIS.

"arc you so tired? You are worn out. I have
wearied you. Pray do not stand."

In truth Avis trembled heavily, and sank into the
chair which he had brought.

4 ' Did you mind me so much ? ' ' murmured Os-
trander, with a daring rapture in his voice.

" I am ashamed ! " she cried impetuously ; " but
it is a nervousness I have when a picture comes to an
end. It is like the ending of a life."

Her chance words fell with a sudden dreary signi-
ficance upon them both as they sat looking across
the little room, which seemed to be absorbent of the
intense evening light, and to throb like a topaz
about them.

Avis looked up at him with timid, candid eyes. It
would be lonely in the studio to-morrow : he must
know that. She had nothing to conceal from this
man, — nothing, nothing ! She repeated the word
to herself with a sharpening emphasis.

But she rose with a swift motion, as if she dis-
carded some encroaching thought, and, going to the
doorway, stood there, looking out across the garden.

Ostrander followed her, and gently said, —

" Do you see the bees on the wigelia? "

As he spoke, one circled away from the blush of
the shrub, and hovered over her with a slow, intoxi-
cated swing.

" You have flowers about you," he said.

"No — yes: I had forgotten. It is the rose in
my hair."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 113

She flung it away as she spoke with a startled
gesture.

" You did not listen," said Ostrander, " to the
bee. Have you forgotten the pretty thought about
the growing of the grass and budding of the flow-
ers ? — that it is only because our eyes are not fine
enough, that we do not see a lily open, or a clover
blooni ; and only because our ears are not delicate
enough, that we do not hear the sap circulate in a
rose-leaf, or the heart throb in the insect that
alights upon it."

" I have thought of that," said Avis in a low
voice, " every day. Sights that I never saw, and
sounds that I never heard, it seems to me I have
heard and seen this spring. Something ails the
June. I have felt as if I had her heart beneath a
microscope all the time. It is the being at home,
I think, and finding my father so well, and content
to see me hard at work. And I am always excited
when I am at work."

" No," said Ostrander in a changed voice. " No,
that is not it. I believe you are the only woman
in the world who would not understand. You do
not, will not, will not. Ah, hush ! For all that
ails the June is, that we love each other."

The young man had hardly uttered these words
before he would have given a ransom to recall them.

There is something appalling, at times, to the dull-
est fancy, in the inexorable nature of human speech.
The word that has leaped from the h'ps has gone, as

114 THE STORY OF AVIS.

the soul goes from the body ; it has taken on the
awful rebellion of a departed spirit ; to recall it is
like recalling the dead. A moment ago your friend
was yours, to have and to hold, to kiss, to clasp.
Now, whose is he? and what? and where? An
instant past, your thought was your slave, mute,
subservient, safe : now it defies you.

Ostrander had felt himself blindly driven, that
evening, towards some riot of expression, circling
slowly to it as the bee circled to the flower in her
abundant hair. He had struggled against this im-
pulse stoutly. As long as his love was his secret, he
felt himself to be, in a certain mystical, exalted sense,
the master of this beautiful, defiant creature. He
could love her. /She could not help that. Deeper
than all the moods that the subtle June night could
ever strike, he knew now that he loved her. It was
no riot : he was not the man to mistake a revolution
for a riot ; he knew the difference.

He had been spurred into speech by an instinct,
daring as all instincts are, and as full of danger.

And his instinct had told him that this was a
woman to be surprised, not wooed. He felt, that, if
he came suppliant to her, her whole being would
have gathered itself like a queen, and receded
from him. He could not have dallied with her, or
pleaded with her, or sighed before her : that seemed
to him an artificial process, adapted for the winning
of other women, in whose tenderness there was
usually an element of art. They might melt beneath

THE STORY OF AVIS. 115

it : it would be like the administration of ether to
the grand simplicity of her soul ; the influence meant
to subject her into a gentle dream would prove a,
powerful excitant ; she would freeze under it, like
ice mechanically formed at mid-summer.

He could not think of her as a woman to whom a
man would ever say, " Learn to love me. Permit
me to teach you. Suffer me to be near you." He
would as naturally have said to a beautiful torrent,
" Seek to love me ; " or beckoned to some sweet, wild
creature of the woods, expecting it to fawn at his
feet.

The young man's nature had leaped to entrap her,
as the hero in the old mythology crossed the ring
of fire that surrounded the daughter of the gods.
When he had made the plunge, he found indeed a
woman sleeping ; but it was a woman armed.

Avis lifted her eyes slowly, like one struggling
with a fugitive dream. He would have given years
of his life at that moment to see her lip tremble, or
her eyelash fall, or her commanding figure shrink.
She did, indeed, change color, but it was to take on
the color of white fire. And then the antique cast
of her features came on. She looked like a great,
dumb, protesting goddess, whom some light hand had
just dragged from the bosom of the earth to the
glare of day.

As they stood there, the humming of the bees in
the wigelia-bush reverberated, and seemed to fill the
world. One crawled out of the rose which she had

116 THE STORY OF AVIS.

cast away, and reeled against her foot. They stooc
just as his broken words had arrested them, fastened
by each other's eyes. Suddenly in hers there
dawned a far, startled look : she began to turn her
neck a little from side to side, like a deer stirred
by the sound, but not as yet by the sight of pursuit,
and secretly preparing for flight.

Then she thrust out both her hands.

" I deny it ! V said the woman.

"I assert it!" said the man. They faced one
another, flashing like duellists.

"You assume," she blazed, stammering, and
struggling with her words, — " you presume — what
no man ' ' —

"I presume to say that I love you," he urged,
swiftly scintillating into a dazzling tenderness. " I
quite dare to say that I love you. I know what I
am saying. I love you, love you ! "

At that moment his words seemed to her a kind
of unendurable liberty, like personal approach, as
if he had touched her dress or hand. Her startled
maidenhood felt a wild rebellion in just standing
there, and knowing that his eyes were on her. Her
own had now fallen. She began to quiver and flush,
but it was not with tenderness. She was caught
between two fires. She could not have told just
then for which cause she felt most repellant of him,
— that he loved her, or that he had told her she loved
him. A kind of wide recoil from him, such as she
had never known from any man, made either of these

THE STORY OF* AVIS. 117

suppositions seem to her like usurpations ; like in-
fringements of some blind, sacred law, which she felt
about her, like the evening air, and would seek to
understand at a calmer tune. But it was not an
instinct of repugnance that had spread in a moment —
there, through the calm June afterglow — a sudden
impassable distance between herself and this man
(an antipathy would have been less complex, and so
more tractable, than this feeling) : it was a rebound
of dismay ; it was at once blindly instinctive and
rigidly measured, like that which one makes before
a plunge.

No man had ever spoken to her like this man.
His words had the character of events. She felt as
if she had in one moment put a great fact behind
her, whose effects the whole of life could not undo.
What was the weakness in her nature that had made
this experience possible? and what the tumult there
which made it memorable, stamped it upon her like
the mould of a great sorrow, or a wild joy?

Her startled look had broadened now, and bright-
ened, like a light coming near and nearer to one
through the undergrowth of a dense forest. There
was even a kind of appeal in her voice, though it
was with ceremonious dignity that she said, —

" I hope, Mr. Ostrander, that you may find your-
self as much^ mistaken in your own feeling as you
have been, so extraordinarily, in mine. It will
undoubtedly be so. Nothing is easier than to over-
estimate the depth of a passing influence. "

118 THE STORY OF AVIS.

"I have over-estimated nothing," persisted he
doggedly. " And I am mistaken in nothing. Ah,
hush ! Let me speak ; let me explain. You do not
understand yourself or me. You recoil ; you are
angry with me. I was abrupt, I was uncouth, I
was unreasonable ; but before God I believe I was
right. Turn to me one moment. Let me see your
eyes. Let me beg of you to listen " —

"I wonder, Mr. Ostrander," said aunt Chloe,
panting up across the pansy-bed, "if I might so
greatly trouble you as to help me one moment with
the grape-vine. — And, Avis, I am sorry ; but there
are callers : I think it is Mr. Allen and his sister ;
and the grape-vine will get a sprain if I leave it as
it is. I thought — if they'll excuse the garden-
gown — you would like to bring them out, and get
their criticism upon the picture."

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 119

CHAPTER VII.

ARMGAKT : " I accept the peril ;
J choose to walk high with sublimer dread
Kather than crawl in safety."

GRAF : " Armgart, I would with all my soul I knew
The man so rare, that he could make your life
As woman sweet to you, as artist safe." — GEORGE ELIOT.

HE sought her the next day without preface or
apology, and like a man demanded his hearing
out. There was a perfectly new element in his man-
ner to her, that had almost the dignity of a claim or
right ; but to resent this seemed like resenting the
pacred incoherencies of grief. Avis received him
gently.

He found her wandering in the fields about the
shore. She could not work. She, too, had not slept,
and looked well-nigh as worn as he. They did not
sit down, but walked restlessly to and fro through the
long, impeding grass.

He could not catch her eye ; but the expression of
'her mouth when he began to speak disheartened
him. He had never seen her put her lips together
so. Avis felt that a battle was impending. Even
her gentleness had a kind of strategical character.
Her foot fell upon the bruised clover with a martial
rhythm. The whole force of her, soul and body
seemed to garrison itself.

120 THE STORY OF AVIS.

He began by telling her in a tone of proud humi
lity that he had been too hasty yesterday; thai
though it was not possible that he could be mis-
taken in his own feeling, as she would know, if
she knew him better, yet that it was never easy for
a man's imagination to employ itself upon the nature
of a woman.

" And 3Tou," he said, with a lover's ingenious grav-
ity, "are like no other woman, — no other that I
ever saw. I do not believe the world contains
another. You perplex me like the Sphinx ; you awe
me like the Venus ; you allure me like the Lorelei !
I have dreamed of such women. I never saw one.
I love you! "

He turned to her with a kind of solemn authority,
as if in those three words all the swift, sweet argu-
ments of his heart had so clearly culminated, that it
would be as impossible for her to combat them as it
was to advance any thing more compelling or con-
vincing ; as if he had said, "The sky is blue fire," or
"The daisy turns to it," or "The tide leans to the
shore."

He looked at her a little blindly, with half-fallen
lids : there was a hazy radiance in his eyes, from the
full force of which it was as if he shielded her.
Glancing up with some unspoken protest on her
lips, she seemed to feel this ; she put her hand
across her own eyes as if she had been dazzled.

" When a man loves a woman as I love you," he
said quietly, ' ' he expects to be loved ; he has a
right to be ; he must be."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 121

" You do not know what you sajT ! " she cried :
"you don't know what you ask. I am not a
woman to make you — to make any man happy.
Even if I" —

"Ah, what? Even if you what? Rest here a
minute in the shade, and tell me. You shut your
heart away from me. Let me stay here till I find
it."

"Then you will stay forever!" flashed the wo-
man, off her guard. He threw himself at her feet,
in the shadow of the stone wall, and, across a little
cordon of tall daisies that leaped uncrushed between
them, looked over at her.

"Even if you" —

"That does not matter now. It was nothing.
Let that drop."

" Even if you — what ? Pray finish your sentence.
You are incapable of small coquetries. If you do
not finish your sentence, it must be that you really
prefer me to finish it for you."

"No, no! I would rather finish it for myself.
I meant to sa}^ that even if I loved you."

"And what then? Suppose — just suppose it
that }TOU loved me. Suppose that all this spring,
the feeling — 3*011 have called it artistic fervor ; the
sympathy — you have thought it friendliness; the
sweetness, — I believe you thought that had some-
thing to do with your father; all the glory that
has come into life ; all this delicate intoxication
that has been between us two, man and woman,

122 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

created by heaven, to love, to yield, like other
men and women ' ' —

"I will never yield, like other women! " cried
Avis, quivering across the daisies.

u But suppose," he continued, his tone gaining
in quiet insistence as hers lost strength in emotion,
— " suppose that all this had meant that you loved
me?"

" Then I should be very sorry," she said tremu-
lously.

"Why sorry?"

" You compel me to repeat an unpleasant thing,"
she replied more faintly yet. "I said, even sup-
posing it were as you wish, I could never make you
happy. "

"I have the right to judge of that, — rather a
comfortless right ; but I shah1 not overlook it, nor
any other right you give me."

"I have given you none, none!" She rose in
much agitation, and, sweeping down the daisies,
turned from him. It were hard to say whether it
were his eyes or his voice that restrained her, —
surely his touch had not fallen upon so much as the
hem of her garment, — but she stood swaying and
uncertain, and then slowly, as if tender, compelling
hands had drawn her, sank down against the wall
again.

Perhaps there was a momentary consciousness of
weakness in this little act, which stung her ; for her
whole mood seemed suddenly to gather and defend
itself.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 123

" Mr. Ostrander," she said with a gentle distinct-
ness, " we are making a long and painful scene out
of a matter which a dozen plain words will settle."

" Then," said he, " let us speak the plain words."

She sat for a moment with her face turned towards
him, in the attitude of one who waits for expected
speech. But the young man, with his elbow in the
daisies, and his head upon his hand, lay watching her
in a kind of trance. His eyes had gone quite dull
and blind, as if the force of his repressed feeling had
been an objective presence, like a mid-day sun.
Turning, she saw this memorable look, for the first,
but not the last time in her life. Her resolution
seemed to gather courage from it ; and she said with
increasing quietness, —

"The plain word is, that I do not, and I must
not, think of love, because the plain truth is, that
I cannot accept the consequences of love as other
women do."

1 'Oh, I see! I was a brute to make you say
that," cried Ostrander impatiently. That blind
look broke suddenly, and scattered into an uncer-
tain, darting gleam, like a ball of quicksilver
crushed. "You mean that you do not wish to
marry?"

" Certainly I mean that. But it was a little hard
to be made to say it. Now it is said, I don't care.
There is an end to it."

"It is not love, then, that you feel a disrespect
for, but marriage? You prefer to marry Art, I

124 THE STORY OF AVIS.

suppose," he said perplexedly. " You are happier
so?"

"I feel no disrespect for either, that I am con-
scious of; but surely I am happier as I am." That
sensitive vein on her temple throbbed painfully.
What did this man take her for? Painted canvas,
perhaps ; or a marble antique ; a torso, possibly ;
something mechanically constructed on the principles
of the highest art, content to gather the dust of her
studio without a heart-throb ; a fleshless, bloodless
thing. A great impulse surged over her to rise, and
cry out to him, —

"I am human, I am woman! I have had my
dreams of love like other women ! ' ' But that was
not a matter to chatter about. When she found the
man who could both understand and reverence these
dreams — but in her wildest vision she had only
seen his face as we see the loved faces of the dead,
sacred, safe, and snatched from her. God gave her
the power to make a picture before he gave her the
power to love a man.

And this man, this, who had confused and agi-
tated, nay, half blinded her, with whom her nature
found escape or surrender equally impossible, — what
should she do with him ? She thought of him with
a kind of terror which only a woman can understand,
because he had come so near, but failed to come
nearer J to her ; because he had startled her into put-
ting her whole soul in arms which he had failed to
conquer. She almost wished at that moment that

THE STORY OF AVIS. 125

she could have loved like other women, and* that she
could have loved him. That experience, at least,
would have had the beauty of holiness : this bore
the bruise of sacrilege.

His thoughts, like a witch-hazel, seemed to follow
and command the spring of hers ; for just then he
said abruptly, —

" So, then, if you loved me, you are sure you
would not marry me ? We might be so happy ! Did
you never think of that?"

He drew a little nearer to her. Both the words
and the motion had something of the nature of
unconsciousness. The tall white daisies swayed
delicately in the golden air between them.

4 c A woman never thinks — I never thought — of
such a thing in such a way," said Avis, with recoil-
ing eyes.

" I beg your pardon. A man is so different ! and
you are so different from most women ! But, if you
loved me, you would marry me all the same. You
should be happy. You should paint. I should be
proud to have you paint. I used to think I should
be wretched with a gifted wife (all young men do) ;
but you have taught me better. It would be the
purpose — do not think it the ravings of a lover if
I say it would be the passion — of my life to help
you realize your dreams of success."

Avis smiled sadly ; but she said, with the evidence
and the consciousness of feeling more deeply shaken
than any he had yet seen, —

126 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" How can you know what my dreams are? Did
I ever tell them to you ? You are using a language
that you do not understand. My ideals of art are
those with which marriage is perfectly incompatible.
Success — for a woman — means absolute surrender,
in whatever direction. Whether she paints a picture,
or loves a man, there is no division of labor possible
in her economy. To the attainment of any end
worth living for, a symmetrical sacrifice of her
nature is compulsory upon her. I do not say that
this was meant to be so. I do not think we know
what was meant for women. It is enough that it
is so. God may have been in a just mood, but he
was not in a merciful one, when, knowing that they
were to be in the same world with men, he made
women,"

"But suppose," interrupted Ostrander, thrilling
with hope in proportion as she fired with rebellion,
— " suppose two people had been born to show that
this need not be so. That would be very much like
God, on the whole, to let the whole world suspect,
if it dared not accuse, him of injustice in a given
course, and then spring the abounding mercy of it
on us at the brink of faith's surrender. Suppose a
man and woman had been made and led and drawn
to one another, just to show that the tolerance of
individuality, even the enthusiasm of superiority,
could be a perfectly mutual thing."

" There may be such women in the world," said
Avis : " I have never seen such a man. Only lovers
think it to be possible."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 127

Nothing could have disheartened him like the
delicate tooth of perfectly unconscious satire biting
through those last few words ; not even her lapse
into her wonted self-command, nor the sealed eyes
which she was turning away from him to the restless
sea. He understood, as perfectly as if she had said
so, that the tide of an emotion stronger than he had
ever witnessed in her had turned, and was setting
out from him. He was only half comforted when she
added, in the calmer tone of one who brings a dis-
cussion to an inexorable close, —

' 4 1 never said to any one what I have said to you
to-day, if that is any pleasure to you : it will be none
to me."

" I suppose," he said, after an oppressive silence,
" if I had been more of a man, a man of genius for
instance, I might have commanded your love by this
tune. "Whatever my abilities are, they are untried.
Your future is so far established. It is all so differ-
ent from the way a man and woman usualty meet !
A man of my sort must seem to you so young. To
your inspirational atmosphere what a plodding dog a
college tutor is ! I suppose a gifted woman dreams
of a great man. I shall never be a great man ; but
— with you — I might do some worthy work. I feel
a unity in all aims, all hope, since I have known you ;
life seems symmetrical and coherent, and worth
while. It does not always. I am a restless fellow."

" I am sure you will do worthy work," said Avis
with ringing earnestness, — " sure, sure ! "

128 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" Are you so sure? Thank you for that. I wish
I were."

"And you mistake me," she continued eagerly,
" in what you said just now. I don't think I could
love a great man, if I tried."

" Why not? " asked Ostrander, a faint smile en-
croaching upon the deepening pain of his face.

" I never asked myself why, any more than I ask
myself why I thrill to paint a picture, and suffer to
sew a seam. It is enough to feel such things, if you
feel them as hard as I do. But I suppose it is the
moral nature of a man a woman needs — I mean I
should need — to find great. That is noble, I think,
— to be a man, and be great in goodness ; to have
faith and tenderness and truth, and whiteness of soul.
I should care much less for what was in a man's
head than what was in his heart. And a great man
is absorbed : he is not so apt to think of little things ;
he is too busy to be tender, I should say."

"But that is the way," said he, "that men feel
about women, not women about men."

"Is it? " asked Avis, sighing : " I do not know.
I should think all women would feel so. But I have
told you more than enough, Mr. Ostrander, of what
I think and feel. It cannot help us any. And no
man's love can be meant for me."

" Now that," he said musingly, " is what I can-
not quite understand. I never knew a woman in my
life who could love a man so much — if she would.
Pray forgive me ! Ah, you do not — you dare not —

THE STORY OF AVIS. 129

deny that. You would perjure your own nature if
you tried."

"God forbid that I perjure my own nature!",
answered Avis, beginning to grow pale. " But, as
I live, I should perjure it if I said to you to-day
that I believed love and marriage were meant for
me. And whatever it would be to me — this life
that other women seem to be so — happy in ; this
feeling that other women — have — to offer to the
man they ' ' —

She broke off abruptly : her voice had fallen to an
awe-struck whisper.

Her solemn reticence and reluctance before this
experience which he had been used to see women
enter upon both readily and irreverently, affected
Ostrander as the flash of a new planet affects the
astronomer whose telescope misses to-day what it
has discovered yesterday. He brought his dry
hands together, and wrung them, — a silent, elo-
quent gesture.

" Marriage," said Avis, not assertantly, but only
sadly, as if she were but recognizing some dreary,
universal truth, like that of sin, or misery, or death,
44 is a profession to a woman. And I have my work ;
I have my work! "

" But suppose," he suggested, " that your future
should fail to fulfil its — present promise — Be
patient with me ! You cannot think I am capable
of underrating that promise. As I see it, it is a
splendid one. But fate is so false to genius ! —

130 THE STORY OF AVIS.

perhaps most of all to women, as you say. A thou-
sand things may baffle you. You dare the loss of
what nineteen centuries of womanhood has held as
the life of its life ; you dare the. loss of home and
love for — God forbid that I say an unproved but
as 3'et untried power."

44 At least," she said, after a silence in which she
had sat not unmoved, — uyes, at least I can dare.
There is that in me which will not permit me not to
dare. God gave it to me."

"Amen!" said the }7oung man solemnly. Just
then he could add no more. He had, perhaps, never
thought till that moment that God really did give
such things to women. How right she was about
it ! How true, how strong ! His reverence for her
grew with Ms sense of loss. His ardor deepened
under her denial. He had always thought he should
learn to hate a woman who had been too easily won.
It seemed to him at that moment that he would
rather be scorned by her than loved by any other
creature in the world.

" May I not come another day? " he pleaded ; for
she had risen as she spoke, and, carefully stepping
around the daisy cordon, turned her face towards
her father's house.

"What could be gained?" said Avis sadly.
" We can neither of us spare the strength needed
for our life's work — you or I — on scenes like this.
They take strength. How tired }'ou look ! "

She looked up at him with a sudden womau/y
quiver on her face, and held out her hand.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 131

" You won't mind it, if I say that I shall — miss
you ? Or that I shall always like to know }TOU are
my friend? " she added timidly. " And by and by,
when all is different . . . and we can talk of other
things . . . you will come back to me? "

" If ever I come back to you, it will be to stay,"
said Ostrander under his breath. "You will not
get rid of me so easily, if you beckon me back."
But he turned haggardly away; and, leaping the
wall with a mighty bound, strode off alone upon the
beach.

Avis stood as he had left her till he was out of
sight; then slowly, as if each nerve and muscle in
her body yielded separately, sank down among the
daisies, throwing her arms above her head, among
their roots. She was worn with the strain of the
last few days. She thrust her cheek down into the
cool, clean earth, and let the grass close over her
young head with a dull wish that it were closing for
the last time.

As she lay there, prone as a fallen Caryatide,
steps crushed the clovers ; Ostrander had returned,
and stood again beside her.

"Pardon me," he said deprecatingly. "I have
no right, but the right of my misery, to intrude in
this way. I thought you would have heard me.
Do not stir. I have only come back to ask you a
single question."

He parted the long grass that had closed above
her, and looked down. She had sprung, half lean-

132 THE STORY OF AVIS.

ing on her elbow, and lifted her face, which gathered
a chill from the dull green shadow in which she was.

" In your soul's name and mine," he said, " will
you answer what I shall ask? "

" I will try," she said solemnly.

" Tell me, then," he proceeded with a dizzy feel-
ing, wondering whether it were madness or inspira-
tion that possessed him, and why a man must find
in either an iron necessity like this that flogged him
into speech, " tell me, — it is all you can do for me
now, and I dare believe you would relieve the pain
you must inflict so far as you can, — tell me if I am
the man you would have, might have, loved? "

All her face and figure, which had been suffused
while he spoke, with a beautiful compassion, grew
tense. She flung out one bent elbow as if she had
been warding off a blow. But she said still sol-
emnly, —

u For your soul's sake and mine, you are the man
I will not love."

It was not long, possibly it might have been a
week or ten days, after the completion of the por-
trait, when one evening, as Avis came in rather
wearily from the studio, she found aunt Chloe beck-
oning mysteriously to her from the piazza-steps.
Aunt Chloe had on the purple-and-wood- colored
garden-gown that she had bought at a Harniouth
bankrupt sale, since three cents a yard was a saving
worthy the attention of any woman who handled

THE STORY OF AVIS. 133

money often enough to know the value of it ; and
the difference would exactly get one and a half of
those religious mottoes so pretty in the So/dier's
Hospital. Aunt Chloe beckoning on the piazza, be-
hind the woodbine, bloomed like a large and rather
stumpy pansy. Avis remembered the pattern of
that calico, and remembered the outline that the
woodbine mercifully dropped upon it, for years after
it had gone to adorn some Georgia freedwoman of
an undoubtedly deserving, but, it is to be hoped,
not an aesthetic cast of mind.

" I wanted to see you, my dear," said aunt Chloe,
" about the lemon cream. Can you step into the
pantry a minute? There. Just taste it, willyqu?
Too much sugar ? I thought so. For a woman who
can not cook, you are the most faultless taster I ever
knew. Thank you. I wonder if you'll shut the
door — it blows the cream. That will do. If you've
got the paint off 3Tour hands, suppose you skim a
little for your father's berries. Your father is quite
put about, to-night," added aunt Chloe, who seldom
dropped into the expressive old Vermont phrase un-
less the Harmouth anxieties were over-keen.

So that was it. Of course it had not been the
lemon cream. Since aunt Chloe had sadly, but, as
she hoped, resignedly and finally admitted the glaring
culinary deficiencies of Avis' s nature, these pantry
matinees had been rare.

Avis asked, rather listlessly, what was the matter
with father this time ? Was it the sophomore haz-

134 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

ing, or the senior rush? the dangerously lax posi-
tion taken by the Theological Chair? or had some-
body taken the liberty to differ from him about
the non-ego ? Poor father ! His nervous irritability
grew upon him a little.

" Yes," said aunt Chloe, " I think it does. We
must watch him more carefully. We must see that
he is kept amused and exercised."

This was said in the tone which aunt Chloe always
adopted in discussing this time-honored subject, —
the tone usual with the women of a literary man's
family ; one of calm and gentle superiority to a race
of beings, and to a class of weaknesses, which must
be. tolerated, but might not be cured or improved.
Aunt Chloe said he must be kept amused and ex-
ercised, exactly as if she had been speaking of a fine
terrier or blooded racer, for whose physical nurture
she was professionally though affectionately respon-
sible.

" I wonder," went on aunt Chloe, with placid ir-
relevance, " why we none of us gave Mr. Ostrander
his title?"

4 'His title?" Avis held the skimmer suspended
at a rash angle over a plate of bread-cake.

" Yes, his medical title. You know he graduated
somewhere in medicine ; but I believe he found it dis-
tasteful or injurious ; I think it was injurious to his
health. And I should no more have thought of him
as a doctor than I should think of him as a — por-
poise," said aunt Chloe, finding her imagination sud-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 135

denly bankrupt of scientific similes. u But, now lie
must needs go into the army, it comes into play. It
shows the great usefulness of a liberal education, I
suppose ; but your father is just as much worked up
about it. You are dribbling the tream on the bread-
cake. Your father says the country needs superior
young men to preserve the tone of her colleges as
much as she does at the front just now. And he
says there's a plethora of surgeons. Mr. Ostrander
was such a pet with him ! What have you done with
the skimmer ? And the worst of it is " —

" Well," said Avis, " what is the worst of it? "
For aunt Chloe had suddenly set her sentence away
to cool in the ice-chest, into which she had dived
bodily on one of those mysterious domestic inspira-
tions which Avis had long since ceased attempting to
fathom. Aunt Chloe's face and shoulders had quite
disappeared ; but the back of the pansy-gown pre-
sented a broad and impressive front, if I may be
allowed the expression. A vis's eyes traced the pat-
tern up and down. There seemed to be nothing but
a brown palm-leaf and a purple stripe in all the world.

"You were saying, aunt Chloe, the worst of it
was " —

" The berries are withered," said aunt Chloe,
slowly exhuming herself from the refrigerator.
" Oh, yes ! the worst of it is about the professorship.
Mr. Ostrander received the call last night, and this
morning he enlisted for three months. That is what
has put your father out so. I told him, if the young

136 THE STORY OF AVIS.

man was worth any thing, he was worth their waiting
for. But he said three months was long enough to
kill a man, and that he liked to see a }Toung fellow
have a mind, and stick to it. Now, if you'll call
Julia, we will have' these picked over."

The next day Coy and Barbara came over to beg
some of aunt Chloe's flowers to send ou,t to camp,
whither, they said, Mr. Ostrander was going in an
hour. The next night the professor laid a letter
upon A vis's plate at tea, from which, when she opened
it, there dropped out a check, drawn in Philip Os-
trander's name, upon the Harmouth Bank. It was
enclosed in a letter-sheet, on which was written only,
in the pencilled camp-scrawl which so quickly takes
on something of the sacredness of death, —

u I have made it paj^able to your father's order,
thinking it may be more convenient or agreeable for
you to cash." Nothing more. It was the price of
the portrait.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 137

CHAPTER VIII.

"Touch is the sight of the body Sight is the touch of the

soul." — CHARLES BLANC.

Bead us at length,

Head this transcendent thing

Neither angel nor human ;
Alert with a lion's strength,
Plumed with an eagle's wing, —

But still with the face of a woman.

JULY kindled slowly but fiercely, like the heart
of a furnace. The delicate edges of each nerv-
ous leaf on the famous Harmouth elms curled and
blackened. The much-gravelled sidewalks burned
the dignified feet of the professors on their patient
way to lecture. The much-expanded cotton um-
brella gloomed gracefully above their heads. The
college-boys fitted for biennial under the tutelage
of the ice-cream vender, and became the abject
preys of the soda-fountain and the lemonade-boy.
The yachting-parties drew in their idle sails. Aunt
Chloe's anxious watering-pot made no tours among
the stifling flowers till the scorching sun had stooped.
The blinds of the garden studio were closely drawn.
At the front, hale soldiers dropped from the ranks
with sunstroke, and the wounded died of thirst upon
the field . It was the summer of battles , — Fair Oaks ,
The Seven Days, Cedar Mountain, Bull Run, Har-
per's Ferry, Antietam.

138 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Avis, that summer, seemed to herself to be turn-
ing her life through her fingers, as we turn the pages
of a book whose purpose we foreknew, but whose
construction is blind : its action moved slowly and
almost painfulty, like the motion of superfluous de-
tails muffling the stir of events. She read on and
on and on, with fixed eyes, but with a sense of ex-
pectance difficult to explain or justify : by and by
the text would be clear ; by and by she should live
in terse sentences.

She had set herself, with more patience than
power, resolutely to work ; but she found the lips
of her visions muttering in a foreign tongue. She
sat entire days before an untouched canvas. She
stared entire nights upon untapestried darkness.
Her father found her one day, burning the sketches
in her studio in a fever of self-despair. He said
nothing, except that he thought the sketches were
promised to him, gave her a keen look, patted her
cheek gently, and went away. He could not help
her. He supposed that was the way the "fine
frenzy" worked upon the feminine nature.

Perhaps her mother would have known what to say
to the child. If she must live this life, she needed
her mother. The professor had long since tabulated
his daughter as a glittering syllogism whose premises
were incorrect, though its conclusion was perversely
attractive, and so, like a philosopher, peacefully
given her up. It must be admitted that A vis's pic-
tures were better than her biscuit. And man did

THE STORY OF AVIS. 139

not live on bread alone. And sometimes, when he
came out from the studio, a dimness like faint mist
stirred far within his cavernous eyes. She would
have been proud of this dark-eyed, deft-handed, un-
domestic girl. She had never wanted a boy.

Beyond two or three really fine things done in
Paris, the landscape which had attracted so much
notice in London, a sketch or so in the spring exhi-
bition, and Philip Ostrander's portrait, Avis had
as yet done little towards giving form to her ideals ;
and more than one year of Couture' s golden proba-
tion was gone.

Her return to America had been in itself one of
those stimulating experiences whose immediate effect
is a sedative one.

The elemental loves of kin and country had been
stirred in her to the finest fibre of their wide-reaching
roots. She had come home to find that the after-
noon sun in her father's study, on the picture of Sir
William, thrilled her as no glory or story of Vati-
can, Pitti, or Louvre, had ever done. It meant
more to her, at first, just to go out into the garden
and bury her face in the young grass, and listen to
the squirrels scolding in the pear-trees, and the
trustful call of the cows waiting for Jacobs down the
field, than it seemed as if the fair young picture
before her could ever mean. Especially she was
moved by the spring scents ; the breath of the earth,
where the overturned loam lay moistly melting shades
of brown together, — amber, umber, sienna, mad-

140 THE STORY OF AVIS.

der, bitumen, and Vandyck, — with that tenderness
which is so inexpressibly heightened by the gravity
of the color ; the aromatic odor of the early bonfires
with whose smoke the languid air was blurred and
blue ; then by the exhalation of small buds, the ehn
and the grape that borrowed the mantle of the leaf,
as wild things do that of the forest, to escape detec-
tion. Every sense in her quivered to homely and
unobtrusive influences.

It was a long time before she could look at a
certain faded cricket in the parlor that her mother
worked, without the strange, hot tears. She would
not have exchanged the choirs of St. Peter's for the
sound of the old chapel bell calling the students to
evening prayers.

And then — ah well ! and then there had been that
slip upon the light-house reef ; that had cost its own
proportion of dumb days. And after that she had
painted the portrait. And then it would have been
impossible to forecast the precise personal effect of
this war. Life, she thought, had pressed too near
her, since she came home, for her to tell the world
what it meant ; clung too close, and with too sweet
insistence, like the friend who stops the mouth with
kisses.

All those studies which had stood with their faces
to the wall while Ostrander had been in the studio,
she would have liked to put out of the wide world,
if her father had not cared. She wanted a clean,
cold, barren start, like a racer in a moor. There

THE STORY OF AVIS. 141

were some pleasant little things among them too, —
a Florentine sunset, five poplars on the crest of a
hill against a sky of dull metallic red ; a Neapolitan
girl tossing her bambino into the air; a study of
breakers under an advancing fog, the mist stalk-
ing in about a headland, licking up the deep under-
tones of a great green wave ; figures, — a man and a
woman peering over the edge of a precipice under
an intense tropical moon ; a woman's head, the eyes
quite turned away, — a study from some Parisian
model, — unfinished.

But Avis put them all back with their faces to the
wall, sat an hour longer before her blank canvas,
then laid down the charcoals, and went wearily out
into the hot air. The sultry evening had settled
upon the sultrier day. The college-boys over on
the green were singing army songs.

"The studio is too hot," said aunt Chloe with
conscientious sympathy. " I wonder if it wouldn't
help you out to go down cellar, and stir the ice-
cream."

" I shall get to work to-morrow," said Avis, who
never liked her studio to be under family discussion.
But to-morrow Coy came over to take her to the
chapel, where the women of Harmouth sat with
hushed voices, rolling bandages and picking lint.
The butchery of Bull Run had fallen upon the man-
gled land.

This meant that it was August in the garden
studio. Avis had meant to have a picture — had

142 THE STORY OF AVIS.

hoped to have a good picture — well under way by
the time that the copper-colored sunlight struggled
through the August murk upon the easel.

She went up to her bedroom that night with dog-
ged eyes. She had fallen into one of these syn-
copes of the imagination in which men have periled
their souls to stimulate a paralyzed inspiration. By
any cost — " by virtue or by vice, by friend or by
fiend, by prayer or by wine" — the dumb artist
courts the miracle of speech.

Angel or devil, who is it that troubleth the torpid
waters ? Equally the soul makes haste, lest another
should step down before her.

Avis shut and locked the door of her bare, old-
fashioned room, looking about it with a kind of tri-
umphant rebellion. She was a woman. Those four
walls shut out the world from the refined license of
her mood. She wanted nothing of it, — the great
unholy world, in which seers struggled and sinned
for their visions. Let them go fighting and erring
on. God spoke in another way to women, — in no
earthquake, in no fire of the soul, but in still small
voices. What would her escaping nature with her ?
Perhaps by and b3^, when all the house was still,
she would go bounding down through the long grass,
and dash herself full-length upon the shore, and let
one wave — just one — break its white heart upon
her. Or she would push her little boat off from the
beach, and row out alone a mile or two down the
Harbor, till she was exhausted (and so calmed) by

THE STORY OF AVIS. 143

the wooing of the faint moonlit shores. The only
thing she could think of that she wanted, out of all
the intoxications that the round world held that sum-
mer night, would be a room full of hyacinths, — rose-
hyacinths, — and some one to play Schumann in the
sultry garden. Then, by morning, she might paint
her picture.

Was that what the work of women lacked? —
high stimulant, rough virtues, strong vices, all the
great peril and power of exuberant, exposed h'fe ?

Dreamily across the current of her thought, float-
ed the pathetic sound of the bqys' voices in the
street, still and forever busy with those army
songs : —

" In the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea."

She turned from the window with an abrupt, de-
jected motion. Who could make a picture till the
war was over ?

" Since he died to make men holy,"
sang on the boys,

" Let us die to make men free."

She stood for some moments quite still, in the mid-
dle of the room, her arms thrown down, and her
fingers clasped together at the tips. Suddenly start-
ing, with a firm step, and half- amused, half- curious
lighting of the face, she unlocked a little French
dressing-case that stood upon the bureau, and took

144 THE STORY OF AVIS.

from it a slender bottle, bearing the trade-mark of a
house in the south of France, and the label, " Eau
de Fleurs d' Granger."

She poured the liquid out, holding it to the light.
Each drop was-an amber bead, sluggish and sweet.

Leave men their carousal, their fellowship, the
heart's blood of the burning grape. In the veins
of the buds that gills wear at their bridals runs a
fire of flavor deep enough for us. The wine of a
flower has carried many a pretty Parisian to an in-
trigue or a convent. Could it carry a Yankee girl
to glory?

So, half laughing, half credulous, wholly excited,
Avis swallowed a cautious dose of the innocent-
looking liqueur, darkened her room, threw wide her
blinds, and went to bed.

In the course of perhaps ten minutes she experi-
enced a slight swimming of the head : she bolstered
herself high upon the square pillows, and threw her
arms down by her side ; they fell heavily, and she
found it a task not quite worth the undertaking to
stir them again from their places. A dull but not
painful pressure set slowly in the brain, and a slight
but not disagreeable ringing, in the ears. The most
distinct thought that she had was now a sense of
relief that she could not hear the army songs. Sud-
denly the room began to reel. Then, as if a Titan
had taken her by the feet, and swung her through
infinite space, she felt herself spin round and round.
As suddenly all motion and all sound ceased. She

THE STORY OF AVIS. 145

sat up against the pillows. The world was still,
cool, calm. If she had been foolish to try the ex-
periment upon so warm a day, she thought she was
lightly punished. Her head was quite clear and
strong. She got up, and bathed her face and bare
arms and neck. All her motions were free and full ;
only a faint sickness remained. Nothing had hap-
pened. She drained a tumbler of ice-water, and
went back to bed. The moon had now set. Nothing
had happened, except that the darkness had become
alive.

That which she saw appeared at the remote wall
of the room, — a panorama extending from floor to
ceiling, stirring slowly, like Gobelin tapestry which
unseen hands rolled and unrolled. She roused her-
self, sitting with her hands" clasped about her
knees, giving, as was her habit, a more iron atten-
tion to these fictions of her own nature than to any
thing which those of others had made fact in the
world. Neither Raphael nor Titian could have
taught her what she learned in one such self-articu~
late hour as this.

The first thing which she saw was a huge earthen
vase, standing by itself against the wall, raised a
few inches from the floor, thus, and thus only, indi-
cating to her eyes that it was not what we are used
to call a reality. It was of an antique Egj'ptian
mould, with which she must have been unconsciously
familiar ; but the pattern of its decoration was one
perfectly unknown to her. Through a maze of

146 THE STORY OF AVIS.

lotus-leaves Isis went seeking Osiris, the figures
moving faintly before her eyes till they had adjusted
themselves with what seemed a voluntary motion to
their attitudes upon the clay. The figures were
black, expressed by gray lights. The leaves were
of an opaque green, without veining or shadow. A
raised design of silver and steel surrounded the neck,
lips, and pedestal of the jar. If it had been light
enough, she could have taken her pencil, and accu-
rately copied this design, which was very intricate,
and which pleased her. At the mouth of the jar a
bronze crocodile lurked, with fore-feet and jaws only
raised above the edge, lolling like a tongue.

This appearance, which lasted but a few moments,
was the signal for a kaleidoscope of beautiful and
soulless form to stir before her, slowly and subtly,
like the outer circle of a whirlpool into which she
was to be drawn. Pottery, porcelain, furniture,
drapery, sculpture, then flowers, fruits, — a medley
of still-life, — swept through strange, half-revealed,
but wholly resplendent interiors, which glided on in-
differently, like languages that said, ' ' What hast thou
to do with us? " Now and then, out of the splendid
maze, a distinct effect seemed to pause, and poise it-
self, and woo her through the dark. An open hand,
raised, and turned at the wrist like a flower on its
stem, held water-lilies drooping and dripping. A
sunbeam, upon an empty chair in a student's alcove,
focussed upon a child's shoe and a woman's ribbon.
A skull ground a rose between its teeth. Bees,

THE STORY OF AVIS. 147

upon a patch of burning July sky, wooed a clover.
In a pool in a cliff, a star-fish defined the colors of a
tangle of weeds and shells. In a thicket of wild-
briar a single rose-leaf had fallen upon a gray stone,
across which, and over the miniature clearing in the
mimic forest, the tattered and fringed light lay.

These passed. Avis nodded at them like the
children at the visions in Hans Andersen's tales. It
was all a land of bric-a-brac. She had not the ce-
ramic nature. Let them go.

They were succeeded by an uplifting and sweep-
ing on of perspective, by means of which great dis-
tances seemed to become measurable in the little
room. Through them the generous moods of nature
stirred, and earth turned herself about like a beau-
tiful creature half awake. At first it was the cac-
tus on the campagna which shot up against the dark,
scarlet, blazing, having a pulsation Mice a heart ; it
towered heaven-high, as if to the eyes of one who
sat below its level ; and low through, and far beyond
it, the sun had set, shrinking under a purple cloud.

Then out of a cool, green shadow faint outlines
grew, sharpened, swept ; and a world of ferns arose.
She could see spiral buds uncoil delicately, like the
opening life of a silent girl, and the fine fronds sway
and aspire. These, too, shot high, as if she had been
prone upon the ground among them ; and on them
the light lay low. From the gold to the cold, every
chromatic shade due to them was there. It was a
melody in green.

148 THE STORY OF AVIS.

From this there slowly gathered itself, and leaned
towards her, one Titantic wave. It was a mid-
ocean wave. It reared its full-length from foot to
head. The colors which are seen only at the ocean's
core settled upon it. Not a "shoal tint was in it.
It was both the science and the art of a wave. It
held both the passion and the intellect of the sea.
Above its crest there was flung one human hand,
and a strip of pearl-white sky.

A medley of outlines followed, — caravans crawl-
ing through a desert ; sunsets behind palmettos ; twi-
lights in forests " wherein no man had been since
the making of the world ; ' ' a silver fog curling from
a harbor pierced by the masts of anchored ships ;
wastes of snow, blue- cold, and wan, unbroken by
human foot, defined by the loneliest of all horizons,
— the horizon of pines ; then one mountain-peak,
swathed below in gloom, swiftly broken at the sum-
mit into glory, on which ' ' God made himself an
awful rose of dawn."

But Avis bowed her head before these things, and
said, " Only the high priest enters in."

When she raised her eyes, they fell upon forms
and faces grown gaunt with toil, — an old man sow-
ing sparse seed in a chill place ; the lantern-flash on
a miner's stooping face ; the brow and smile of a
starving child ; sailors abandoned in a frozen sea ; a
group of factory *women huddling in the wind ; the
poisoned face of a lead-worker suddenly uplifted
like a curse ; two huge hands knotted with labor,

THE STORY OF AVIS. 149

and haggard with famine, thrust groping out upon
the dark.

But her heart cried out, " I am yet too happy, too
young, too sheltered, to understand. How dare I
be the apostle of want and woe ? ' '

Even with the word the vision changed, and
slowly as she leaned to look, swiftly as her heart
beat in gazing, there grew the outline of a Face. It
was a Face dark, dim, brightening, blinding, beneath
a crown of thorns ; but she dashed her hand across
her eyes, and said, " I am unworthy."

The night might have been now well worn on,
and she was conscious only of that exhaustion of
the nature which comes from a highly-excited
but impotent imagination. The repose of creation
had failed to relieve the fever of vision. She
was thinking so, dejectedly enough, listlessly look-
ing in one corner of the roomj where two or
three slender, bright harebells seemed to be spring-
ing from a cleft in a rock, when, as she looked,
a girl in the garb of a peasant stood stoop-
ing to pluck them. Instantly the room seemed to
become full of women. Cleopatra was there, and
Godiva, Aphrodite and St. Elizabeth, Ariadne and
Esther, Helen and Jeanne d'Arc, and the Magda-
lene, Sappho, and Cornelia, — a motley company.
These moved on solemnly, and gave way to a sQcnt
army of the unknown. They swept before her in
file, in procession, in groups. They blushed at
altars ; they knelt in convents ; they leered in the

150 THE STORY OF AVIS.

streets ; they sang to their babes ; they stooped and
stitched in black attics ; they trembled beneath sum-
mer moons ; they starved in cellars ; they fell by the
blow of a man's hand ; they sold their souls for
bread ; they dashed their li ves out in swift streams ;
they wrung their hands in prayer. Each, in turn,
these figures passed on, and vanished in an expanse
of imperfectly-defined color like a cloud, which for
some moments she found without form and void to
her.

Slowly but surely at last, and with piercing
vividness, this unfolded, and she saw in curt out-
lines, like a story told in a few immortal words, this
only : —

She saw a low, unclouded Eastern sky ; fire to the
horizon's rim ; sand and sun ; the infinite desert ; a
caravan departing, faint as a forgotten hope ; mid-
way, what might be a camel perished of thirst. In
the foreground the sphinx, the great sphinx, re-
stored. The mutilated face patiently took on the
forms and the hues of life ; the wide eyes met her
own ; the dumb lips parted ; the solemn brow un-
bent. The riddle of ages whispered to her. The
mystery of womanhood stood before her, and said,
" Speak for me."

Avis lay back upon her pillow with a sudden,
long, sobbing sigh. She was very tired; but she
had seen her picture. To-morrow she could work.

Up to this point there had been nothing unpre-
cedented in the character of these fantasies, ex-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 151

cepting in their number and variety. Her creative
moods were always those of tense vision, amount-
ing almost to optical illusion, failing of it only where
the element of deception begins ; but now when,
exhausted and satisfied, she turned upon her pillow,
nestling her cheek into her hand like a child, for
sleep, none came. Still before her closed eyes the
panorama swept imperiously ; but it had become a
panorama of agonies. For a long time she per-
ceived only the suffering of animals, an appalling
vision of the especial anguish incident to dumb
things. She saw the quiver of the deer under the
teeth of the hound, the heart-throb of the pursued
hare, the pathetic brow of a d}dng lioness, the
reproach in the eye of a shot bird, a dog under
vivisection licking the hand that tore him. Sharply,
without transition or preparation of the fancy, this
changed to — O heavens ! What ?

Avis started, with a cry that rang through and
through the sleeping house, beating her hands
against her eyes, as if she would beat out the very
retina on which the shadow of such sight could fall.
For now she was pursued by a vision of battles.
Martial music filled the room ; bright blood-streaked
standards waved and sank and rose again ; human
faces, like a wind-struck tide, surged to and fro ;
men reeled, threw up their arms, and fell ; the floor
crawled with the dead and dying; wounded faces
huddled in corners, came and vanished on the ceil-
ing, entered and re-entered through the door, gasped

152 THE STORY OF AVIS.

their life away upon the bed. The glazing eye, the
whitening jaw, the clinching fingers, the ineffectual,
hoarse effort to breathe a broken name, — all were
there : nothing was hidden, hinted, or veiled ; noth-
ing was spared her.

" O terror ! O pity ! Have mercy, have mercy,
have mercy! "

Aunt Chloe came panting in (in an amazing wrap-
per that outdid the pansy-gown) , and shut the blinds
before she struck the light. No good housekeeper
would let in the mosquitos, whatever the emergency.

i c Nightmare, Avis, or colic ? I thought the black-
berries were sour. Never mind, we will have a light
directly. Why, what is this broken glass ? Pieces
of a bottle on the window-sill ! Are you hurt — cut ?
I was sure I heard your voice. But, fortunately, it
has not waked your father. Now, my dear ! "

u Aunt Chloe," said Avis, passing her hand blind-
ly across her eyes, " where is the military music? "

"Music? There's no music, but tjiose boys:
they've kept it up till now, the worse for them !
There'll be some business for the Faculty to-morrow.
I always thought the objection to a university town
was the students. So that was what waked you,
was it? I don't see why your father doesn't put a
stop to these midnight carousals. Army songs,
indeed ! I suppose the cats in the back-yard think
they're patriotic, and I had one in Vermont that
used to start c America ; ' but he never got beyond
the second bar. There, my dear. All right now?
Why, Avis!"

THE STORY OF AVIS. 153

For Avis, like any broken-hearted woman who
was not going to paint a great picture to-morrow,
had fallen back upon the pillows, and crjing,
"Auntie, auntie, O auntie! let me cry a minute,"
lay shivering and sobbing in the chill dawn.

Aunt Chloe and the professor sat in the study in
the August sunset. Aunt Chloe had meant to take
the first opportunity to recommend to the Faculty
a stricter regime of night police for those boys ; but
she had forgotten all about the boys. Her knitting-
work (blue stockings for a theological student des-
tined for the Bulgarian field) lay idly on her broad,
benevolent lap. Now and then the rare, honest tears
of her Puritan race fell : it was too dark for Hegel to
see them. Under the Bulgarian stocking lay the
evening paper, folded with the particular crease
indicative in aunt Chloe 's family that a newspaper
was sacred from the waste-basket, and elected to go
upon file in the left corner of the third shelf from
the top in the little what-not in the study alcove.

"What," asked the professor, bringing his more
than commonly nervous pace to a halt, "what, by
the way, did Avis say to this ? "

"Nothing."

"Nothing at all? I should have thought — they
were thrown so much together — that the young
man's fate would have been something of a shock
to her. Where is she ? ' '

" She has been in the studio all day, except a

154 THE STORY OF AVIS.

while when she would go rowing. I found her with
a terrible headache this morning, what with the
blackberries and the boys. I don't believe Avis has
had a headache before since she had the measles.
But directly after breakfast she dragged herself out
into that hot summer-house, and there she's been.
I carried her the paper. I thought she'd better read
it herself. She thanked me, and went on drawing.
Oh, yes ! she asked if I knew where he would
naturally be carried."

u To his home in New Hampshire, I should sup-
pose," said the professor sadly. "I believe there
is an old father — or mother. I should have thought
Avis would have been more touched by this."

"No doubt she feels it," said aunt Chloe, with a
certain reserve ; ' ' but you know when she is in that
studio, nothing is to be got out of her."

"True," said the professor, "any close occupa-
tion, indeed, is literally a pre-occupation : the ab-
sorbed mind is inhospitable to intrusions. Sir Wil-
liam says ' ' —

" Are the Faculty going to do any thing? " inter-
rupted aunt Chloe, who seldom found Sir William
as much to the point as might have been expected
of a really intelligent-looking man who resembled
her brother.

"What can be done? But you may be right.
There ought at least to be some formal action, some
expression of sympathy. Now you remind me of
it, I will just step over to the president's, and see
if the matter has been broached."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 155

u Poor fellow, poor fellow ! Tell Avis I will be
b«ck in season to say good-night," added the pro-
fessor gently, coming back after he had closed the
door.

Aunt Chloe sat for a few minutes in the dark, still
idly, thinking how long it was since she had seen
Hegel so much moved. Then she rolled up the Bul-
garian stocking, and went to put away the paper in
its place, stopping only by the window to be sure
that the marked passage lay folded on the top. The
faint and now rapidly dying light enabled her to
read, with her common spectacles, very clearly, —

" Ostrander, Philip, surgeon: in the lungs."

It was perhaps a week after the battle of Bull
Run, and Avis had found herself quite undisturbed
at her work, left, indeed, in a rather exceptional
solitude, at which she wondered. She liked to see
Coy now and then ; missed her, as we miss the sun-
light whose presence we are yet too absorbed, or too
miserable, to note. Harmouth without Coy would
have been like Harmouth without the elms or the
chapel bell. She clung to Coy with the almost
pathetic loyalty of a woman whose twenty-six years
had given her no comradeship of a fibre against
which her own could lean. In all her young and
later friendships Avis had been used to bring, not
to receive, the elements of support. Deeper than
all chance in this, some unconquerable instinct lay.
In the relations of girlhood she had been marked for

156 THE STORY OF AVIS.

a certain sweet but unapproachable reserve. She
kissed the girls politely, since it was expected of
her ; but, in their indiscriminate caressing, she found
no part, no lot : her nearest intimate could not recall
an hour of weakness, of pain, or of excitement,
which had surprised Avis into it. As for Coy, she
would as soon have thought of petting the Faculty
as of offering any of these little feminine eccentrici-
ties as an expression of her feeling for Avis.

Now, Coy had never voluntarily staid away from
her a fortnight before in all her life. When, there-
fore, she came into the studio one morning after this
temporary defalcation, Avis turned the sphinx to
the wall, and received her with unusual warmth.

4 'Avis," began Coy at once, "you are pale, —
pale as the higher mathematics."

" And you," said Avis, closely scrutinizing her,
standing at arm's length, with both hands on her
shoulders, " you are as radiant as a Neapolitan
rose."

" So she said in a novel, I think," said Coy.
" Be original, Avis, if you must be complimentary.
You don't ask me, either, why I radiate. If you
don't keep a cricket in your studio for me, I shall
have to sit in your lap ; and I've gained five pounds
this summer. Well, the classical dictionary will do :
it is quite as hospitable. Avis? "

"Very well, Coy."

"If you were like other women, — which you
know you never, never will be, as I've said in your

THE STORY OF AVIS. 157

defence a hundred times, — but just to suppose it,
as you might suppose you could make Parker-house
rolls, or a tatting collar, or any other chef d'oeuvre
of which your nature is incapable : what I want to
know is, if you liked a man, — let me sharpen that
crayon for you : I hate to sit doing nothing, — if you
liked a real, live, dreadful man, do you suppose you
would be all summer finding it out ? ' '

i ' O Coy ! Ask me some conundrum with which
my education has. made me familiar. But what is
it, Coy ? Who is he ? What have you come to tell
me?"

Avis laid down the crayon, pushed the sphinx a
little away from her, and, gently clasping her hands
around Coy's neck, looked with a solemn tenderness
at her.

" I said if there were," nodded Coy perversely.
"You generalize from insufficient data, Avis, — a
mistake said to be common to women and reformers.
But speaking of men — you know all about Mr. Os-
trander ? If you don't, I have a lovely bit of gossip
for you, — a Mnd of Sevres specimen, very rare. I
like to gossip in Harmouth : it is considered so un-
intellectual."

4 ' I knew that there was some hope of Mr. Os-
trander's recovery." Avis removed her arms from
Coy's neck, and took up her charcoal. "Father
said so this week. I have heard nothing else."

" You didn't know that he was in Harmouth? "

"In Harmouth?"

158 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" He was brought here last night." Coy, on the
dictionary, waited with a pretty, expectant look,
perhaps to be questioned further; but Avis asked
no questions. She replied that she had supposed
him to be in New Hampshire, and finished sharpening
the charcoal slowty.

" Guess now, Avis, where he is staying. Just
guess."

" I never guessed any thing in my life."

"Your superior women never can. Don't mind
it, dear: it's a deficiency common to your class.
Give it up? At Mr. Stratford Allen's."

" Mr. Allen is very kind," said Avis, after a
momentary silence.

" And so," said Co}T, " is Barbara, — very kind."

"Barbara is a good-hearted girl," urged Avis
honestly. "I don't like to hear women speak of
one another in that tone, Coy."

" Mr. Allen went on as far as Washington to
bring him home," proceeded Coy, ignoring the
rebuke. "Mr. Ostrander had no brother or father
to depend upon, and Stratford Allen is always doing
such things. He wouldn't let him go to those hot
college-rooms. And I believe, in point of fact, it was
thought the mother was too old to be any thing but a
burden in a sick-room : so New Hampshire was just
put quietly out of the question. And here comes in
the advantage of being your brother's housekeeper.
All that Christian self-sacrifice and grateful patriot-
ism can do, Barbara will see to it is done, you

THE STORY OF AVIS. 159

may depend. There hasn't been such a dainty bit
of household art-decoration as that in Harmouth
circles this many a day. Meanwhile, poor Mr. Os-
trander is still very ill, and greatly exhausted with
the journey."

Avis put away her charcoal, and, rising, hunted
in her portfolio for a model of her sphinx, then for
a blender, then for the chamois- skin and chalk.
After a little delay she sat down again, and began
touching in the values of the sketch with a firm and
conscientious hand.

"Now," she said gravely, "since we cannot
help Mr. Ostrander, — you or I, — what is it about
that other man, Coy? Am I not fit, not enough
like other women, to hear?"- The point of the
blender trembled a little against the sphinx's chin.

" And you haven't been to see me for a fortnight,
Coy!"

"Avis," said Coy with judicial solemnity, "I
have done the best I could by you. We weren't
engaged till last night ; and I haven't even told my
mother yet. I'm going to make John do that. It
is with falling in love as it is with religion, — your
parents are the last people to know when you've
been converted. At any rate, that's the way at our
house. It's a family awkwardness we have. I'd
rather be disinherited than tell my mother I loved a
man. She married father because she RESPECTED
him. I've heard her say so. So I poked John in at
the front-door this morning, to have it well over

160 THE STORY OF AVIS.

with, and I ran out across lots, and over here to
you. It was mean, but unavoidable. John will
hare no trouble : he's precocious, patriotic, and
Dious, — three harmonious p's. He got one very
"becoming scar in the army. He's several years too
young to have been called to the Central Church.
And there's been a revival already since he was
settled. Mother will cr}r a little, and be as happy
as a kind-hearted old lady with a funeral to go to."

4 'And you," said Avis, laying down her work,
and once more bringing the tips of her fingers
together about Coy's neck, " you are happy, Coy?
There. Hush ! I see. It wasn't fair to make you
look like that."

Avis's sense of awe increased. It seemed to her
a kind of rudeness for her to sit and watch this
young, transfigured face. She had almost a con-
sciousness of indelicacy, as if she had usurped one
of John Rose's new and sacred rights, in having
surprised Coy into the expression with which — half
kneeling, with both arms about Avis's waist, and her
face uplifted — she regarded her.

The two women sat for a little space in silence ;
Avis still with that delicate action of the hands
which hovered about, but did not rest upon Coy, as
if she had become a holy object that she might not
touch. There was something very noticeable in this
reticent and reverent motion. She was thinking
how far apart, all at once, and by one little word,
she and this other woman, scarcely younger than

THE STOEY OF AVIS. 161

herself, scarcely more full of unexpressed life,
seemed to have been thrust.

"How natural," she said rather wistfully, —
"how natural it must seem to be so happy! "

"It is as natural as life," said Coy, suddenly
starting to her feet, — "so natural, that I think
John will expect me by this time. I'll tell you
more about it all some other day. But there's
really nothing to tell, Avis. He propounded the
conundrum, and I gave it up. We just loved each
other, and so we're going to be married. That's
ah1," added Coy simply.

" It sounds a simple matter, as you put it," said
Avis, smiling in rather a lonely way.

"And I don't mean to make fun of John's
revivals," said Coy, turning in the doorway. "If
there were more like John in the world, there'd be
less like — mother, perhaps. When he was in col-
lege, don't you know how he used to say he should
have to be a minister to keep himself straight ? It
sounded mean ; but it was only brave. And now
there isn't a thread, not a shred, of cant in him.
To the bottom of his soul he means what he says,
and says what he means, when he tries to save a
soul. John believes people have got to be saved.
So I have given him a chance to try his hand on me.
But I shall never be half good enough for him,
never ! ' '

When Coy had crossed the garden, she came back,
and, putting her face in at the half-open door,
said, —

162 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" Avis, there's only one little matter that troubles
me."

Avis, uncovering the sphinx, looked interroga-
tively around.

" It is Barbara Allen's curls."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 163

CHAPTER IX.

" What's death? You'll love me yet! " — BROWNING.

" Loved for we did, and like the elements,
That know not what nor why." — Two NOBLE KINSMEN.

"VTOW and then a feature, an attitude, an accent,
-LA gets a mathematical hold of our imaginations,
as far removed as is possible from the aesthetic or
magnetic way, yet more imperious than either ; like
the pattern of the wall-paper in the room which has
known some tragedy or ecstasy of our lives. We
sit enchained by a trick of speech in the man we
hate, or the cut of the brow in the creature we
despise, the shadow under the lip of the stranger
we neither expect nor care to meet again, or the
glance of the friend in whose broken faith eternity
could not tempt us to confide. These things hap-
pen as the comets march and countermarch, by laws
deeper than, though apparently subservient to, ca-
price.

Something of this soil occurred to Philip Os-
trander as he lay through the long September days
in Stratford Allen's luxurious guest-room, wooing,
more slowly than might have been expected of his
youth and health, an escaping soul to remain in a
mutilated body. He had been very near death.

164 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Of this, though no one had told him so, he was
fully aware. He had enlisted in a reckless temper,
like — who can count how many other young men ?
to whom the war offered the quickest and most inci-
sive road to a glorious solution of inglorious per-
sonal difficulties.

Ostrander had the refracting, not the absorbing
nature, in which ambition kindles under emotion,
like the maple-leaf, whose heart the autumn seeks
earliest, and earh'est deserts. A keen passion like
vanity, a strong one like love, or a subtle one like
that of immediate personal sway, transfigure the
resolve of such a nature, only so long as they may
focus upon it. He would have felt himself humili-
ated to own to another man how impossible he had
found it to dedicate to a science of which he be-
lieved himself to be enthusiastically appreciative, the
life which a woman's foot had bruised. Yet he
felt no more degradation in admitting this to him-
self than he did at admitting the beating of his
heart. Perhaps we may say he made as little resist-
ance to it.

The position reserved for him in Harmouth Col-'
lege ceased to possess those elements of attraction
which he considered conditions of success for him-
self in any thing, as soon as he found himself com-
pelled to undertake it in teeth of the precise expe-
rience awaiting the man who has to adjust the hunger
of a strong nature to the famine of a denied love.
This, as he assumed, was the fault of his tempera-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 165

xnent. He yielded to it as he would to a distaste
for a poem or a pie.

The world was wide. A Harmouth professorship
was not an undue part of it. One man would
answer about as well as another to fill any mould,
unless, perhaps, the chalices of life ; and it could
hardly be said that the veins of his nature throbbed
with sacramental wine, only a serviceable, secular
brand. It was, indeed, he thought, indicative of a
narrow, if not an arrogant fancy, to suppose that it
made much difference, in the end, who undertook
any given little portion of the work of his age :
these youthful enthusiasms were interchangeable.
If he were shot, there would be one indifferent
geologist less in the world, possibly one grieving
woman more. He had moments in which he had
dared believe that she would mourn for him. He
found these inexpressibly and mystically sweet.
Regret in a nature like hers might easily turn into
tenderness, when her beautiful, fierce maidenhood
was forever safe from its encroachment. Death
would not be a costly price to pay for that subtle
and constraining mastery of her soul which repent-
ant grief and virgin widowhood would give him.
Nay, the barren chance of this seemed worth far
bitterer than a soldier's fate. There would be a few
robust physical pangs, more or less, perhaps the
inevitable homesickness to be expected at first from
entering an unknown life, the relief consequent
upon leaving one with which he was at present thor-

166 'THE STORY OF AVIS.

oughly dissatisfied, then the wide spaces and free
chances of a spiritual economy in which to make
his nature worthy of approach to hers, as, by an in-
stinct deeper than the reverent humility of newly-
awakened love, he felt that it was not likely to be-
come, in the conditions of this. For Ostrander
believed in another life. Fifteen years ago, an
educated young man did not find it absolutely im-
perative to doubt the immortality of his own soul.
He had, therefore, — for it was thus that he loved
this woman, with all the strength and the weakness,
with the heights and the depths, of his nature, —
gone into the army, moved by a profound and intel-
ligent hope, that he might never come out of it.

When, however, the shot struck, he had grappled
with death as manfully as most life-sick young crea-
tures do, if given the chance ; for, as he fell, his
major's horse toppled over on him. It was the
struggle consequent on the effort to free himself
from so hideous a death, rather than the wound (not
in itself deadly) , which had made the nature of his
peril. The pierced lung was badly bruised.

Through the sultry days and cooling nights in
which the first breath of autumn crept, his mind had
stirred sluggishly towards the positions in which
death had met it. His medical training told him
that this was his most hopeful symptom, and one to
be fostered. He yielded himself peacefully to the
little eddies of a sick-room existence. He would
have been glad to forget that the whole round world

THE STORY OF AVIS. 167

was not bounded by the daintily-decorated, scented,
and soothing spot in which his recovery met him.
He would have been glad to forget that there was
any other woman in the world than this excellent
sister of a good fellow whose kingly hospitality was
likely to save his life. He experienced a peculiar
sense of relief in the presence of a simple feminine
nature lending itself to these delicate cares with
which he felt himself surrounded unobtrusively, as
he was with the pale, cool pearl- tint of the walls,
the select engravings, the luxurious knick-knacks of
the toilet or the medicine-table, the exquisite service
of his breakfast, or the pattern of ferns on the lace,
to which the Venetian blinds lent a suifusive wood-
land tint.

Awaking one morning, several da}Ts after his re-
turn to Harmouth, from the state of semi-conscious
exhaustion into which the hot journey had thrown
him, he had been made aware of a distinct and new
sensation of optical pleasure. For the first time, he
perceived within the hazy lighting and shading of the
room a soft outline upon which his eye wandered,
rested, and remained, with the wide, blind impulse
of a baby's on a sunbeam. It was the outline of a
woman's neck.

It was a delicate neck, of not too muscular nor yet
too full a curve ; of the sensitive fairness which ac-
companies umber tints in the hair, eyes, and brow.
The hair was brushed well up from it, lingering re-
luctantly in little rings, of which it was difficult to

168 'THE STORY OF AVIS.

express the images of endearment that they pre-
sented involuntarily to the mind, as it is difficult
to explain those which we receive from tendrils or
from the shadow of tendrils upon a ripe leaf. Thrown
high over a comb, two or three curls fell, leaning
lightly, and yielding with an almost imperceptible
stir to the motions of the wearer's breath.

The sick man's fancy had from that time found
itself curiously, but not ungratefully, subject to the
outline of those curls ; pursuing it idly in his weak-
est hours, with interest in his stronger ones ; tracing
the exact course of a lock that defied him like the
pattern of an old lace ; watching for the resumption
of certain broad lights or warm shadows that he saw
yesterday ; disappointed if they did not re-appear ;
nervously fretful sometimes if he could not under-
stand why, when she turned her head, one curl would
fall, and another only nestle closer to its place ; busy
now and then in putting them into imaginary order
upon his finger. He once heard a celebrated beauty
say, that, if she could possess but one physical attrac-
tion, it should be that of pliant and abundant hair.

"Miss Barbara," he had said one day, "do you
ever arrange your hair in any other way?"

" Do you not like it?" she answered, turning her
neck slowly. She generally sat with her profile to-
wards him.

" Amazingly."

" Does it have a nervous effect on you in any way,
— to see the curls fly, I mean? I can change it if
it annoys you."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 169

" It does not annoy me in the least. But I should
like to see it changed — for once," he demanded, in
the idly autocratic tone of the spoiled convalescent.

"Certainly," said Barbara. "I will do it up
plainly some day, if you wish. I will try and re-
member it."

But she never did, it chanced, remember it.

Certainly there never was a better nurse than Bar-
bara Allen, — soft of step, and quiet of dress ; sure of
the right word at the right time, yet mistress of long
silences ; never taxing a weak and wearied attention
with chatter about her china, yet capable of bringing
the English breakfast-tea in a lotus-leaf, and the ice-
water in a pond-lily ; competent to adjust the color
of the doyley to the prevailing tint of one's supper ;
throwing an atmosphere of domestic frankness about
a homeless man when her brother was in the room ;
just brushed in Ms absence by a poised reserve ; per-
ceptive of the precise moment when speech is a strain,
and silence an oppression, and a song of Schubert's,
touched in the twilight, should stir like a spirit
through the quiet house ; full of those delicate and
pictorial resources of which returning strength is
least likely to become ungratefully critical.

" You have been so kind to me ! " said Ostrander,
the day that he took his first step into the cool hall,
and she drew out the white linen ottoman for him
from the direct draught, and took the cricket at his
feet, there being no other seat there for her, — "so
kind, that it seems a sort of rudeness or affectation

170 -THE STORY OF AVIS.

for me to express a gratitude that must only deepen
with time."

" Stratford and I are so glad!" said Barbara
warmly. "It is the only very visible way we have
had open to us of doing our little share for the meb
who are imperilling their lives for us. The obligation
is all on our side, Mr. Ostrander. And you have
been such a delightfully romantic invalid, it has been
like having a poem or a story alive in one's own
house. How do you think we are going to get along
on plain prose when you are gone? "

" Shall you miss me? " asked Ostrander, leaning
back upon the white ottoman, and watching her
dreamily. It was a graceful pose she had upon the
cricket ; and the low wind was busy with her hair.
Barbara lifted her brown eyes ; but they fell, and
she said nothing. She was content to be watched
like that. Why spoil an innocent pleasure by talk-
ing?

" So much?" continued Ostrander in a lower
tone, clasping his hands behind his head, and bring-
ing his lips together under his bright beard. "I
don't know but it is worth a man's being shot, to
be first cured, and then missed — so."

Now, as Ostrander could never have sat with
downcast eyes listening to his own voice, its effect
could hardly have been a measurable thing with him.
And then he was very grateful, and at that moment
he was filled with the tender flood of returning life —
and Barbara happened to be there.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 171

%

Tea, to which, for the first time, Ostrander stag-
gered down, was late that night. Barbara always
waited tea for her brother. Stratford Allen, who had
failed to develop that naturally superior manner to
be expected of the business-man who is known to
have endowed a university, came in with, perhaps,
an unwonted touch of his habitual, modest, sad re-
serve. When Barbara asked him why he was so late,
he said he had been at the treasurer's office.

' ' Did you ask Professor Dobell about those Ger-
man books for his department? " asked Barbara.

"Yes : I stopped at his house a moment," said her
brother, coming up to give his cordial hand to Os-
trander. " I think }TOU had better run over there to-
morrow, Barbara. Miss Avis has got hurt rowing."

' ' Oh ! Much hurt ? — Mr. Ostrander, not in the
draught, please : take this chair."

" Nothing serious, I hope ; but a troublesome
bruise. She was pulling her boat in through a
heavy sea, and brought her thumb between the
rock and the bows somehow. She made light of it ;
but it will cripple her for a while, I am afraid. — Os-
trander, how pleasant this is ! Shall I help you to
the very last huckleberry that was to be found in
New England?"

After tea, Ostrander said that he wished to try a
step or two upon the piazza. Stratford objected ;
but Barbara said it was her rule that sick people
(of any thing be}^ond a common-school education)
should be allowed to do as they liked. She came

172 THE STORY OF AVIS.

up to him with a rose-bud in one hand and his over-
coat in another, — his winter coat : Barbara's lightest
sentiment had a sufficiently practical ballast. She
pinned in the rose, a plump, hot-house bud of a
sturdy color ; one long sinuous curl fell over it.
Ostrander drew his furred lappel over the flower
with an exquisite motion which an artist or novelist
would not have wasted upon any thing less than
a Madonna lity. With his peculiar tenderness of
touch, and with his eyes fixed upon her, he folded it
slowly against his heart.

"As if it had been — a woman,*' thought Bar-
bara with a discreet vagueness of imagination.
Barbara had a high respect for a man who could
receive a favor of hers with a grace so princely.
But she did not wish she were that rose. Ostrander,
still touching his coat with a certain gentleness, crept
out into the rapidly chilling air.

He had come out to try his strength. He meant
to know for himself about that hurt hand. He
crawled along with a suppressed fierceness when he
found how weak he was. The fat rose-bud slipped
and fell. He did not see it, and stepped on it twice
in crossing the piazza-floor.

It was impossible to have better intentions than
aunt Chloe's, when any member of the family was by
illness or otherwise thrown defencelessly upon them.
When Avis had been for three days incapacitated
for work by her little accident, aunt Chloe resolutely

THE STORY OF AVIS. 173

took her sewing, and went to find her. It was non-
sense to be moping out there like a chilled blue-jay.
Avis must be entertained. The first condition of
recovery, were it from a broken thumb or a broken
head, aunt Chloe held, was to be got out of one's
self. And, in the nature of things, we find those
people to be self-absorbed who are not occupied in
our own particular forms of benevolence, precisely
as we find those irreligious who are not of our own
especial faith. The main trouble with Avis, aunt
Chloe reasoned, was, that she did not go out of her-
self.

What if she could not paint for a week or two ? A
soldier's box could be packed, at all events a Har-
mouth soup-ticket could be distributed with any
energetic left hand. It may be that aunt Chloe's
stout impulse, like that of many another outflowing
heart, sometimes struck nearer to a truth than the
richer but less objective fancy.

But Avis in the orchard, flung , upon the short
September grass with her Ruskin and Hawthorne,
and Mrs. Jameson, and other resources not so im-
mediately telling upon the needs of the age as the
soup-tickets, responded to aunt Chloe's sympathy
with the assurance that she was not in pain, and fuUy
occupied, and hoped to be at work again in at most
a fortnight.

" I hope so, my dear, I'm sure," said aunt Chloe,
laboriously seating herself beside her, and unrolling
a package of metaphysical shirts; "for it must be

174 THE STORY OF AVIS.

very lonely, having so few resources as you do. I
came out because I thought it bad for you to be so
much alone."

" Thank you, auntie," said Avis in a sincere tone,
closing her book.

" How Odd all this is about Mr. Ostrander and Bar-
bara ! " began aunt Chloe, carefully fitting a gusset.
(Why was it, that it always made Avis frantic to see
aunt Chloe fit gussets?) "It is the last thing I
should have thought of. Should you have thought
of it?"

"Perhaps not," said Avis; "but it is very nat-
ural."

"I hope, for her sake, it will prove a bond fide en-
gagement," buzzed aunt Chloe : " it will be so awk-
ward for her otherwise ! Though it isn't a choice /
should have made for Mr. Ostrander. I sent him
some nasturtiums this morning. Avis, let me see
that hand once more. I don't understand why you
should look so fagged out over it."

"A little hurt sometimes causes a good deal of
pain," said Avis rather wearily. She threw herself
back upon the brown grass, and closed her eyes
while aunt Chloe talked. It irked her, this enforced
idleness, more than she could remember to have
been irked by any thing since she sat cutting out
night-clothes with aunt Chloe, on the dining-room
table, at sixteen. Just now, it seemed as imperative
to be busy, as action to the swimmer ; and her efforts
to exchange her palette for her books had been pur-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 175

poseless and spasmodic, like the motions of the sink-
ing. She seldom read while she was at work, and
could recall many a sketch which had been ruined
by the morning paper. She could not set the fire
of creation to boiling the tea-kettle of acquisition.
Especially had this experience proved untimely and
unmerciful. There seemed to be great spaces in her
nature, into which she neither cared nor dared to
look, and which the events of the summer had imper-
ceptibly enlarged, like the boundaries of a conquer-
ing country. She found herself now with a kind of
terror thrust into them against her will.

"My dear," said aunt Chloe with unwonted ab-
ruptness, folding the gusset, however, before she
laid it down, "I don't know but there is a provi-
dence in this accident, after all. I have been troubled
about you for a long time. It is always a pity for a
woman to become dependent upon any excitement
outside of the sphere to which she must, of course, in
the end, adjust herself. And really, Avis, I don't
see how you are going to marry in that studio. I
do not wish to speak of such matters with any in-
delicate freedom," added aunt Chloe with her old-
fashioned womanly reserve, which Avis, in all her
life, never remembered to have seen broken in this
way before ; ' ' but of course, my dear, }~ou will ex-
pect to marry."

"No," said Avis gently, with the perfectly hope-
less feeling one has under the necessity of an ex-
planation which kindliness demands, but which is
sure to be only a deepening mystery to the auditor.

176 TfiE STORY OF AVIS.

" No, auntie, I do not expect to marry."

" In a certain way," replied aunt Chloe with grave
hesitation, "that is the way a woman should feel.
I had refused your uncle twice before I thought of
marriage. I am glad you preserve so much mod-
esty about such matters. Young girls now-a-days
are generally so different ! Of course, no lady will
ever allow herself to become interested in a gentle-
man till he has positively sought her in marriage."

Aunt Chloe rolled up her work as she uttered this
first and great commandment, upon which all the law
and prophets of womanhood hung, with the serene
dignity which only an absolute inability to conceive
of two sides to a question can give. What a lady
ought not, that, of course, a lady never did. It was
scarcely necessary to remind any niece of hers of
that. But aunt Chloe had almost a sense of immod-
esty in having spoken, as she had felt it her duty to
do, to Avis. Marriage was not a thing for women
to chatter about. But equally it was not the thing
for women deliberately to put themselves beyond the
reach of that honorable institution, which, we must
admit, was ordained of Almighty God, and neces-
sary to weak-minded man. And, when a poor moth-
erless girl had reached the age of twenty-six without
any apparent appreciation of this fact, it was clearly
the duty of somebody to remind her, with that delicacy
belonging to the old-time breeding, of the mistaken
and undesirable position into which she was drifting.

" Not," said aunt Chloe, hastening to a virtuous

THE STORY OF AVIS. 177

qualification of her unwonted indiscretion, — "not
that a maiden lady cannot li ve a very useful and un-
selfish life, my dear. I have known many instances.
But I think you, Avis, would be happier in the mar-
ried state ; and so I thought I would take an oppor-
tunity to caution you a little. You seem to be so
absorbed in that painting, that somebody must think
for you. And now Coy has gone, and Barbara will
soon follow, you will be left very much alone. I can-
not deny that I feel some anxiety for your future."

" Thank you, auntie," said Avis again. A dull
sense of disturbance mingled with her surprise at
aunt Chloe's unprecedented expression of feeh'ng.
She was glad when the last gusset was rolled away,
and Julia called to ask if she should scald over the
marmalade.

She wandered away restlessly, when aunt Chloe
had gone, through the orchard, over the meadow,
across the field. She crushed the crisp grass idly.
The brown butterflies circled over her head ; and the
grasshoppers rose and fell in their short autumn riot,
which lends almost a pathos to a creature that is
alternately repulsive and absurd, as the throb of
any ephemeral life must do in its last delight. Avis
watched them with a sudden, fierce envy : they would
die of the bitter frost ; but they had leaped to the
summer sun.

She stopped — from a feeh'ng too ill defined to be
called a purpose, perhaps hardly conscious enough
to be named an impulse — at the spot where she had

178 THE STORY OF AVIS.

last seen and spoken with Philip Ostrander. It was
broad, white September noon. The narrow shadow
crept crouching against the feet of the stone wall.

The direct touch of the sun fell gratefully ; for the
morning had been chill. There was a rising, but as
yet unagitated wind, which appealed to, but did not
stir, the purple heart of the sea morning-glories that
sprang from the sand across the wall. The water
had the superlative and unmated meaning of a Sep-
tember sea. The near waves broke weedless and
kindling, clean to the heart's core, like a nature
burnt holy with a consecrated passion. All the
colors of the tide and of the shore compelled
attention, as if one must create a vocabulary to
express them, as if one struggled to say, A blazing
brown, a joyous gray, a restless green, a reticent
red, a something never seen before: in every tint
there was a subtle contradiction. The life and
death of the year wrestled upon the face of the
water. The whole harbor looked to Avis like some
large soul, in which a conflict old as iime, and young
as hope, and eternal as nature, and sad as fate, was
impending. By and by the harbor, too, must freeze.

A pace or two down the wall, two little stunted
spruces grew, — sparse, wind-beaten things, shiver-
ing away from the sea with the touching action of all
trees upon an easterly shore. Avis, stepping along
to help herself up by the assistance of their shrink-
ing branches, climbed the stone wall, and stood
for a moment between them, looking across the
cliff, and down.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 179

In her full lithe length there, a perfect panel
against the sky and sea, she was still standing,
when she heard her name spoken under breath ; and
immediately the speaker added, —

"Do not move, I pray you; do not even turn
your head just this moment."

Neither starting nor stirring, without comment or
inquiry, she obeyed. Perhaps her breath came with
some swiftness ; for she seemed to sway a very little
in standing. In her pale straw-colored summer dress,
she looked like a delicate flame, slender, and ascend-
ing against the sky.

Still without turning, she gently said, —

" This is long enough, I think, Mr. Ostrander."

" Is it? Are you tired? Ah ! Well, I am self-
ish. I would have kept you there much longer.
Well, then, if you must. Shall I help you down? "

Then she turned. Slowly, like a statue on its
pivot, she circled towards him between the dark
lines of the two trees, and slowly opened her grave
eyes upon his face.

Perhaps she was not thinking that he would be so
sorely changed. It was so long since she had seen
him ! Silence had been heavy between them, and
the shadow of death had overhung. In all the
strain of this summer she had thrust herself back
upon her own quiveringly-poised imagination — a
terrible companion. Upon the battle-field, beneath
the shot, within the blazing hospital, upon the
scorching journey, and at the door of death, she

180 THE STORY OF AVIS.

had followed him as one follows afar off, exchan-
ging the terror of that which is for the horror of that
which may be. Her mind had not been at any time
laggard in its apprehension of the fact that he lay,
at a stone's throw from her, grappling with life,
and that another woman rendered him the tender
offices of friendship and of compassion.

But her pictorial instinct, cruelly loyal to her
thus far, had failed her at last. This face, this,
which he lifted to her now, haggard and gray, tense
with that enforced patience, so foreign to a man, that
a woman instinctively gauges the extent of his phy-
sical suffering by his acquisition of it, — against
this, her saddest vision had not fortified her.

Astronomy happened upon a beautiful and signifi-
cant phrase when it gave us " energy of position,"
and meant us to understand by it that certain sepa-
rated bodies are far apart, with great spaces to travel
to reach each other.

At that one moment the energy of position between
these two seemed an immeasurable thing. Avis,
perhaps because she had just obeyed him in standing
still to be looked at, had turned a little coldly.
Where she stood high upon the wall, her health and
youth and color seemed to cut themselves like articu-
late words before his eyes. He, upon the side of the
ascending field, crawled weakly towards her. He
was shattered as a broken column. For that mo-
ment they ' looked steadily and silently upon one
another.

ME STORY OF AVIS. 181

Then slowly, furtively as an unacknowledged
motive or a rebel fancy, there crept over her face a
change. It was the marvellous and magnificent
change wrought upon a woman's face only by that
compassion which steals a regent to the palace where
Love the King has been dethroned. Nothing is
more beautiful, because nothing is more womanly,
than that subsidence of the muscles, that quiver of
the nerves, that kindling of color, and luminous
entreaty of the eye.

The young man held his breath before it, stirred
with a perfectly new and daring hope. He felt, that,
had he come to her again in the power of his man-
hood, he might again have gone as he came. It was
his physical ruin and helplessness which appealed to
the strength in her. He would have died to see that
lip of hers tremble so — for him. Now he saw it —
and lived. He had exchanged nothing but a shot
lung and life-long feebleness — for heaven. He drew
a weak step nearer to her, and held out his arms.

She wavered for an instant. The morning-glory
behind her, across the wall, wavered as much in the
now rising wind. Then, with a low, inarticulate cry,
she stretched both hands down towards him.

He took them, and she slid down from the wall,
and stood beside him. She did not offer to remove
her hands. He thought she was unconscious of his
touch, for she had not yet taken that broken, piteous
look from his face.

" Oh ! " she said indistinctly. " I did not think —
I did not know ' ' —

182 TteE STORY OF AVIS.

"You did not know I was so changed?" He
gently took her hurt right hand by the wrist as he
spoke, holding it like a drooping water-lily by the
stem. < ' There, I must have hurt you. I was cruel ;
but I was dazzled. Poor little hand ! There is 9
great deal of suffering in a little hurt like this. A
bruise is so much worse than a cut — in hearts 01
hands. / have had the cut. You have almost
drawn the life-blood out of my soul, I think ; but
you — you have been bruised."

A wild flash of dissent or protest shot across her
eyes ; but the quiver of her lip increased.

" All this time," he went on in the pathetic ac-
cent which mortal illness leaves lingering so long
upon a man's voice, " you have sent me no word,
no sign."

She silently shook her head: her eyelids looked
heavy, as if a distinct effort only prevented them
from drooping.

" You never expressed to me the commonest sym-
pathies of friendship."

Imperfectly she said, " No."

"I lay, pretty weak, watching, day after day,
thinking perhaps you would come, or speak one little
word. I went down into the valley of the shadow
of death without you. You never extended a finger-
touch to help me."

"1 never did."

" You did not dare ! "

Then her eyelids fell ; then her quivering lip

THE STORY OF AVIS. 183

melted ; then her whole face broke and blazed. She
snatched away both hands, and covered it.

" Let me hear you say it," he demanded with a
kind of solemn authority which seemed, for the
moment, to be that of one who dealt with a divine,
not a human, passion. " You dared not ! "

"I — dared — not."

" Let me know why not."

" Because you did not — ask me to."

Scarlet behind her shielding hands she flung out
the words.

He took one blind step towards her.

4 'If I had asked you — would you have come?
Did you care? Did you want to come — when I
was suffering — to me ? ' '

"Oh! every day, every hour — there was not a
minute — for so many cruel weeks. It was so hard !
Oh ! don't think I am crying : it's only that I can-
not get my breath — and I couldn't go — I was
afraid" —

"You were afraid you loved me !" he cried.
"You are afraid of it now."

As long as he lived, Ostrander saw in dreams the
expression of exquisite pain with which she dragged
her hands away from her face, and met his eye. She
seemed like a creature whose throbbing heart was
torn out of her live body.

" If this be love," she slowly said, " I am afraid
I love you now."

He staggered, he was still so weak : he staggered,

184 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

and, putting out one hand upon her shoulder, sank
slowly to the ground.

" Oh ! " she cried, " I have hurt you ! "

"No, oh, no! Hush! You have healed me. I
am well. Only let me rest a minute, till my breath
comes. " He leaned panting against the wall, under
the scant shade of the storm-tormented spruce.

"Oh! I have hurt you," she repeated, kneeling
beside him. " What can I say? Is there any thing
that I can do?"

She had melted into a gentleness under which he
felt his head spin giddily. There was a suppressed,
appealing accent in her voice which he had never
heard : it was faint as the first golden outline of
land to one long in mid-ocean. He put his head
back, and closed his eyes. He would not for life's
sake, just then, have seen more than that mistily
throbbing boundary. It was as much as he could
bear. If this was her pity, what would her tender-
ness be?

When he had grown a little stronger, he turned,
and silently looked at her. Already upon her rested
that indefinable change, on the hither side of which,
when once it has touched her, all time cannot put
a woman's face. In yielding her confession, she
seemed already to have yielded some impalpable
portion of her personality. In the words of the old
story of chivalry, " her soul had gone out of her."
Her blinding consciousness of having taken the first
step in a road which led to some indefined but im-

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 185

perative surrender of her nature had an effect upon
her incalculable to one familiar only with a simpler
type of woman. She did not look subdued, only
startled. And, when he reverently extended his thin
hand again towards her, she shrank, with widening,
fear-stricken eyes.

Just then Ostrander thought her beautiful terror
of him more precious than her love.

He did not press any expression of his feeling
upon her, and they sat quite still, and the live noon
pulsated about them.

Presently she said tremulously, —

" You are so weak ! And you walked across this
long field : how will you ever get back ? I am
troubled that you came."

"I can go anywhere," said Ostrander in an in-
toxicated tone, " do any thing. I can go the world
over ; for you will go with me."

He turned to her, leaning his head upon one wan
hand on which the sunlight drew out the veins. She
turned away. She could not just then say the word
which would darken sun, moon, and stars in the face
of a man who looked like that. Her own grew tense
and pinched.

"But still, as you say," said Ostrander, — whether
wilfully or not unconscious of this movement, — " I
am not yet very strong. Indulge me. Let me hear
you say once more — I'll not ask for it but once
to-day — that you are afraid you love me."

"Oh! I am afraid I love you! There, hush!"

186 «£HE STORY OF AVIS.

She sprang to her feet, putting her finger on her own
lips.

" And can you not love me without being afraid? "

She shook her head, her eyes beginning to wander
from side to side.

"But why?"

"I do not know. I am made so," defiantly.
"Let me go. Let us go now — home, somewhere.
Oh, I forget! I am cruel." She broke into a peni-
tent tenderness. " Are you rested? Can you walk
so far yet ? Can you go ? ' *

" One moment." Ostrander rose feebly, and
stood beside her. His startling pallor burned as
marble does if thrust into the full sun, as if it were
lighted, not from without, but from within. He
folded his arms with the resolute action of a man
who thinks that is the safest thing to do with them,
before he said, —

"You will not leave me, I think — to-day — like
this. I am almost too sick a man yet to be left —
so."

" Do you appeal to my pity ? " she flashed, draw-
ing a step back.

" No. I appeal to your love."

The scorching color slowly rose, lighted, sped,
fired her face, brow, and neck : when he saw it, he
knew that he had never seen her blush before. She
seemed to stand imprisoned by that blush, as if it
had been a physical paralysis or pain.

"My love," she said under her breath, — "my
love ! Do you know to what you are appealing? "

THE STORY OF AVIS. 187

' 4 Hardly, — yet , ' ' said Ostrander deliriously. ' ' I
am not strong enough to know to-day. I only ask
that you will give me the right to know another day
— to-morrow — when you will. Is it too much to
ask?"

She made as if she would have spoken some im-
petuous word ; but a glance at him restrained her.
He was trembling heavily, and his breath had visibly
shortened. He looked very ill. Her heart leaped
with the deep maternal yearning over suffering that
is more elemental in women than the yearning of
maiden or of wife. Had he spoken no word of that
other love to her, she could have gathered his faint
face in her arms, and brooded over it with leaning
cheek and sobbing voice ; but this other, this en-
croaching, appalling love, which she felt in herself,
as yet, only as the presence of a vague, organic
dread, — for this, nature gave her no speech nor
language but the instinct of flight. Yet flight now
would be either coquetry or cruelty, and of both she
was incapable."

" I will see you," she said after a moment's grave
silence — " yes, I will see you again."

Ostrander was sensitively conscious that her trans-
parent honesty could not wrest even from her com-
passion a distinct mortgage to his now blinding
hope. But he felt himself as physically unequal to
enduring just then any possible depression of that
hope, as he was to 3ielding any larger allowance of
the scant breath with which he must compass that

188 THE STOEY OF AVIS.

widening distance across the dizzy field. He paused,
however, to say with a certain authority, —

" You understood what I asked in asking that we
may talk of this, that we may talk of our love,
again ? ' '

"Yes.'*

11 And you distinctly grant that we may speak of
it, so?"

She said, " If you stand another moment, you
cannot crawl home."

" I shall stand till you grant what I ask."

"Oh, I grant it! Come! How shall I — how
can I help you over this rough ground ? I wish I
were a man ! "

" I am sorry not to sympathize with any wish of
3rours," said Ostrander, breaking into a boyish
laugh as they turned, striking down into the brown
stubbly field. " And now, if you will permit me, —
just a hand upon your shoulder. It shall be a light
one ; and I shall get along famously. I am already
stronger than I was."

She lent him her strong young shoulder simply
and readily, and, he leaning upon it with radiant
eyes, they passed over the conscious meadows in
the white September noon.

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 189

CHAPTER X.

"Are there not ...

Two points in the adventure of the diver? —
One — when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge ;
One — when, a prince, he rises with his pearl.
Festus, I plunge ! "

FEST. I wait you when you rise !

BROWNING'S PARACELSUS.

THERE now began in Avis a memorable conflict,
which only a woman, and of women perhaps
only a few, can articulately understand.

Ostrander felt that it was only accelerated, but
did not believe that it was in any other sense
affected, by the state of extreme exhaustion into
which that morning by the shore had plunged him.

He had struggled up through the orchard and the
garden, and as far as the studio, where he sank upon
the steps. The professor and aunt Chloe came out
and got him into the house ; and he lay for the rest
of the day upon the study sofa, sorely spent.

Nothing would have suited aunt Chloe better than
to keep him beneath her motherly wing ; she had
small secret respect for Barbara Allen's nursing.
What could a girl with red curls know about gunshot
wounds? And she understood that Mr. Ostrander
had been kept too long in a dark room : men, like
flowers, waxed strong in the light of heaven. Un-

190 TfiE STORY OF AVIS.

doubtedly, Barbara could play opera music for him
down stairs ; but meanwhile, who was to rub the
poor fellow's feet? or exert an authoritative influ-
ence in the question of wet or dry heat in an attack
of pain?

And now that he had really gone back to the
college (too soon, as it had clearly proved), she
could surely take him in hand without any discourtesy
to the Aliens. Aunt Chloe's hospitality expressed
itself with the touch of dignity, which 5 though it
makes acceptance easy, leaves denial graceful. She
did not press the matter, when Ostrander, growing
. stronger with the heavily cooling evening, said only
that it was best for him to go ; and he returned to
his old quarters, upon which he held some hen by
courtesy until his health should admit of a definite
settlement of his relation to the university.

Avis was in her room when his carriage drove up,
and did not come down. She had presented herself
through the day only so much as was necessary to
prevent remark. She hovered about him distantly.
In her eyes smouldered a dangerous light. When
once they had been left for a few minutes alone
together, as the afternoon shadow was stooping to
the study-floor, she had fanned him conscientiously,
to be sure ; but she had not broken by a breath, the
expressive silence which settled like a third person-
ality between them. He did not watch her, but lay
with closed eyes : he perceived the shining of her
slender wrist, the faint scent from her dress and

THE STORY OF AVIS. 191

hair. When aunt Chloe came in, she felt his pulse
anxiously, and said she had given him too large a
dose of the elderberry- wane.

For that next day he left her to herself. And for
yet another he stood afar off from a struggle upon
which he felt it unchivalric to urge, more than need
inevitably be, the appeal of his physical wreck and
disordered future. Upon the third day he came,
leaning upon John Rose's arm. Rose had found
him down the street, crawling along home. But
John Rose had an appointment with a lady, and
would not come in.

Aunt Chloe stood in the hall with her bonnet on. •
She was going to a very special female prayer-meet-
ing (of which far be it from me to speak scepti-
cally), appointed to further the discontinuance of
the war. And the professor would not return from
the lecture-room till after the Alpha Delta Phi din-
ner, which would be a late (and dyspeptic) affair.
Aunt Chloe thought the parlor too damp for Mr.
Ostrander, and would send Avis into the study.

He went in, and awaited her with such nerve as
he could command : he would not have turned his
transparent hand over either way upon his chance.
He waited what seemed an immeasurable, and really
was rather a cruel time.

When at last she came in, down the long, sunlit,
home-like room, between the rows of books, he
was shocked to see the traces of a sleepless and
s straggle that she bore.

192 tfHE STORY OF AVIS.

He met her with some indistinct, impetuous word
of endearment, and drew her beside him upon the
old mahogany sofe.

" You suffer ! " he cried, with the helpless bewil-
derment of the strongest man before the nature of a
strong woman. " I would make you so happy ; and
I have made you miserable ! Why do you suffer? "

He held her fast now by the delicate crossed
wrists. She lifted her tender face.

" I suffer/' she said, " because I love you."

"Oh! Is that an?"

" I never loved any other man. I did not know
•what it was like."

She gently drew her hands away, and folded them
one into the other.

< ' And what is it like ? Can you tell me ? ' '

One might have said of Ostrander's voice at that
moment, what was said once, and said perfectly, of
music, that it was " love in search of a word."

11 It is like — death," said the woman slowly, with
a deepening shade on every feature.

"Then," said the young man lightly, "I am
ready to die."

But he was sorry to have made her smile so ; for
her smile did not encourage him.

" It is civil war," she said.

Spurred by a momentary stinging sense of having
retraced his own footsteps, he leaped on, —

" Do you remember that you were to give me an
answer, — that you were to talk with me of our
future, to-day? "

THE STORY OF AVIS. 193

"Yes."

u And I may know — now — what it is you have
to say to me? "

"Mr. Ostrander, in all my life — since I was a
little girl — I have never known one hour in which
I expected — like other women — to marry/'

uYou could not be like other women," he mur-
mured ; but she waved his words away with her
bruised hand.

" I don't think you understand what that means.
I never could conceive of myself as expecting it.
I cannot now. I do not wish to marry any man.
It seems to me a perfectly unnatural thing that any
man should look me in the face, and ask me to be
his wife : it always did. And that a man of your
superior intelligence should actually expect it is really
incomprehensible to me."

She pelted these words at him over her shoulder.
Ostrander heard them too anxiously to smile. It
was the irrational outcry of a creature rasped and
wrung by the friction of her own nature upon itself.
Only a woman terrified by the serried advance of a
mighty love upon an able and discomfited resistance,
could have spoken those words in that way. But
only a few men in the world would have instinctively
understood this. Ostrander was not one of these
few. It seemed to his dizzy eyes that her face
receded as she spoke, growing larger but dimmer
with every word.

"I never said this before," she added, with the

194 THE STORY OF AVIS.

rapid, incisive utterance of one who is expressing
what is so long familiar, and so long suppressed, as
to have become a functional part of the being, and
to exhale involuntarily like the breath. " I never
cared enough — for any one — to try to explain it.
But I must tell you. I had rather not be happy
than to be happy at such a cost as marriage demands
of women."

"Ah! then you own that you would, that you
could, be happy." He hastened to entrap her in
her sweet admission. She gave him one transcend-
ent look. As if she had given him some matchless
wine never before unsealed for human lips, his head
grew light. But then there fell a swift and great
withdrawal upon her ; and her face gathered itself
together like a garrison, while she said, —

" I told you something about this long ago, before
you went into the army, that day by the shore ; but
I could not explain it then, for I could not explain
myself then. Every thing that I felt then has inten-
sified. With my feeling for you has deepened this
other feeling. The more I care for you, the more I
shrink from what you ask."

" Let us talk of this quietly now, and reasonably,"
said Ostrander in his low, vibrant way. "I will
urge nothing upon }'ou. Onl}r let us reason about it.
Marriage is not to be treated with such personal
irreverence or rebellion, I think. It is really the
best plan Almighty God could contrive for us. It
is his will that men and women should love one
another, and, loving, marry."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 195

u But I do not see it to be his will for me," urged
Avis. "He has set two natures in me, warring
against each other. He has made me a law unto
myself — He made me so. How can I help that? I
do not say, Heaven knows ! that I am better, or
greater, or truer than other women, when I say it is
quite right for other women to become wives, and
not for me. I only say, If that is what a woman
is made for, I am not like that: I am different.
And God did it."

There was a solemn but yet submissive arraign-
ment in these words, and in the tone with which
they were uttered, to which, at that moment, Os-
trander found no ready lover's argument of a texture
large enough to be laid against them.

" Even if I had no work, no life, of my own,"
she continued less calmly, " I think it would be the
same, though I cannot tell. But I have my work,
and I have my life. I was not made to yield these
to any man. I was not made to absorb them in his
work and his life. And I should do it — if I married
him. I should care so much — too much for what
happened to him. . . . Mr. Ostrander, if I were a
man, I would not stoop to ask such a sacrifice of
any woman! "

" And I stoop to ask for no more than I give,"
he said with a haughty humility. u I will take
from you only what I can yield to you, — the love of
a life. I do not want your work, or your individu-
ality. I refuse to accept any such sacrifice from the

196 THE STORY OP AVIS.

woman I love. You are perfectly right. A man
ought to be above it. Let me be that man." Os-
trander uttered this daring sentiment as ardently as if
he had ever thought of it before, and as sincerely as
if it had been the watchword of his life. He felt him-
self at that moment in the radiation of a great truth
that blazed from her ringing voice and her intrenched
beauty. He seemed to himself to be the discoverer
of a new type of womanhood, to which, as we do in
the presence of all ideals, he instinctively brought
his own nature to the rapid test : he would have
scorned himself if his manhood had not rung respon-
sive to it. He ventured solemnly to say, —

" Only let us love, and live, and work together.
Your genius shall be more tenderly my pride than
my little talents can possibly be yours. I shall feel
more care for your assured future than you ought
to feel for my wrecked one. Try me if you will ;
trust me if you can. I do not say that I am worthy.
But you shall make me so. If I did not believe you
could make me so, before God, I would go out from
your presence to-day, and never seek it again."
He spoke in an agitation now, that extended itself,
like the air they breathed, to her. She rose, and
walked across the study-floor two or three times,
with something of her father's attitude, the long,
nervous step softened to a sinuous grace in her
clinging dress.

" I wish I had a different past and a different
future to offer you," pleaded Ostrander, throwing

THE STORY OF AVIS. 197

one weak arm up over his head restlessly. "But
the one has at least been clean, I believe ; and the
other must be — what God and yourself will it."

She stopped her rapid walk, and looked at him
standing in the middle of the floor ; and in what
seemed a half-unconscious tone, as if she had not
been listening to his last words, she said, —

4 ' I have wondered sometimes if there were such
a man in the world. I always knew," whispering,
' ' how I should feel. I knew it would be all over with
me when I found him." Then, still softly, —

" Oh, how pale you are ! All this excitement — is
so wrong for you ! I should be so glad to see you
happy — to help you to get well! Oh, I think I
could make you happy! I would try — there is
nothing I would not do, would not suffer " —

With a swift motion she stirred towards him, saw
him reach his arms out dumbly, wavered and turned,
then, —

" Oh, no, no, no ! " she cried. " Help me to say
no! Come another tune. I must think. I must
take time — because " —

"Because what?" he demanded, sorely shaken
by the prolongation of this strain.

; ' Because I care too much for you to make you
miserable. Every thing would be so hard for you !
Don't think it is that I care so much about myself!
/ could bear it, — to grow poor and sick and worn-
out, and never to paint, and to have to sew so much !
When you look at me, (oh, you are so pale !) I could

198 THE STORY OF AVIS.

bear it all. But I can't forget how it would be —
and the coffee wouldn't be right. And men mind
such things — you would mind. You would be sorry
we had done it. It is not right for us to marry.
Don't let me do what is not right ! You should see
— you should be merciful to yourself and me."

She seemed to slip and slide before his still ex-
tended hands like a wraith, and he heard the door
open and close, and the afternoon sun bent pla-
cidly upon the rows of books, upon the portrait of Sir
William, upon the decorous mahogany sofa, and the
dull figure on the carpet where she had stood.

He took his hat, and crawled away in the bright
sunshine. Avis up stairs held her hands upon her
ears as if she were trying to shut out the sound of
her own words ; and the professor at the Alpha
Delta Phi dinner sat discussing representative per-
ception with that New- York clergyman who had
written so intelligent a review of the Identity of
Identity and Non-Identity ; and aunt Chloe at the
prayer-meeting poured out her good soul for the
benefit of the country.

He did not seek to see her after this, but wrote to
her several tunes, expressing more fully both the
burden of his love and the reason of his hope, crys-
tallizing calmly all a lover's sublime conviction of the
practicability of his wishes. He had no answers ;
but he wrote bravely on. Perhaps a fortnight passed
in this way. All this while, Ostrander had said
nothing of his health.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 199

One day Coy came in and said, —

" Poor Mr. Ostrander ! He doesn't seem to get up.
John goes over there almost every day. He doesn't
walk out now, — hasn't for a week ; and the Aliens
take him to ride. But I hear his chum is very good
to him, and he won't go anywhere else. And John
says he can't see why he doesn't gain. John is very
good to him. And John says " —

But Avis did not seem to be granting her usual
tender attention to what John said ; and Coy changed
the subject — to bias ruffles.

It was when Ostrander was lying alone in the dusk,
on his college lounge, the next day, that a little note
was brought to him, the first he had ever received
from her. With shaking fingers he struck a light,
and read, in her large, defined hand, this only : —

"MY DEAR MR. OSTRANDER, — I should like to see
you, if you are strong enough to drive to my father's
house. Do not come till you are quite able. I have
nothing to say that cannot be said as well at one time as
another. Yours sincerely,

" AVIS DOBELL."

His chum came in at that moment ; and Ostrander,
who had not ventured into the evening air for weeks,
fiercely demanded a carriage and his overcoat, and
got them. He usually got what he sought in that
reverberating tone. Men were almost as pliable as
women to the quality of Philip Ostrander 's voice.

As luck would have it, there was a Faculty meet-

200 THE STORY OF AVIS.

ing in the study, and a City Relief Society in the
parlors. He asked distinctly for Miss Avis, and
was bidden into the long, empty dining-room. There
was faint firelight in the Franklin stove ; and the
moon, which was full, looked in over aunt Chloe's
ivies. There was heliotrope in the room somewhere ;
but it could not be seen. She came, before the
lights, not knowing how it was, and stopped in the
doorway, uncertain. He was standing at the other
end of the room. It seemed as if he leaned against
a column of straight moonlight. His height and
pallor were thus both emphasized.

Avis, looking in through the darkened room, lean-
ing forward a little, hesitating, thought of the Har-
bor Light, oddly enough, and of the birds.

The lamps came in while they were standing so :
the servant went out and closed the door. Avis
had on something scarlet over a thick white dress
that blazed out with the lighting of the room. She
spoke first, and she said gravely, —

" Mr. Ostrander, I have decided " —

" Oh ! do not decide — yet/ '

" It is quite necessary. I have tried your patience
overmuch. I have decided ; and I pray you pardon
me for the lateness of the decision, and for all the
trouble I have been to you, and all the pain — but —
I have decided that I cannot resign my profession as
an artist."

He was hastening impetuously to remind her that
they had both decided she need resign nothing, when

THE STORY OF AVIS. 201

he perceived a tender merriment that he had never
seen before, dawning far within her eyes.

His voice and face sprang towards her ; but she
motioned him back.

" And — I forgot to tell you that I hate — with a
fervent hatred — to keep house."

" I did not ask you to be my housekeeper ! "

u And," suddenly serious, "I make very sour
bread."

" You will bring me," he said reverently, " the
bread of life."

He looked so wasted, standing trembling there,
with his hand upon the long table, that his words
seemed less the rhapsody of love than the cry of
famine ; and the reply, which in the telling has
almost a touch of the ludicrous, in the solemn saying
was almost sublime.

" Come," he said feebly, "I am starving.
Come ! " Slowly at first, with her head bent, as if
she resisted some opposing pressure, then swiftly,
as if she had been drawn by irresistible forces, then
blindly, like the bird to the light-house, she passed
the length of the silent room, and put both hands,
the palms pressed together as if they had been man-
acled, into his.

202 THE STORY OF AVIS.

CHAPTER XI.

"Wine sweeter than first wine
She gave him drop by drop ;
"Wine stronger than seal could sign
She poured, and did not stop." — H. H.

"VTEVER was there such a wooing. So, with the
JL M simple assurance of that glorified time in which
we seem to ourselves to be the originators of each
new emotion that overtakes us, Ostrander thought.
And, indeed, many a lover's sweet fallacy has been
farther from the truth.

Had she not been of a tissue to which caprice was
as impossible as crime, he would scarcely have felt,
for a day's space, confident of his new and dazzling
claim. Her betrothal fitted upon her impatiently,
like the first articles in a treaty of capitulation only
looking askance as yet towards a dreaded surrender
in which a passionately defended lost cause was to
go down. He felt his way painfully with her, care-
ful not to startle her, as if she had been a bird
poised with tender, receding feet, and fluttering wing,
uncertain whether it would nestle at his heart.

The abrupt and cavalierly form of wooing with
which he had at first, as was inevitable, shocked and
temporarily estranged (but thus ultimately strength-
ened) the leaning of her feeling towards him, had

THE STORY OF AVIS. 203

given place to a definite persistence, to be sure, but
to one so tender and cautious, that she seemed to be
scarcely more conscious of it than of the tempera-
ture of the morning.

For the first few days she received him with a
distance which would have disheartened a less per-
ceptive man. Even her anxiety for his recovery
seemed to have retired from the foreground of her
thoughts. Neither the future nor the past, appar-
ently, occupied her imagination much more than
they do that of the caged creature who has just
become percipient of the existence and the nature
of bars. She sat by him silently, or they talked of
matters of wide interest, or aunt Chloe came in.
She had steadfastly refused so far to acquaint her
family with the state of the case between them, say-
ing decidedly, —

"I must get a little used to it first." Secretly,
Ostrander blessed the sturdy American sentiment
which made this possible. It seemed to him just
then as much as he could bear, that they two, they
only out of all the world, should know that the
almost inconceivable future was possible to him,
which would give him the right to call her his wife.
To share the first blush of this knowledge with any
human creature was like bruising the velvet on the
petal of an iris.

"Aren't you sorry yet? "she asked one day,
when this first mood had passed. u Don't you think
we had better not do this ? I can't do any of the
tilings men expect."

204 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" Oh ! " he cried, " you shall not be what other men
expect. I don't want you like other men's wives.
You Lorelei ! sphinx ! you Cassandra, you ! rebel-
lious — beautiful ' ' —

44 But they thought Cassandra was mad," inter-
rupted Avis. " Except " —

"Well?"

" The king loved her," said Avis softly.

It was perhaps a week since he had received her
promise, when one evening, as they were alone to-
gether, he went resolutely yet gently over to the
window where she stood behind the heavy curtains,
restlessly shifting aunt Chloe's flowers about to no
very definite end, that he could see, and said, —

"Avis?"

He had not called her so before. She started with
leaping eyes, moved her lips as if she would have
spoken ; said nothing.

"Avis," he repeated, "do you know that we
have been engaged a week — a whole week ? ' '

When she looked up, he was smiling quietly, and
he spoke in that unimpassioned, matter-of-course
tone which most quickly disarms the dismay of such
a woman ; as if that which he sought were as natural
as the drawing of the breath, and in no sense more
suited to create an exciting scene ; or as if he dealt,
indeed, with a thought too lofty and too grave to be
reduced to the level of an excitement.

' ' A whole week, my darling. Ah, hush ! Can
you not bear so much as that? And you have not

THE STORY OF AVIS. 205

yet given me one kiss. Don't you think it is a little
hard on a poor wreck of a wounded soldier? "

" I don't mean to be hard/' she said, slowly re-
ceding from him with unconscious steps that twisted
in her long dress.

"But you are — very hard. It doesn't seem to
me worth while exactly. Why should you mind so
much, if you really love me? "

"I love you!" she murmured, standing quite
still.

11 Ah, how much?' Dear, how much? "

"Do you think I can — say, what I have not
dared — yet — to ' ' — Her voice sunk.

" All the same," said Ostrander, shaking his head,
obstinate with joy, "I'm tired of living on faith.
I don't feel sure of you."

She began to stir again, still receding, her outline
growing fainter in the shadowed corner of the room.
He advanced as slowly, but with a reverent attend-
ance on her wish, towards her.

" You don't understand ! " she cried. " No man
could. This is all so new, so strange, so terrible, to
me. You don't remember how it is. I never ex-
pected to be in such a position as this : in all my
life I've never thought I could be ! If I am more
foolish than other women, that is why. I don't mean
to be foolish. Be patient with me ! I love you ! "

" If I had not been patient " — he began impul-
sively, but checked himself.

" I don't know what to do, how to act, how to

206 THft STOEY OF AVIS.

adjust myself to what has happened," she said in
an entreating, childlike way, as if she sought his
tolerance for some radical fault of hers. He was
intoxicated by this peculiarly beautiful lowh'ness into
which her unstooping spirit now and then surged
over, and spent itself, like the foam upon the crest
of a wave.

" Only let me teach you! " he urged, drawing,
unforbidden, nearer her. " Only say that you will
try to learn! "

He thought for a moment that she would have fled ;
her hands held her very dress away ; she seemed
to draw even her breath back from him. There was
a solemn deprecation, almost of the character of a
rebuke, upon her face. But she did not deny him.
A sense of sacramental awe, such as he would not
have believed it possible for him to be so penetrated
with at such a moment, — penetrated almost to the
exclusion of the sense of joy, — possessed him ; and
his own hand with which he touched her seemed to
the young man to alter, and become transfigured,
like the hand of a spirit stretched to meet him across
the kneeling room.

Then, indeed, he walked about with resplendent
eyes. He trod on bounding air. Then, at last, he
felt that he should win her. He was no longer
afraid of any mood, or re-action, or recoil of hers.
She might withdraw herself as she would, or grieve
over her sweet, lost liberty as she must: she was
his.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 207

All our pleasure is said to be nothing more than
the consciousness of some one or other of our per-
fections. Ostrander wore the self-gratified smile of
successful love. But one's personal share of acidity
must be flavored with gall, if one would be untender
with this form of complacency.

It was the next day after the little scene just re-
lated, that she went to aunt Chloe. She had pre-
ferred to go, and to go alone. Aunt Chloe heard
her in silence, and rounded off her stocking (for the
little feet of the State orphans, this time) , before she
said, —

" My dear, he's consumptive! However," after
a long pause, in which she' knitted and winked with
violent rhythmic harmony, ' ' your father will be
pleased. And in these days it isn't every talented
young man who takes a decided stand. Mr. Ostran-
der doesn't think he's too smart to believe the
Bible, so far. Of course you wouldn't marry any
but a religious man. And he will go into the pro-
fessorship as soon as he recovers. I don't see, on
the whole, what could be better. You might take
that house of the Perkinses on High Street. But I
confess, I thought you'd tug away at that painting
a while longer."

" I do not intend this to make any difference with
my painting," said Avis quickly: "my marriage,
if I many, is not to interfere with my work. Mr.
Ostrander does not wish it."

Aunt Chloe laid down the little stocking, and

208 THE STORY OF AVIS.

regarded her niece with that superior matronly
smile, under which, above all earthly afflictions, a
young woman feels herself a helpless rebel. But all
aunt Chloe's reply was a long, low, significant,

"H-u-m-ph!"

" Certainly not," repeated Avis very distinctly.
" I would not marry, if I must give up my profes-
sion. That is understood."

" When a — woman becomes — a wife," said aunt
Chloe, taking to the little stocking again with her
generous, dogmatic hands, " her husband's interests
in life are enough for her. When you are once
married, you will no longer feel any of this youthful
irritation against the things that other women do.
Women." added aunt Chloe solemnly, "are not
men. God made us."

"Well, I," said Avis, laughing, "am like the
boy in the Sunday school, whom God didn't make.
We'll play that somebody else made me, auntie. —
Aunt Chloe," — she suddenly changed her tone to
one of grave and searching appeal, — " tell me now,

— tell me the holy truth (for I need all the truth I
can get just now, auntie) , did you never in all your
life want to be any thing else but my uncle's wife?
Is there nothing in all the world that you, — a wo-
man of overflowing energy and individuality, and
organizing power, — able to carry a Christian com-
mission or a national commissary on your shoulders,

— is there nothing that you ever wanted to be? "
The little stocking gently sank to aunt Chloe's

THE STORY OF AVIS.

broad knee, and there was a pause, in which her soft,
brown, benevolent eyes filled with a slow light. In
the window-sill the September sun fell upon her
geraniums. They turned their burning faces to her
solemnly, like visions which said, "We will never
tell." Aunt Chloe arose, went over and stroked
them, then came back.

4 'My dear Avis," she said in a subdued voice,
" I suppose all of us have times of thinking strange
thoughts, and wishing impossible things. I have
thought sometimes — if I could begin life over, and
choose for my own selfish pleasure, that I would like
to give myself to the culture and study of plants. I
should be — a florist, perhaps, my dear ; or a botan-
ist."

Aunt Chloe uttered these words under her breath,
as she might have some beautiful heresy, then took
to her knitting with a fierce repentance ; and that
one particular orphan had a pair of stone-china col-
ored stockings before tea-time. It would be difficult
to follow the precise chain of mental influences which
led aunt Chloe to put in Turkey-red toes.

The interview between Avis and her father was,
like ah1 deeply-fraught scenes between them, a brief
one. She went in, and, sliding away his books, knelt
beside him, and, without looking upwards, said, —

" Father, I have promised to marry Mr. Ostrander.
I never meant to marry."

The professor pushed back his spectacles, then
his lexicon, then his daughter; held her at arm's
length for a moment.

210 THE STORY OF AVIS.

"The conceivable," he murmured, "lies always
between two inconceivable extremes. Such we find
in the law of the conditioned." Then gently, —

" And so my little girl — has come to — that! I
can hardly understand. It seems such a short time
since you were playing about ; and your mother " —

The professor laid his nervous, scholarly hand upon
his daughter's head ; she felt it suddenly tremble.
But he collected himself, and said, —

" I have a high regard for Mr. Ostrander. I
think your mother would have liked him — but it
was not quite easy to prophesy whom your mother
would like. She was a woman of rare penetration
into human character. I wish she were here — just
now. But there, my child, is the lecture-bell. I
have mislaid the fifth lecture on the Cartesian dictum,
somewhere, Avis : I think your aunt must have been
dusting to-day. Look under those three volumes of
Dugald Stewart. Try Reid on Aristotle. No, that
is the refutation of Ilobbes. Have you shaken the
Duality of Consciousness thoroughly? "

He dropped his hand once more upon his daugh-
ter's head in passing out, but only said, —

" Et in Acadia ego. How like your mother you
are looking in these days, my dear ! "

He strode away to lecture at a more jagged pace
than usual. Across the Cartesian dictum, which he
clutched with j everent tenacity under one gaunt el-
bow, the Duality of Consciousness (whatever was to
be said of the argument) carried every thing before it

THE STORY OF AVIS. 211

that afternoon. If hands had touched him, clinging
by the sensitive finger-tips to his lonely old arm — but
the bloodless September air was wan and empty.
If a voice had spoken — but there was only a sulky
wind to say, —

" Did you want any thing. Professor*} "

And clearly only the Duality of Consciousness could
reply, with the leaping pulse of eternal youth, —

" Only to see if you look well and happy, my dear;"
while the boys upon the college-steps were shouting
within his mild, objective ears, —

" Here's the old fellow himself! "

That afternoon, too, Avis sent a little note to
Coy. It ran thus : —

" DEAR COY, — I have said, that, sometime or other,
I will marry Mr. Ostrander. But, Coy, if you talk to
me about this as most women do about such things, I'll
break the engagement. Yours,

" Avis/

And Coy answered, —

" DEAR Avis, — You'll streak his cake with saleratus.
His biscuit will taste of yeast. His wristbands will be
wrinkled. But you know, if I were a man, Avis, I'd live
on johnny-cake and paper cuffs to get you. You'd better
be married Christmas, when we are. Yours,

" COY.'

And now the marvellous medicine of joy began
its subtle work ; and fast, with the glamour of the
autumn days, the wounded man waxed strong.
Avis, looking up sometimes with timid, astonished

212 THE STORY OF AVIS.

eyes, trembled to see the work that love had wrought
upon him. She was frightened that she could make
him so happy. Perhaps for the first time in her
young, untroubled story, she had a glimpse into
that mysterious truth which no story is long enough
or sad enough to penetrate, — that joy is life, as misery
is death, as the sun is organic warmth, or the night
inherent blackness. There may be deeper signifi-
cance than we always fancy in the sacred figures
which familiarize our lips with the everlasting life of
heaven and the everlasting death of hell.

In brief, Ostrander, being in heaven, proceeded
to immediate, and let us never say, amazing recovery.
He received, and before November was able to
accept, the renewed overtures from the university.
He became the junior colleague of the old geological
professor, whose death or resignation (and the
-Board of Trustees generously allowed him his
choice of these alternatives), undoubtedly to take
place in a few years' time, would slip the young man
into an assured and commanding future.

" I can hardly understand," said Avis : " a month
ago you were a failing man. We thought — I
thought, Philip, you would die."

She had but just learned, slowly and hardly, to
make music of his name for him upon her bewildered
lips. The "little language" in which lovers are
usually profuse , he heard but scantily. An exquisite
reticence hung over her, which he would not, if he
could, have shaken. Her expressions of endear-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 213

ment, like her caresses, were rare, rapturous, and
rich. His hungry mood waited on them : they sur-
prised his imagination like the discovery of a new
art, which all time would not be long enough for him
to make his own.

" The man who has won you" he would answer,
with that unconsciousness of possible exaggeration
which makes the very folly of young love sublime,
— " such a man could not die."

Then, indeed, she turned her strong head towards
him, in that way of hers, with a kind of lofty won-
der at the new conditions in which she found herself,
making it possible for her to sit and hear a radically
feeble assertion without any intellectual revolt.
Upon this grave wonder a gradual tolerance grew ;
then, perhaps, if she were in her gentler temper, she
melted into some sign of tenderness, which overtook
him like a beautiful stratagem of her nature, yet
which expended itself as unconsciously as the smile
of a child, or the nodding of an anemone.

Or perhaps she sat wrapped in some maiden rev-
ery of silence, or fear, or retreat, which he found it
impossible to understand or to share with her : he
sat shut out, as if he had tried to lift the veil of
Isis, or to woo the Sphinx of the desert to open her
stone lips.

One day he asked her to play to him, for he had
never heard her. She told him, what was true
enough, that her execution, which was always poor,
had not been improved by six years of exclusive art-

214 TOE STORY OF AVIS.

study. But she went to her mother's old piano, and
played for half an hour, — fragments from the An-
dante of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, a serenade
of Schubert's, the Adelaide, some Scotch melodies,
and one or two improvisations, unscientific, power-
ful, and magnetic.

Ostrander threw himself upon the sofa, and lis-
tened, with his hand above his eyes, as if he were
shutting out a light.

" Oh," he said under his breath when she had fin-
ished, " what a touch !"

Avis heard this gratefully. Ostrander's taste for
music was highly cultivated : she would have felt it
to be an unkind insincerity if he had said she played
well. She was moved by the delicate and honest
fervor of his tribute ; as if he — he first and only in
the world — had recognized some dumb side to her
nature. She cherished the memory of this recogni-
tion with a peculiarly coy happiness, which she had
afterwards occasion to remember.

She long remembered too, and he — what lovers
would soon forget ? — their first shared experience
of the rapture of the dying year. It seemed to
her that the heart of spring could never beat to stir
her own like this October pulse.

What was the vigor of a violet ? the fire of a snow-
drop ? What did the young grass know of hardly-
yielded and sternly-encroaching love ? One red leaf
understood her better than they all. They walked
one day far out of the town, into a forest of young

THE STORY OF AVIS. 215

oaks, and stood clinging together, awed by the sea
of subdued color that broke against their feet, and
down the knoll, to the crown of which they had
climbed. In the violet distance the maples splashed
into shallow tints, bold vermilion and transparent
yellow, like emotions quickly stung and healed.
But the infant oaks, mere shrubs yet, gathered
themselves in deep shades, blood to the heart's core.
All the gales of winter could not stir their leaves.
They would cling like the unclasped fingers that
death had overtaken ; they appealed to the imagina-
tion like some superb constancy towering above all
lesser story, as strength must, perforce, tower over
weakness, and unity above disintegration.

Avis, standing with her straw hat thrust hanging
down her shoulders, and her head bent as if she
listened, turned suddenly, with an appealing gesture,
towards Ostrander, and said, —

" I never loved another man. What should I do
if you had loved another woman? "

Instantly, for her only answer, she was swept to
his heart, with an impulse more daring and authori-
tative than she had ever witnessed in him, as if
some impalpable power had been arrayed to snatch
her from him, or as if her mad supposition were be-
neath the respect of articulate reply.

The young oaks throbbed about them dizzily for
a moment, before, moved by his continued silence,
she drew her face back, that she might look up into
his. She was a little surprised to find, for the sec-

216 THE STORY OF AVIS-

ond time, that look which she had marked upon the
June morning by the shore. He seemed to have be-
come, for the moment, perfectly blind, and to regard
her with the blank, narrow gaze of a person whose
brain was stealthily diseased. Then swiftly it darted
as before, and his deep eyes burnt it out before he
said, —

"Avis, never say that again! It frightens the
man — who has won the right to hold you here — to
remember that it might or could, but for God's
mercy, have been some other woman. And you —
you would have still been in the world, — in the
same world with him ! "

Avis said nothing. A man, after all, was so differ-
ent ! She, for instance, had never thought that it
might or could have been some other who should
have so much as touched her hand. One does not
waste the fancy upon the" incredible. It had not
occurred to her as a special interposition of Provi-
dence, that she should love Philip Ostrander. What
man cometh after the king? Her great love was
simply the condition of existence, like the action of
her heart. She had never felt called upon to thank
God for that.

Just before his assumption of his new duties in
the college, Ostrander left for a few days' visit in
New Hampshire. He expressed much regret, in which
Avis, with a tenderness which she shrank from ex-
pressing, fully shared, that he had been obliged to
defer seeing his mother for so long. She felt sorry

THE STORY OF AVIS. 217

that this had been, and must have been so. Her
heart yearned towards that solitary old mother — •
Philip's mother. She did not care how rustic, or
old, or ignorant she might be. (" My poor mother
is not exactly a cultivated woman," Ostrander had
said once in his tender way.) Her own motherless
youth reached with a peculiar longing after this un-
known woman who had borne the man she loved.
She wondered sometimes if the old lady would not
find it less lonely to live in Harmouth. But of
course her son would be the best to know, and
should be the first to speak of that. She contented
herself with sending a timid but tender little message
when Ostrander went, in response to the cramped,
old-fashioned postscript — her only welcome from his
only living kin — in which Mrs. Ostrander had once
sent " her kind respects to the young lady of whom
her son had written her."

When he was gone, for the first tune since the
injury to her hand, she resumed with stiff, strange
fingers, her work in the studio. It was not easy to
estimate, perhaps, the precise effect which that dis-
abled hand had borne upon her lot. Avis found her-
self wondering, with a kind of terror, if she should
ever have promised to be Philip Ostrander 's wife,
if she had been through those idle, enthralling days
doggedly at work.

A stiffness and strangeness deeper than a bruised
muscle could strike, came upon her when she closed
the door of the long-deserted place, and, striking a

218 THE STORY OF AVIS.

fire in her little grate, sat down to warm her hands.
The autumn sun stepped in, and stood cool and calm
against the wall, like the friend who never forgets,
or suffers us to forget, the resolve or the aspiration
which we once expressed. The dust had collected
upon her sketches; the boughs of the apple-tree
were bare ; upon the easel the sphinx hung, covered
and dumb.

Avis looked about her with a singularly self-
defensive feeling, as if she were summoned by some
invisible tribunal to answer for an impalpable offence.
A radical confusion, such as her young life had never
known before, obscured her thoughts. She had
something of the self-recoil which a man has in
turning to his books or his business after a night's
dissipation.

She went up and uncovered her sketch. The criti-
cal, cool sunlight fell upon it. The woman and the
sphinx looked at one another. Avis glanced at the
ring that fettered her finger. Her whole figure
straightened and heightened : she lifted her head, and
out of her deepening eye there sprang that magnifi-
cent light which so allured and commanded Philip
Ostrander.

4 ' What have I done ? ' ' she cried. " Oh ! what have
I done?"

With an impulse which only a woman will quite
respect, standing alone there in the silent witness of
the little room, she tore off her betrothal ring.

Then with one of her rare sobs, sudden and sharp

THE STORY OF AVIS. 219

as an articulate cry, she flung her arms about the in-
sensate canvas, and laid her cheek, as if it had been
the touch of one woman upon another, against the
cold cheek of the sphinx ; and solemnly, as if she
sought to atone to a goddess for some broken fealty >
she whispered, —
"I will be true."

When Ostrander returned, he found her nervously
at work. A marked unrest enveloped her. But she
stood quite still, when, pushing open the studio-door
eagerly, he met her with the accumulated fervors of a
lover after a first separation. A chill crept over him
even while he touched her — beautiful, reluctant,
nrysterious — this strong, sweet woman, wooed, but
not yet won.

"Are you not glad," he pleaded, "to see me
back?"

" I did not think I should be so glad."

' ' And j'ou missed me — a little ? ' '

" I had no idea," complainingly, " that I should
miss you so much. I can't understand it. I ought
not to have minded. I have been at work." She
spoke with protesting significance, glancing at her
hand, which he held — palette, brushes, and all — fast
prisoner. He followed her glance, and changed color
swiftly before he said, —

" Avis, where is your ring? "

" I took it off. It made me uncomfortable."

"Made you uncomfortable — my ring — our en-
gagement-ring? "

220 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Ostrander released her hands, and stood looking
at her with a perplexity which struck, as indeed it
seemed to, the very core of his imagination.

"I do not understand this at all," he said with
some displeasure. " Where is the ring? "

" On the shelf, behind the Lake of Como, at the
left of father's portrait, on the right of the char-
coal newsboy," replied Avis, laughing. Ostrander
brought the ring, and stood with it balanced between
his thumb and forefinger, looking from her to it,
thoroughly uncertain what to do or say.

Turning with one of her sudden, supple motions,
she saw how deeply she had pained him. She put
down her brushes, and held out her firm finger at
once.

" Shall I put it on again? " he hesitated.

" If you think I deserve it," she gently said.

He put it on ; and they talked no more about it.
Ostrander was thoroughly uneasy. He ventured for
the first time, that morning, to speak quite distinctly
of their future ; said that he was going with her
father, when his inauguration was well over, to see
the available houses in Harmouth ; spoke of his im-
proving health, and of his desire to be quietly set-
tled ; but more especially of his wish to see her at
work more to the purpose than she could be, as
things were at present, than she could indeed, he
feared, well be until after their marriage.

Avis, while he spoke, painted busily. Still paint-
ing, and without looking round, she said below her
breath, —

THE STORY OF AVIS. 221

" Philip, don't want me to marry you yet ! "

But, when he left her, she crept up to him, timid
as a hare, and besought him to be patient with her ;
for she was sorely tried in ways she said, that she
knew she could not expect him to understand. He
would have waited half a lifetime for the tone and
the touch with which she said those words.

After this she painted with great steadiness. Os-
trander spent most of his spare hours in the studio.
Aunt Chloe had an easy-chair wheeled out for him,
and set beside the little grate.

" Why not leave that picture," he asked one day,
as he stood silently watching it, u until by and by ? "

' ' Why do you want me to do that ? ' '

" I think you would make a greater picture of it
after we are married," he answered, disregarding
her disturbed expression. " You will have more lei-
sure, more calm. It is going to be a great work,
Avis. I wish to be as proud of it as possible. I
wish it to be grand and full, without deficiency.
I want the world to know you by it, in some sense,
— in its sense, — for what you are."

She was touched by his generous interest in her
work and fame. She thought how true was that
wise man's word who said, that a friend is he who
makes us do what we can : she pitied with the calm
compassion of joy that woman, wherever she might
be on the earth, who would not find in this beautiful
sense a friend in the man whose wife she was to be.
Down through the years she suddenly saw herself

222 THE STORY OF AVIS.

transfigured by happiness. She saw her whole na-
ture deepening, its lightest grace or deepest gift
illuminated, herself idealized, by love. This man —
so tender, and so noble above his fellows, so true
that he could be proud of the woman he loved, so
great that he could make himself small beside her,
so anxious rather for her success in doing the thing
God had made her to do than for his own, so simply
and superbly recognizant of the truth that this thing
was not done when she had become his wife, and or-
dered his house, — this man brought her, she thought,
that transcendent experience which is so often given
to a man, but alas ! so unknown to women, in which
the sternest aspiration is strengthened by the sweetest
joy ; in which love shall be found more a stimulus
to than a sacrifice of the higher elements of the
nature.

Hand in hand with this man whose generous hu-
mility had exalted him — as what else could? — to the
kingship of her, she should climb to see "how life
looked behind the mountains."

She longed to make herself worthy of so royal a
love. She began to be glad with a proud pleasure
that it was in the nature of things that she should
sacrifice more for Philip than he for her. It seemed
that, by slow and kind degrees, a reposeful spirit
crept upon her. The inevitable conflict between her
art and her love, which had diseased her happiest
hours, shrivelled from an organic to a functional
thing. She began to consider it now without alarm.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 223

She began to understand how natural is joy. Her
sequestered tenderness peered out more frequently.
She became a radiant creature.

Ostrander watched her in a kind of ethereal trance,
which, for a long time, he guarded from the disturb-
ance of his own more impatient moods as jealously
as he guarded herself from them. He felt it a
barbarism now to mar the unforecasting nature of
her sweet impulse, as it would be to hasten mechani-
cally the budding of a flower. He felt that he was
living that which few men ever live at all, and no
man ever lives but once. He held the cup of his
happiness to a delicate and slowly-tasting lip.

But the autumn met its blazing death, and the
calmer colors of the winter set in.

The tenser nerve and the clearer brain kept time
to the strong step that crushed the flakes of first-
fallen snow. Now, on nights when one's solitary
feet rang upon the walks of the little town, shadows
flitted on drawn curtains, and lights beamed out
from the hearts of deeply- colored rooms. All the
sacraments and sacrifices that go to make up human
homes, began to gather upon them the vigorous
solemnity of the winter.

On Christmas Coy was married ; and the two young
people began, with the touching confidence of the
young and the very happy, the sacred work which
we are wont to call " saving souls." The phrase is
well-rasped, not to say worn, but indestructible as
an atom, and poetic as a fossil.

224 THE STORY OF AVIS.

It was not long after this, that aunt Chloe began
in a vague and abstract manner to drop a variety of
remarks upon the family ear, which Avis failed to
find interesting, but did think singularly inconse-
quent.

4 'What is it," she said to Coy one day, sitting in
the cheerful parsonage-parlor, " that has happened
lately in the cotton-market? Aunt Chloe keeps
telling me how cheap unbleached cotton is. I think
it is twenty-five cents, — or really, perhaps it was
five. Is that a fact so vital to the interests of the
country, that I ought to care about it? "

" My dear child," cried Mrs. Rose with her most
matronly smile, " it is the servants' sheets ! "

" Servants'— sheets?"

"Why, yes. O Avis — Avis Dobell ! Who but
you would be so divinely dull? I suppose you
expect your servants to have sheets, when you go
to housekeeping? "

" I never thought, >? said Avis faintly. " And is
that what she meant, too, about towels? She's
been exhausting the subject of towels, Coy. There
is something very remarkable about them. I think
you cut the fringe, or else you fell — let me see.
No, I think you overcast it. I think it was very
Ul-mannered in aunt Chloe."

u A roller-cloth would do, dear," suggested Coy
soothingly. " And no New-England servant would
mind camping out. I wouldn't trouble myself, if
I were you."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 225

But Avis sat looking at her with wide eyes, like
an injured goddess. Women upon whom domestic
details sit with a natural, or even an acquired grace,
will need to cultivate their sympathies with this young
recoiling creature. Across her picture or her poem,
looking up a little blindly, she had listened to the
household chatter of women, with a kind of gentle
indifference, such as one feels about the habits of
the Fee-jeeans. Unbleached cotton, like x in the
algebra, represented an unknown quantity of oppres-
sive but extremely distant facts. How had she
brought herself into a world where the fringe upon
a towel must become a subject requiring fixed
opinions ?

She bade Coy good-by abruptly, fled to her studio,
and worked till dark.

But, when she went into the house, she found aunt
Chloe advancing a new theory about comforters.
In Vermont they were quilted at home. But there
were advantages in purchasing them outright, not to
be under-estimated, unless — as in the case of Miss
Snipper, a worthy young woman who had put two
brothers through college, and one into the Hawaiian
field (he died in six months, poor fellow!) — you
really felt it a duty to employ a seamstress ; and the
professor made so much less trouble about having
her at the table ; which was the more to his credit,
as her teeth were set by so inefficient a dentist, and
make that peculiar noise, especially with biscuit.
But aunt Chloe thought milk-toast would remedy
the difficulty.

226 -THE STORY OF AVIS.

CHAPTER XII.

" It should be remembered that the p'ing is a ' calling ' or ' exclaim-
ing' tone; theshangisa 'questioning' tone; the ki\ is a 'despairing'
tone; and the hia-p'ing, an 'assenting' tone; the ja-shung is an
'abrupt' stop."— CHINESE GRAMMAE.

IT was in the heart of the happy winter that Os-
trander, sitting one day by the study-fire with
Avis, after a long walk over the frozen beach, said
quietty, as if resuming a broken conversation, —

" But, Avis, is this to last forever?"

" This?" She turned to catch his meaning, dull
with happiness. " It is pleasant enough to last for-
ever, I think," she said, throwing herself back in
her deep chair. She sat drowned in her furs and
partially loosened cape : her cheek had the vivid
flush that a winter-night paints upon young faces,
and the fine excitement which accompanies it, hovered
in her eyes.

" But our own home would be like this always,"
persisted he, with the vague and blessed fatuity of
a lover's imagination, which, while it may perceive
the trail of the serpent over Adam's Eden, or Tom
Smith's, or 3~ours, or mine, hears in its own only the
rustle of the leaf upon the tree of life.

Avis, who had now lost her brilliant color, and sat
quite dull and still, said, —

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 227

"I wish a man and woman could be always en-
gaged ! What are you laughing at, Philip?"

" Should you really like it to be so — for you and
me?" asked Ostrander, with a smile that was grave
enough.

" Certainly," said Avis promptly. " Of course I
should. I am perfectly happy as we are. I think
most women would be."

"But I," suggested Ostrander, " am not happy.
I am tired of a homeless life ; I have lived one so
long!" He had never so distinctly urged his own
need upon her before. Avis listened attentively.
Her precious freedom — wild rebel that it was ! pet-
ted, perhaps, and over-indulged — took on to her
mind for the first time, faintly, the aspect of a self-
ish delight. To be sure, Philip had no home, like
herself, no consonance of household repose and love
let into his life. She had not thought sufficiently of
that.

" I do not wish to press any claim or want of mine
unduly," he went on gently ; " but there is my work.
I have my future to make ; I don't want it to be one
that my wife shall be ashamed of. Situated as 1
am, I cannot command my best conditions. With
his home and his wife, a man must develop him-
self, if he ever can. With you, Avis, with you"
he paused, much agitated, "there are no bounds but
those of my own nature that will prevent my life from
becoming at least a worthy if not a noble deed."

Long years after, these words came back to Avis

228 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

DobelTs memory, like the carven stone into which
time has wrought meanings that the sculptor's mind
or hand was impotent to grasp.

"Come, now," he continued more lightly, "an
honest word for an honest word, Avis ! Do you sup-
pose, if I let you go on just as you like, you would
ever make a definite step towards our wedding-
day?"

" No," said the woman, after a long pause.
" Never!" She threw back her wrappings with a
suffocated look, and paced for a few minutes back
and forth before the brilliant fire, a silhouette in her
falling feather and dark winter-dress. Ostrander
watched her with compressed lip and guarded eye.
He was prepared for a long and serious contest, in
which he had fully made up his mind not to be
worsted. By gradations as fine as the shades in a
woman's fancy — too fine for any man but a deter-
mined lover to be patient with — he expected her to
taunt, torment, allure, baffle, but yield to him now.
He had not understood (what man ever understood
a complex woman?) the immortal element of sur-
prise in her nature. He sat dumb with delight under
the look and the motion with which she present!}'
turned to him. As beautiful is the pliability of a
torrent meeting its first unconquerable resistance ; it
surrenders as mightily as it defied.

" You are perfectly right," she said with a grave,
sweet dignity ; " and I have been very foolish. If
j'ou leave me to myself, I shall never make any change

THE STORY OF AVIS. 229

in any thing. If I am ever to become your wife, let
it be all over with as soon as possible.*'

They were married in three weeks.

If ever the Christian character deepened under dis-
cipline, aunt Chloe's should have been that character
at the end of this memorable time. We are all of us
a little incredulous of our neighbor's affliction ; but
among the radical trials of life, who could fail to
rank the rearing of a motherless child to a marriage
in which neither the trousseau nor the upholstery com-
manded the proper respect of the bride ? Unless, aa
some one has told us, deficiency of charity be defi-
ciency of imagination, we must feel sorry for aunt
Chloe.

Avis positively refused, at the outset, to investi-
gate the deeps beyond the lowest deeps that under-
lay the nature of unbleached cotton ; asked why, if
a woman had money enough to buy blankets, she
must sit an hour discussing the wadding of a com-
forter ; and failed utterly to see why the marriage-
certificate wrould not be valid without the interven-
tion of Miss Snipper and the milk-toast. There was
a compromise upon these fatal questions. Aunt
Chloe retained the privilege of seeing to it that Avis
entered upon the holy estate of matrimony as a lady
ought, with a dozen of every thing, upon sole condi-
tion that Avis herself should not be consulted. In-
stead, therefore, of a heavy-eyed, exhausted woman,
whose every nerve was stitched into her clothes, Avis
came to her wedding-day brilliant with health, and
calm as the sky.

230 THE STORY OF AVIS.

This little fact was the more memorable because
it left her to her instincts, and no one knew quite
how those led her to dispose of these three weeks.
She was much in the open air, pacing the shore and
the snowy fields ; or she worked intently in the
studio ; or she sat alone with unshared, inscrutable
moods. Ostrander would have said that he scarcely
saw her in all that time. She received him quietly,
but with a withdrawal which he dared not disturb.
It was evident that she preferred her solitude to
himself. He left her to her fancy, not altogether,
perhaps, without some comprehension of it. A man
does not live a celibate till thirty-one without be-
coming fully as conscious of the perils as of the
pleasures of a wedded future. Ostrander would not
have thought it possible, however, that he could put
his broad shoulders beneath this sweet yoke with so
slight a protest. His feeling that he accepted a
sacrifice radically so much deeper than any he could
ever make, overswept the superficial shrinking from
change, which perhaps ah1 but the youngest lovers
feel in more or less degree upon the immediate eve
of marriage. He felt impressed by his dim concep-
tion of the strong individual struggle in the nature
of this woman whom he loved. His whole soul con-
centred itself, with a unity not habitual to him in all
things, upon the effort to adjudge himself worthy of
the acquiescence of her life with his. He tried to
tell her so the day before their marriage. But she
gave him one look which stopped the breath of his
soul, for joy ; and he tried no more just then.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 231

It was the simplest of weddings. Mr. and Mrs.
John Rose were there, and Barbara ; but her brother
was out of town on business. Barbara looked at
Ostrander, and remembered the tea-rose. Ostrander
looked at Barbara, and forgot it. Poor Chatty Ho-
garth was got over with her wheeled chair ; and Fred-
erick Maynard came to see what he was known to
have pronounced ' ' the burial of the most promising
artist in New England ; " and at A vis's request the
family servant came in ; and her father (who, as is
so usual with the collegiate instructors of America,
had begun life in the pulpit) married them; while
aunt Chloe, with a mind at peace with God and
man upon the subject of the wedding-cake, which no
New- York caterer had been allowed to handle for
Tier niece, protected her silver-gray silk from her
honest, sparse tears, and made it clearly understood
among the guests, that Mrs. Ostrander's health had
not permitted her attending her son's marriage, and
that the young people would visit her in New Hamp-
shire upon their brief little wedding-tour.

They had a relenting February day, in which the
prophecy of the neap spring was audible, as the
whisper of one dear to us across a darkened room.
The windows were flung open in the house, and the
well-worn path to the studio was without frost, yield-
ing timidly to the touch of the foot that loved it.

Avis slipped away somehow, and was missing
after the wedding : her husband went in search of
her. He found her, as he had expected, in the

232 THE- STORY OF AVIS.

studio. The disarray of packing put a chill deso-
lation into the room. The pictures were boxed or
gone ; the easels folded against the wall ; only the
sphinx was left. There had been no fire in the
building that week. Avis, in the middle of the cold
little neglected place, stood shivering in her wed-
ding-dress.

He held his arms out, smih'ng, but with an emo-
tion which he found it difficult not to call sad even
at that moment. He was so sorry to startle, to
grieve, or distress her, by the inevitable presence of
his feeling. There seemed to him just then some-
thing inexorable, like a Pagan Fate, in the nature of
a mighty love. They two, standing there in the
yielding winter sunshine, seemed like children swept
and lost within it.

"Tell me," he said, seeking to dissipate the
almost oppressive solemnity which the moment had
assumed for him, and coming up behind her where
she stood before the still incomplete but now
strongly-indicated and impressive picture, " what
would you do if you had to choose now between us,
— the sphinx and me ? ' '

" A man cannot understand, perhaps," said Avis,
after a long silence, "or he would never ask a
woman such a bitter question."

"Oh! we will have no bitter questions to-day,"
he murmured, taking a step back to look at her.
There seemed to him something strangely select and
severe in her unornamented dress. Only an artist

THE STORY OF AVIS. 233

could make such a bride. Her silk drapery hung
about her like the marble folds upon a statue.

u Can you understand," continued Avis, ignoring
or unconscious of his look, " that I might — perhaps
— choose to stay with the sphinx to-day — and not
mind it much? "

"I think I can," he said, hesitating. "No, I
will not mind. I can't be jealous even of the sphinx
just now."

"And then," she added, turning sharply, so that
she stood with her face averted from him, " another
day,"-

" Oh ! and what the other day ? "

Avis did not answer. Impetuous words bounded
to her lips ; but they were checked by an instinct
that she herself did not comprehend. Her nature
recoiled on itself in the discover}7 that she had begun
to tell him that she could think of no price too costly
by which to purchase her way back to him.

She stood in her white dress with burning cheeks.
She wondered if, when a woman had been for half a
lifetime a happy wife, she could let her husband un-
derstand how much she loved him. Her love seemed
to her an eternal secret. Her soul spoke to his in
whispers. It were unwomanly, unwifely, to lavish
herself.

After a silent moment, she gh'ded to him like a
goddess, and for the first time of her own unguided,
or it might be unguarded will, his wife lifted her lips
to his.

234 THE STORY OF AVIS.

They passed out together into the pliant air ; and
aunt Chloe came calling about the carriage and the
people ; and the sky, when they looked up to it
through the garden trees, lifted itself, and widened,
like a joy whose nature knows no end. They passed
on through the golden weather, in the solemn separ-
ate ness from all our little common cares and pleasures,
which to have known is to have lived, and to have
missed is to hope for life beyond.

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 235

CHAPTER XIII.

"In the opinion of the world marriage ends all, as it does in a
comedy. The truth is precisely the reverse. It begins all." — MME.

Di; SWETCHINE.

" Who hath most, he yearneth most,
Sure as seldom heretofore,
Somewhere of the gracious more.
Deepest joy the least shall boast,
Asking with new-opened eyes
The remainder." . . .— JEAN INGELOW.

THE reluctance with which we turn from any in-
tense feeling, whether of pain or pleasure, to a
lower level of emotion, is a psychological study for
which the curriculum of Harmouth University un-
questionably finds a proper place in the lecture-room,
where all well-classified feelings go, but strictly in
view of which, it does not regulate the academical
year. Granting that the corporation agreed to honor
him by the offer of a chair, Harmouth would have
summoned Adam out of Eden, had the Lord chosen
to create him in term-time.

It lacked still some weeks to the spring vacation,
and Ostrander's bridal tour was necessarily com-
pressed almost between two sabbath sunsets. They
did not get up into New Hampshire, after all. He
found himself suffering somewhat from the capricious
weather ; and it would be really worth more to his
mother, he said, to see them in July.

236 TH# STORY OF AVIS.

The two young people came dreamily to their own
home. The afternoon that they were to come, Coy
and aunt Chloe held confidential counsel in the
expectant house, a passable place, which had been
selected in the perplexed patience with which we
adjust ourselves to all depressed ideals. Avis in
the town was like a bird that has flown through a
window by mistake. The sea could be heard, but
not seen, from her chamber- window. The noise from
the street interrupted the library. It was not quite
clear where the studio was to be, unless in the attic.
But there were elms in the yard, and crocuses in the
garden, and the house stood at three minutes' walk
from the college green. This, in view of the New-
England winters, and the delicate health of the
young professor, was decisive.

" I can arrange about the studio somehow," Avis
had said.

" Certainly," said Ostrander, " that must be man-
aged." He meant to manage it, of course. There
should be no trouble about the studio. And aunt
Chloe said approvingly, —

"You do quite right, Avis, my dear, to consult
Mr. Ostrander 's interest first."

Avis vaguely resented this, she could not have
told why. She had no principles but the instinctive
code of daily love, about deif}ing her husband's
interests, and had found women singularly weak
upon this point. But it was quite reasonable that
Philip should be near the college : she thought she
had done no more than good manners required.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 237

"Poor Avis," said aunt Chloe plaintively, as she
and Coy put the last touches to the small dining-
room, where tea was spread for the travellers, " would
have pink doyleys. Of course, the first cooked
huckleberry will ruin them. And I told her they
never could be used with English breakfast-tea, and
they fade in washing beyond all belief."

"Yes, they fade like a sunrise," said Mrs. Rose
demurely ; ' ' but Avis is precisely one of those
women of whom you can say that she never will be
married again. And salt sets them. Is this the
china she painted ? How like Avis ! At first you
don't understand it, then it bewitches you. See,
every piece has a feather on it, — a different feather !
She has wrought some fancy about her own name
into this tea-table, I'll venture. Oh, I see ! No, I
don't ; I don't see. I suppose we're not expected
to see. That rose-curlew on the creamer is like —
a singing-leaf, I think."

"Perhaps so," moaned aunt Chloe. "But have
you seen the vegetable-dishes ? Not a handle that a
servant could get hold of if her thumbs were all
fingers. And that rep in the parlor, poor child, may
last her through the summer. And when I told her
how easy it was to slip down newspapers — and I'm
sure you can get them up again while the door-bell
rings, and a housekeeper can't begin by counting a
little trouble like that — but if I'd proposed plated
spoons it couldn't have been worse. Not that I've
said much about it to her father ; for he is so over-

238 THE STORY OF AVIS.

worked, and it never does to worry a literary man :
they weaken down under it like a baby under the
whooping-cough. But when I come into this house,
and think of those two, I am — I am very much
troubled," said aunt Chloe, stiffening suddenly at
the discover}- that one slow tear had rolled into the
Japanese tea-pot. "Now, while she was painting
all this china, she might have learned to set white-
bread, at least with milk ; and the yeast I could
have looked after. Mr. Ostrander may dine off
painted feathers a while ; but he's too literary to like
it long. No men are so fussy about what they eat
as those who think their brains the biggest part
of them, though my brother is very patient, and easy
to pacify. And poor Avis knows no more what is
before her than if she were keeping house with little
stones and broken crockery in a huckleberry-pas-
ture on a Saturday afternoon."

"There's a baker," said Coy soothingly, "and
Mr. Ostrander is very much in love with her." But
in her heart she shared aunt Chloe's anxieties more
acutely than she found it worth while to allow.
Coy had a delicate loyalty about expressing them.
She did not talk much about Avis, even with John
himself : she wished to spare Avis the sting which
pricks the brightest hours fate yields to some of
us? — the knowledge, that, behind the shield we hold
before our dazzling happiness, a prudential commit-
tee of our friends sits indorsing — whether in our
temper, health, income, complexion, or the nature

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 239

of things — a grudge against our delirium. Coy rev-
erenced the severe old canon which bids us rejoice
in the joy of the soul we love.

Mr. and Mrs. Ostrander came with 'the laggard
March sunset. Avis moved about the house radiant
and unwearied as a Hebe : even the dust of travel
seemed to glitter on her. Coy and her husband, the
professor and aunt Chloe, remained, at her wish, to
dedicate the pleasant tea-table. Certainly there
was never a pleasanter. And the bread was aunt
Chloe' s. Avis presided dreamily. The room was
alive with color. She felt rather than perceived the
rose-tint of the linen, the bronze prism on the pea-
cock's plume which encircled the cup that she lifted
to her lips, the Pompeiian red upon the walls, the
mellowed meaning of the Japanese coloring upon
the lamp-screen, the nutter of the bright ribbon at
her own throat, the luminous presence of her hus-
band's face. She lifted her eyes to him timidly for
the first time across their own table. Life put a
finger on its lips like a child with a secret to tell.
Love was a mystery that went deepening before her.
She stood with one foot on an untrod path that
broadened to the sun. She shrank from the ad-
vance, nay, even from the existence, of unexplored
joy. She was afraid to be so happy.

He found her, when, at an earty hour, their friends
had left them to themselves in the silent house, in a
daydream in the middle of the parlor, just where
she had bidden her father good-night. He came

240 THE STORY OF AVIS.

and stood beside her ; but he, too, found it difficult to
speak. He was silenced with joy: to find words
for it was a task sacred and slow, like selecting an
earthly lily for an angel to carry into heaven. He
did not try, it seemed, and for that she liked him
better ; for he said only presently, —

" Are you too tired to go over the house to-night,
Avis? Will it not be pleasant to see how it all
looks at first ? And in the morning I must get to
college early. "

She felt grateful to him for the easy commonplace
words as they wandered up and down, hand in
hand, through " that new world which is the old."
She wondered how women ever became used to their
husbands, and spoke of them indifferently, as Mr.
Smith or Mr. Jones.

This home — their home — lifted its walls gravely
about her like a temple ; and this man whose wife
she was, ministered therein a high priest, before
whom her soul trod softly. She had never perceived
before how solemn a thing it is to found a human
home. Most of those experiences which make the
whole world kin must become personal to become
interesting. The truism was now the discovery.

Avis had contrived, it was impossible to say how,
— for never did a bride take possession of a house,
knowing so little what was in it, — to stamp her
individuality with a delicate but distinct definition
upon her home.

"It is like going from flower to flower," said
Ostrander, as they strolled from room to room.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 241

On certain points Avis had been stringent. What-
ever the vague necessities in the matter of tin-ware,
aunt Chloe should not put a scarlet cricket or a
purple tidy in the same room with a maroon curtain.
His library was a harmony in green and gray. The
little room upon whose windows the buds of the
elm-tree tapped was a melody in blue. In her own
room Avis had gathered the shades of the rose. The
little house was a study in color. To the young
man, coming out of the cold spaces of so many
homeless years, it seemed, that night, like a new
and glowing science, wilich it would take him as
long to command as to possess the mysterious nature
of his wife. Both awed him. He watched her with
held breath as she moved, gentle with the new
domestic touch and stir, that sat so strangely on
her. She breathed color, he thought, as other women
breathed pale air.

Avis left him presently to look over some matters
for his morning class, and herself strolled about the
house alone. It was one of the small surprises of
life to her to find herself stroking the curtains, and
patting the pillows, like other women whom she had
seen in other new houses ; to see that her hand lin-
gered upon her own door-knobs even, with a caress.
The thrill of possession, the passion of home, had
awaked itself in a sleeping side of her nature. In
her own room there was a very fine East India ham-
mock, woven of a lithe pearl-white cord, much fa-
vored for this purpose by people of ease in tropi-

242 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

cal countries. Avis put it there, because, against the
color of the walls and draper}', it had a peculiarly
delicate and negligent effect, grateful to her in the
confined house. Above it, against a deeply-stained
panel, stood her own Melian Venus.

She flung herself into the hammock, and yielded
to its light motion idty. As idly she thought of her
future, of her work, of the sphinx in the cold,
closed studio. Not to-morrow, perhaps, but some
day, she should convert her delight into deeds.

It seemed to her a necessity1 simple as the rhythm
of a poem, or the syntax of a sentence, that the
world should be somehow made nobler or purer by
her happiness. By and by she should know how to
spell it out.

Her husband called her presently from the foot of
the stairs, and she stole down to him with a beautiful
timidity. She did not tell him what she had been
thinking : she felt as if he understood. This is what
it is to be happy, to believe that our thought is
shared before it can be spared.

She had exchanged her travelling-dress, while she
was up stairs, for a loose wrapper, over which she
had thrown a shawl — a crape shawl — that he had
never seen. He put his hand upon it, and said, —

" You do not often wear this color, Avis. What
do you call it?"

4 ' It is carmine."

" It looks like a live thing."

" It is oiieof the colors made from the cochineal,"

THE STORY OF AVIS. 243

said Avis. " I have always fancied that they throb
with the life that has been yielded to make them.
Do you like it, Philip?"

4 ' Like it ? How should I know ? You are in it . "
She blushed gently : she was glad he thought the
carmine suited her ; she loved it too well to wear it
at hap-hazard. One of those subtle fancies which
the happiest woman does not expect to share with
the man she loves, came to her just then. She would
not wear this color except for him. Her soul seemed
filled with fine reserves, winding corridors of fancy,
closed rooms of thought, deep recesses of feeling,
which she curtained from him by a lofty instinct.

The nature of the wife withdrew itself with a
deeper than maidenly reticence. She feared lest
her great love should put into his hands the key to
a fair palace in which she would that he should be
forever an expectant guest.

uWhat are you thinking, Avis?" he asked her
suddenly. A certain contraction of her forehead
which he did not know, and the familiar throbbing
of the temple, arrested him.

" I was thinking," she began, and hesitated.

" Are not your thoughts to be mine, love? "

He drew her to him slowly. In the rich color of
her loose drapery she had the poised, reluctant look
of the fine Jacques rose.

" I was only wondering," she said. " I was
thinking that there are women in the world whose
husbands have ceased to love them. I can think of
nothing else like that."

244 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" You could never, under any conditions, be one
of those women," murmured the young husband
rapturously.

"I?" said Avis, looking for the moment per-
plexed. "I was not thinking of myself. I was
sorry for the poor women. But I would rather be
such a woman than such a man. I begin to be sorry
and glad about many things, in many strange ways,
new ways of which I never thought. Philip, two
people who love one another might almost make
the world over, it seems to me. Joy is so strong —
we are so strong. God will ask a great deal of us."

"If he asks he shall receive," said the young
man solemnly. He was impressed with her reverent
mood : he assimilated it so perfectly, that he could
have thought it was an impulse of his own which she
rather had perceived and reflected. He asked her
for a Bible, and himself suggested that they have
prayer. With an agitated voice he sought God's
blessing upon their home and upon their love.

They talked no more of lesser things after this.
Avis moved about hushed and happy ; she stirred,
putting his books and papers in order upon the table.
He watched her with eyes beaten faint by love.

" You must not tire yourself to work, dear love,"
she said. She had never called him so before.

Shivering like a cremona upon which a discord had
been struck, Avis started, when at the newly-painted
door of the new little gleaming room, there fell a sud-
den knock. It was the new c 4 girl. ' ' Ostracder had

THE STORY OF AVIS. 245

forgotten that there was anybody in the house but
themselves. Avis looked at her in gentle perplex*
ity. It seemed to her a remarkable breach of good
manners, that the woman should have come at all ;
and when she said, —

" An' what is it yez would lave me to get for your
breakfast?" Mrs. Ostrander could have dismissed
her on the spot.

Philip Ostrander now plunged into his life's work
with the supreme vigor of joy. His ambition took
on the colors of his emotion, and fired feverishly.
He assumed the drudgeries of his position with the
fervor of a far more conscientious temperament ; and
its excitements took on the character of a thrill. His
really brilliant but phosphoric nature strengthened
into honest flame. He was at that time in his life
a marked and splendid illustration of the cohesive
power of a great love. His own wife failed some-
times to fathom the almost pathetic movement with
which, in those days, he would turn to her, when he
came home from the lecture -room over-wearied,
holding out his still thin hands, and ask her to
strike a few chords for him upon the piano, saying,
as he did so, —

"Harmony, harmony! Avis, I am spent for a
touch of harmony."

And when her eyes only asked him what he
meant, when she had satisfied him as she could,
with her repressd, rich touch, he would answer that

246 THE STORY OF AVIS.

the boys had tried him, that something had jarred,
that there was a discord in him.

" And you," he said, — " you quell it all." And
then he spoke no more ; but to himself he said,
bowing his forehead on her yielding hair, " Who am
I, that I should win her? "

He was then, at least, as that man should be who
has gained the allegiance of a strong wife, — an
awed and humble man.

Then his professional work began to partake of the
gravity of his happiness. Professor Dobell brought
to his daughter from the green-room of the university
a report of her husband's present popularity and pro-
spective power in the college, which excited her like
fine wine. For a little while that seemed to her,
added to ah* the other elements of deep emotion in
her new life, as much excitement as she could sanely
bear. Her own work she deferred resuming from day
to day, but neither from that syncope of the will, nor
fever of feeling, which threatens the integral purpose
of a woman first intoxicated by the deification of
herself, that grows from ministry to the man she
loves. She reasoned herself through her honeymoon
and its succeeding weeks with a steady eye. The
studio was not in order ; and she chose not to put
into her picture — this one picture, at least — any
element less permanent than repose. She decorated
the dados in her hall contentedly : the sphinx could
wait.

A tender sense of justice, possibly, mingled itself

THE STORY OF AVIS. 247

with this course. She had not treated Philip so
well before their marriage, that she need accentuate
her haste to pursue her personal aims and wishes
now. Each lingering sign of physical weakness in
him smote her with a rich revenge. She watched
the lessening pallor of his temples with a hidden
remorse of which she dared not trust herself to speak.
Sometimes she stole up, and kissed the still promi-
nent and beating vein across his forehead, darting
like a vanished thought then from his outstretched
arms, and silent afterwards for a long tune. One
day, sitting beside him in the full light, she lifted
his hand, which was whiter than her own, in both
her sensitive, healthful palms, and brought her lips
to it with her slow and delicate, deepening touch.
Then, when he restrained her, she sat crimson. She
could not have said whether she was more afraid of,
or more savage with, herself. She had never
thought before that she could care to kiss her hus-
band's hand.

But in these days she felt herself wasted with
unsatisfied sorrow for all that she had cost him.

For him, he sat blessed and blind with love. He
remembered when his daring fancy had first asked
itself, " What will her tenderness be? " Her light-
est endearment, he thought, meant more than the
abnegation of other women's souls.

A little thing chanced at this time which gave
Avis a deep pleasure, and which threw a certain
glamour, even in her husband's own e}res, over his
brightening popularity in the college.

248 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Dunng the two years of travel and study which
had preceded Ostrander 's connection with Harmouth,
it had befallen him,^one Leipsic vacation, to find
himself so exhausted with the term's work, that his
German physician ordered an immediate sea- voyage.
Ostrander, never loath to yield himself to a new sen-
sation, readily threw aside the laboratory life marked
out for that summer, and joined a fellow-student on
one of those aimless expeditions so alluring to a
young, unanchored fancy, shipping on a trader,
which, for aught they cared, might have been booked
for the Chinese Seas or the River St}^x. It chanced
that they were driven by gales out of their expected
course, which skirted the South Seas, and found
themselves in the Paumotu Archipelago, somewhere
in the track taken first by the Wilkes Expedition, and
thereby opened since to navigators and missionaries.
They anchored for some cause, one day, off an island
to the north-east of Tahiti, — a small coral island
uninhabited by man. Ostrander and his friend rowed
out, overcome by an emotion which they were still
young enough to try and express to one another,
and beached their boat upon this maiden shore. But
Ostrander, after the first thrill had spent itself, wan-
dered away into the heart of the place, finding him-
self as unable to share the impression it produced
upon him as he would have been to share the heart
of a woman with another man. He plunged on
from beckoning thicket to beckoning thicket, reeling
like an intoxicated creature. When he came to

THE STORY OF AVIS. 249

himself, he was in a wild place alone. It was on
the bank of a small stream, fair but fearful to him.
The virgin repose of the trees, the startled look of
the strange flowers, the retreat of unseen and un-
known creatures rustling through the undergrowth
at his approach, solemnized the nature of his de-
light.

Suddenly, as he sat reverent there, a bird — the
island was peopled with rare birds — settled slowly
over his head, and alighted on a cactus near him. It
was a large creature, snow-white, and dropped like
an angel from the burning sky.

A tide of feeling half terror, half joy, overswept
the young man, sitting there with upturned face,
gone white to the lips' edge.

Perhaps there was not a young scientist in the
world but would have risked years of his life to be
in Ostrander's place at that moment.

The name and nature of that bird were unknown
to science ; and the young man knew it. It seemed
to him as if Nature laughed in his face. She held
out this one sequestered, shining thought of hers,
this white fancy that she had hidden from the world,
and nodded, crying, " Catch it if you can! Clas-
sify my unwon mood in your bald human lore.
Marry my choicest tenderness to your dull future if
you will. See, I have waited for you. I have kept
my treasure back from the eye and hand of other
men. Yours it shall be, j^ours only, yours, yours ! "

As for the bird, it stirred circling on the scarlet

250 THE STORY OF AVIS.

cactus. Ostrander grasped his gun, dropping to his
hands and knees. The bounding of his heart de-
layed his shaking aim.

Pie sought to calm himself. His future lay bal-
anced upon that long, shining, shuddering barrel.
To capture that bird was fame : so at least the situa-
tion presented itself to the young man. When we
are 3roung, nothing seems quite so likely to happen
as glory. He grew pale, with faint finger on the
trigger. The bird stood perfectly still.

One day in the class-room it occurred to Ostran-
der to tell this story. When he had reached this
point he paused, shaken by the retrospect of one of
the most muscular emotions that his life had known.

" Gentlemen," he said, " the bird stood still. It
turned its head and looked at me : its eyes shone
with a singularly soft, pleased light. I lowered the
gun. How could I fire? I crept towards it. It was
a beautiful creature. It did not move : I thought
it was gratified at the sight of me. It acted as if
it had never seen a man before : I do not suppose it
ever had. I crawled along ; I stretched out my
hand : and yet it did not fly. I touched it — I
stroked it. With this hand I stroked that magnifi-
cent, unknown creature. It did not shrink. I
took out my knife, opened it, laid it down. The
bird looked at me confidingly. I put the blade to
its throat; but it would not stir. It trusted me.
Gentlemen, I came away — I could not kill the
bird."

THE STORY OP AVIS. 251

For a moment after the young professor told this
story, his repressed feeling extended itself, like the
shade of a powerful cloud, upon the class ; and
then the boys broke into a passion of cheers that
out-rang till the old college walls trembled like a
being surprised by something in its own nature that
it had never perceived before. Ostrander had be-
come the demi-god of the term.

He came home to his wife, that afternoon, much
moved by this little experience. He called her sev-
eral times, and, receiving no answer, sought and
found her in their own room. She was in the ham-
mock under the Venus. The weather was warm, and
she was lightly covered with a white "muslin neg-
ligee. The instinct of the English tongue has done
no better yet than to level the artistic possibilities
of this garment to the word ''wrapper." As she
lifted her head at his knock in her poised way, and,
slipping from the hammock, stood to receive him,
holding the long white folds of her dress, he looked
at the Venus behind her, and said, - —

" How like ypu are to one another ! And I have
known you so long, and never thought of it till this
moment. Turn your head — so. There. Yes. —
What were you doing love, when I came in? "

"I was at work."

"At work?"

" Thinking where I had better put — what I shall
do about the studio? " said Avis.

" Oh the studio ! — yes. We must attend to that

252 THE STORY OF AVIS.

to-morrow, immediately," said Ostrander lightly.
He was thinking about the bird and the boys. He
began at once to tell her about it. Her face flushed
with a divine light. Nothing could have happened
to her which would have so kindled her tender eyes.
If the sphinx, standing with her patient face to the
wall in the closed studi >, had herself put on the
wings of immortality that summer afternoon, would
the woman have turned her proud head to see her
fly?

They sat down side by side, like children, in the
hammock. Avis touched the floor with the tip of her
slender long foot ; she lifted her arms timidty, and
wound his hair about her finger ; they looked in one
another's eyes through a sweet distance, like Cupid
and Psyche through the dark. .

Philip Ostrander that day saw his future as the
people saw the face of Moses, shining so as it must
be veiled. They had been four months married, and
his wife was as sacred a marvel to him as on the day
when he first touched her reluctant hand. Not one
charm of the bud was missing from the glory of the
flower.

Deeps beyond the lowest deeps in her nature were
yet unwon. His manhood gathered itself to be
worthy of their mastery. He felt himself to have
taken a supreme Hen upon an exhaustless joy.

THE STORY OP AVIS. 253

CHAPTER XIV.

" The primal duties shine aloft, like stars." — THE EXCURSION.

" TT'S the drain, mem, as is playin' the fool on me,

1 bad luck to it!"

Mrs. Ostrander's third " girl " — the third that is
in point of continuity, not in cotemporaneity — met
her at the front-door with these portentous words.
Mrs. Ostrander, radiant from an hour in her old
studio in her father's orchard, came in, shutting out
the August morning, and repeated with a perplexity
which would have had a touch of the superb in it,
if it had not been something at once too pitiful and
too ludicrous, —

"The— drain?"

" The kitchen-drain, mem, as has refused entirely
to take the clane tea-leaves from the sink, but casts
them back upon me hands, the vagabond ! "

' ' I did not know there had to be — drains in
sinks," said Mrs. Ostrander with an expression of
recoil, " I never examined one. Could not ours be
fixed to work without? What must we do about it,
Julia?"

" Yez must have a man to it, mem," said she of
Erin, with a sweet superior smile.

" Very well," said Mrs. Ostrander with a sigh of

254 THE STORY OF AVIS.

relief. "We will send for a carpenter at once.
Mr. Ostrander shall attend to it. You can go now,
Julia. Is there any thing more you wished to say ? "

" It's the chramy -tartar I am lackin* for me cake,
mem ; and the butter is out against dinner : but that
is all, mem, barrin' the Union for the pies, and the
jelly-strainer, as they slipped me mind when the
grocer come, being up to do the beds, mem, at
the time ; and the hole in the pantry-windy that lets
the rain upon the flooer-barrel, as yerself complained
of the mould in the biscuit. That's all I think of at
the minute, savin' Mr. Ostrander's company."

" Mr. Ostrander's company? " blankly from Mrs.
Ostrander.

" It's meself as well-nigh forgot it till this blissid
minute, on account of ironiu'-day and the breakfast
so late, ye'll own yerself, mem," penitentty from
Julia. "But it's himself as left word wid me while
yez was gone, as there would be four gentlemen to
dinner."

"Have we — I suppose we have dinner enough
in the house for four gentlemen?" asked Avis a
little nervously. She liked Philip to feel that his
friends were welcome ; and she had thought, with a
certain scorn, of families that were injured by the
appearance of a guest on ironing-da3T. She was
sure that a narrow hospitality must indicate either a
narrow heart or a dull head. Any family in a
university Faculty must, of course, be expected to
receive largely and irregularly. Avis was quite

THE STORY OF AVIS. 255

used to this. But she had never been able to under-
stand why aunt Chloe found it a necessary condition
of this state of things, to make the puddings herself.
The political economy of any intelligent home im-
plied a strict division of labor, upon which she was
perfectly resolved not to infringe. A harmonious
home, like a star in its orbit, should move of itself.
The service of such a home should be a kind of blind
intelligence, like a natural law, set in motion, to be
sure, lay a designer, but competent to its own final
cause. Besides, as Philip had said, she had not
married him to be his housekeeper.

4 'It's the pound and half of steak for the two
of you we has," observed Julia peacefully. "An*
the butcher had gone before Mr. Ostrander let on a
word about the gintlemin ; and college gintlemin,
mem, eats mostly awful."

It was not much, perhaps, to set herself now to
conquer this little occasion ; not much to descend
from the sphinx to the drain-pipe at one fell swoop ;
not much to watch the potatoes while Juh'a went to
market, to answer the door-bell while the jelly was
straining, to dress for dinner after her guests were in
the parlor, to resolve to engage a table-girl to-
morrow because Julia tripped with the gravy, to sit
wondering how the ironing was to get done while
her husband talked of Greek sculpture, to bring
creation out of chaos, law out of disorder, and a
clear head out of wasted nerves. Life is composed
of such little strains ; and the artistic temperament

256 THE STORY OF AVIS.

is only more sensitive to, but can never hope to
escape them. It was not much; but let us not
forget that it is under the friction of such atoms,
that women far simpler, and so, for that yoke, far
stronger, than Avis, have yielded their lives as a
burden too heavy to be borne.

That one day wore itself to an end at last, of
course, like others of its kin. It was what Avis had
already learned to call a day well wasted. She was
so exhausted, what with the heat of the weather and
the jar of the household machinery, that she scarcely
noticed her husband, when, after their guests had
gone, he came in to the cool darkness of the parlor,
and threw himself in the chair beside her to say
easily, —

"Tired, Avis?"

Everybody knows moments when to be asked if
one is tired seems in itself a kind of insult, and to
be asked in that tone, an unendurable thing. But
it was not in A vis's poised and tender temper to
drizzle out her little irritations as if they were matters
of consequence . And her husband' s greater physical
delicacy had already taught the six-months' wife the
silence of her own. She replied, after a moment's
pause, that she should soon rest.

"I am sorry to have you concerned so much in
this domestic flurry, ' ' began Ostrander. Avis turned
her head with a slight contraction of the brow. To
have left the colors without the drying-oil upon her
easel, and surrendered her whole summer's day to the

THE STORY OF AVIS. 257

task of making one harmonious fact of the week's
ironing and four round, red, hungry alumni, and then
to have her moderate, but at least gracious and orderly
success called a "flurry, "was one of those little
dulnesses of the masculine fancy which she was
loath to admit in Philip, — Philip, whose fine per-
ception, and what might be called almost a tact of
the imagination, had always from the first been so
winning to her.

"It must not be," proceeded her husband with
some deepening sincerity in his affectionate tones.
" We must have better-trained service for you."

"We must, I think, — I have been thinking it
over to-day, — have more service," replied Avis.
" It seemed as if Julia ought to take care of two
people. And there are your college-debts to be got
off, whatever happens ; but I cannot think it right
to get along so any longer."

" Certainly not," said Ostrander promptly : " you
must have what relief you need, my dear. Do not
burden yourself to worry over those debts. At
most, as I have told you, three thousand would
cover the whole, and a part of that is already
cleared."

Avis did not answer. This point of the debts
was rather a sensitive one between them. Philip
thought he had explained it all to her before their
marriage. Avis thought he had not made it quite
clear. Of course she dimly understood that he had
incurred pecuniary liabilities for his education, like

258 THE STORY OF AVIS.

other young men in America, whose belongings and
beginnings were unendowed.. But her way would
have been to have straightened all that before incur-
ring the risks and obligations of a home. Still,
with Philip's good salary, and her own little income
that fell to her from her mother, — and surely when
she herself was well at work, — there need be no
trouble about it. And, of course, if Philip thought
he explained it to her, he must have done so. It
was she who had been dull. She argued this slight
point with herself sometimes with an earnestness
which she could not justify to herself, without a
glance at some far, crouching motive set deep like a
sunken danger in her thought, at which it did not
seem worth while to look scrutinizingly. Any
thought of her husband which was not open as the
mid-clay to her heart and his, was beneath the re-
spect of attention. Her most distinct annoyance in
this, and other little points which might occur to her,
was, perhaps, the first baffling consciousness of a
woman, that there may be laws of perspective in
her husband's nature with which courtship had not
made her clearly acquainted.

"It will all come right," said Ostrander in a
comfortable tone, turning to go. " And now I
must get to college, or I shall be late." He looked
back across the long parlor ; the closed blinds and
dark draper}?- cast a moveless green shadow upon
Avis's face, that made her look pale and ill. Os-
trander came bade. He had not reached the point

THE STORY OF AVIS. 259

of conjugal culture at which a man can go happily
away, leaving a shade upon his wife's face. He
came back, and said, more tenderly than a husband
who has been six months' married may be expected
to speak upon an especially busy day, —

"What is it, love?"

"Nothing worth getting late to recitation for,
Philip. "

" You tire yourself going so far and so often to
your father's. We must build you a studio at home,
I think."-

" I do not get to father's so often as to tire my-
self," said Avis with a slight emphasis, but with
a brightening brow. ' ' But indeed, Philip, I begin to
be a little impatient for my regular and sustained
work. We have changed girls so much — and with
all the Commencement company — something has
continually happened to embarrass my plans so far.
But do not look troubled, my darling. It is not all
worth one such look as that."

She leaned to him lovingly ; she was comforted by
his tenderness ; she blamed herself for adding one
least anxiety of her own to his crowded cares. When
he said that all this must be changed, and that she
at least should not be exhausted below the level of
her work, if they had to close the house, and board,
her heart lightened at his thoughtfulness. Her little
difficulties fused like rain-drops into a golden mist.
She was sure that she saw her way through them, and
beyond them, to that " energy of days" which nature

260 THR STORY OF AVIS.

had made imperative to her. When her husband
called after lecture, and asked if he might go to the
studio with her, and see what she was doing, her
heart lifted as it did when they two stood there be-
neath the apple-boughs, learning love and surrender
of the falling blossoms, now so long ago. She
looked her future in the face with aspiration larger,
because deeper than her maiden days had known.
With love as with God, all things are possible.

Avis had that day retouched the sphinx. She
turned the easel, and she and her husband stood
before it silently. Against a deep sky, palpitant
with the purple soul of Egypt, the riddle of the ages
rose with a certain majesty which Ostrander may be
excused for thinking few hands could have wrought
upon it.

Avis had commanded with consummate skill the
tint and the trouble of heat in the tropical air. It
was mid-morning with the sphinx. The lessening
shadow fell westward from her brow. The desert
was unmarked by foot of man or beast; the sky
uncut by wing of bird. The child of their union
looked across them to the east.

" Staring straight on with calm eternal eyes.'*
The sand had drifted to her solemn breast. The
lion's feet of her no eye can see, the eagle's wings
of her are bound by the hands of unrelenting years ;
only her mighty face remains to answer what the
ages have demanded, and shall forever ask of her.

Upon this face Avis had spent something of her

THE STORY OF AVIS. 261

best strength. The crude Nubian features she had
rechiselled, the mutilated outline she had restored ;
the soul of it she had created.

She did not need the authority of Herodotus to tell
her that the face of the sphinx, in ages gone, was
full of beauty. The artist would have said, " Who
dared to doubt it?"

Yet she was glad to have wise men convinced that
this giant ideal was once young and beautiful, like
any other woman. If there were a touch of purely
feminine feeling in this, it was of a sort too lofty to
excite the kind of smile which we bestow upon most
of the consciousness of sex which expresses itself in
women.

A poet of our own time has articulated the speech
of one phase of womanhood to one type of manhood
thus, —

"I turn from you my cheeks and eyes,

My hair which you shall see no more.
Alas for love that never dies !
Alas for joy that went before!

Only my lips still turn to you,

Only my lips that cry, Repent."

With something of the undertow of these words
Avis was at this time struggling in the making of
her picture. Grave as the desert, tender as the sky,
strong as the silence, the parted lips of the myste-
rious creature seemed to speak a perfect word. Yet
in its deep eyes flitted an expectant look that did not
satisfy her ; meanings were in them which she had

262 THE STORY OF AVIS.

not mastered ; questionings troubled them, to which
her imagination had found no controlling reply.

4 * It is a great picture," said her husband heartily,
after long and silent study. She flushed joyously.
Just then she would rather hear these words from
him than from the whole round world besides.

"I am not satisfied yet," she said. "The eyes
baffle me, Philip."

" They ought to baffle you ; they ought to forever :
else you would have failed," he answered. "Let
that picture go now. It isn't right to waste it on
one blessed, unworthy sort of fellow like me. Let
as much of the world as has been created fit to
understand you, have the sphinx at once."

1 ' I cannot be understood till I have understood
myself," said his wife in a low voice. " The picture
must wait — now — a while . ' '

"You should know best; but I hope 3'ou'll not
mistake about it," he replied, yielding himself to
the influence of the picture, with only a superficial
attention to her words. "That, I have noticed, is
the peril of thoroughly trained women. Once really
fit to do a great thing, their native conscientiousness
and timidity become, I sometimes think, a heavier
brake upon their success than the more ignorant,
and therefore more abandoned enthusiasm. Why,
in reason, should the sphinx wait any longer? "

" Not in reason perhaps, only in feeling ; and an
artist can never be brusque with a feeling. The pic-
ture must wait, Philip — a little longer."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 263

The depth of her tone arrested his scrutiny ; and
the eyes which she lifted, turning from the solemn
sphinx to him, held themselves like annunciation
lilies in a breaking mist.

It was not long after this that Professor Ostrander
received imperative telegraphic summons to his old
home in New Hampshire. His mother lay very ill.
A succession of those little distractions incident to
young people who have just yielded themselves to
the monopolizing claim of their own home, together
with the brief trip to the scientific convention which
Ostrander had taken at the outset of the vacation,
had delayed their longer and more laborious journey
up to this time. Avis, upon the reception of the
message, said at once that she should go with him.
They set out that night, oppressed by a differing
weight of feeling, of which neither cared to speak.

They found themselves in the face of a calm, in-
evitable death, which seemed rather an awe to the
son, and an anguish to the daughter.

Avis trod the dreary oil-cloth of the narrow stairs
to the sick-room with an acute sense, such as she had
never known before, of what it meant to live and die
in these dumb country homes. Poor, narrow, solitary
home ! Poor, plain, old mother, watching so long
for the son who had not come. She forced herself
to remember with some distinctness how imperative
her husband's reasons had been for not coming be-
fore. She dismissed the neighbors and old friends
who were in attendance, and herself, having sent

264 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Philip to rest within sound of her voice, watched
out the night — for the first time in her life — alone
with a dying face.

She found it a reticent, fine face, on whose gray
solemnity sat a strange likeness to the youth and
beauty of the son. Towards morning, when Mrs.
Ostrander, stirring, spoke, she bent, and kissed her
passionately.

" Thank you, dear," said the old lady with a
painless, pleasant smile.

" I have lived without a mother," cried Avis,
headlong with regret and grief. "I am so glad I
am not too late ! Now you kiss me, I know what it
is like."

" Thank you, dear," came the answer once again
quietly. ' ' Is Philip here ? ' '

" Oh, yes ! Shall I speak to him? "

" No, do not disturb him," said his mother in
the pathetic, uncomplaining tone which solitude gives
to gracious age. " I would not break the poor boy's
nap. And I like to see you. You are my daughter,
my son Philip's wife. You made the portrait for me
of my son. It was kind in Philip to send me his
portrait, because I do not see him very often. You
have a gentle hand, my dear. You are a good
daughter."

"I am a heart-broken daughter!" cried Avis.
" Why did }^ou not send for us? We did not think
— did not know — Philip did not understand how
feeble a summer you have had . I can see how it has
been. You did not tell us ! "

THE STORY OF AVIS. 265

4 < I have had — rather — a feeble summer — yes , ' '
Baid the sinking woman with some effort of speech ;
" but I have needed nothing. M}7 son has been
always a good son. I knew he would come when he
could. I did not want to trouble him. I have never
lacked for any thing. Did you have a pretty wed-
ding, my dear?" Her mind seemed to slip and
wander a little with this ; for she spoke of Philip's
father, dead now these twenty years ; and then she
called to him, bidding him find the wedding-slippers
in the bureau-drawer, that she had saved for her
son's wife ; then reiterating that Philip had been a
good son, and she had wanted nothing, turned to
Avis once again, to say apologetically, —

' ' They had got so yellow, my dear, and I had not
seen your foot. Philip thought they would not fit,
when he was here, and I showed them to him. I'm
glad you had a pretty wedding. Philip thought it
was too cold for me to go. He was always careful
to think when I would take cold. He was quite
right. But I'm glad to know it was a pretty wed-
ding. Raise me up, my dear, and let me look at
you again."

Avis lifted her with her strong young arms easily
against the pillows, and the two turned to one
another. " In the chill before the dawning " some-
thing seemed to stir from eye to eye between them,
and to crawl cold about the heart of the wife, like a
thought created to be of the creeping things forever,
to which rectitude of gait and outrightness of speech,
were forbidden.

206 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Had Philip — Philip, whose tenderness was like
the creation of a uew passion in the world — some-
how, somewhere, in some indefined sense, neglected
his mother, — his old mother, sick and alone? It
was not a question for a wife to ask : it was not
one for a mother to answer. Like spirits, the two
women met each other's eyes, and neither spoke.

Waitstill Ostrander (such was her poetic, Puri-
tan name) died that night. Her son was with her,
tender and sorrowful, to the last. But a little be-
fore the stroke of midnight she turned her face, and
said, —

" He was a good boy — he was always a good son
to me. I never lacked for any thing. Your father
will be pleased, Philip — that you had — a pretty
wedding. Now I want — my daughter, Avis. ' ' And
in Avis's arms and on Avis's heart she drew her
last uncomplaining breath.

Philip and Avis were together after the funeral,
drearily busied with all the little matters about the
house which required the woman's and the daughter's
touch before they left. Avis was standing reverent-
ly before an open bureau in their mother's room. She
had just lifted from their old-fashioned swathings and
scents of linen and lavender those sacred yellow satin
shoes which had never ventured to the pretty wed-
ding. Their first smooth, suave touch upon her palm
gave her something almost like an electric shock. To
conceal the intensity of her momentary feeling, of
which she could not just then speak to her husband,

THE STORY OF AVIS. 267

she laid them down, and began to talk of other
things.

"Philip," she said, " there was a woman, — a
young woman in gray, I think, — who cried so bitterly
at the funeral, that she attracted my attention. Do
yo remember ? She went up and kissed poor mother
on the forehead/ She had dark eyes ; and I am sure
the shawl was gray. Do you know who it was? "

" It might have been Jane Gray, or Susan Wana-
maker, possibly : I hardly know. Both have dark
eyes, and both were neighbors of mother's/' said
Ostrander thoughtfully. " Susan Wanamaker was
always very fond of her," he added with an increas-
ing interest. "I think you must have heard me
speak of Susan?"

" No, I do not remember that you have."

' ' I did not have a suitable chance to speak to
her," proceeded Ostrander : "I ought to have done
so. It was an old friend. All the neighbors seem
to have been very kind to mother." Thus he chat-
ted on, to divert her, of indifferent things. Avis
said nothing just then ; but presently she asked, —

" Of course you added your own urgent invitation,
Philip, to mine, that mother should have come to
our wedding? "

"Why, of course," said Ostrander. "But cer-
tainty she could not have come. The weather was
far too cold, and I really don't know what we could
have done with her exactly. But I was so absorbed
then, my darling, that I am afraid I don't remember
about it all as clearly as I ought."

268 THE STORY OF AVIS.

In truth he did not ; and it was this very fact,
perhaps, that Avis brooded over with the most
definite discontent. She had half feared, standing
there with the poor little old wedding-shoe in her
hand, that he would turn to her, flashing across it,
and ask her if she thought him capable of a slight
to his mother. That he had not even perceived that
the circumstances were suggestive of neglect was
in itself peculiarly painful to her. His nature had
slipped so lightly away from an experience under
which her own was writhing, that she felt at a loss
to understand him.

She folded the white slipper with tender fingers,
to take it home. Perhaps Philip could not be ex-
pected to know what a sacredness it would have
added to her marriage-day to have worn it. Perhaps
no man could. Perhaps this was one of the differ-
ences, one of the things that it meant to be a man,
not to understand such matters. Gently she tried
to think so. But she stood looking across the slope
of the near church-yard to the locked, oppressive
hills, with a dull pain for which she wished she
could have found the tears. When her husband
came up, and laid his hand upon her shoulder,
stooping to see what she saw, she pointed to the
mountains, and said, —

u How lean they look ! How parched ! And she
lived — shut in here — seventy years."

"Don't grieve so!" said Ostrander tenderly.
4 ' Poor mother would never have been happy away

THE STORY OF AVIS. 269

from them. She always told me so when I asked
her."

He kissed her, and went down stairs to see about
boxing the portrait for the morning's express.

270 THE STORY OF AVIS.

CHAPTER XV.

"Only the ey<> of God can see the universe geometrically: man, In
his infirmity, sees only foreshortenings. Perspective is, so to say, the
ideal of visible things. . . . As man advances towards his horizon,
his horizon retreats from him, and the lines that seem to unite in the
remote distance, remain eternally separate in their eternal convey-
ance."

point at which love ceases to be per se an
_L occupation, is seldom more distinctly defined
than the line which divides the fire of the sunset
from the calm of the upper sky. Avis' s love for
her work was as imperious as her love for her hus-
band, and as loyally stubborn to distraction.

Said one of the greatest women of this age,
11 Success is impossible, unless the passion for art
overcomes all desultory passions." Avis found her-
self, by dimly shaded gradations, approaching a con-
dition of serious unrest. She was like a creature
in whom two gods warred. Her nature bent, but
could not break, under the divine conflict. Yet at
this time she looked across it with firm, clear e3Tes.
All would come right. These little household obsta-
cles, experience would disperse. They loved each
other, — what could she fear ?

The winter passed dreamily. When her husband
came home on the bitter nights, her eyes turned to
him full of a trust as unreflective and as much in

THE STORY OF AVIS. 271

the nature of things, it then seemed, as the trust of
the lily in the summer wind. He liked best to find
her in the dark, opaque reds of their little parlor,
and in the mood of the open fire. She sat with her
books or her sketching, or in the shadow at the soft
piano. The usual little feminine bustle of sewing
he missed without regret. Women fretted him with
their eternal nervous stitch, stitching, and fathomless
researches into the nature of tatting and crochet.
He rather admired his wife for sharing so fully his
objection to them. Avis was that rare woman who
had never embroidered a tidy in her life.

"It is as much of an exhaustion of the nervous
centres to my wife to sew as it would be to me," he
used say at this time, " and as much, if not more,
of a nervous waste. She shall not do it."

It did not occur to him — how should it ? — that
Avis's exemption from this burden was a matter
requiring any forethought or management ; and he
expressed surprise on learning, by accident one day,
that the price of two portraits which she had paint-
ed — her only finished work — that winter, had
gone to cover the seamstress's bills. Avis did not
chatter about such things. She had a fine power of
selection in her conversation (has not some one well
said that conversation is always but a selection?)
which he admired.

Certain moods befell her that winter, from which
he stood afar off. Sometimes, when the wild weather
deterred her from the brisk walks which her sturdy,

272 THE STORY OF AVIS.

out-of-door habits had made a necessity to her, he
found her pacing the house, up and down, from
attic to cellar, in a fitful, and what, in a woman of
less self-control, would have been a fretful way. He
spoke to her, and received courteous but uncommu-
nicative answers. Her eyes had become two beat-
ing rebels, for whom his tenderest thought could find
no amnesty. Usually, at such times, she retreated to
the studio (which was now established, in a manner,
in the attic) , and worked fiercely till the early winter
dark dropped down. Then he would come up and
call her, unless he were too busy. If he came, he
found her gentle and calm. She leaned upon his
arm as they went down stairs.

Avis left the unfinished sketch or painting pa-
tiently. She said, " By and by. After a while. I
must wait a little." She was still able to allure
herself with the melody of this refrain, to which so
many hundreds of women's lips have shaped them-
selves trembling ; while the ears of a departing hope
or a struggling purpose were bent to hear. Life
had become a succession of expectancies. In each
experience she waited for her foothold upon another,
before finding her poise. There is more than a
fanciful symbolism in the law which regulates the
drawing of the human form. We must be able to
take a straight line from the head to the feet, or our
picture topples over.

Women understand — only women altogether —
what a dreary will-o-the-wisp is this old, common,

THE STORY OF AVIS. 273

I had almost said commonplace, experience, " When
the fall sewing is done," "When the baby can
walk," " When house-cleaning is over," " When the
company has gone," "When we have got through
with the whooping-cough," "When I am a little
stronger," then I will write the poem, or learn the
language, or study the great charity, or master the
symphony ; then I will act, dare, dream, become.
Merciful is the fate that hides from any soul the
prophecy of its still-born aspirations.

The winter was over. In the elm-tree outside of
Avis' s chamber- window a robin was building a nest,
with an eye that withdrew itself like a happy secret.
Avis watched the bird with a blind sympathy. She
held out her hand, and the little creature ate from it
after a decorous hesitation. She felt a lowly kinship
with the brooding, patient thing.

In May her baby was born, — a son. Avis was a
little sorry for this, but she did not like to say so : it
seemed a rude disloyalty to the poor little fellow.
But when his father asked her if she were not con-
tent, she said, —

" If I had a daughter, I should fall down and wor-
ship her."

It was a delicate, ailing baby, and seemed at first
a mere little ganglion of quivering nerves. It cried
a great deal.

" I don't see what the child has to cry for ! " said
Avis, looking a little offended.

The baby's grandfather was there the day that she

274 THE STORY OF AVIS.

said this. He put on his spectacles at the precise
angle and with the peculiar rub which he reserved for
a pet philosophical problem, and with a lordly rever-
ence took the child's fingers — poor little sprawling
antennae — upon his own.

"What Aristotle and Leibnitz and Kant," he
said loftily, " would have yielded their lives to know,
you ask, Avis, over-lightly. Philosophy will be no
longer a fragment, but a system, when it has com-
manded the psychological process by which one infant
is led to weep."

Aristotle might have had a chance to find out, Avis
thought, if he could have had the pleasure of study-
ing her child for the first three weeks of its life. But
the professor watched the child gravely. He had a
deep respect for a being who could baffle Aristotle.

" That baby has cried ever since it was born ! "
Avis wailed one night, exhausted with sleeplessness.
" I wish somebody would take it out of my sight
and hearing for a while."

"Why, Avis," said her husband, "don't you
care — don't you feel any maternal affection for the
little thing?"

"No," cried every quivering nerve in the honest
young mother ; " not a bit ! "

Perhaps, indeed, she was lacking in what is called
the maternal passion as distinct from the maternal
devotion. She was perfectly conscious of being
obliged to learn to love her l>aiby like anybody else ;
really g.he did not find the qualities which that

THE STORY OF AVIS. 275

unfortunate young gentleman developed during the
early part of his existence, those which she was
wont to consider lovable in more mature characters.
She felt half ashamed of herself for being the
mother of so cross a baby. She had supposed that
children were gifted by their Creator with some
measure of respect for the feelings of others. This
child seemed to be as deficient in it as a young
batrachian. It mortified her, like an evidence of
ill-breeding. Avis had never lived in the house
with a baby ; neither had Ostrander. Their vague
ideas of the main characteristics of infancy were
drawn as, I think I may safely say, those of most
young men and women are at the time of mar-
riage, chiefly from novels and romances, in which
parentage is represented as a blindly deifjing privi-
lege, which it were an irreverence to associate with
teething, the midnight colic, or an insufficient in-
come.

Avis herself had not escaped the influence of
these golden, if a little hazy pictures. While she
knew, or supposed that she felt, many things not
expected of her, and failed to feel others which it
was proper to feel under the conditions of maternity,
yet she cherished in her own way her own ideals.
But of these she did not talk, even to her husband.
These it was only for her child and herself to under-
stand. Over these, as over her wedded fancy, Na-
ture drew a veil like those casement screens, which
to the beholder are dense and opaque, but to the

276 THE STORY OF AVIS.

eye behind them glitter with a fair transparency
through which all the world is seen divinely new.
And then motherhood was a fact which had never
entered (as in the case of most women) upon her
plans or visions of h'fe. It was to be learned like
any other unexpected lesson.

But the spring was budding ; and in the robins'
nest at the window the fledglings chirped ; and the
tender air stole in on tiptoe ; and her strength waxed
with the leaping weather ; and God made people to
love their children : so it must all be well. The
kind of dumb terror with which she had lain listen-
ing to the child's cry gave place to a calm exult-
ance. Now, in a fortnight, in a week, in days,
to-morrow, she could be at work.

To be sure the baby was a fact; but he was
matched by another, — the nurse : from so fair an
equation it was not too much to expect a clear solu-
tion.

She came out into the sunshine with bounding
heart. The soul of the spring was in her. Her
most overpowering consciousness was one of deep
religious fervor. She thanked God that her life's
purpose, for which she believed He had created her,
would be more opulently fulfilled by this experience.
The baby would teach her new words to tell the world,
— His sa'd, wrong world that the birth of a little
child had saved. She felt a deepening respect for
the baby. She kissed him fervently. It seemed
singularly obtuse in him to double up his seriously

THE STORY OF AVIS. 277

inartistic fist, and put her eye out with blind and
smarting tears.

" I hope you like him, Avis," said Coy a little
doubtfully, one day in June. He was so pre-emi-
nently uninteresting compared with her baby, that
she really felt some uncertainty on the nature of
Avis's feelings ; and then Avis said so little !

u Certainly," said Avis, looking up rather wearily
from the week's wash which she was sorting, — a
snowdrift fatally deepened by all these little gar-
ments whose name and nature were still a mystery to
her, and, if the truth must be told, produced more a
sense of irritation than of poetry on her fancy, since
she did not see that her love for her son required
that she should know whether the scallop on his
flannel petticoat was ironed the wrong way, — " cer-
tainly I like him ; but I don't understand why, when
he is put on the bed, he doesn't go to sleep. It is
very inconvenient, — crying so, when it is proper for
him to take a nap. Why," said Avis, lifting her
grave eyes, " I find him a great deal of trouble! "

Coy, who thought it quite in the order of things
that her baby should be three months the older, since
naturally Avis couldn't get on (she never had) in
any real thing that had got to be done without her
advisory council, — Coy gasped, and felt it useless
to remonstrate that morning, even about the little
shirts which poor Avis was understood to have
trusted the nurse to sew.

We hear and think much of the marked days of

278 THE STORY OF AVIS.

life, the signal-stations of gloom or gladness, the
wedding, the birth, the burial, the da}' that lent its
ear like a priest to love's first confession. One may
dare assert that among these

" Days which quiver to their roots
Whene'er you stir the dust of such a day,"

there strikes in the lives of most of us one deeper
than they all, — that day when we heard the first bit-
ter word from lips which would once have breathed
their last to win our kisses. Do you not remember
how the sun struck out the figure in the carpet?
The refrain of the bird that flew singing past the
window ? What the pattern of the sofa-cushion was
on which you sat gazing ? How the Parian Venus
tumbled from the bracket, when, going out, he
slammed the door? How she swept away to the
piano, and the little polka that she played with bent
head to hide the tears? You turned that carpet, you
covered the cushion long ago, for economy's sake,
you thought. Ah, me ! It must have been for econo-
my, too, that the broken Venus was never mended,
but lies hidden in your bureau-drawer ; and let me
hear you play that little polka if you dare !

Avis's baby selected one July night, when the
thermometer stood at ninety degrees in the heart of
the little town, to cry, with a perseverance worthy of
so noble a cause, from nine o'clock in the stifling
night till three in the exhausted dawn, doubtless for
reasons which were metaphj'sically satisfactory to

THE STORY OF AVIS. 279

himself. Philip Ostrander, not finding in them any
distinct bearings upon the natural sciences, was, as
might be expected, less of an enthusiast in the mat-
ter. He took his pillow, and vacated the scene of
action. He had some time since reached the stage
at which a man first perceives the full value and final
cause of the "spare room," — an institution not
created, as we have crudely supposed, for a chance
guest, but for the relief of the father whose morn-
ing duties clearly require a full night's rest. It cer-
tainly was plain enough that Mr. Ostrander could
not conduct the morning recitation if he had been
kept awake all night ; and his weak lung forbade his
carrying the baby, Avis said.

The poor girl wore that terrible July out as best
she might, in the deepening reserve which mother-
hood only of all forms of human solitude knows.

On this particular morning she came down late
and wan. The fierce, free fire of her superb eyes
had given way to the burnt-in look of anxious pa-
tience, which marks a 3'oung mother out from all
..other young creatures in the world. Her husband
sat with a disturbed face at a disorderly table.

" Avis," he began, without looking up to see how
she was, " the cracked wheat is soggy again."

Avis for a moment made no icply : she could not
for sheer surprise. The husband's tone, breaking in
upon her exhaustion of mind and body, gave her
something of the little shock that we feel on finding
our paper give out in the middle of an absorbing

280 THE STORY OF AVIS.

sentence. When she spoke, she said gently, but
with some dignity, —

" I am sorry, Philip : I will speak about it."

"And the cream," proceeded Philip, "is sour.
The steak was cold ; and the coffee will give me a
bilious headache before night. I really don't see
why we can't have things more comfortable."

" We certainly must, if they are so very uncom-
fortable," replied his wife with rather a pale smile,
striving, she could hardly have told why, to turn the
discussion into a jest. " But you remember you
didn't marry me to be your housekeeper, Philip ! "

Philip Ostrander pushed his chair back without a
smile, folded his napkin with the peculiar masculine
emphasis which says, I can hold my tongue, for I
am a gentleman ; but it is doggedly hard work !
Then turning, with averted face murmured through
his closed teeth, —

" Yes, I remember. I don't know what we were
either of us thinking of! "

With this he took his hat and strode away to col-
lege, in the sacred summer light, to conduct the
morning prayers of a thousand perceptive and re-
ceptive boys.

Avis sat for a little while at the uninviting break-
fast-table ; she tasted the cold coffee, and sent Julia
away with her sympathetic if a little bitter tea : she
felt too weak to eat. She looked out into the elm-
branch, and saw the empty nest which the May robin
had left, and dimly thought what an unpleasant

THE STORY OF AVIS. 281

look it had, and dimly thought she would get Julia
to pull 'it down. It seemed quite necessary not to
think of any thing except the nest. Her eyes
burned feverishly. She threw herself upon the
lounge, and lay with both hands pressed upon them,
still as the coins that press the lids of the dead.
Presently she rang the bell sharply, and in a strung,
strained voice bade that the nurse be ordered to
bring the child.

He came, poor little fellow ! looking as wan as his
mother, but as innocent of having made himself an
unpleasant fact in the family life as a tuberose is
of yielding too strong a sweetness. Avis caught
him with something not unlike the passionate love
which Arria may have felt for the dagger, and hid
her broken face upon the baby's neck, as if she
would have hidden it there forever from all the
world.

When Ostrander came home, he sought his wife
ah1 over the house. She was not to be found. The
cook said she took her hat and went out an hour
since ; and the nurse explained, that in throwing
back the nursery blinds to give the important mes-
sage which the cook had forgotten to deliver to the
grocer's boy, she had thought it likely it was Mrs.
Ostrander as she saw just bej'ond the top of the
cart, turning Elm Street to the beach. .

Ostrander pursued her impatiently in the blazing
sun. He perceived the flutter of her dress far down
against the light-house ; and, when he had over-

282 THE STORY OF AVIS.

taken her, he found her creeping along in the shadow
formed by that great gorge so memorable to them
both. She did not see him or hear him, and so
crawled along in an aimless, dreary fashion which it
gave him a nameless terror to see.

Her figure looked so broken, so beaten, and weak,
that it for the first time occurred to him that the
effect of a little conjugal quarrel upon a nature like
that of his wife's was not altogether a calculable
one. His own words once spoken in that spot came
back to him as he made his penitent way along the
purple gorge, looking from torn side to torn side.

" It was a perfect primeval marriage. The heart
of the rock was simpty broken."

Had Avis wrought herself into that frenzy of
wounded feeling in which weaker women have
courted death, as a man with lacerated spinal nerves
courts the moxa? He overtook her without her
hearing his light step, and, man-like, trusting to the
sensation to interpret the emotion, barricaded her
with both arms, and folded her to his shamed and
sorry heart. But Avis glided from his touch like a
spirit. Her bent figure heightened grandly, and her
unwon maiden C3~es seemed to look again from a
great height, down upon him where she had swept
and stood upon the jutting cliff.

Ostrandcr at that moment felt that to have been
permitted to gain the allegiance of the heart we love,
is but the most tentative and introductory step to-
wards the durability of a happiness whose existence

THE STORY OF AVIS. 283

depends upon our being found worthy to retain what
we have won ; and in feeling this he felt deeper than
he could reason into the joy and pain and peril which
weld two individual human souls into the awful
fusion which we call marriage.

But he said only, —

"Avis, I was a brute ! "

" No," she said bitterly, " you were only a man."
Then repenting, with swift nobility she came to
him, —

"Now it is I who am wrong. Forgive me,
Philip!"

" You?"

He gathered her tenderly. She did not repel him :
she was worn out with the strain of the night and
the glare of the long walk. She did not cry ; but
she lay in his arms with a dry, sobbing sigh which
alarmed him. He caressed her passionately. He
sought her pardon in the soul of every sweet sign
love had taught him in its first dizzy hours. She
submitted quietly, but with an unresponsiveness
which afterwards he remembered with disquiet per-
plexity.

The scar which an unkind word leaves upon a
large love, may be invisible, like that of a great sin
upon the tissues of the repentant soul ; but for one
as for the other, this life has no healing.

Avis did not choose to talk about cracked wheat.
There were other things in the world to say. And
it was impossible to express, without giving them

284 TpE STORY OF AVIS.

both useless pain, her inherent, ineradicable, and
sickening recoil from the details of household care.
And Philip, distraught with his deepening respon-
sibilities at the college, naturally ceased to inquire
so often how matters went in the studio. Avis
faced her circumstances with such patience as she
could command. A weaker woman lets conditions
override her, be the lash a divine frenzy or a
chronic neuralgia. Avis sadly turned the tense
muscle of her strong nature now to secure a
gracious home. The thong which has stung the as-
pirations of all women, since Eve, for love of knowl-
edge, ate and sinned, goaded her on. She said to
herself, "It will be a matter, at most, of a few
months. When I have mastered this one little
house, life waits; and art is long." She made
haste to be wise in wisdom that her soul loathed, to
clear the space about her for the leisure that her
patient purpose craved. But sometimes, sitting bur-
dened writh the child upon her arms, she looked out
and off upon the summer sky with a strangling deso-
lation like that of the forgotten diver, who sees the
clouds flit, from the bottom of the sea.

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 285

CHAPTER XVI.

"It is the low man thinks the woman low."— TENNYSON.

" Thou hast met, found, and seized me, and know'st what my ways

are.

Hold ME, —hold a shadow, the wings as they quiver,
Hold ME, — hold a dream, smoke, a track on the river ! "

THEODOKE PRODONTTS.

JOHN ROSE was one of those people to whom
one may surrender a confidence, and never re-
pent it; this is to say, John Rose had a rare
nature, and therefore one which educated him for
the peculiar draughts upon delicacy of organization
involved in the calling of a Christian preacher.

At the outset of his work in Harmouth he had
adopted a plan never, to my knowledge, put in use
by a pastor in precisely this form, in more than one
other instance. Doubtless there are others unknown
to me.

The experiment resulted from a chance word of
his wife's. Coy, with the grasping capacity for self-
exhaustion characteristic of the New-England girl,
had married the profession with the man. She
always said, " Our work," " Our people," " Our
pulpit," and " Our salary." She flew from the
nursery to the prayer-meeting, from the mission-
school to the Commencement dinner, from the

286 TEtE STORY OF AVIS.

church fair to the Italian class ; young married
ladies losing caste in Harmouth, if they do not main-
tain a palpable connection with that sad, forsaken
world which has no baby, poor thing ! to interfere
with its course of reading.

Coy, who had never been considered " religious "
before her marriage, and who sorely felt her lack of
clear theological acumen, said one day, —

" John, a minister's business is precisely — what?
When we talk about saving people, we mean
exactly" —

" I don't answer conundrums for any other
minister," said the Reverend John, thoughtfully
calculating the distance from hand to eye between
the baby's head and the ceiling, as he stood playing
his after-dinner game of human pitch-penny with
that remarkable infant ; ' ' but I consider my business
a very simple affair. The human animal seems to
have been (for what inscrutable purpose, you 3'oung
porpoise, I'll not attempt to say, and you'll never
grow up to prove, if you jerk yourself over my lame
shoulder like that) endowed with what we find it
convenient to call, for lack of a better term, an
immortal soul."

" John ! " said wife, in the tone she used at tea,
treading on his toes under the table when he pro-
pounded some doctrine that savored of laxity, with a
conservative supply spending the Sunday.

" What's the matter now ? " asked John, giving the
baby a double twist that the offspring of any less

THE STORY OF AVIS. 287

muscular Christianity would have resented. " Have
I said any thing heretical again. to-day?"

"I — th-think — not. It sounds right on the
whole," said Coy anxiously; " but I never know
where you'll turn up, John. An immortal soul is all
right, so far as it goes, of course, John dear. But
the trouble I have with theology is, I never know
what is coming next. And your theology especially,
somehow, John,. is — you know — I like to have you
make it very plain, because the baby is usually mixed
up in it a little (there ! you'll bump her head ! ) or
else, you see — I find it hard to fix my mind when I'm
being kissed. If I'd been intellectual, like Avis, I
suppose I shouldn't mind. Certainly it is quite true-
about the immortality of the soul. But old Mrs.
Bobley — you know the old lady behind the last
pillar, who always cries in the wrong place, with the
ironed purple strings to her bonnet — asked me yes-
terday what I thought were jour views as to the
precise nature of the ministerial vocation. I told
her I'd ask. She said she hoped you realized, for
you were so very young, the awful responsibility
which rested on a minister if a single soul in his
congregation had never been worried — no, never
been warned, that was it — by his pastor. I said I
supposed so. And then she asked me if I knew a
good recipe for Parker-house rolls. But now, John
dear, I'll tell you what I think a minister is. He's a
kind of a doctor, John, don't you see ? — a soul-doctor.
I don't pretend to understand about sin (I suppose

288 THE STORY OF AVIS.

that's because I've never associated with wicked peo-
ple) ; but it seems to me like an awful disease, — •
like scarlet-fever. People's souls are sick — sick^-
sick all about us, John. And if you can cure them,
you know" —

" Amen ! " said John gravely.

u Or if you can only ease them a little ' ' —

" Amen ! " said John again.

" Of course I don't mean quite by yourself — un-
less Anybody — greater — were behind," said Coy
quickly, slipping with the characteristic reticence of
the atmosphere in which she had been bred, from ex-
plicit expression of the more vital elements of reli-
gious feeling. " But I've been thinking, John, why
shouldn't a minister have an office-S3rstem, like a
doctor, and be ' at home,' so many hours a day to
aching people?"

It was this suggestion which John Rose, in carry-
ing out almost to the letter, had made so memorable
a feature in his Harmouth work. He announced not
onty from the pulpit and in the vaguely polite ways
usually thought sufficient to relieve the ministerial
conscience, but literally upon his modest door-plate,
like a physician of the body, that he who assumed to
prescribe for the health of the soul would be within
to patients from such an hour to such an hour, mak-
ing it in due time quietly understood among the
heterogeneous population of the town, that he held
himself answerable to the call of any creature in any
lack, were it of a friend or a pillow, were it of

THE STORY OF AVIS. 289

Heaven or a dinner, were it of forgiveness or flan-
nels.

In the course of six months from the inauguration
of this project, the young minister's heart and hands
were overwhelmed with what Coy called the " ach-
ing people." The aching people of a place in
which the intelligence of society is almost wholly
absorbed in the impairment and the reception of
intellectual culture, have a certain bitterness in their
capacity and ability to ache not to be matched in
communities of broader and more human interests.

John Rose received into his healthy 37oung heart,
as within the walls of a newly-consecrated temple,
these refugees of human fate, on an average per-
haps to the number of twenty souls each day. This
method of labor brought him into contact with
what we are wont to term the " dangerous classes "
of society. The walls of that little study listened
to strange histories, not often, in the chance of hu-
man lots, brought across the threshold of delicate
homes. Strange figures not known to the pew-roll of
the Central Church skulked in on Sunday evenings,
and stood, savage, unkempt, like Centaurs, up and
down the crowded aisles. The heavy pew-owners
were gratified, and proposed a mission church.

" If these men and women go, I go with them,"
said John Rose in a deep voice with which his dea-
cons were not familiar. " Turn them out into a
mission church, if you will ; but you turn me there
too."

290 THE STORY OF AVIS.

So the rich and the poor met together in this
young prophet's church, for the Lord's sake, who
was the Maker of them all. And John Rose bent
to his sacred work with awed and humble eyes,
seeking only on the knees of his heart to know
wherefore he had been found worthy of that fate
than which neither life nor death has more glori-
ous to give the Christian pastor, — that the com-
mon people heard him gladly.

That supervision of suffering and sinning homes
which his theor}7 of Christian sendee involved, he
assumed at the start in person to an extent which
experience compelled him to retrench, but which
served to form a peculiar tie between himself and
his clientele.

He had often invited Mrs. Ostrander to accom-
pany him upon one of these visiting tours at the
lower end of the town, and one day she went.

It had been an uncomfortable day. The child had
cried a great deal. Company had come from out of
town just as she had, for the first time for weeks,
locked her studio-door behind her. The weather
was extreme ; and it was not so easy as usual to be
patient with the heat, to which she was, at best,
almost morbidly sensitive. They had taken no
vacation this year : at least she had not. Her hus-
band ran down to the beach for a week or so, as
usual, with a Hirmouth party, — the Hogarths and
Aliens, and so on ; but boarding at a watering-place
with a three-months' baby is a modified form of

THE STOEY OF AVIS. 291

human bliss which Avis had felt compelled to de-
cline.

On this evening she was alone : Philip was out on
Faculty business. She trod the hot pavements to
Coy's home with that restlessness which is the
keenest element of physical distress in a New-Eng-
land July day. Coy was busy: it was something
about the mosquitos ; but whether they had killed
the baby, or the baby had killed the mosquito,
Avis did not distinctly understand, and did not offer
to sfay and discover. The fire of the outer air was
preferable to the smouldering atmosphere of the
house. She joined John Eose gladly, and they
descended into the Inferno in which the dregs of a
large town are to be found upon a July night.

It is not to the purpose of this story to dwell upon
the sights, which, for the first time in a refined and
sheltered life, passed at a town's breadth from them,
met Avis's young eyes that night. They were the
eyes of a woman tender and true ; but they were
those of an artist, to whom it had been mercifully
given — while her visions were young, inchoate, and
quick to dissolve — to be a little color-blind to
misery for beauty's sake. It is enough to say that
Avis understood that night how the insight of a single
hour, like a torch, may flare out across the width
and breadth of a life's work. She understood how
great men have seen the drawing of great purposes,
the body-color of great inspirations, gone false in
the revelation of such hours. She understood how

292 TCHE STORY OF AVIS.

Frere can exhaust an inspiration upon the muscle in
the cheek of a sewing-girl starving in an attic ; and
how Millet was exiled from Paris for daring to paint
the misery of peasant-life. Certain sights which she
saw that night in the tenement-houses of Harmouth
pursued her for years with the force of vocal cries.
She felt, that, when she was at work again, they would
syllable themselves, of sheer necessity, in some form,
It was still a long time, however, before she recog-
nized in herself what she could presume to call a
passion to express the moan of human famine. »

" One other case," said John Rose, as they turned
from the furnace of an attic-room in which three
famih'es dwelt and damned themselves as comforta-
bly as they might, — "just one more, and we will
go. Coy bade me be sure and see this woman, — up
three flights, across the court, if you can make it?
The last we heard of her she could not get about,
and so her business was falling behind. But we are
not to understand that she was knocked down, and
trampled on. She fell. It is surprising how in-
secure of foot women with drunken husbands, as a
class, are found to be. She is a very respectable
woman, from the country. I got her a little book-
agency a good while ago ; and he doesn't get home
very often, and so she gets along. And Coy sent
her away for a vacation last year. But I'll just run
up and ask how it goes with her." At that thresh-
old Avis shrank instinctively, begging John Rose
to go in without her.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 293

The woman came out, however, into the stifling
entry-way, when the young minister had completed
his errand, and gravelv said, —

" Will you not come in? "

She was a dark-eyed, rather delicate creature, with
a scar across her forehead.

" This is Mrs. Ostrander," said John Rose.

"Yes," said the woman after a pause. "Will
not Mrs. Ostrander step into my room? "

" I was a stranger," replied Avis, giving her hand,
which the other, after a moment's hesitation, coldly
touched. " I did not feel that I had any right to
intrude upon you."

"No," said the woman again, "you had not.
That is true. But every one is not so ready to see
what is right."

An uneas}7 sympathy with a sorrow, more impres-
sive because so foreign to her fancy, led Avis to turn
as she went down, and say in her pleasant, womanly
way, —

" If I can be of any use to 3Tou, I hope you will
some time come to see me as well as Mrs. Rose."

The woman did not reply, but stood and watched
them as they felt their way down the dark stairs.
She had noticeable eyes ; not so much because of
their darkness, and they were very dark, as because
of their deadness. They seemed either to have lost,
or never to have had, the refractive power. They
were the color of cold coal when it is in shadow.
They were of the sort which give us the uncomfor-

294 THE STORY OF AVIS.

table sensation of having been once familiar with
them, but of having disgracefully forgotten the where
or the when. Avis was dully conscious of such a
superstition as she crept down the stairs, and out
into the oppressive night. She asked John Rose
more particularly about the woman, thinking that
possibly, when Philip published that text-book which
had been coming out so long, but never came, he
might be able to put the poor thing in the way of
some slight increase to her precarious business.
But, when she spoke to Philip about it, she did not
succeed in exciting his interest in the matter ; and
the chapel bell was ringing him away. Pier hus-
band's interests in many things seemed to her, some-
how, less vivid than they were.

It was while the incidents of the evening spent
among John Rose's " patients " were still cut keenly
upon her memory, that word was brought to her one
morning that a book-agent had called. Something
was wrong that day — the babjr was sick, perhaps,
or she herself was overworn ; and she reminded the
servant, with some emphasis, of the rule of the
house touching the admission of peddlers.

"It's not so much a peddler, ma'am, as a lady,"
replied Mary Ann, hesitating ; " and she's been badly
hurt upon the forehead, ma'am."

Avis put down the baby, — she remembered after-
wards that the child clung to her with an irritable
persistence, — she took his little hands forcibly from
her neck, and went.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 295

She recognized the woman at once ; the scar, the
coal-cold eyes, and a certain dignity that held itself
through her meagre dress, as well-developed muscles
do through obedient tissue. The woman wore gray
clothes, and carried a little agent's bag.

" I am glad you are able to be out," began Mrs.
Ostrander at once. "Mr. Rose told me you had
been ill. Pray do not stand."

"I prefer to stand," the woman said, waving
away the easy-chair which Avis rolled towards her.
There was an awkward pause, which her visitor
made no motion to break. Avis said kindly, —

" Can I serve you in any way? Have you a book
to show me to-day? "

44 1 did not come to sell you any book. I came to
say good-by. I am going away. I wanted to see
you once before I go. I am going to Texas. My
husband has come home, and taken the notion to go
to Texas. The law compels me to go with him, as
if I were a horse or a cow. Women don't think of
such things when they marry. I've had a hell of a
life with my husband."

The woman brought these words out monotonous-
ly, as if she spoke of a matter of course ; as if she
had said, I've walked half a mile, or I have had my
breakfast.

" I am sorry, indeed I am sorry for you," mur-
mured Avis, at a dead loss how to conduct a scene
like this.

" My name is Jessup," proceeded the book-agent

296 TSE STORY OF AVIS.

in the same tone, — ' ' Susan Jessup. I didn't like the
man when I married him. I loved another man.
But I've got long past that. I never told this before.
You're wondering why, in God's name, I've told
this to you, Mrs. Ostrander. In God's name, then,
I don't know ! I didn't mean to ; upon my word I
didn't. Is your husband at home ?"

The excitement of this Mrs. Jessup' s manner had
so visibly and suddenly increased, that Avis found
herself faintly disturbed by it, and stood wishing
that John Rose were at hand to take care of his
own " patients." It was with a perceptible dignity,
though gentty enough, that she said, —

" My husband is out this morning. I am sorry.
Could he have done any thing to help you ? Do you
wish to see him?"

"No," said the woman abruptly, "he could not
help me ; and I do not wish to see him. I'm glad
he's out. I thought I'd like to know he was out.
Perhaps you've heard, Mrs. Ostrander, that I used
to know your husband before he was married. My
name was Susan Wanamaker. I lived in New
Hampshire, in the same town with him."

" Why — yes," said Avis slowty, "yes, I remem-
ber. I have heard Professor Ostrander speak of
you."

"We were great friends once, your husband and
I," pursued her visitor with a narrow look at her.

' ' I remember to have heard him — to have heard
him say some such thing himself," replied Avis.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 297

Her lips had become quite dry, so that she moved
them with difficulty, and her words went clumsily.
A similar stiffness seemed to have settled upon the
action of her mind. Contingencies to which she
would not have stooped to give a name, pressed in
upon her, and seemed to exert a compelling influence
upon her speech. She was conscious of choosing
her words with a terrible exactness.

"Oh! he's told you, then, has he?" said Mrs.
Jessup sharply. " You knew that I once expected to
marry him ? I suppose some husbands do tell their
wives every thing. I never expected that Philip
Ostrander would make such a husband."

" We have spoken together of you," said Avis
slowly. In the pause of her voice, the baby's cry
came from overhead : she put out her hand to hold
herself by the chair which her visitor had refused.
She spoke to this stranger with the ceremonious re-
serve which the circumstances would seem to war-
rant ; but that sensitively responsive sympathy of
hers, which no personal exigency could blunt, led
her on to say, —

1 ' You should have told us — my husband and
me — that you were so unhappy, in such need.
You must have been most miserable, Mrs. Jessup —
to have exposed — yourself or me to a conversation
euch as this. What then — what now can I do for
you to make it worth while for either of us that we
should — speak in this way? "

" I saw you at the funeral," proceeded the other

298 THE STORY OF AVIS.

abruptly, disregarding Avis's words, as if the force
of her own reflection had deadened her power of
hearing. ' ' I was up there on a visit — to get away
from Jessup for a while : I was there with my old
friends. I used to be very fond of Mrs. Ostrander.
She wanted it all to go on — before I married Jes-
sup : she thought Philip didn't know his mind — he
wasn't always apt to. Then, once I met him here in
Harmouth, in a snow-storm, before he married you.
And once I went to the chapel-church to see 3Tou. I
don't blame him. Why, I shall see that face of
yours till I die! And I'm a woman. He was a
man. Oh, you think I've come to taunt and torment
you ! Women do such things. You think I'm an
insolent creature ! — some of us are. But I'm not
that kind. I'm not jealous : I'm only desperate.
I'd like to see the man that was worth, down at
the core of him — worth a woman's getting jealous
for. The sort of life I've led spreads over you like
ivy-poison: you distrust the whole lot of 'em be-
cause one bad man brushed against you. When I
knew him, he was such a handsome boy ! Oh, you've
got him — and I've got a brute ! That's the differ-
ence between us. It's a monstrous difference ! It's
a monstrous difference ! ' '

She unfolded her thin hands from the old shawl in
which she had held them wrapped while she stood
talking, and, bringing them together at the knuckles,
opened their palms, and spread them out slowly and
impressively before Avis ; as if they had been facts
patent to the conversation.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 299

There is a force peculiar to itself in the mere
anatomical appeal of an emaciated hand. It is dif-
ficult to believe in the grand despair of a person with
plump fingers.

Avis felt herself growing paler and paler under
this pressure. She tried to speak ; but words looked
distant and small, too small to be gathered up.

"Married women don't often look happier than
you do," proceeded Susan Jessup a little wildly.
"I didn't think Philip Ostrander could make any-
body look so happy. He got tired of me. I
thought he would get tired of every other woman."

" We will not discuss my husband any more this
morning, if you please," said Mrs. Ostrander, col-
lecting herself, not with severity, but with a touch
of stateliness. " And I think, Mrs. Jessup, if there
is really nothing that I can do for you, it will be best
for us both to put an end to a scene which — cannot
be fully agreeable to either of us."

"You do it gracefully," said Susan Jessup with
a bitter smile, which, however, subsided instantly.
"When I found what I'd said, I expected to be
sent at once. I hope you'll believe, Mrs. Ostrander,
that I didn't come here meaning to make trouble. I
didn't even mean to speak about it when I came in ;
and I'm glad he had the grace to tell you."

She turned, with her hand upon the door, lifting
her face slowty. Avis saw that it might once have
been rather a pretty, uneventful country face.

"I ion't know why I came," she said rather

300 THE STORY OF AVIS.

pitifully. " Why does a woman trust herself to do
anything, when she's beside herself with things she
can't speak of? That's the worst of being a woman.
What you go through can't be told. It isn't respect-
able for one woman to tell another what she has to
bear. When I saw you last week, I wanted to pull
you into my room and cry in your arms ; but I can't
cry."

Some expression of sympathy hung confusedly
upon Mrs. Ostrander's lips ; but she was not sure if
she uttered it. She felt herself turning dizzy and
faint, and the wild figure in the gray shawl blurred
before her eyes. She remembered, however, hold-
ing out her hand, and that the other took it with a
passionate movement, and held it for a moment like
a screen before the embers of her eyes, before she
closed the door, and trod heavity across the hall
and out.

Susan Jessup trod heavily ; but her heart was at
that moment light with a certain noble joy. We
hear much of the jealousy and scorn of women
among themselves. It is not often that we are re-
minded of the quickly-flashing capacity for passion-
ate attraction and generous devotion which renders
the relation of woman to woman one of the most
subtle in the world, and one exposed most to the
chance of what we call romantic episodes. This
little wretched, excited creature turned her face
from Avis with a sense of having divinely outwitted
her. She knew perfectly well that Philip Ostrander

THE STORY OF AVIS. 301

had never told his wife of that affair ; but his wife
should never know that she knew it.

That day passed much like other days. Ostran-
der was very busy ; and, if his wife were a shade
more quiet than usual, he was not likely to notice
her. He dined with John Rose, and ran in for a
little music at the Aliens in the evening ; and it was
late when at last, the child being well asleep, and
the women of the house in bed, Avis told him that
she wished to talk with him.

He said, " What is it, my dear? " He was pacing
the room, — their own room, — looking more than
usually comfortable. He was in his richly- colored
dressing-gown, that Avis thought became him. He
had an indefinably masculine air of mastery over his
circumstances, and enjoyment in them, which it is
impossible to put into words, but to which a woman
is very sensitive. At that moment, when, drawing
his hand easily out of his pocket, he came up and
touched his wife under the chin, lifting her face,
Avis felt a dull sense of displeasure. It seemed to
her excited thought that he touched her lightly,
much as he twirled the great blue silk tassel of the
dressing-gown, as if she were, in some sense, the
idle ornament of a comfortable hour. She drew her
face back, and said with grave abruptness, —

4 'Philip, something has occurred which I must
tell }TOU at once."

"Very well, my dear," said Philip, smiling
down.

302 $HE STORY OF AVIS.

"There was a book -agent here this morning.
Her name was Susan Wanamaker."

" Has Susan Wanamaker been here?" said Os-
trander, standing still.

" And told me, Philip — in my own house — that
she was once engaged to be married to my husband."

Ostrander slowly removed the hand with which he
had sought to caress his wife's withdrawing face :
the lordly silk tassel itself seemed to shrink some-
how, as it hung from his side. He took a step back,
and thrust both hands again into Ms pockets. Avis
did not look up at him. At that moment a deep
instinct forbade her to meet her husband's eyes. It
was as if she thus saved herself and him from some
vague disgrace or grief. Whatever it was, whatever
it could be, that flitted across them, her husband
should never have it to remember that his wife had
surprised his eyes by a stratagem. She would
almost as soon surprise his soul. When she had
thus given him tune, she lifted her own, dim with
her sweet sense of honor ; but in his she saw then
only that darting, scattered gleam, — the quicksilver
look.

In a deep, displeased voice he said, —

" And — my wife discussed such a matter with a
strange woman, a book-peddler, before consulting
me?"

" You wrong your wife ! " blazed Avis, springing
to her feet, and holding herself grandly. " I am
afraid you have wronged me from the beginning. I

THE STOEY OF AVIS. 303

am afraid you do not see — my husband does not
see — what is wrong, and what is right. I don't
understand you, Philip."

" I don't see what could have possessed Susan,"
said Philip Ostrander.

Perhaps nothing in the range of the English
vocabulary would have struck Avis so drearily just
then as those few words. She could not conceive of
any others which would have so emphasized the dis-
tance between the temper of her thought and his. It
was the sense of this distance and difference which
oppressed her to an extent, that, for the moment,
obliterated the admission which the words them-
selves implied.

But with his characteristic quickness, Ostrander's
manner suddenly changed. He shook his bright
hair impatiently, as if shaking off a temporary
annoyance, and, swiftly turning, threw himself upon
the lounge, and held out his arms.

" Come, Avis," he said in h'is usual voice, " come
and hear my story now."

The slight arraignment of her justice in this ap-
peal, touched Avis's delicate sense of honor. True,
she had not heard his story. She stirred slowly to-
wards him, and sat down at the other end of the
sofa.

" Come," he repeated still holding out his arms.
" I can't talk to you over there. No? Well, then ;
perhaps I deserve it. But upon my honor, Avis,
there is so little in this affair, that it never occurred

304 THE STORY OF AVIS.

to me to tell you. I suppose Susan Wanamakcr did
think she was going to marry me once. She was
eighteen, — a country school-girl: I was just past
twenty, — a college-boy. I found I did not love her,
and I told her so. Was there any thing dishonora-
ble in that? You see at once, the dishonor would
have been in going on with the affair."

"The dishonor la}'," began Avis, but stopped.
She could not bring her lips to say that dishonor
lay in her husband. " The mistake lay," she went
on.

" Permit me one minute," interrupted Ostrander,
" till 3'ou have heard me out. Grant that I had a
bo3r's fancy for this girl: is that such a crime,
Avis? Has a man never blundered with a pretty
face before ? Very well, then. Grant that I did not
tell 3'ou, and so blundered again. I was wrong : I
perfectly admit it. I see it now, if I never saw it
before. Poor Susan has made a mess of it, for
which I'm outrageously sorry. I wouldn't have had
3rou so mortified for the world ! It's a confounded
faux pas ! ' '

" She does not know," said Avis more gently.
" I told her we had talked of you. She thinks you
had told me. But the mortification was the least of
it, Philip."

The mortification was the most of it on Ostran-
der's face at that moment. His lips murmured some
phrase of relief ; but his heart took little comfort in
it. Susan was not dull. And Avis's marble recti-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 305

tude of speech was not calculated to make the most
of a matter. Who could have thought that Susan
would have turned up in this way ? Women needed
to be guarded against the accidents of their rela-
tions to each other as much as against graver in-
discretions ; though he must admit that his wife
seemed to have held herself with admirable prudence
throughout a very awkward position. Poor Avis !
How solitary she looked over at the end of the sofa,
across the color of the cushion. Ostrander at that
moment wished with all his heart that his wife might
have loved some better fellow. He wished he had
that talent for openness, which a perfectly honor-
able man may yet lack, but of which he felt the
want keenly in an emergency like this. He said
with genuine agitation, —

" I was wrong, Avis, quite wrong. I ought to
have told you all about that affair. And it's not
quite true, perhaps," he added frankly, u that it
never occurred to me to tell you. I think it did —
must have. But I was having such extra hard work
of it to win you, — do me the justice to remember, —
and a breath would have blown out my chance.
Perhaps the plain truth was, I didn't dare talk about
it. You were not in a state to be tolerant of a lot
of boyish nonsense. And I knew I had nothing
wrong or base to hide from you. And every other
woman seemed so far away from me after I knew
you ! — and all other feeling so false ! "

Her husband spoke with a tremulous passion which

306 THE STORY OF AVIS.

she did not often look to hear now, in the stress and
haste of daily care into which marriage seemed to
resolve itself, in which it seemed a man and woman
must take their love for granted to save time. She
yielded to the stir of feeling like a harp to a hand.
When Philip said with a delicate reproach in his
voice, "After all, Avis, I think I have the worst
of it, you have nothing to repent," she crept towards
him across the rose-colored cushion with a long, ex-
hausted sigh. She was perplexed at finding herself,
at the very moment when her nature had risen most
emphatically in rebuke of his, most weakened with
the need of his love. Was there always an incal-
culable element in the radical metamorphosis which
wifehood wrought ? Was this one of the ambuscades
of nature against which a strong woman must per-
force go fortifying herself to the end of life ? She
hid herself — she would have hidden herself from
her own consciousness just then — upon her hus-
band's breast.

For him, he bowed his head over her in a solemn
and solitary shame. lie could not know what was
in her guarded heart. He felt that he had in a dun
sense lost the right to know. They sat clinging, but
separate.

Presently he began to talk to her again of what
they had been saying, thinking it most natural and
best. He spoke of the night in which he had met
poor Susan in the streets of Harmouth ; he dwelt
upon every detail of the affair which he could recall :

THE STORY OF AVIS. 307

the process gave Mm a late, agreeable sense of can-
dor, lie went farther ; he told his wife that he sup-
posed he had been a susceptible boy. His fancy, he
said, had been a gusty thing till he found her ; he
had never felt quite sure that he was capable of a
permanent feeling, till he loved her. He spoke
sadly, as we speak of a misfortune of the nature as
distinct from a fault.

Aristotle ranks confidence as one of the passions.

Avis felt rather sorry for her husband, and feared
she had been harsh. And then the baby cried, and
she went to him ; and Philip went down to finish the
article on the electric battery.

It was late when he came up stairs again. He found
Avis fallen asleep upon the lounge, half wrapped in
the shoulder-robe from the hammock : the rose and
white silk was fading, like all the other little fancies
about the house. His wife's face, too, seemed to
have faded with the rest of the bridal brightness.
She had thrown herself down with the especial grace
which great exhaustion gives to a lithe figure. Avis
was too much of an artist ever to choose an awkward
pose : she would have writhed under one, he thought,
had she been dead. If she had been alone in the
universe, she would have thrown that firm hand of
hers, upon which no e}^e should ever rest, with just
that slowly- surrendered outline across the happy
pillow. Her hand was a trifle worn, too, like her
cheek. Her husband stood looking down. There
swept and gathered upon his face an expression

308 THE STORY OF AVIS.

which it was as well for both of them, perhaps, that
Avis did not see. Whether it were most of self-
reproach or self-pity, of tenderness or terror, it were
hard to say. Whether he the more distrusted him-
self at that moment, or the more believed in her,
perhaps Philip Ostrander could not for his soul's
sake have answered.

He stooped and kissed her. He was more in love
with his wife just then than a busy man can afford
to be every day in the year. Avis stirred, and,
lifting her hand, gravely drew his face beside hers
on the pillow. She did not tell him that she had not
been asleep. She listened to the faint tapping of
the elm-bough upon the window; a dreaming bird
chirped in its nest somewhere in the summer night ;
in the sensitive, windless distance, the college-boys
were singing Kinkel's " Soldier's Farewell." The
wildly- swelling words came up, —

" How can I bear to leave thee ? "

The mournful monotone of the frogs piped from the
meadows beyond the town, and under all fitful
music she heard the chant of the eternal sea.

Afterwards she wondered how it would have been,
daring to wish that they had died that night, — they
two, — dumb with the sweetness of reconciliation and
resolve ; nay, they three, — Philip with the boyish
love and laughter in his eyes, and the baby sleeping
in the crib, and she herself just then content to have
it so.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 309

It was Philip who was wakeful that night. Visions
which he would just then have gone blind to forget,
electrotyped themselves upon the half -lit room.
Long odorous country twilights, the scent of
honeysuckle about a farmhouse-door, the pressure
of confiding fingers on his arm, the uplifting of a
young face, the touch of trustful life, pursued him
rather with the force of sensations than reflections.
With these came other ghosts, incoherent fancies,
aimless fevers, nameless dreams. He shielded his
eyes from the nursery-lamp, watching the uncon-
scious face of his wife with a fine envy which only
a noble soul, or the nobler side of an inharmonious
soul, could have commanded. She, — she only of
themselves, — he said, was the truly married. He
could think of no lesser joy which he would not have
sacrificed just then, if he could have brought to her
that absolutely unmortgaged imagination which she
had brought to him.

He drank the ashes of his own nature in silence,
as soldiers swallow in their wine the cinders of
their worn-out colors, before unfurling new.

Faint and more faintly in the distance, from the
now dispersing boj^s, the cry came up, —

" Farewell, farewell, my own true love!"

310 THE STORY OF AVIS.

CHAPTER XVH.

" Men think that it is ungrateful to the Creator to say that it is the
design of Providence to keep us in a state of constant pain ; but . . .
were our joys permanent we should never leave the state in which we
are ; we should never undertake aught new. That life we may call happy
which is furnished with all the means by which pain can be overcome :
we have, in fact, no other conception of human happiness." —

" nnHE worst of it is the babies," said aunt Chloe,
J_ giving a severe twist to her flower-pots, that
would have estranged the devotion of any thing else
than the verbenas. But verbenas are not sensitive :
one knows about how far one can go with them. "I
don't see but the worst of it always is the babies, in
this world," she proceeded, and prayed next minute
to be forgiven for so unevangelical a sentiment.
Aunt Chloe -was so stubborn to the advance of civil-
ization, that she still held that the Lord never sent
more mouths than he could fill. She would have
thought it very unwomanly to confess to Avis her
conscious lack of enthusiasm at the birth of this
second child. She blamed herself, that in her honest
heart poor Avis' s experience of motherhood gave
her so much more anxiety than pleasure, and at-
tributed it all to the fact that Mr. Ostrander would use
homoeopathic remedies for the croup. And now —
" Who is going to prepare Avis for this ? " asked
aunt Chloe, turning her back on the verbenas with-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 311

out ceremony, and standing on tiptoe laboriously to
remove a bit of lint from her brother's coat-collar
while she spoke : it was not necessary that they
should meet each other's eyes. When a literary
man is in any kind of trouble, he does not want his
women-folks to know too much about it : that, aunt
Cliloe thought might be easily understood, even in a
business family. When the professor said shortly, —

"I suppose I must tell her myself," going out,
and letting the wind take the door behind him, she
said, " Poor Hegel !" and wondered if the arbute-
lon overheard her. And then she went to start a
lemon-cream for his dinner. She remembered that
she gave him lemon-cream the day the president
vetoed that plan about the post-graduate courses ;
and what a comfort it seemed to be to her brother !
And then perhaps poor Avis would taste of it ; and
there really was no hurry about the child's shirts.
Aunt Chloe, like the rest of the world, had expended
all the poetry of her allegiance upon the first baby.
It did not seem so necessary to crochet the edges of
things for this one, poor little lassie ; and she had
put fully five cents a yard less into the flannels.

Mrs. Ostrander's little girl was four weeks old,
four weeks that very day, as the professor — Heaven
knows how ! — chanced to remember on the way to
his daughter's house. He was rather proud of him-
self for thinking of it, and made the most of the little
matter. He was nervous over what he had to say.
He thought he had never seen Avis looking so poor-

312 THE STORY OF AVIS.

ly. He took the child from her, for she held it
rather listlessly across her arm upon the rose-red
lounge: he lifted the little maiden upon his knee
well-nigh as tenderly as if she had been a leaf from
the " Rhetoric "or " Poetic " in the original auto-
graph. When the boy ran in, he gave him a cough-
lozenge, and said, —

" And how is Van Dyck, to-day ? " with a sense of
unusual originality of expression. In his heart the
professor was rather glad that day, that the boy had
not taken a family name. Avis had never been
heard to express a wish to name her son for his
father. She did not try to explain either to herself
or to another why this was. We do not always re-
member that a woman seeks and finds two perfectly
distinct beings in one and the same man. For her-
self, she can afford to love a human creature ; for
the father of her child she demands a God. That
very weakness in his nature upon which she will
abnegate herself, which perhaps she will lower the
tone of her own soul to idealize into a perversion of
strength, she will defy like a lioness in its transmis-
sion to her son. But Avis did not talk — even to
her own husband — much about her children. There
were throes of the soul in her strong motherhood,
which it was.no more possible to share than to share
a physical pang.

When the professor had repeated, "And how is
Van?" and asked the four- weeks' baby (in the
anxious tone of a man who expects a reply) if she

THE STORY OF AVIS. 313

were sitting quite comfortably, he found that he had
exhausted his nursery vocabulary ; and when he had
said helplessly, —

" Are you quite well to-daj', my dear?" and
when Avis replied that she was gaining slowly every
day, his mind proved to be perfectly barren of any
further phrases logically consequent upon the prem-
ise formed by the morsel of humanity upon his knee.
He began therefore, at once, but with a certain hesi-
tation to which Avis's transparent face became mag-
netically alive, —

44 1 came for a special purpose to-day, Avis : I
want to have a little talk with you about — 3Tour hus-
band."

" Van," said his mother immediately, u run into
the nursery." She spoke to her two-years' baby
in a tone which assumes both intelligence and obe-
dience in the listener. "Mary Ann, take the child
— take both the babies, and do not bring them back
till they are sent for. — Now, father, what is it?
What has Philip done?"

She raised herself upon the pillow with a sharp
motion. The deep circles about her eyes seemed to
widen, like the circles in the sea into which a blazing
jewel is sinking.

" He has not done any thing," said the professor
nervously ; " and that is exactly the trouble."

" Do you mean," asked Avis in a rapid, busi-
ness-like tone, " that my husband is not giving
satisfaction in the university?"

314 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" Somebody must tell you/' pleaded the poor pro-
fessor. " I thought you would rather — perhaps —
it would be I."

" Walk the floor, father," said Avis, after a
moment's silence : " you will feel a great deal more
comfortable . Don' t mind me . ' '

The professor, with a sigh of relief, thrust back
his chair, and trode heavily to and fro : the floor of
the room shook beneath its faded roses.

4 'Now," said Avis, after a slightly longer pause
than before, — "now tell me all about it. I am
quite ready to hear. Stop ! To begin with, does
Philip know this?"

"N-n — I do not know. Probably not. There
has been no direct expression of dissatisfaction made
to him as yet. How sensitive he is to the indirect
command of the situation, it is not possible to say.
There is a committee of the Board in town to-day :
that is why I have annoyed you with it. Proba-
bly the matter will be taken up at once in some
form. I thought you would prefer, and he, that
you should be forewarned."

" Thank you, sir ! " said Avis in a low voice.

"The trouble is" — began the professor, and
stopped.

' ' The trouble is ? " prompted Avis gently.

' ' That your husband does not attend to his busi-
ness," said her father desperately. "The depart-
ment is running behind. It ought to be one of the
most brilliant in the college. Under Professor Co-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 315

bin's day it acquired a prestige, which, of course,
makes it difficult for a younger man, any younger
man. I thought Mr. Ostrander was equal to these
difficulties. He is not : that is about all."

''Still I don't understand," urged Avis. "Is
not Philip enough of a man for the position ? Did
you overestimate his abilit}r to start with ? In plain
words, has not he the brains for it? "

4 ' He has the brains for any thing ! ' ' exclaimed
the professor irritably, "that he chooses to apply
himself to. It is not his ability that has been over-
rated."

"What, then?" insisted Avis. "Does my hus-
band shirk?"

She brought the ugly word out with a keen em-
phasis with which it was not possible to parley.
"Certainty," she added with a momentary flash,
"he is not an idle man: he works hard. Philip is
rather overworked than underworked. I think he is
always busy. I do not in the least understand
where all this activity has gone to, if it has not gone
into the department."

" It is not easy to say where it has gone," replied
her father nervously. "I doubt if he knows him-
self. It is not quite fair to call a man a shirk, per-
haps, while he is occupied in so many — but the
trouble is, they are not the right directions. He
bends himself to too many things. Now it is elec-
tricity ; now it is magnetism ; then it is a process
for utilizing coal-gas. Just now it is a new method

316 THE STORY OF AVIS.

for blowing up caterpillars — blowing up fiddle-
sticks ! His business is in his class-room. He ought
not to see one inch be}Tond the faces of those boys
this five years. He ought to absorb that morning
recitation as the old Hebrew prophets swallowed the
scroll on which the word of God was written. Every
fossil ought to be a poem to him. He shouldn't
be able to say Old Red Sandstone without a thrill !
He should have conquered his lecture-room by
this time. There is a soul in science : he should
have handled her body reverently for her soul's
sake. He should have overwhelmed that class with
his inspirations, as the deluges have overmastered
the mountains. When every man in it worth edu-
cating could get an enthusiasm out of a chip of gran-
ite ; when a man he'd marked down on examination
would huzza for him in the street ; when the college
papers were afraid to lampoon him, — then he might
have taken to his magazine-writing, and his what-
not, and the more welcome. When the college could
afford to be proud of him was the time to let the
world know that such a man as Philip Ostrander
was in it. Well" — the professor brought himself
up short before his daughter's sofa with burning
eyes — " I am tiring you, Avis. It is a great pity :
it is all a pit}^."

"Then Philip has done — none of this?" pro-
ceeded Avis authoritatively. "He has been impa-
tient, volatile — he has " — She paused.

" He has shirked the drudgery of the class-room,"

THE STORY OF AVIS. 317

,said her father in a lower and calmer tone. " He
got weary of it. He has dissipated himself irf un-
consequent ways. He has no more business to be
giving popular lectures on physiolog}T, or writing
poetry for the newspapers, than I have to set up a
milliner's shop on the college green. It is too bad,
too bad. But, my dear, I'm tiring you."

" The trouble," began Avis, hesitating.

" The trouble with your husband, my child," said
the professor with something of gathering enthusi-
asm in his manner, as though he propounded a well-
involved metaphysical problem to a rather superior
class, — " the trouble is an extraordinary lack of in-
tellectual constanc}r. It — it really is nothing worse,
my dear," he added soothingly. " It does not pre-
vent him from possessing all those domestic virtues
which have doubtless endeared him to you ; and I
must say," tremulously — "to myself as well. I
have been very much drawn to the }'Oung man, as to
— a — son. After we have adjusted ourselves to
this — blow, my dear, something else will open for
him. I see no reason for indulging in any undue —
regrets. As for yourself ' ' —

" Should Philip resign at once?" demanded Avis
in the metallic tone which resolutely suppressed
feeling gives to a tender voice.

u It may be — I cannot tell till after the meeting
of the Board. It is impossible to say what will be
done, or when, about a successor. But it will not
be expected that his resignation shall take effect

318 THE STORY OF AVIS.

before the end of the year. That will give us six
months to look about us in," added the professor
rather miserably.

He came and stood beside his daughter, looking
compassionately at her. He did not seek to offer
her a consolation which her nature would inevitably
reject. Her lip did not tremble. She had the half-
recoiling but wholly patient look of one who was
adjusting herself to a familiar experience in a slightly
altered form. She put up her hand, and said only, —

4 'Thank you, father! "

And he said, —

" There, there, my dear ! "

And then the little boy ran in, with Mary Ann
and the baby behind him.

Avis gathered both the children in her arms with
a quick and passionate motion. Her heart said,
" Oh! what have we done to bring them into this
world? What have we done ? What can we do ?"
But her lips said nothing at all.

11 The little folks interfere with the studio just
now," said the professor awkwardly, coming back
when he was across the threshold of the room. He
was sick at heart to say some tender word. " If her
mother had lived," he thought, "this might some-
how have been spared." Whenever Avis was in
any trouble, he always said, "If her mother had
lived " — The great professor was as unconscious
of any logical flaw in this sweet inconsequence, as
the lover is of the laws regulating the circulation
of the blood in the lip he kisses.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 319

"Yes, papa,'* said Avis, falling back into the
pretty girlish fashion of speech that she had scarcely
outgrown before her marriage.

"But as soon as you are about again — and —
the little girl begins to grow, we shall have some
more pictures I hope, my dear? "

" Yes, papa," patiently. But she said nothing
more. It did not seem to help any thing to talk
about it. And then the baby began to cry — her
little daughter — her woman-child. Avis looked at
her, and said, " You too, you too!" It seemed to
her just then more than she could bear, to know
that she had given life to another woman.

When her husband came to her with the news, a
day or two after, she had so far adjusted her mind
to it, that she was able to receive its announcement
from himself in the only way which — long after —
she could have recalled without regret.

He came in looking very pale. She had heard him
coughing in the hall : the day was damp. He threw
himself heavily upon the lounge, and said, —

" Has your father told you what has happened? "

"Yes, Philip."

"How long since?"

"On Tuesday."

" Some way or other," said Ostrander irritably,
" I have offended Cobin. He has been more or less
cavalierly in his treatment of me this long while.
When it's time for a man to die, he never can under-
stand why other men are alive. He opposed me

320 THE STORY OF AVIS.

about the museum ; he complained of my Star Course
Lectures ; I haven't raised a point in Faculty meeting
this year, that he hasn't voted down. I attribute
this disaster entirely to the cause which has ruined
so many a young man, — the jealousy of his senior
colleague."

Avis made no reply. She could not speak just
then. It did not seem a sane expense of words,
which, at best, must be hard to choose. She let
him dribble on petulantly for a few minutes. Her
boy at her knee was vociferously claiming it an evi-
dence of extraordinary maternal depravity, that his
little sister was not allowed rubber-boots with which
to go to walk with him. The child's voice and his
father's chimed together oddly. She stood apart
from them, — these two intensely wrought male per-
sonalities, with whose clamorous selfism it was im-
possible to reason. It struck her unpleasantly at
that moment that Van might be like his father, if he
lived to grow up. She pushed the boy a little away
from her, then drew him penitently back.

" What in Heaven's name is going to become of
us," Philip was saying, "is more than I can see.
The mere mortification of it is enough to kill a
stronger man than I am."

"Never mind, dear," said Avis, exactly as she
spoke to the child. She came up, and bent over the
lounge, passing her strong hand across his forehead
and hair, with the magnificent, maternal motions
which her fingers had learned more slowly than those

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 321

of most women, but more passionately. When he
said, —

"My head aches horribly !" she stooped and
kissed him, and said, —

" My poor boy ! "

It was impossible for her to render any thing more
reasonable than tenderness to a humiliated man.

" It is hard for }TOU, coming just now," said Os-
trander, rather as an afterthought. " I wish the
children were not both babies. It's a confoundedly
tough thing for a man with a young family to be
turned adrift in this way. I should have thought/'
irritably, "that your father's influence fnight have
prevented it. But it seems he couldn't or didn't
exercise it. I shall write my resignation to-morrow,
and get it off my mind. Ought you to stand so
long, Avis? "

"It does not hurt me;" but she sank wearily
down upon the edge of the lounge. Philip did not
move to make room for her, but lay with his brows
knotted with pain, and his restless eyes flitting about
the room. She slipped down upon her knees, and
so knelt, crouched and cramped, till the life of her
sensitive hand had spent itself upon him.

" The pain is gone, thank you," he said at last
politely. Avis rose at once, and took a chair. In
these days, if she caressed her husband, it was with
a sufficient and distinct reason : the time had tripped
by when he expected her to sit within reach of his
hand, within vibration of his breath, within the maze

322 THE STORY OF AVIS.

of all that sweet young folly which is wiser than the
love of the ages to those who love. It was so with
all married people, she supposed.

"Whatever," began Philip, "is to turn up
next" —

" Whatever we do next, I hope we shall be able
to persevere in it," suggested Avis gently. She
was not a woman of reproaches. Philip Ostrander's
wife never " nagged " him. He shrugged his shoul-
ders now, and said, —

" Perhaps it is all for the best. I was worn out
with that eternal class-room," rather sullenly.
Then he complained of the draught, and said that
he had taken colcl, and asked what on earth the
baby was crying about now.

Avis' s heart brooded over him, seeing him so
irritable and weak, as if he had been a wounded
thing. She drew a little nearer, and began to plan
and purpose for him, as she would for an excited
boy who had got into a scrape. She brought the
whole machinery of her superb imagination to bear
upon their future. She presented it to him in the
colors of courage and the ardors of hope. She spoke
with a cheer and assurance that rang hollow to her
own forebodings. Ostrander warmed at this tremu-
lous fire He talked of his command of the lan-
guages, of his medical education. He thanked
Heaven that he had never been a man of one idea ;
and now, whatever versatility it had pleased Provi-
dence to endow him with would serve them through

THE STORY OF AVIS.

this emergency till another position offered. Avis
listened, and said, —

" Yes, Philip." She sat with her face turned
from him.

" Of course it will be impossible to meet the first
annoyance of this by living along here," said Os-
trander in a tone that admitted of no reply. " I
must get abroad for a month or so at the end of the
year ; but I think we can manage that. And, as
soon as I return, I shall take to lecturing. It is
impossible that we should get into a very tight place.
I am not sure that the freedom of such a life will
not be better for my health. Whenever I get strong
enough to go under the harness of all this drudgery
again, some other college will be ready for me. At
least, a good American can always go West. We
won't give up the ship for one blunder, Avis."

He put out his hand to her affectionately; he
thanked her for her courage and consideration ; he
was afraid he had overwearied her in her state of
health. His spirits and his tenderness rose together.
And Avis to herself said, with a leap of her strong
heart, "No, we will give up nothing, not for many
blunders." She gathered him under the wing of
her great love with a kind of fierce maternal pro-
tection; her husband, — the man who had won her
lost freedom from her ; life of her life, and soul of
her soul ; hers in his weakness as once in his glit-
tering strength ; hers in the fault and folly as in the
beauty and the brilliance of his nature ; still hers,

324 THE STORY OF AVIS.

for still he loved her: nothing could snatch that
from her, — her one sure fact, abiding calm above
the gusty weather of her life. Philip loved her :
let the rest go. Why should she fret?

"It will all come right," she said, letting her
hand drop reticently into his. " There are two of
us, Philip, to try again."

She was glad to see him catch the glow of her
strong spirit so quickly. She smiled when he got
up nervously, and walked the room, calculating the
expenses of the European trip. It pleased her bet-
ter, she said to herself, than if he had staid where
he was, and stopped to fondle to her. And she
never told him, when, her strained nerves being too
receptive, she caught the headaches which she had
cured.

She threw herself down wearily, and watched him.
She thought she could never have noticed before
that uncertain curve in his delicate lips ; perhaps that
little something in the shape of his head, which had
always troubled her — was it a deficiency in the
organ of tenderness? either the cause or the effect,
as Lavater would have put it, of some weakness in
the nature ? Ah, well ! Poor Philip ! Her heart
assumed a new burden, as if a third child had been
born unto her. Was it possible that her soul had ever
gone upon its knees before the nature of this man?
So gentle had been the stages by which her great
passion had grown into a mournful compassion, her
divine ideal become this unheroic human

THE STORY OF AVIS. 325

the king of her heart become the dependent on its
care, — so quietly this had come about, that, in the
first distinct recognition of it all, she felt no shock ;
only a stern, sad strain upon the muscle of her
nature. There was, indeed, a certain manhood in
her — it is latent in every woman, and assumes
various forms. Avis possessed it only in a differing
degree, not in differing kind, from most other women,
— an instinct of strength, or an impulse of protection,
which lent its shoulders spontaneously to the increas-
ing individuality of her burden.

She spoke to her husband out of a deepening self-
restraint, down whose solitary corridors she did not
suffer herself to look too closely. She bowed to
the great and awful law of married story, by which,
so surely as life and love shall one day wear them-
selves to death and calm, we ma}r know that it shall
befall the stronger to wear the yoke of the weaker
soul.

But late that night, when the wind was high about
the house, and the firelight, djing, flung wild shapes
upon the walls, Avis got up, and went into the little
room where her children were, to think it all over
alone with them. She could not sleep. The shadow
of their disordered future, of her own dishonored
aspiration, of bedraggled ideals, of clambering fears,
sat heavily upon her. Her thought flickered con-
fusedly, now upon her own unfitness for the cares of
motherhood, now upon the lapse of time before they
should have Van's school-bills to pay. Then as the

326 THE STORY OF AVIS.

child stirred, coughing slightty, she must sit mourn-
ing about it, and wondering what else he had inher-
ited from his father besides his delicate lungs. Then
her imagination flew like a bird into a clouded sun-
rise, across the future of her little daughter. She
turned from one little face to the other ; she gathered
them under her knotted arms half savagely, as if she
would shut them in from the chance of this awful
gift called life, which she had imposed upon them.
It seemed to her a kind of mortal sin that she should
have bestowed upon her children a father whom
she might not bid them kneel to worship. She
felt a sense of personal guilt for every pain or peril
that was in store for these two poor little confid-
ing creatures — her children, their children — to be
reared in a sick and poor and struggling, and per-
haps (Heaven only knew) an inharmonious home.

"Nothing can make this right," she said, and
fell upon her knees beside them, constrained by
that mute prayer without ceasing, through which all
lofty motherhood draws the breath of its strong life.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 327

CHAPTER XVIII.

" The effects of weakness are inconceivable, and I maintain that
they are far vaster than those of the most violent passions."— CAR-
DINAL DE RET/.

" Ce temps oil le bonheur brille et soudain s'efface,
Comme un sourire interrompu ! " — VICTOB, HUGO.

IT is said that Greenland, five or six centuries
ago, was temperate. Parts of Siberia were once
mild. Sulphur past the point of fusion, at a higher
degree of temperature, consolidates again.

Perhaps most married people reach a point where,
for the time being, they consider their union with
each other to be the greatest mistake of their lives.
Fortunate are they who pass this period, as the
younger and more irritable passion may, within a
year or two after the wedding-day. It is the slowly
growing divergence, as it is the slowly gathering at-
traction, which is to be feared. That tether galls
most terribly from which the satin surface is longest
in wearing down.

Avis and Philip Ostrander had been married three
years and a half.

She was thinking of this one night rather sadly,
more leisurely indeed than she might often think of
any thing in that careworn summer. Beneath the
pressure of their increasing anxieties and the more

328 THE STORY OF AVIS.

clamorous strain of the nursery, her elastic strength
had at length surrendered. For the first time in her
life, she had been dangerously ill.

Stung with the immediate needs of their position,
in the heart of July she had put the new-born baby
off her knee, and gone up into the hot attic studio
to finish a portrait. Then came the old and common-
place story : any woman knows it. Why the chil-
dren must needs select that precise time to have the
whooping-cough? why the cook must get married
the week before Commencement? why Philip must
just then and there have an attack of pleurisy ? why
the New- York relatives, unheard of for years, should
come swarming in on class-day? why she herself
should come down with diphtheria the evening that
Philip's resignation was accepted? — such questions
eternity alone can be long enough to answer to the
satisfaction of some of us. A fig for the mysteries
of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, the origin
of species or pre-Adamic man ! when in teeth of it
all, flat comes the professor with rheumatism, and
aunt Chloe even cannot be spared to High Street.

It was very kind in Barbara Allen to make the
offer. Really, there was no one else to be had. And
Barbara was alwa}Ts kind : she certainly had a genius
for the sick-room, as Philip and Avis agreed. Avis
accepted the attention gratefully, dropped her house-
hold in Barbara's hands as gladly as the escaping
soul may drop the d}'ing bod}T, and proceeded imme-
diately to be as ill as she knew how. Her sickness

THE STORY OF AVIS. 329

was characteristically intense, and culminated rap-
idly. Stirring one clay, out of the famine of exhaus-
tion which renders that disease, when fatal, a pecu-
liar prolongation of the agony of dissolution, she
caught an expression upon her husband's face which
absolutely aroused her.

" Philip," she said, " am I going to die? "

" Oh, God knows!" he had cried, before he
could be silenced. Avis had not thought of it be-
fore. She lay a few moments perfectly quiet. She
did not, — like that great creature to whom late
happiness brought an early death, to whose genius
love was superadded, only that both might mercifully
sleep before the conflict of ages should befall which
has set these two at odds in women, — she did not
cry out, —

" God will not separate us, we have been so
happij!"

No, not that.

Afterwards she remembered that she did not
think about her husband at all. In one supreme
moment the whole future of two motherless chil-
dren passed before her. One of those clairvoyant
flashes which sometimes seem to make motherhood
a form of prophecy, flared out across these uncon-
scious lives for whose creation she was responsible.
Oddly enough the thing presented itself to her in
isolated pictures, as if she had been turning the
leaves of an illustrated book. She saw Van — a
large bo}r in jackets that did not fit — coming home

330 THE STORY OF AVIS.

with his rubber-boots wet: nobody told him to
change them, 'so he had the lung-fever; and the
nursing was poor, so he got the cough.

As distinctly, she saw him skulking in from col-
lege one night (a moonlit night) ; he swore as he
came up the steps ; there was something wrong, but
he did not tell his father. Van would never confide
in his father. Then she saw her little daughter.
Avis was sure that she knew what her daughter was
like, before the child was a week old, — a reticent,
solitary little girl, hating her patchwork, always
down by the sea ; as full of dreams as a dark night,
and as impenetrable, — her daughter, brought up by
another woman. There probably would be a step-
mother. Rather a pretty woman, Avis thought she
would be (Philip's taste was fastidious), well-bred
and a little dressy, a member of a Harmouth read-
ing-club, but without a career ; probably her bread
would always rise ; and she would turn the studio
into an excellent lumber-room, with every thing done
up in camphor, and carefully shaken twice a year on
account of the moths.

" Doctor," she repeated, "is it death that is the
matter with me? " The baby, as her mother spoke,
began to cry from the adjoining room ; not cross!}',
as the boy used to, but with a low, confiding wail.
Avis could never be impatient with her little girl's
cry. Van, too, came trotting up vociferously, de-
manding, behind the sick-room door, to be let in
and ask mamma why he couldn't get the kitty

THE STORY OF AVIS. 331

through the ice-cream freezer. His voice, as his
father hushed him, died away rebelliously; A sin-
gular upheaval of the moral nature seemed to Avis
to take place in herself; something stronger, be-
cause more vital than the revolt of the will or the
physical recoil against death. Her children assumed
the form of awful claims upon her conscience ; they
presented a code to her, absolute, imperious, inte-
gral with the law of God.

"It is wicked " she said aloud, " it is wicked for
the mother of two little children — babies — to die.
Doctor, 3^ou should have told me I was in danger of
committing such a mistake. I will not do it. Do
you understand ? I will not die ! Call in my hus-
band. Tell him to kneel down there and pray.
God understands about this. It is my duty to
live."

Magnificently she set herself moment by moment
to conquer death. She counted the dropping of the
medicine which she could not swallow, the passing
of her pulse, the beating of her heart, the ticking of
the watch. She cast the whole force of her nature
upon that die. Her will rang iron to the crisis.
She repeated at intervals, —

" It is my duty to live."

She continued the struggle for three days, grow-
ing weaker. On the fourth she swallowed brandy ;
on the next her medicine; beef-juice on the next.
Every physician knows such cases. " The soul
makes her own body," said the great physician
Stahl.

33.2 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Avis recovered rapidly.

Perhaps the inevitable re-actions of convalescence
told more heavily upon Ostrander than upon most
people. His mercurial sensitiveness to discomforts
rose as the excitement of danger ebbed. The anno}'-
ances of sickness acted upon him like cologne upon
a blooded dog. (If any reader fail to understand the
force of this simile, let him put the experiment in
practice.) Ostrander had never been able to remain
within hearing of the children's cough. Once when
the boy was ill, long ago, worn with watching, Avis
had asked him to take the baby a while. He said,
"Oh, certainly ! " and paced the floor with Master
Van, who was black in the face with vocal disappro-
bation of the arrangements, for half an hour. Then
Avis heard Philip say through his clinched teeth, —

" ril get a nurse for this child to-morrow, if it
costs twelve dollars a week."

She never asked him to take the babies again.

On this particular night, when it occurred to Avis
to lie thinking just how long they had been married,
he had come up after tea and said, —

" Nicely to-night, Avis? " And she had said, —

" Thank you, Philip ! " And he had asked, —

"If we leave the doors open, will it not rest you
to hear a little music before I go out? " And she
had repeated, —

" Thank you, Philip ! " And then he had said, —

" Pellet makes a mistake using so much camphor
in your case," and had kissed her forehead, and
gone away.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 333

She tore the bandage off her throat when he had
gone. Philip was always fastidious about scents ; no
wonder this kept him out of the sick-room so much.
She felt a little solitary, listening to Barbara's fine
execution down stairs, as the twilight came on. But
she was glad and grateful to have Philip amused.
Barbara was playing the "Adelaide," then the
operas , < l Trovatore , ' ' "Lucia , " " Faust . ' ' Every
thing she touched to-night had the sway of famil-
iarity : every thing was full of arias, of — it was not
easy to say what. Barbara was not a woman of
strong emotions. She possessed, however, abundant
sensitiveness to strong effects.

Avis thought how long it was since her husband
had asked her to play to him. She remembered the
day when he said beneath his breath, —

" What a touch !"

But now Barbara had begun to sing. She sang, —

" Oh ! dinna ye mind, young man, she said,

When the red wine ye were spillin',
How ye made the cup gae round and round,
An slighted Barbara Allen ?"

Barbara was still playing, when, pliant to the quiet
temper of -returning strength, Avis fell asleep.
When she waked, it was late, and the house was
still.

The door was open into the hall. Philip, in com-
ing up, must have forgotten it. He usually came in,
but, now that she was so much better, sometimes
merely looked in, on his way to the little blue room

334 THE STORY OF AVIS.

which he occupied. Avis rose to shut the door : as
she did so, she glanced at her watch. It was two
o'clock.

The gas in the hall was still lighted ; and they
could not afford to waste gas in these days. Think-
ing it a pity to wake the nurse, and feeling her
strength rather rising than falling with the exertion,
Avis flung over her wrapper a shawl, — the carmine
one, — folding it about her face and head, and crept
along, hand over hand upon the balusters, clinging
with care. Her bare feet made no sound upon the
carpeted stairs : not a board creaked beneath her
tread she noticed, as she crawled down.

Half way down the stairs, she was surprised to
hear the sound of a voice, low and irregularly artic-
ulate ; no — voices — two. The sound came from the
parlor ; and then she saw that the parlor-door, too,
was open, and that the room was still lighted like
the hall.

She was for the moment slightly startled. There
was usually a little tramp and burglar panic in Har-
mouth in the early autumn nights, and usually with
some reason. Then she remembered that Philip
had said something of an appointment with an Eng-
lishman, with a notion about making telegraphy
subservient to audible speech. But she crept on to
make quite sure and safe, staggering a little, holding
by the wall, and so into the doorway.

It was not the Englishman.

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 335

CHAPTER XIX.

PRO : " How long remained the fickle true to thee? "
EPI: Her vision still is true : 'tis ever near me."

GOETHE'S PANDORA.

BARBARA ALLEN sat on the piano-stool, lean-
ing backward, one elbow upon the music-rack,
and the poise of her pleasant figure resting upon the
bruised white ke}Ts.

The sheets of music lay scattered about ; one or
two had fallen to the floor : they lay with disordered
leaves. A hand surprised by some momentary dis-
turbance would have dropped them so. Barbara's
touch was habitually self-possessed ; that of few
women more so. Barbara's head was bent. Her
bronze curls fell against her cheek, sweeping clean
that fine profile from the comb to the curve of the
neck. There were traces of agitation upon her face.

Philip Ostrander sat beside her. He had drawn
his chair, so that its edge and the edge of the piano-
stool collided. The hardly-acquired housekeeper's
impulse in Avis noticed this, even at that moment,
and she thought how the varnish was getting rubbed.

One of Ostrander 's arms was stretched out, his
hand resting upon the bass keys. It could not be
strictly said' that it encircled Barbara's waist ; but
there was no back to the piano-stool, and Barbara

THE STORY OF AVIS.

was tired. In his other hand he held, alas ! he held
her own. There were dimples in Barbara's fingers ;
she had cool, clear-cut, conscious nails. She had
put her hand in Ostrander's, so that the profile of
the thumb and first finger was presented to view ; a
constitutional amendment on nature, which a hand
not altogether of the smallest may surely find legiti-
mate. Nature had as yet suffered no such surprise
in Barbara as to enable her to forget this ; but then
Barbara had never allowed a man to hold her hand
before.

Ostrander's eyes were fastened upon Barbara's
face. They wore the look which a woman accus-
tomed to the admiration of men would feel, whether
through the lid of her eye or her coffin. You think
you can watch a woman as you will, sir, because
she happens to be at the other end of the room?
transfigured in conversation with the hostess ? netted
in the labyrinth of a crocheted shawl-strap ? up to
the ears of her soul in the poem or the sonata?
promising the next polka to your rival? or adoring
the Tintoretto, with her cool, round shoulders to you?
Do you fancy that you can lift an eyelash that she
will not know it, any more than you can pass a com-
ment on the weather that she will not hear ?

Barbara's lashes swept her flushed cheek ; but
she would have seen Ostrander's look through her
back-hair.

Ostrander's face wore a peculiar illumination
when he admired any thing, — a statue, a picture,

THE STORY OF AVIS. 337

or a woman. The corners of his mouth quivered a
little, and his lips parted in a smile beside whose
silent homage a spoken word would have seemed a
definite rudeness. There was a refined, cool light in
his eye, too, which Barbara exceedingly admired.
She had never seen a man look just like that. His
whole bearing was that of one swayed by a delicate
intoxication, in which all that was noblest, calmest,
and most permanent in himself, deferred to the ob-
ject which had excited it.

It was this look which his wife — years past, now,
there in the garden-studio, when the apple-blossoms
fell about them — used to surprise, looking up sud-
denly from her painting ; and then sit lifting her
beautiful head gravely beneath it. It was this look
which his wife surprised now.

Philip Ostrander was called a man of great dis-
cretion in his relations to women. It is doubtful if
his most wayward fancy had ever betrayed him into
a positive social imprudence before. — What, then,
would he have done with Barbara's hand?

When Avis saw him lift it, prisoned there like a
bird against his leaning shoulder, she stirred, and
would have uttered his name. Her lips made no
sound ; but her trailing dress rustled upon the floor.
Barbara started. Philip turned slowly around.

His wife in the doorway, haggard from her mortal
sickness, stood colossal. She was paler, perhaps,
than need be, in that red drapery. She gathered it,
for it had fallen almost to her knee, in one hand.

338 THE STORY OP AVIS.

The other was thrust into the empty air. She had
never reminded him of her great Venus as she did at
that moment. In the blind action of her arm and
figure was something of the same shrinking as of a
creature from whom a shield had been torn away.
The real or fancied similarity in her features, too,
was emphasized by the way she held her head.

Ity degrees her pallor deepened dreadfully. Her
features seemed to grow thin and sheer like a marble
medallion of a spirit.

Philip Ostrander looked from her to Barbara's
curls ; and his eyes dropped like a falling star.

Barbara drew away her hand swiftly. He would
not have had her do this : it was an implication
which, he began angrily to say to himself,, the cir-
cumstances did not call for. He roused himself at
this, and said in his easy way, —

" Why, Avis!"

But Barbara said nothing.

Avis also said nothing — nothing at all. She
advanced a step or two into the room, and in silence
pointed to the little Egyptian clock upon the mantel-
piece, whose bronze sphinx told the hour, — seven
minutes past two o'clock. With the other hand she
pointed to the door.

Barbara arose at once. She said she had no idea
it was so late ; she muttered something about being
very sorry, and that she was afraid Avis would take
cold. Barbara had never got into such a strait
before. She was frightened.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 339

Avis did not stir when Barbara left the room, but
stood, still pointing with a grand sweep of her arm
to the open door. Perhaps never in her youth and
joy and color had she possessed more beauty than
at that moment. It is undeniable, explain it as you
will, that Ostrander's most conscious emotion just
then was one of overpowering admiration for his
wife. He felt a kind of terrible taunting pride in
her. He did not believe there was another such
woman in the world. He could have flung himself
at her feet, if he had dared.

His eyes, as hers transfixed them, seemed suddenly
to reel ; then came on their dead, dense look. He ap-
peared to watch her from a vast distance like a being
from another sphere ; as a dumb animal watches a
human face ; or the victim of some pitiable mania
regards the sane.

" Don't be offended over a little thing, Avis," he
began, collecting himself, stumbling into the weakest
thing he could have said.

He wished hotly that she would have burst into
reproaches, accusations, into a passion of repulse or
rebuke. The woman who does this puts herself at
radical disadvantage with most men. Perhaps,
mingled with the unworthy consciousness of this
little psychological fact, a nobler impulse stirred in
Ostrander's heart. Perhaps he knew that he de-
served the worst she could have given, and it might
have been a certain relief to him just then, to get
what he deserved.

340 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

But Avis answered him not a word. Her lip
curled slightly, — his wife's lip, — curled above him
as she stood looking down. A single articulate syl-
lable would have broken the exquisite edge of her
scorn ; but she did not utter it. He felt under her
silence as men may under crucifixion, which does
not permit the victim even to writhe.

" You are making a mountain out of a mole-hill,"
he said irritably, rising with his fugitive look, deter-
mined to put an end to this dumb and dangerous
scene; "and it is a terrible imprudence for you
to be here in the cold. You will have a relapse to-
morrow. Let me help you up the stairs."

Advancing, he put out both hands, and would
have touched, supporting her. But Avis, with a
slight, imperious gesture, waved him away.

"Very well," he said, "have it as you will."
He stood to watch her from the bottom of the stairs,
anxious for her, till he should see her safely up.
She had swept by him with a certain strength, but
tottered on the first stair. He sprang and caught
her ; held her for one moment so impetuously, that
his trained ear detected the irregular, sluggish beat-
ing of her heart, — a paratytic beat. It alarmed him,
and he said hurriedly, —

" You are not fit to get up by yourself. Don't be
so hard on a man, Avis ! "

But she disengaged herself, and crawled up alone.
He followed at a little distance to catch her, if she
fell. Thus they reached the landing ; and she went

THE STORY OF AVIS. 341

on into the faded rose-red room, and shut the door.
The wind was rising as she went in. She crawled
weakly into bed, and lay with her hands crossed, lis-
tening to it. It blew all night fitfully, like the re-
solve of some great live, lawless nature ; but it rose
perceptibly from hour to hour. Towards morning
it lulled.

In the morning aunt Chloe came over, and Barbara
sent up word, that, if she could be spared, perhaps
she had better go home. Avis replied that she
should like to see her. Barbara came awkwardly
enough. She had been crying, and her front-hair
was out of crimp. Avis looked at her with gaunt,
insomniac eyes : it was evident that she had not
slept, but she was quite at ease. She thanked Bar-
bara for all her kindness, and bade her a grave
good-by.

Barbara looked sullen for a minute ; then a quiver
ran through the bronze curls. She began to sob.

u Pray don't," said Avis wearily. " I am not
quite strong enough — to — see people cry. But I
understand your feeling. It is so dangerous for a
woman to commit an indecorum ! Society does not
excuse her as it does a man. Will you ask aunt
Chloe to bring the children up? "

Avis spoke gently. A certain terror fell upon her
at finding in her own heart no sting sharper than
that of a sad scorn. She had rather hoped that she
might find herself a little jealous of Barbara. She
hung over her love for her husband as we hang over

342 THE STORY OF AVIS.

a precious, diseased life, of which we have not the
courage to despair. She fanned it wildly. Better
fire than frost ! Better the seething than the freez-
ing death ! But all her soul was numb. She looked
calmly at Barbara's curls and fresh maiden colors
and attitudes. She could not be jealous of so slight
a thing. With a sickening dismay she perceived
that Philip — he too — began to seem to her small
and far, like a figure seen in the valley of an incoher-
ent dream. She felt as if she had suddenly stepped
into a world of pygmies, and had a liliputian code to
learn before she could take up the duties of citizen-
ship therein.

Barbara stopped crying. She stole down stairs
with dry, startled eyes. An indecorum f Society?
Excuse? Barbara repeated the words confusedly.
Two weeks ago she would have regarded the suppo-
sition that any human lip would ever tell her she
had been indecorous, with a pleasant unconcern, like
that with which she regarded the habits of the cave-
men, or the subject of unconscious cerebration.
Barbara thought she ought to see Philip Ostrander
at once, and ask him if he thought any harm was
done. But he was in the study, and the door was
locked. When he came out, he asked where she
was, and his little boy told him she had gone.

Now, Barbara forgot to take her sun-umbrella. It
was the middle of the afternoon before Ostrander
saw it — a pretty purple silk toy — hanging by the
clutch of a little ivoiy hand upon the hat- tree. Os-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 343

trander saw it, and thought he had better carry it
over to her : he must walk somewhere. Under the
circumstances it would be more fitting that Barbara
should not come for it ; it would be pleasanter, in •
deed, for Avis, he said to himself: and Avis had
expressed no wish to see him to-day. He put on
his hat and strolled out, carrying the parasol. A
delicate perfume hung about it, something that he
had never known any woman but Barbara to use :
he remembered that he fancied it when she was
taking care of that gunshot wound. Barbara had
certainly been very kind to them both. It was not
right that his wife's over-scrupulousness should re-
act unpleasantly upon her. The least that a sense
of honor demanded of him now was to see to it that
Barbara should not in any manner suffer from his
folly. If he did not guard her, nobody would. No
man with a spark of chivalry in him would allow
the woman whom he had so unfortunately drawn
into a trifling imprudence, to meet the consequences
of it unwarned or unshared. Then, too, he would
not be misunderstood himself in the affair, if he
could help it. If he had said any thing that sounded
indiscreet, — and he could not remember that he
really had, — it would be better to explain to Bar-
bara precisely what he did mean : there should be
no mistake in the thing anywhere. There was no
need that any man with a sound head should get
into that fog-bank of relations in which men and
women were always going astray for simple lack of

344 THE STORY OP AVIS.

a clear understanding each of what the other
wanted. He thought the sooner he had a talk with
Barbara the better.

He went to her brother's house, and she presented
herself at once : her eyelids were still delicately dis-
colored, like rain-beaten flowers, with tears. Os-
trander did not go in, but stood in the hall, hesitating.
He said, —

u Here is }Tour parasol." And Barbara thanked
him ; and then there was an awkward pause.

" I want to see you — a few moments," said Os-
trander gravely.

"There is company in the parlor," replied Bar-
bara, with downcast eyes.

"It is pleasant on the beach this afternoon,"
urged Ostrander impulsively. It did not seem quite
possible now to go home without seeing Barbara
alone.

Barbara said, " Just as you like." She got her
hat, and they went out in silence together into the
hot summer afternoon.

When they reached the beach, he said, " It will be
cooler on the water." Nothing but common-places
occurred to him.

He pushed clown the boat, — his wife's little
dory, — and helped Barbara in. She slipped, and
he caught her, but neither spoke : she released her
hands slowly. An old fisherman stood on the beach,
hauling his dirty boat, with a rasping noise, across
the coarse gray sand.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 345

" I wouldn't put up that there sail ef I was yeou,"
he said.

" And why not? " argued Ostrander, glad to have
something to smile at just then. Avis and he had
always differed about that sail : she never used it.

" You mought as well put spurs onto an angel as
a sail onto a dory," observed the fisherman, dogmat-
ically moistening his hands for another tug at his
boat. ;' 'Tain't in the natur' of a dory to stand it :
there's natur' in boats likewise as there's natur' in
fishes and folks. No use rowin' agin tide in none
of us. A dory, now, knows what she wants done as
clear as yeou do, or the lady. Ef I was yeou, I
wouldn't cross her."

" I wouldn't, either," said Barbara.

So Ostrander took the oars. He rowed hard, but
composedly, with the long, virile Harmouth stroke.
He rowed quite into the heart of the harbor ; but
few boats were in sight. He drew in his oars, and
they drifted beneath the blazing sky. Barbara put
up the sun-umbrella, and they sat under it in a pur-
ple light. The breeze struck pleasantly across the
bay, and the sun dipped. The wind lifted one of
Barbara's curls, and blew it softly against his cheek.
He looked at her ; but she did not return his look.
She sat quite still.

"I am very sorry," he began, and stopped.
What in the name of reason was he to say he was
sorry for? Barbara came to his aid. She turned
her head: the wind was at her back, and carried

346 THE STORY OF AVIS.

all her hair forward, so that her face looked out of a
soft aureola. She said, —

" Avis was very much annoyed."

" I suppose so," answered Ostrander irritably.

4 'Do you think," asked Barbara timidly, " that
any — any thing unpleasant — any harm will come ? "

" Harm cannot come where there is no harm,"
said Ostrander, suddenly remembering that this was
the thing to say.

" Certainly not," replied Barbara more coura-
geously.

4 c The whole world is welcome to hear any thing
that I have ever said to you, Miss Barbara," he
went on in a confident, clear tone.

" Why, of course," said Barbara.

It seemed for the moment to make quite sure of
it, that he should say it, and that she should assent
to it. He took up the oars with a sigh of relief,
and instinctively, perhaps, made toward the shore,
as if it were safer to let this scene end just where it
was.

The tide, while they drifted, had turned. He
rowed a few minutes in the hot sun, laboriously,
and then laid down the oars: he came and sat
under the sun-umbrella. Barbara's face looked un-
usualty tender in the purple light. Their eyes met.
Necessarily they sat so near, that he could perceive
the agitated fluctuation of her breath.

" The man was right," he said in a low tone : " it
is of no use to row against the tide."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 347

" Oh, hush ! " said Barbara.

It is possible to say a very dangerous thing in a
perfectly safe way. Ostrander 's readiness both of
the lip and of the fancy at once exposed and pro-
tected him in the possession of this perilous power.
When he said, "It is of no use to row against the
tide," he certainly was not altogether thinking of
the tides of Harmouth Harbor. But when Barbara
not only perceived that he was not, but committed
the mistake of letting him know that she perceived
it, he fell back at once upon the literal significance
of his words. Instinctively he had provided him-
self with a barricade of such significance. If one
trench had failed, he would have withdrawn to an-
other, strictly, in his own view at least, on terms
of honorable retreat. This is one of the accidents
liable to a lithe mind, and may fasten itself upon a
nature of great delicacy ; in rare cases, upon one of
real rectitude.

Ostrander regarded Barbara with a certain gentle-
manly surprise, and sajing in his usual voice, —

" However, we will try again," took up the oars.
But the tide set sternly against him, and he per-
ceived now how far they had drifted. His friend
the fisherman was abreast of them : he sat in the
sun, hauling out his nets, still as a figure in the fore-
ground of a marine picture.

" With your permission," said Ostrander after a
few minutes' very unplatonic hard work, " I think
we will put up the sail. There is not wind enough
to trouble a nautilus."

348 THE STORY OF AVIS.

He put it up, and they glided along quietly ; the
swifter motion at once rested and excited him. When
Barbara said, How pleasant it was ! his deepening
voice and eyes answered, —

44 1 am afraid it is too pleasant." But Barbara
did not say, " Oh, hush! " She knew better this
time.

They were sitting so, she leaning over the gun-
wale like a violet, with the purple light across her
white dress, when a slight stir struck the perfectly
calm water, as if the feet of an unseen spirit trod
across it. Then the whole bay seemed to gather her
bright shoulders, and shiver a little. Then the near
waves crinkled and curdled, as flesh does with fear.

Ostrander sprang to wrench the little mast out of
its socket just as the dory reeled. He was too late.

As he went down, he saw the fisherman leaning,
gunwale to the water's edge, the fine lines that his
black net made against the sky, and the wreath of
smoke from his pipe. Distinctly he thought what a
good sketch Avis would make of it.

Then he thought how the bay looked like a lake of
blue fire, and how he and Barbara were going into
it together. The last thing that occurred to him
was, " We have been struck by a white squall."

By the time that he had begun to ascend, he was
not conscious of any coherent idea, except that, if he
and Barbara were drowned, then and there, together,
his wife would believe him a rascal to the end of her
life. And then he knew that the mere fact of d}ing
was only an incident in that supreme despair.

THE STOEY OF AVIS. 349

He struggled up, and struck out madly. Barbara
was clinging to the bottom of the dory. She was
calling to him. He seemed a great way off. The
water between them — calm now as outworn feeling —
was a cold and deadly blue. Once more he thought
of the lake of fire, and of those terrible old Bible
metaphors that played upon it in such a ghastly way.

He made his way rather weakly. Who would have
believed that the blazing summer sea could hold so
cold a heart ? The fisherman was coming with long,
sharp, agitated strokes : the water reeled under his
blows. Ostrander's head reeled too. He was grow-
ing very cold. A paralytic thickening of the ten-
dons, and stiffening in his muscles, had crept upon
him.

" My God ! " he said aloud, " am I going to have
the cramp? "

Then the boat made a great leap, and recoiled on
itself, like a jaguar, and snatched him up.

' ' You took me before the lady ! ' ' cried Ostran-
der, horror struck.

" The lady doos very well ! " said he of the sea
imperturbably. "As long as they can screech,
they ain't cramped. Just you stay where you be.
You mought be took agin — and she's pretty solid.
I'll haul her in."

Barbara was hauled in, hand over hand, like a
mackerel-net ; the dory was righted, and taken in
tow — possibly the whole thing had taken seven
minutes. The fisherman had not removed the pipe
from his mouth.

350 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Ostrander and Barbara sat awkwardly and miser-
ably in the dirty boat. When the fish flopped in the
net, and an eel, in the struggle for existence, jumped
into Barbara's lap, Ostrander felt as if he were
watching the blue-devils in the last act of some
second-rate opera. The purple umbrella was gone.
High in the western heavens the holy sun peered into
their faces. His fastidious fancy revolted from this
grotesque, satiric ending to a highly-wrought experi-
ence. He would have found it hard to explain wlty
he felt as if it must be, somehow, Barbara's fault.
He could not imagine his wife, for instance, in the
same boat with an eel. At all events, she would
not have shrieked at it. He was surprised to find
how it altered Barbara's appearance to have her
curls washed straight.

The fisherman took the pipe from his mouth as
they grated on the solitary beach.

" Mebbe," he said, " ye'll remember next time
not to hurt the feelins of a dory. A dory's like a
lady, sir. The man that slights it has to pay for it
fust or last. She's tender in the feelins, a dory is."

He had landed them, as chance would have it, just
off the light-house reef ; and Barbara and Ostrander
walked up through the divorced gorge together.
Barbara did not understand the expression which his
face had assumed. She thought him very cross.
He, for his part, was not thinking about Barbara at
all.

He and Barbara parted miserably enough, at the

THE STORY OF AVIS. 351

edge of the town. They agreed that it was better
so. Barbara protested that she was not very wet,
and preferred to take care of herself. When he said
that he supposed it would attract less attention, she
assented decidedly. She said she was sorry they
went to row. She asked him if he were going to tell
Avis. Barbara was thoroughly alarmed.

Ostrander went quickly home. As he passed his
wife's room, she called him. The door was open.
Avis sat upon the edge of the bed, partly dressed :
she had thrown a thick shawl about her, and her
bare feet, with which, it seemed, she had been trying
her strength, hung weakly, just touching the floor.
Something in her attitude — whether it were the
weakness or the strength of it, its courage or despair
— affected Ostrander powerfully. He stopped in
the door- way, feeling disgraced and miserable. He
did not cross the threshold of his wife's room. She
said rapidly, —

" What has happened, Philip?"

" I was out in the dory, and got struck by a white
squall. That is all, except that I had the cramp,
and a mackerel-boat picked me up."

Ostrander brought the words out stolidly. He
did not exactly mean to appeal to her fear or sym-
pathy ; yet he felt conscious of some disappointment
that she exhibited no sign of either. She said, —

« ' Was Barbara with you ? ' '

u Yes," said Ostrander doggedly. His quick
sense of irritation rose. He was not going to stand

352 THE STORY OF AVIS.

and defend himself like a school-boy. There was a
long silence.

"Well," he said, breaking it uneasily, " I must
go and get out of these wet things."

" It will be best for both of us," said Avis in a
low voice, after yet another pause, in which she had
sat with her eyes upon the floor, but rising now, and
slipping to her feet, " if this thing is to go on, — if
you wish to indulge platonic friendships with other
women, — that your wife should not be unnecessarily
insulted by it ; you would agree with me, I am sure,
that I had better take the children, and go to father's
for awhile."

When he was gone, she crawled back into bed.
The words of the woman Susan Jessup had dogged
her thoughts that day: "He got tired of me. I
thought he would get tired of every other woman."
Oddly beside them stepped in that hideous old
rhyme of Goethe's, —

" The false one looked for a daintier lot;
The constant one wearied me out and out."

These pursued her like the jingle on the hand-organ
that follows us seven squares away. She hated her
own heart for giving hospitality to such words.

The children were laughing in the nursery. Birds
broke their hearts for joy upon the window-ledge.
She shrank as she listened, turning wearily in bed.
All sweet sounds in life seemed to have fallen sud-
denly a semi-tone too high or too low for her, so

THE STORY OF AVIS. 353

that harmony itself became an exquisite ingenuity
of discord. She seemed to herself like that afflicted
musician to whose physical ear this happened ; or
like that other, who stood stone deaf in the middle
of his orchestra.

How could they ever hear — she and Philip now
— the perfect music of a happy home again ?

She straggled with the unique dismay which over-
takes the woman who first learns that she has
married a capricious man. Avis thought, that if her
husband had committed a forgery, or been brought
home drunk, she should have seen more distinctly,
at least more clearly, where her duty lay. She was
sure that she should have gone on loving him, in
fierce proportion to the depth of his fall, till death
had resolved all love to elements so simple, that it
knew no code of fluty, and needed no spoken bond.
But then he would have loved her. She could not
spend herself for the husband whose tone and touch
had hardened to her. She could not cast away the
pearls of wifehood : that were to commit the unpar-
donable sin of married story.

But Ostrander came back presently, manfully
enough, to his wife's room. He was startled by
what she had said, and touched by the gentle dig-
nity with which she had said it. Then the con-
sciousness of clean linen is in and of itself a source
of moral strength only second to that of a clean con-
science. A well-ironed collar, or a fresh glove, has
carried many a man through the emergency in which

354 THE STORY OF AVIS.

a wrinkle or a .rip would have defeated him. Os-
trander came in, looking very clean and comfortable,
shut the door, and sat down by his wife on the edge
of the bed. He leaned, putting one arm over her
where there was room to support himself, upon his
hand : Avis stirred uneasily, and he removed it.

" You have given me no chance, Avis," he began,
" to explain myself: I don't see but I must take
it."

" What is the use ? " asked Avis drearily.

"I don't understand your disinclination to discuss
the matter," said Ostrander, flushing slightly.

4 'There is nothing to discuss," said his wife,
turning her head from side to side upon the pillow.
" When a man has ceased to love his wife, that is
not a subject of discussion between them."

' ' Upon your own lips rest the shadow from those
words ! " he cried with an heroic air. ' ' / did not
utter them. I scorn to deny that I have ceased to
love my wife."

" You adopt a singular method of expressing
your affection," said Avis. She was terrified at her
own words as soon as they were spoken. Roots of
bitterness and blight seemed to be fastening upon
her soul, like a fungoid disease upon the flesh.

" Well, admit then," said he with a peculiarly
winning air of patient sadness, " that my love is
not quite the same as it was ; that it has assumed,
with time, a different form and different force."

" Oh, hush! " cried Avis. She could not help

THE STORY OP AVIS. 355

it : the imperious impulse of the woman overswept
her. When her husband understated in her ears
that which her own voice had underscored, she felt
as if she had plunged a knife into a dissolving ghost,
and drawn it back, reeking with human blood. All
was over now, she thought. The}7 never could look
at each other with tender fictions in their glance
again. Their four lips had spoken the terrible
truth : in their e}Tes forever would be the memory
of it.

" I am sorry," continued Ostrander sadly, " that
my peculiar temperament has brought you into suf-
fering. I ought to have foreseen it ; but I had more
confidence in myself than events have warranted."

' ' Do you care for — do you love Barbara ? ' ' asked
Avis abruptly. Her voice rang foreign to her own
ears. The whole scene moved on dimly to her, as
if they sat on some solemn historic tribunal, weigh-
ing the fate of two strangers whose life hung in their
trembling hands.

"Love her? No!" thundered Ostrander, recoil-
ing.

" What is it like, I wonder," asked Avis, "to feel
as you do ? I am not made so as to understand it,
Philip."

"You may thank Heaven you are not," murmured
Ostrander, exactly as if she had inquired of him
touching the sufferings consequent upon some physi-
cal deformity.

"Is it friendship you seek ?" went on Avis sim-

356 THE STORY OF AVIS.

ply. " My husband was my friend. I needed no
other."

"That is your temperament," said Ostrander :
"mine is different. I am sorry it is so. I don't
know what more I can say."

It is impossible to convey the absence of self-
insistence and presence of gentle regret by which
Ostrander contrived to transfigure these feeble words :
they seemed, as he uttered them, to be the outgrowth
of a delicate and forbearing reticence, in itself the
index of essential strength. Avis lay for a few
moments with a pathetic confusion on her worn face.
Her husband made her feel as if she were dealing
with an afflicted man.

"It is harder to be subject than the object of an
infirmity," he went on. "Do me the justice, Avis,.
to remember that I must suffer more in discovering
that my affection is capable of change than you can
in the consequences of such a fact."

"That will do," said Avis faintly, after a silence.
"It is a waste of strength for us to talk. We do
not understand each other."

"I repeat," he said more earnestly, "that I am
sorry for the whole thing. You shall not be anno}~ed
again. Don't take the children to father's just yet ! ' '
He leaned over her, smiling ; but her soul sickened
within her. He had rather expected to kiss her ; but
the expression of her mouth deterred him. He would
as soon have dared to kiss the Melian Venus.

How could he know that a great impulse came upon

THE STORY OF AVIS. 357

her to throw herself upon his heart, and sob her misery
out ? It seemed incredible that Philip could not help
her to bear it. They had been so dear to each other
— for so long ! Then she thought how he would
soothe her, and how she should writhe to remember
it. He did not love her. He was her husband.
Humiliation beyond humiliation lay forever now in
his caress. She gave him her hand gravely, like a
courteous acquaintance.

She thought, "I would have clung to you I " But
she said only, —

"Well, Philip, we must make the best we can of
it." After a silence she added, —

"We shall always need each other's forbearance,
though" — She could not bring herself to say,
"though we have lost each other's love." And then
Van ran in, radiant and indescribable. He had in-
vited Mary Ann and the kitty to a party. He had
been dressing his hair — with the prepared glue.

Barbara that afternoon curled her hair, with cheeks
hotter than the seething tongs. She had made up
her mind that it would be best for her to marry be-
fore long. She thought, perhaps, she had amused
herself with men about long enough. Barbara was
exceedingly disconcerted at what had happened. She
hoped there would be no talk : Barbara could think
of nothing worse than to be talked about. She had
never forgotten herself before . In Barbara' s " set "
in Hannouth, young ladies did not flirt with married

358 THE STORY OF AVIS.

men. Barbara had never been the least in love with
Philip Ostrander. But, strictly speaking, it could
not be said that she had ever quite forgiven him for
not having fallen in love with herself before he mar-
ried Avis. Yet she knew it was expecting too much
of the masculine perception that he should under-
stand all that.

Probably he would go to his grave supposing that
she cared.

No more subtly confusing type of woman than
Barbara is as }'et rudimentary in the world. That
man must have a keen and modest eye who will
distinguish her vanity from her tenderness, or her
love of his admiration from her love of himself.

Barbara thought she should marry a minister.

One day not long after, John Rose ran over to
High Street. There was a poor fellow who could
not get a scholarship ; and Mrs. Ostrander had
promised some flannels to those Pinkham babies ;
and Coy sent over a taste of snow-pudding ; and so
on. But, when he went away, he put one finger
upon Ostrander's arm with a delicate yet deepening
pressure. Ostrander followed him at once to the
street.

"I suppose you know," began John Rose, hesi-
tating gravely, " at least I thought I had better call
your attention to the fact, that Harmouth is very
much occupied just now with — that accident in the
dory."

11 The — mischief it is ! " said Ostrander, stopping

THE STORY OF AVIS. 359

short. There was a silence, in which the two young
men walked up and down in front of the gate. Avis
watched them from the windows contentedly. She
always liked to see her husband and John Rose to-
gether. She thought, or rather she felt, that John's
must be one of the golden natures of which it would
be possible to say, as was said of one of the grand-
est of our time — the noblest words, that can be
spoken of any human life, — " There never lived a
truer friend."

Ostrander put his hand upon the other's shoulder
as they walked, and leaned upon it heavily.

" Seriously so, Rose? " he asked.

" Not unkindly so, I think," said Rose thought-
fully ; ' ' but there is some unnecessary and annoying
gossip. It will soon blow over ; but I thought —
excuse me, Phil — it would be as well for you to un-
derstand it at the outset."

"John," said Ostrander, after a longer silence
than before, "if it be possible, — you will help me,
old fellow, I know, — I hope my wife may never
hear of this."

She never did.

360 THE STORY OF AVIS.

CHAPTER XX.

" Every man has experienced how feelings which end in them-
selves, and do not express themselves in action, leave the heart de-
hilitated. We get feeble and sickly in character when we feel keenly,
and cannot do the thing we feel." — ROBERTSON.

IN September the college papers announced that
Professor Philip Ostrander had resigned the as-
sistant geological chair in Harmouth University, on
account of an increasing delicacy of the lungs, in
consequence of which his physicians had forbidden
all brain labor, and required a change of climate. It
was understood that he would sail for Havre next
week to spend the winter in the south of France.
His resignation was deeply regretted by the Faculty
and students. The academic year opened prosper-
ously under the hands of Professor Brown, his suc-
cessor. Professor Cobin was expected to resign at
the close of the winter term.

Professor Ostrander was so feeble, that he had not
been present at the Senior Party kindty given by Mrs.
President Hogarth at the usual time. He had been
as deeply missed in the drawing-room as he would
be in the class-room, both of which locations he emi-
nently graced.

Professor Brown was understood to be the man
who had recently detected the precise difference be-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 361

tween the frontal sinuses in the white and grisly
bears. A brilliant career was predicted for him.

FOOTNOTE. — A contributor adds, that he is also the dis-
coverer of the left foramen of the third cervical vertebra of
the first monkey who harmonized with the environment.
It is needless to say that a Freshman bears the entire re-
sponsibility of this grave statement.

After the first strange chill was out of the lonely
air, Avis was shocked to find her husband's absence
a relief. He had become extremely irritable before
he went away. The re-action from his college-work,
and from his escapade with Barbara, had added mor-
tification to mortification, under which he weakened
petulantly. Like all untuned natures, he grew dis-
cordant under the friction of care and trouble. He
became really so ill, that Avis felt that not an hour
should be lost in removing him from the immediate
pressure of annoyances from which she could not
shield him. It was she who passed lightly over the
embarrassments and economies under which the pro-
jected journey must place the family. It was she
who was sure they could get along till the lease of
the house was out. It was she who was confident
that rest would restore him, and that a future would
await him. It was she who remembered the draughts
that lurked for him, shaded the sun that dazzled
him, cured the headaches that tore him, went away to
amuse the children when they fretted him. Philip
must have the cream-whip and the sherry, and the
canter across country, and Europe, though the nurse

362 THE STORY OF AVIS.

were dismissed, and the seamstress abandoned,
and the rent paid — Heaven help her ! — out of that
locked studio to whose cold and disused walls she
should creep by and by with barren brain, and broken
heart, and stiffened fingers.

Avis took the emergency in her own strong hand.
She planned, she hoped, she commanded, she con-
trived. That intelligent self-surrender which is the
supreme sign of strength, expressed itself in her
with the pictorial graciousness peculiar to her special
gift. She brought the whole force of her profes-
sional training to bear upon the shade of d}Te which
might renew a baby's cloak. She made the very
shoes that Van wore in those days, — poor little
pathetic shoes, badly stitched, perhaps, but of ex-
quisite color, and a temporary defiance to the family
shoemaker. If only papa could have beefsteak at
breakfast, the omelette need not be in a nicked
platter ; and a flower or so on the table gave Van a
swelling consciousness of hilarious domestic dissipa-
tion, which obviated the gloom of absent luxuries.

" I am sorry to have you burdened with such petty
economies," Philip had said one day. But he spoke
with the polite reserve which had become habitual with
him. He was always polite to his wife. He noticed
her domestic ingenuities with approval. He said, —

4 ' We never thought }'ou would turn out so com-
fortable a housekeeper, did we, Avis?'* with an
absent-minded smile. And then he asked her what
she did with his passports, and if she had packed

THE STORY OF AVIS. 363

the Calasaya bark, and where was the lecture on
" Chalk," which he thought he might have a chance
to deliver in England. Avis answered patiently.
She thought Philip walked about like a frost-bitten
man. A certain hardness in his nature, of which she
could not be mistaken in fancying herself the especial
object, developed itself in a delicate but freezing form,
like the ice-scenery upon a window. It was with pro-
found inteUectual confusion that she remembered his
first kiss. Was this the man who had wooed and
won her with an idealizing gentleness which made
of his incarnate love a thing divine? To admit it
seemed like a challenge to the doctrine of personal
identity. One day, spurred by a momentary impulse
to leave no overture of wifely forgiveness and yearn-
ing unoffered, of whose omission she might think
afterwards with that scorching self-rebuke in which
all shallow pride shrivels to the bitterest ashes, she
crept up to him and began timidly, —

" Philip, this poor old carmine shawl that you used
to like so much is pretty well faded out. Do 3'ou
remember the night when we first came home, when
I had it on?"

" Yes, I remember," said Philip distinctly.

" We were very happy, Philip — then."

"Yes."

" Sometimes I wonder," tremulously, " if no-
thing in this world can ever make us feel so again."

" That," he said, regarding her with cool, distant
eyes, "is entirely out of the question." The man

364 THE STORY OF AVIS.

whose unapproachable tenderness had spared the life
of a dumb bird because it trusted him, could say
this — to his wife. His voice had a fine, grating
sound. It made Avis think of the salute of icebergs
meeting and passing in the dark.

Yet we should see that, apparently, Philip Os-
trander was as unconscious of cruelt}^ as the burnt-
out crater is of the snow that has sifted down its
sides. It was his temperament, he reasoned, to ex-
press himself as he felt, and he certainly did not feel
to his wife as he did when they first married. He saw
no occasion for dwelling upon an ardor which mar-
riage must inevitably chill. A vis's good sense must
perceive this. Why should they trouble themselves ?
The daily annoyances and anxieties which the bond
between them compelled them to share were as much,
he thought, as either of them could bear just now,
without adding any finer affectional subtleties to their
burden. He wished with all his heart, he said, that
it had been the necessary outgrowth of his nature to
love with the poetic constancy natural to his wife.
Events had proved that it was not. What, then,
could he do? Ostrander pitied himself. He sin-
cerely believed that he bore the heavier end of their
mutual sorrow.

And now he was gone.

He had not, indeed, parted with his wife without
emotion ; but it was a perfectly silent one, like that
of a man struggling with feelings ill defined to him-
self. He had hung over his bo}^, and clung to him,
choking. He was very fond of Van.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 365

His departure left Avis free for a space to wrestle
as she might with the inevitable re-action of the last
few months. In the calm of her first solitary hours
she was chastened to perceive how her married story
had deepened and broadened, nay, it seemed, created
in her, certain quivering human sympathies. Her
great love — so hardly won, so lightly cherished —
withdrew upon itself in a silence through which all
the saddened lovers of the world seemed to glide with
outstretched hand, and minister to her, — a mighty
company. Especially her heart leaned out to all
denied and deserted women, to all deceived and
trustful creatures. A strange kinship, too solemn
for any superficial caste of the nature to blight,
seemed to bind her to them all. Betrayed girls,
abandoned wives, aged and neglected mothers, lived
in her fancy with a new, exacting claim. To the
meanest thing that trod the earth, small in all else,
but large enough to love and suffer, her strong heart
stooped, and said, " Thou — thou, too, art my sis-
ter."

Avis had been bred to the reticence not uncharac-
teristic of the New-England religion among its more
cultivated, or at least, among its more studious pos-
sessors. She was one of those sincere and silent
Christians with whom we must look more to the life
than to the lip for the evidence of the faith that is
in them. The professor's had been a- home in which
the religious character of his child was taken for
granted, like her sense of delicacy. She was expect-

366 THE STORY OF AVIS.

ed to be a Christian woman precisely as she was
expected to be a cultivated lady: in a matter of
course, abundant speech was a superfluous weakness.
She had escaped the graver dangers of this training,
but not its life-long influences. It was inevitable
that the tragedy of her married life should result in
a temporary syncope of faith, which it was equally
inevitable that she should support in perfect solitude.
But to dwell upon this phase of her experience would
seem to copy the rude fault of those biographers
that break faith with the personal confidence of the
dead who can no longer protest.

With a terror for which I do not feel at liberty
to find speech or language, Avis watched departing
love shake the slow dust of his feet against her
young life. With a dread which shook to the roots
of belief, she perceived that her own slighted ten-
derness had now begun to chill. That Philip should
cease to love her — this could be borne. There was
a worse thing than that. All was hers while she yet
loved him. She wrestled with her retreating affec-
tion as Jacob of old wrestled with the angel till
break of day. She struggled with that which was
greater and graver than the sweet ghost of a ruined
home. She fought for her faith in all that makes
life a privilege, or death a joy.

No argument for the immortality of the human
soul seemed to her so triumphant as the faith and
constancy of one single human love.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 367

u Mamma, has papa gone to Jerusalem? "

" No, my son. Mamma has told you a great
many tunes where papa has gone."

"Jesus went to Jerusalem!" said Van with a
reproving smile, quite gentle, and a little sad, as if
his father had been caught in the omission of some
vital religious duty. "But after I got frough cry-
ing, I fought I'd like to have him go. I'd rather
kiss you myself, mamma. I don't like another man
to do it. I'll have a wife of my own, when I get big
enough he needn't fink ! "

"There, Van; that's enough for now. Don't
you see I am very busy painting ? I can't kiss little
boys all day. Run away now."

Van disappeared, not without something of the
reluctance of a jealous lover drawing his first breath
of bliss in the absence of his rival. Van's love for
his mother was one of those select and serious pas-
sions which occasionally make the tie between son
and mother an influence of complex power. She
must be a woman of a rare maternal nature who will
supersede in the heart of a man the mother who is
capable of inspiring in the boy a love of this control-
ling and sensitive kind.

Scarcely had the palette-knife struck the cobalt to
the Naples yellow, when the studio-door shivered,
stirred, and started with a prolonged and inspiring
creak. Van admitted his little nose on probation
into the crack, and heaved a heart-breaking sigh.

" Mamma," very sweetly, " now Philip is gone,
I suppose I may call you Avis, mayn't I? "

368 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" Shut the door, Van/'

His pretty mamma had an unhappy habit of ex-
pecting to be obeyed, which was a source of serious
disorder to Van's small system of philosophy. He
shut the door in — nose and all — with a filial haste
and emphasis, the immediate consequences of which
fell heavily upon both parties in this little domestic
tragedy. When the outcry is over, and the sobbing
has ceased, and the tears are kissed away, and the
solid little sinner lies soothed upon the cramped and
forgiving arm, where is the strength and glory of the
vision ? Where are the leaping fingers that quivered
to do its bidding in the fresh life of the winter morn-
ing hour ?

" Run away, again, Van: mother must go to
work now."

" Mamma,'* faintly, " I've sat down on — some-
fing — soft. I'm all blue and colors, mamma, on my
sack behind. I didn't know it was your palette,
mamma. I didn't mean to. Oh ! I'd rather not.
I'd like a shair ! "

" Mamma," presently from behind the locked
door, " I want a piece o' punky-pie."

" No more pumpkin-pie, to-day, Van; and you
mustn't talk to mamma through the door any
more."

u Oh! — well, mamma, a piece o' punky-pie will
do. I've had the sherries. I've had twenty-free or
nineteen canned sherries. Me and the baby eat
'em. I eat the sherries, and she eated the stones,

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 369

mamma. I put 'em down her froat. She needn't
have cried, I don't fink. So I want a piece o'
punky-pie."

Silence succeeds.

" Mamma, can't you kiss little boys all day? Not
very dee little boys, mamma?"

" By and by, Van. Run to Julia now. Run and
play with your little sister."

But Master Van stoutly maintained that he did not
wish the society of his little sister. He thought his
little sister had bumped her head. He should axpect
mamma would want to unlock the door, and find out.
If he had the mucilage-bottle, and papa's razor, and
the pretty purple ink (and the kiss), he would go
and find out, and never come up stairs any more.

" Mamma," by and by, " do you love my little
sister best of me, or me best of my little sister? I
should fink you'd rather let me in and tell me 'bout
that.

"O mamma ! " once more persuasively, " I want
to say my prayers."

" To-night, Van, at bed-tune."

" No, I want to say 'em quick vis minute. If
you'll let me in to say my prayers, I'll go straight
down and see if Julia's got the cookies done."

Love in the guise of religion, as ever since the
world was young, carried the yielding day before
him. With despair in her heart and the palette
fresh from its service as a cricket in her hand, Avis
admits the little devotee. Plump upon his knees

370 THE STORY OF AVIS.

upon the drying-oil — in the unutterable background
of that sack — drops Van, and thus waylays the
throne of grace, —

' ' O Lord ! please to not let boys tell lies and say
he's got a jack-knife and a pistol in his pocket
when he hasn't either one which a boy did to Jack
Rose and me this morning O Lord Amen. . . .
Mamma, I fink it was one of the Plimpton boys.
Now will you kiss me, mamma? "

And so, and so, and so — what art can tell us
how ? O golden winter morning ! your coy heart is
repulsed forever ; and when from the depths of the
house, sweeps, like a scythe upon the artist's nerves,
that sound which all the woman in her shrinks to
hear, — the cry of a hurt baby, — Avis with a sigh
unlocks the studio-door. There is the problem of
ages in that speechless sigh. Van, all paint and
patience, like a spaniel lies curled upon the floor,
with his lips against the studio-door. The stout
little lover, faithful in exile, has lain and kissed the
threshold till he has kissed himself asleep.

The rare tears filled Avis's eyes as she lifted him ;
and then Julia brought the baby, and the bump, and
the brown paper. And there she was sitting, pin-
ioned, with both children, patient and worn, with the
bright colors of her paints around her, and the pic-
tures, with their mute faces to the wall, about the
room (there was a hand-organ, too, playing a dis-
mal little tune somewhere down the street) , when an
impatient knock preceded a nervous push to the

THE STORY OF AVIS. 371

unlatched door, and, with the familiarity of art and
age, her old master presented himself upon the
scene.

Frederick Maynard stood still. He did not im-
mediately speak. He looked from child to child,
from both to her, from her to the barren easel. The
dismal hand-organ below set up a discordant wail,
the more pathetic for its discord, like all inharmoni-
ous things. The baby had pulled down Avis's pink
neck-ribbon and her bright hair. The tears lay un-
dried upon her cheek, whose color slowly stirred, and
scorched her lifted, languid face.

"You see," she said, trying to smile, "how
it is.'*

"I am not here to see any thing," answered
the drawing-master shortly. " What have you done
this week ? ' '

"Nothing."

« « Last week ? The week before ? ' '

1 ; Nothing at all. Only the sketch for the crayon
that you see. And I have begun to give drawing-
lessons to Chatty Hogarth. Mr. Maynard, once a
visitor came into Andrea del Sarto's studio. It was
after his marriage. He was dabbling away at some
little thing. He looked up and said, ' Once I worked
for eternity : now I work for my kitchen.' J

"Confound the kitchen- work !" cried Maynard
savagely. " Kitchen- work, indeed! Crayon por-
traits, I should think ! Drawing-lessons if you dare !
You — you ! Why, I am sixty years old. I have

372 THE STORY OF AVIS.

never got a picture into the exhibition but once.
There was a quarrel among the directors, and one
fellow put my landscape in to spite another — but
I've never thought the less of the landscape. And
here are you with your sphinxes and your sphinxes
— why, New York has gone wild over you in one
week's time ! Every studio in the city pricking up
its ears, and ' The Easel ' and ' The Blender ' in a
duel over the picture to start with. May Heaven
bless them for it ! Drawing-lessons, indeed ! "

"Pray tell me," said Avis, growing very pale,
and putting the children down, lest her faint arms
should drop them, — ' ' pray explain exactly what
you mean. I do not understand. 1 have never
heard from the picture since you sent it to New
York. Has anybody noticed — will anybody buy
my sphinx? "

" No," said the drawing-master with a short laugh.
"I don't think anybody will buy the picture — just
yet. Not immediately, that is. The trouble is, you
see " —

' ' I expected trouble, ' ' sighed Avis patiently. ' ' I
am used to that. Don't mind telling me. / don't
mind."

" Why, the only trouble is," said Frederick Ma}T-
nard, "that the picture was caught up the second
day out."

" Caught up ? " asked Avis faintly.

" Engaged — bought — sold — paid for. The
sphinx was sold before Goupil had held it forty-eight

THE STORY OF AVIS. 373

hours. Mind you don't let Goupil photograph it.
You can't afford to photograph a fledgling. You
have a future. 'The Easel' says it is a work of
pure imagination. 'The Blender' says it shows
signs of haste."

'"The Blender' is right," said Avis with return-
ing breath and color. "That child in the foreground
— the Arab child looking at the sphinx with his
finger on his lips, swearing her to silence — do you
remember ? I put in that child in one hour. It was
the day'.' —

She checked herself. Her husband himself should
never know the story of that day — he would not
understand. It would not have been to him as it
was to her, coming down that morning, not a month
after he had sailed, to find the dun for those college
debts. Avis had the blind horror and shame of most
delicate women in the presence of a debt. Her sting-
ing impulse had been to discharge this without telling
Philip or her father. Upon the spot she drew up an
order for the sale of some bonds of her own, upon
whose proceeds the family were in part dependent for
the coming year. Fortunately she had not to deal
with stock or real estate, which the wife cannot sell
without the husband's consent. Avis did not know
this. She knew nothing, except that she was grieved
and shamed, and vaguely in need of money. She
flew to the studio, struck the great sphinx dumb with
the uplifted finger of a child, and sent it desperately
from her before the cool of her frenzy fell.

374 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

" You are to make no more portraits, you under-
stand/' said Frederick Maynard, stumbling over
Van, and narrowly escaping sitting on the baby as he
went out. ''You'll never be a portrait-painter. You
must create: you cannot copy. That is what we
lack in this country. We have no imagination. The
sphinx is a creation. I told Goupil so when I took
it on. He bowed politely. And now he comes ask-
ing for a photograph ! You — you ! — life is before
you now. And I am sixty-three years old."

But Avis put her hand in his with a patient, un-
responsive smile. She looked very gentle in her
falling hair. The children clung to her. The light
lay gravely on the studio-floor. She could hear the
faint pulse of the sea, whose mighty heart beat be-
tween her and her husband, throbbing upon the frozen
shore. The hand-organ in the street wailed on.

' ' Life is behind me too, ' ' she said gently. ' ' It was
before my marriage that I painted the sphinx. Don't
be too much disappointed in me, if there are never
any more pictures. Oh, I shall try ! but I do not
hope — do not think. We all have our lives to bear.
If I, too, were sixty-three, perhaps — there, hush,
my little girl ! — perhaps — I should not — mind so
much " —

"It seems to me," interrupted the drawing-mas-
ter, winking resolutely, " that it can't be quite right
for those children to look just as they do. Isn't
there something a little peculiar in their expression ?

Van was ingeniously trying to cut his throat with

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 375

the palette-knife, and it would have been impossible
to accuse the baby of not trying to swallow the tube
of Prussian blue.

The year ran fleetly. Van was ailing a great deal
that spring ; and in the summer her father was ill.
Thus, in the old, sad, subtle ways, Avis was exiled
from the studio. She could not abandon herself to
it without a feminine sense of guilt, under which
women less tender may thrive callously, but at
whose first touch she quivered with pain. She
was stunned to find how her aspiration had ema-
ciated during her married life. Household care
had fed upon it like a disease. Sometimes she
thought it an accession to her misery, that still,
straight forever through the famine of her lot, its
heart beat on, like that of the nervous ph}*sique,
which is first to yield, but last to die. Then she
wished, with all the wild, hot protest of her nature,
that the spirit of this gift with which God had
created her — in a mood of awful infinite irony, it
seemed — would return to Him who gave it, that the
dust of her days might descend to the dust in peace.
She wished she were like other women, — content to
stitch and sing, to sweep and smile. She bowed
her face on the soft hair of her children ; but she
could not forget that they had been bought with a
great price. She thought of the husband whose
love she had mislaid, and counted the cost of her
marriage in the blood of her soul.

376 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" Mamma, I'm most damp and a little wet.'*
Van, one sharp afternoon in September, said this
hilariously. He and Wait had been to swim. They'd
been to swim in the hogshead. Julia wouldn't put
Wait in ; but lie got in. He got in like funder, while
she went to tell of him. Then she came back and
pulled hun out. But there weren't any fishes in the
hogshead, and he'd rather have^his feet shanged
now. What was the matter, mamma?

u O Lord! " said Van, kneeling, swaddled in his
mother's rose-colored shoulder-robe at his prayers
that night, — " O Lord ! I know you've got a great
many little boys to fink of; but I hope you'll re-
member I've got a sore froat."

And now what was the matter, again, mamma?
Somefing was always the matter, Van thought to-
day. He wished there had never any such day been
born.

" Lo ! " echoed the heart of the mother, " let that
day be darkness ; neither let the light shine upon it.
As for that night, let darkness seize upon it. Lo !
let that night be solitary; let no joyful voice come
therein."

With the frosty dawn the child lay very ill. Be-
fore another night an acute form of pneumonia had
developed itself. Sensitive from birth, the boy's
lungs succumbed with only a frail struggle. For fif-
teen days and nights his mother hung over him in
her strong, dumb way. Then, perhaps, she first

THE STORY OF AVIS. 377

understood the solemn depth of the tie, which,
through all distance and all difference, all trial and
ah1 time, binds any two human creatures who have
bestowed life upon a third. In this awful language
of bereavement which God was setting her ignorant
youth to learn, her own loss seemed to her but the
alphabet of agony. Her heart yearned with un-
spoken and unspeakable throes over the father of
her child. That this must be ; that the lips of his
first-born should grow cold without his good-by
kiss ; that Philip, somewhere wide across the world,
should that day be strolling and laughing in the sun,
not knowing, — this seemed to her the very sense
and soul of her sorrow. She saw him go chatting
with a group of sight-seekers down a bright street,
idling in a chapel at the mass, buying a ticket for
the opera, twirling a lady's fan beneath a chandelier,
praising the claret at the hotels, drumming with
his finger to the music in the beer-garden, stopping
at the toy-shop windows to decide what he would
get for Van, writing notes, perhaps, to the little
fellow (he wrote to Van a good deal) at that mo-
ment ; while the boy struggled on her nerveless arm,
to turn and say, —

u Mamma, will papa come walking in? "

" Some day, Van, some time."

" Will he come in at the front-door, mamma, to
kiss his dee little boy? "

" O my darling ! Some time — somewhere — yes. ' '

"I fought I heard somebody at the front-door,
mamma.'*

378 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" It is the wind we hear, Van."

" Can't papa get home on the wind? Can't papa
— walk — on "the wings — of the wind? God did.
I fought papa could, mamma."

" Mamma, do you love my little sister best of me?
or me — best " —

Best, oh, best, that moment, Van, of all the empty
world !

THE STORY OP AVIS. 379

CHAPTER XXI.

" There above the little grave,
Oh! there above the little grave,
We kissed again with tears."

THE wind was high about the house. Aunt
Chloe and the professor had left her at last
alone to sit and listen to it. The baby slept. The
women had gone sobbing away. The windows
stood wide to the bitter dark in that room up stairs.
The child's bed was straight and still. It was a
wild night for the little fellow to be lying out there — •
his first night.

Avis was almost sorry that night that they had
laid him so near the sea ; for .the sea was high too,
like the wind, and thundered heavily, even here,
sharp through the sheltered house. He had alwaj^s
been a wakeful baby, quick to start and shiver in his
naps. She could not rid herself of the feeling that
the noise would disturb him. The imperious mother's
habit of three years and a half of nervous care was
strong upon her. She could have dashed out and
hushed the voice of the almighty deep, lest it should
wake the child.

Pursued with this and a horde of the irrational
impulses of solitary grief, Avis sought refuge in her
first attempt to write to the boy's father. The arm

380 THE STORY OF AVIS.

upon which Van. had lain, with imperfect intervals of
relief, for fifteen days and nights (it had been only
in one position that the child could breathe) refused
to hold the pen. She wrote with her left hand, a
faint and feeble cipher. She told him what there
was to tell, sparing when she could, striking as she
must. She begged him not to let this make any
alteration in the plans which his state of health
should suggest as wisest and best for them all, —
they who were left, — they three. She hoped he
would not allow any impetuous image of loneliness
at home to hasten his return before the time which
he had selected as desirable in itself, and urged
upon him that a part or the whole of his second
winter should be spent in those kinder climates
which would perfect the growth of his now really
grafted strength. Of herself and her own loss or
lot, she wrote but little. Of the solitude in which
she bore the burden laid on two, she did not speak.
Of her unshared fears, her unkissed tears, she could
not tell. She was an unloved wife. She could not
woo her husband.

As she wrote, the wind went busying itself im-
petuously as a lawless feeling, with the calm of the
house. It beat upon the ear with a slow, increasing
throb, like the purpose of an advancing tide. At
short intervals the roar uprose, as the u third wave"
rises on the coast, and splashed upon the walls and
roof. About the doors and windows unpleasant
sounds set in steadily : Avis tried to think that they

THE STORY OF AVIS. 381

were like the sobbing of the shingle on the shore.
She could not, would not, must not, think — wild
night, be so merciful as that! — that she may not
think what else the wind is like.

She had finished and sealed her letter. She had
sealed the letter, and laid it down, and was turning
to step and see if her little daughter on the sofa by
her side slept warm, when, in the swelling of the
storm, the front-door blew violent!}7 open.

She sprang to shut it, latching the door of the
room behind her. As she stepped into the hall, the
light went out. Rain blew in upon her face. She
groped her way to the door, pushing it feebly — she
was so worn — against the resistance of the wind.
The solid oaken panel baffled her as if human hands
had been behind it. If a human voice had called
her, —

"Avis?"

Swift as the superstitions that we would not, if
we could, disown, flashed the memory of the little
lover, calm out there in the discord of the elements,
stealing up with brimming face to say, —

" Mamma, now papa is gone, I suppose I may
call you Avis? "

Avis could not have denied a genuine shock,
when, stretching out her hands, inch by inch along
the wall and still defiant door, they fell in the dead
dark upon an arm of flesh and blood.

" Avis, what is the matter? Where is the light?
Do let me in, and shut this superhuman door!

382 THE STORY OF AVIS.

There! Have I frightened you? I thought you
would know when you heard me speak. Do let us
get out of this hideous dark ! "

" Philip! O Philip! yes, let us get out of the
dark!"

Her own words appealed with an entreating sig-
nificance to her own ears at that moment as they
went groping together to the light. He had caught
her in his nervous arms ; that, she said to herself,
was a matter of course. He first found the latch,
an.d staggered in. The room was warm, and seemed
to palpitate with light. The baby on the sofa slept
peacefully. The books — it was his study — turned
their familiar shoulders to him, and their open faces
looked from the table where his wife's sealed letter
lay.

" Writing to me, were you, Avis? " He started
on the purposeless instinct that leads one to open
the unsealed letter that he will not read, as nature
leads a dog to hide the bone that he does not want.
Avis, in passing the table, hit the envelope with her
drapery sleeve, and it fell into the waste-basket.

" Never mind!" he said uneasily. " What do
we want of letters now? "

Then in the full light she saw how rain-beaten and
haggard he was.

" Let me help you with your coat, Philip," gen-
tly. " And wait — Oh, how wet you are ! Your
slippers are just where you left them. I have let
nobody touch them all this while. See ! And the

THE STOEY OF AVIS. 383

fire is warm." Like a child she led him; like a
child he submitted. She would not question him or
chatter now. It was plain that something had be-
fallen. But trouble could wait. Care was too old
a friend not to be put by. He had come. Her hus-
band had come back to her.

He flung himself down in his old chair in his
old way. His breath came short. He began at
once, —

" I was horribly sick in London. I've had two
attacks of hemorrhage. There was no time to let
you know. I got to Liverpool, and took the first
steamer. I was afraid I shouldn't get home."

" But you got home, Philip ! " her voice snapped
with a wiry cry. " You are here, you are here ! "

"Thank God, yes! "

He laid his head back, and closed his eyes wearily.
When Avis stirred, he put his hand to detain her.
The color came into her hollow face.

" Must you go? " he asked softly.

" Only to see about supper for you, Philip. You
are faint, you see ; that is all," decidedly, — " only
faint. A good hot supper and a long night's rest
will set you right." She brought the words out so
pathetically, " a long night's rest," — she who had
not rested now for so many nights, — that his atten-
tion was at once attracted to her appearance. He
sat up, rousing with the nervous rapidity natural to
him.

"Avis, how you look! Have you looked like
that ever since I have been gone? "

384 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" We have had sickness in the house," she said
quietly.

4 ' Sickness ? Where is Van ? ' '

" Van is asleep, Philip," after a well-nigh imper-
ceptible pause.

' ' And the baby ? Is that the little lady, that bun-
dle on the sofa? Can you bring her to me, Avis?
I am stronger now, — stronger already. I want to
kiss one of the children. I meant it should have
been Van first. I thought about it in the cars.
But never mind. I want to see the lassie. Let me
see: we named her after mother, didn't we? Does
she look like any of us, Avis? Does she look like
you? You didn't say when }^ou wrote. You
didn't say much about yourself. But I was glad to
hear so much about the children. It did me good.
Now let me see her — let me see the baby."

Avis brought the child, so gently that she did not
wake. She drew a chair up, for she could not stand,
and sat down beside her husband with the baby on
her knee. As she did so, his unstrung voice went
strolling on, —

u How the wind does flog this house ! I'm glad
to be at home ; glad we're all safe under shelter to-
gether. It sounds as if there were a child shut out
there, crying to be let in. But our little folks are
warm. Your hands tremble, Avis. Are you quite
well?"

"Quite well; only tired, Philip. Shall I see
about the supper now ? "

THE STORY OF AVIS. 385

" No, not now. I don't want supper. How the
little thing has grown ! Are you as fond of her,
Avis, as you were of the boy? You used to say you
were afraid you should love the girl the better. Has
Van grown so I sha' n't know him? Little rascal !
I've kept the tin-tj^pe you sent — see — in my wallet.
I've carried it all about. I was sorry you couldn't
afford a photograph. I showed it to some people in
Paris — some ladies. They called him a beautiful
boy. No, please, Avis, don't go. Indeed, I can-
not eat. What has become of that little teapot we
used to make tea in, right here over the fire, so long
ago? The first year, don't you remember" (half
fretfully, for Avis did not answer) , " when I used to
come in tired from Faculty meetings — after every-
body else was in bed? You used to make it — kneel-
ing b}r the fire — on that cricket. I think it was a
Japanese teapot. Is it broken ? Can't we have that ? ' '

" If you want it, Philip, surely. I can find the
teapot. Can you hold the baby ? or shall I take her
back?"

" No, I'd rather hold her. Don't be gone long,
will 3^ou? You can't think how it is to get home,
how it looks , — the fire, the books, — and to see
you moving about. You can't think what a fool it
makes of me," laughing boyishly. "No man knows
what it will make of him, till he has tried it. A whole
year travelling alone ; and to be sick among stran-
gers ! Oh ! I thought I should never get back, nor
see the children, nor — Oh, it is so pleasant, so

386 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

pleasant ! And I am pretty weak yet. Don't
laugh at me. When I've had the tea, — but be
sure you get that teapot, — I shall be a man again.
I'm nothing but a mass of nerves and seasickness,
and sore lungs, just now — it was so cold on the
steamer ! When I've had the tea, I can see Van,
can't I? — No, that was the cricket, this one.
Move it a little. You used to kneel on this -side.
Yes, that is the very teapot. I wonder if it will
taste as it used to. I don't see why nobody wrote
me how thin you had grown. Oh, I am so tired ! It
is so pleasant here, so pleasant ! "

Thus he wandered on. Avis made the tea, and
they drank it together : his eyes followed her. The
child slept upon his knee.

" When the trunks come — I'm as bad as a child :
I can't wait to show you what I've got for Van (do
you remember how we never could wait with our
Christmas presents — }TOU and I — those first years?
how we used to come skulking round to show them
to each other beforehand, and how you laughed at
me ; but you were the worst yourself) . There's a
doll for the girl ; but I stumbled on such an amaz-
ing French notion for him: I expect 3^011' 11 never
forgive me. It's a little fire-engine, Avis, — really
an exquisite toy. I don't know but he'll be set-
ting us all on fire, little villain ! There's something
for you, too, somewhere. That's the only pleasant
part of going away, — getting ready to come home.
A man never knows what his home's worth to him,

THE STORY OF AVIS. 387

till he's turned his back on it. I got Van a ' Pil-
grim's Progress ' too, — the best copy I could find
in all London. It took me three days to select that
book. I want he should have something to remem-
ber his father by, that he'll value when he is a man,
and I am" —

He broke off. It has been said that the soul,
which has always some influence over the muscles,
has none over the blood. Avis supposed that she
might betray, but had no conception of the fact that
she emphasized, the character of what she was en-
during. Rings of blackness slowly enlarged upon
her face, like the shadow of an advancing storm
upon a writhing lake. But she sat with her head
turned from him slightly, bent, like a Mater Dolo-
rosa, over the baby whom she had taken into her
own arms.

" Better, Philip, now?" She must say some-
thing.

" Oh, so much better — so much stronger ! I don't
know but it will make a live man of me, after all,
coming home. Really, Avis, I don't know but that
was all I needed. It's such a mistake, this sending
sick people philandering all over the world alone.
A sick man wants his fireside, and his books, and
familiar ways, and all his little silly, selfish comforts,
and not to have to take his slippers out of a trunk,
and a Japanese teapot, I believe," he rose, laughing
hysterically, ' c and — some one to make the tea on
a cricket by the fire ; and his — Come, Avis, now
let us go up and see the boy."

388 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" Are you quite strong enough yet, Philip? "

" Yes, yes, yes ! " impatiently. " Don't fret over
me. I can't wait any longer. Take me to see Van
at once."

" Are you sure, Philip, that it is best — to wake Van
to-night? He sleeps — so soundly " — She strug-
gled for controlled speech, blindly beating about with
the mad instinct of love, which would fain believe
that to save time is to save suffering.

But now she turned her face, and its mortal color
swept upon him. Slowly, then, it extended itself
to his own, as if they had stepped hand in hand —
she leading and he leaning — into a half-lit world.

"Avis, how many nights did you tell me you sat
watching? "

" I did not tell you, Philip."

"You flit about me like — the shadow of a bird that
I cannot see. You defy me, you escape me, as the
dying escape the living. I have never seen you look
so. It has been coming on a long time. Somebody
should have told me. And here I am, — a burden,
a wreck, — a broken-down fellow, on yowc hands.
It seems a hideous irony in fate to throw the care
of a consumptive on such wasted hands. Let me
look at them. Don't be afraid. I will not hold
them longer than }TOU like. If there were any thing
else to be done — anywhere we could go ! I could
fight hard for life, I think. That's half the battle,
they say. It doesn't come natural to a man of my

THE STORY OF AVIS. 389

age to sit down and die, like a weasel in a trap. If
you had been with me in France — if I hadn't
gone alone, — but what's the use in dissecting old
blunders ? A blunder's a blunder, and done with it,
only we'll do better next tune, if we can — eh,
Avis?"

If there were an undertone of symbolism in his
words, it was too slight, perhaps, to expect her to
recognize it. He watched her with his blind gaze ;
but he watched her constantly. She was used to it
in these days : Van used to watch her so, after he
had been taken sick. There had been no " scenes "
between Avis and her husband since he had come
home. They were neither of them quite strong
enough for that. They lived on and on, as those
live who know that one touch of mutual recognition,
nay, even of self-recognition of certain emotions,
will bring down upon them a land-slide of gnarled
and knotted things, whose upheaval would tear the
roots of soul and body. They cultivated that dul-
ness to their own capacity of feeling, which, when
thoroughly acquired, amounts to a sixth sense, and
becomes an element of character more powerful than
the feeling itself. The divergence between them
had been too wide for them to resume that super-
ficial comprehension of one another, and that crude
standard of affection through which the initiatory
phases of married life revolve.

Avis did not think that her husband was going to
die. But come life or death, come love or loathing,

390 THE STORY OF AVIS.

they should be honest with themselves, they two, to
the heart's core now. She devoted herself to his
invalid wants with the infinite tenderness as natural
to her as her sweet and even breath. But he said to
himself sometimes, —

" She would do as much for a hurt dog." For
her, she moved about uncertainly. She seemed to
herself like one who listens to the interlude in some
nameless music, some long symphony whose chords
strike all around the world.

All the while she was conscious of crouching like
a tigress to save his life.

One day, as he went pacing the house importu-
nately ; coming in now and then to lay the incoherent
plans and hopes of disease before her; running to
her with every sore mood, as Van used to run with
every scratch ; wondering, should he try Colorado,
the South, California, that place in New Jersey
people called the Nice of America, electricity, mes-
merism, inhalation, Spiritualism, or the prayer-cure ?

— she put down her work (her reluctant fingers took
many nervous and extremely irregular stitches in
those days), and said, —

" Philip, suppose /decide this matter for you? "

" I wish you would! " he cried, stopping short.

"The most humiliating aspect of sickness is the

irresolution it produces. A man's brain becomes a

shuttlecock. Mine is sore — what there is of it now

— with surging to and fro from plan to plan. And
something we must do. I won't die without a
tussle — yet."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 391

"It is out of the question, Philip, " quietly, —
" jour dying, I mean. That we will not contem-
plate for a moment. But we will not risk a Har-
mouth winter just now. Shall you feel at rest to
leave it to me, — what we do, and how, and all
about it ? Shall you feel the confidence in my judg-
ment which will be necessary to the success of any
plan?"

" I do not know how a man could have reason to
feel more confidence — in any creature," he said in
a low voice, throwing himself on the lounge beside
her. He was wondering with solemn shame what
kind of a fellow he should have turned out, for
instance, if he had been obliged to provide good
judgment for two. At that moment he was think-
ing, perhaps for the first time quite distinctly, what
a rock in the topography of a man's life, what a
corner-stone of granite in a human home, is the
nature of a strong wife. All that was strong in
himself stood, as column stands to column, in proud
comradeship to it. All that was weakest of him
leaned upon her with increasing naturalness, as if
upon some mysterious maternal power, as we all of
us, soul of man and soul of woman, lean alike without
dispute or shame, upon the mammoth motherhood
of Nature.

After a silence in which she too, perhaps, went
her own way into unspoken and not unkindly revery,
they resumed their conversation gently.

" Then, Philip, if you leave it to me, we will go

392 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

South. You've tried climate and solitude : now we'll
try climate and 1 — and care."

" Very well, Avis. And the baby? "

" Aunt Chloe will take the baby."

" Very well, Avis. Do you propose to beg, bor-
row, or steal? "

"Father and aunt Chloe were anxious to help us.
But " — she hesitated.

" Of course. Father and aunt Chloe are very
kind. I think, however, I will open a sanitarium
as soon as we get — somewhere. I shall be quite
able." He began to pace the room again, with
blind and bitter feet.

"But Philip — it will not be necessary, I think.
I forgot to tell you. While you were gone a piece
of luck came to us. I sold the sphinx. And I
have just arranged with Goupil. He is to photo-
graph it. There is a demand for the picture. We
shall have money enough this winter. I thought
perhaps — I hoped — you would like it better so."
But she faltered.

When he spoke, which was not for some minutes,
he said in a low voice, —

" Was it best for you, best for the picture, to let
the photographs go? "

" Not best for the picture " said Avis, with her
instinctive honesty, "but best forme, best for us
all now. And there is indeed nothing to regret. I
shall not paint another picture — at present."
'Why not?"

THE STORY OF AVIS. 393

" Let us not talk about it, Philip " — she whitened
slowly about the mouth — "I — can't discuss it."
But she collected herself at once ; and, when he
began to chatter about the sanitarium, she listened
with the patience which we lend so readily to the
sick, blessed beyond all small or selfish joy if we
may indulge at any cost the weakness which was
once the thorn in the flesh of our days.

But, when she had left him alone presently,
Ostrander sat with knotted brows. He was think-
ing about the sphinx. Avis's success — mutilated
though it was by care and trouble, nay, most of all,
by his own failure — contrasted rather bitterly with
his own drooping fortune. Was it possible for a
man to be jealous of a woman, and that woman his
own wife? The noble color burned Ostrander's
sunken face. " Before I sink so low as that," he
said, " it will be time for me to die."

394 THE STORY OF AVIS.

CHAPTER XXH.

PRINCE : " Enough. The memory of the past be razed."
MABIA : " Are you a God ? " — • KOTZEBUB.

DELICATE as the marriage of shades in a
Florida shell, is the tutelage which prepares
the eye of the traveller for the soul of the Florida
sun. They yielded themselves to it, like children
to a teacher. Solitude is a stern master, and will
have from us all some form of surrender. Theirs,
for they journeyed quite alone, taught them, first and
above all else, what the anxious brain, and wearied
body, and breaking heart most blindly buffet and
most thirstily receive, — the influence of atmosphere.

It was to Avis one of those subtle experiences
whose suave surprise lends a new outlook to the
possible evolution of character from the probable
novelty of scenery in the life which is to follow this,
when, from the narrow windows of the cars she over-
took the widening of the infinite Southern heavens,
day by day.

Upon the palette of the sky relaxing Nature
spread her colors, as the human artist does, deepen-
ing from the pallor to the flush. Their last Northern
sunset was cold, polished, and perfect as a pearl. The
first Virginia dawn unfolded like a tea-rose leaf.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 395

Down through the great barrens the passion grew :
eternal fire sat sentinel upon the low horizon of Caro-
lina ; Georgia took up the torch, and ran with it,
like a will-o'-the-wisp, from swamp to swamp, swift
to the everglades, where Florida kneeled in purple
and scarlet, like a queen who was crowned in prayer.

" And the evening and the morning were the third
day." Avis, half to her husband, more to herself,
said this dreamily as they put the first foot upon the
white-hot sand. She was a little sorry when she had
said it. The words bore her imagination captive
at once into that powerful old Bible allegory, in which
the love of married man and woman was found the
last and greatest, as it was the most intricate, of
God's creative acts. She had no doubt that Philip's
fancy was as swift as her own to go wandering, (ah,
how homelessly !) led by her chance word so, and
that to him, as to her, the broad bosom of the St.
John's River unveiled itself with a fantastic mockery,
as the wave of the river of life may have flashed
through parting boughs that the wind beat when
exiled eyes, over shamed and shrinking shoulders,
yearned to Eden.

For Philip's fancy was never dull ; and in their
early married days they had dwelt much in that deli-
cate, visionary world, in which imaginative lovers
find the keenest and the most permanent (because
the most varied) stimulus to joy that human feeling
knows. These little fables, phrases of their court-
ship and bridal years, rushed upon her memory that

396 THE STORY OF AVIS.

day, through the blazing hours of their sail down
the river to the Ancient City by the Sea. Tricks of
speech or eye or smile, daily ambuscades of love,
all the tactics of the heart that she had long for-
gotten, presented themselves to her thought persist-
ently. Dead days stalked by her, as the dead trees
stalked down the strange and silent shores, — days
whose dawn and twilight, whose midnight and whose
noon, unfolded each a new petal in the solemn flower
of love. Scenes that she could have stunned herself
into forgetting, emotions which she would have
thought it incredible that she could revivify, pursued
her. Her past arose with its grave-clothes on. Her
buried tenderness confronted her with the awful
immortality given to love, and to love alone, of all
births bestowed upon the breathing soul. She had
not thought ever to remember, even in heaven, where
memory must be the shadow by which we read the
dial of joy, hordes of these things that began to
oversweep the defiance of her self-defensive calm.

She felt a certain petulance with the surroundings
which wrought this mood within her. She did not
remember in any of her wanderings to have so quar-
relled with the introspective influence of travel.
She reminded herself that she had not come to
Florida to grow maudlin with drugged sentiment.
Her thought stepped out like a disembodied spirit,
and took a survey of herself, as she sat there on that
boat, — a hollow-eyed woman, past her first youth,
economically dressed, come thirteen hundred miles

THE STORY OF AVlS. 397

to nurse a consumptive husband — as was clearly her
duty — through the winter. She glanced about the
boat, and wondered if they looked like the other
married people there, she and Philip, — pale, fretful
couples, fatigued with the dust, the jar, the heat, the
homelessness, of travel ; fatigued, above all, she
thought, with each other ; as if marriage had become
to most of them an eternal evening party, in which
each believes himself to be of all men most miser-
able, but gets him into his white gloves conscien-
tiously, lest society strike him from her calling-list.

Like those two young people, for instance, on the
after-deck near her ; they could not be out of their
twenties, poor things, yet clearly there was no lon-
ger any splendor in the grass, or glory in the flower,
of life, to them. She was the invalid, irritable, and
a hard, ill-controlled cougher: he was tired out;
their children were with them, and hung about, cry-
ing for their dinner. The sick woman complained of
every thing, and wished they had never come to
Florida. Her husband looked on, poor fellow, in
the perfect silence in which the husband of a weak
woman, unless he be the weaker of the two, learns
to shelter both himself and her. They made a dull,
realistic Dutch picture, sitting by themselves, miser-
ably on the hot deck. The very cinders on those
people, deep from three days' car-travel, seemed to
Avis somehow to accentuate the emphasis of their
plain and disenchanted lot. She forgot that she and
Philip were just as black.

398 THE STORY OF AVIS.

She wondered what Philip was thinking. He had
strengthened, rather than weakened, with the effort
of travelling; sitting out on the platform of the
creeping ears in the wonderful Georgia weather,
hour after hour, like a boy on his first journey;
drinking down the froth of the sunlight as frozen
men drink wine ; chatting with the captain on the
little boat, and laughing — she could hear him laugh.
It struck her with a certain slight bitterness, of
which she was thoroughly ashamed, poor girl! as
she sat there alone, that he could laugh like that ;
that he, too, was not driven by the Florida scenery
into small, cynical visions of his neighbors, seeing
all life and all love in the Claude Lorraine of their
own darkened story. It did not occur to her just
then that it was not easy to foretell where a fine
influence, in particular a tropical influence, would
drive her husband — in a state of mental isolation'
like this that had befallen them both — to the cap-
tain, perhaps, precisely, or to that very cross couple
on the after-deck, whose little boy he was now lead-
ing away to the wheel-house so tenderly. Philip
could be very tender when he would ; God had never
made a tenderer man. He brought the boy to her
presently, — a pleasant little fellow. The tears were
still wet on the child's now radiant cheek. Avis
stooped and kissed them away, as she would have
brushed a speck from a flower. But, when she
lifted her face, her husband was watching her, and,
as their eyes met, both filled. The child ran back
to his parents. He sat down beside her.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 399

" He is about the size of " —

" Yes, yes," said Avis quickly.

" And did you notice, Avis, a little something
about the eyelashes ? — some trick or turn ? I thought
him almost like, at first. But nobody is like Van, I
think. — Avis, do }TOU see what a miracle it is?
How I bear this journe}*? Is there room for me
here ? I don't want to crowd 37ou. We are going
to get in late, the captain says. We shall see the
sunset and the moonrise, this first night, in this
solitary place."

His voice sunk to a certain solemnity as he drew
nearer to her, and they leaned over the deck-rail to
watch the shadows gather on the water and the
pathless shore.

His face, too, as his wife borrowed a look at it
in the struggling light, had settled into a solemn
cast, like beautiful hardening cla}'. His sunken
eye swept the long untrodden shores, the opaque
water, the beckoning sky. This, then, was Florida,
where he was to get well, or —

44 What is it, Philip?"

Indefinable as the gradation by which the pall of
the thickets melted to the blazonry above the forest-
tops was the motion with which she stirred towards
him. Uncertain as the leaning of the light upon the
perturbed river, to whose heart no eye could see,
was the impulse of the hand which he held — groping
a little, for it darkened now — to hers.

44 1 was thinking," he said, 44 that we have never

400 THE STORY OF AVIS.

been in such a solitary place. You don't mind our
watching the moonrise together? We haven't done
such a silly thing — for so long ! "

He laughed rather nervously ; but for her, she did
not trust herself to speak. On either hand the
forest glided by, — the awful forest in which no man
trod. The river, like all things which seem to en-
large as they become absorbent of light, broadened
beneath the rising moon. The fine outline of the
pine-fronds and the blurred gray tendrils of the
abundant moss made the sole change of accent in
the level horizon ; and this itself acquired a depress-
ing quality, like that of a sweet but monotonous
voice. Their little boat hung, the only sign of
breathing life, pivoted in a trinity of isolation, a
wilderness of water, forest, and sky. As the moon
rode higher, the people on the deck hushed one by
one, families gathered in silent groups, and the tired
children slept. The woman who coughed so crossly
had gone below.

Instinctively, as they rounded into the desolate
landing at Tocoi, Avis crept nearer to her husband.
There was something of superstition, perhaps, in
the repressed shudder with which she shrank from
the innocent outline of the clumsy little train that
waited for them. She was so tired, that every thing
took a symbolic form to her. Her swift, outreach-
ing sympathy gathered in all the other women who
had trod this dreary shore before her, homeless,
anxious, and careworn, battling for a husband's life.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 401

It seemed as much of a wrench to the reason to
believe that beyond that eternal forest an unseen sea
could beat, as, in our earthlier moments, it seems to
the finest spirit among us, that life can leap again
beyond the everglades of death.

As they cut their awed way through it, looking
out from the wide doors of the rude car, Ostrander
said, —

4 ' I am sure I never was in quite such a lonely
place in all my life ; were you, Avis ? "

" Never, Philip."

The simple question was lightly asked, the quiet
answer quickty given ; yet both fell silent, as if their
lips had learned the words of some grave and embar-
rassing confession. Avis trembled beside her hus-
band, sitting there in the dark car. He put his
hand upon hers : it was the first time for a long
while. Her pulse bounded so that he removed it.
His wife was not a woman to be won lightly for the
second time. Caresses could not transfigure for her
the nature that had once defaulted to her. No hys-
teric feeling, warm to-day and chilled to-morrow,
could restore to her the shores of reverence upon
which her own unfathomable tenderness had surged.
Integral and individual as her own must be the alle-
giance which would be found worthy to renew the
exhausted tide of wedded joy. Thus he thought,
with sad, abundant pride. He would not have had
it otherwise with her for their joy's sake. They
two, alone there, seemed to him to stand separate

402 THE STORY OF AVIS.

and strange, bringing a soul-sickness deeper than
the body's hurt to the healing of this new and gen-
tle land.

When they had got into their hotel that night, he
lay and watched her quite silently. He was, after
all, more exhausted than he had thought. When
she had ordered up his tea, and dismissed the waiter,
he asked her, too, to rest. She thanked him for his
thoughtfulness, but moved about, busying herself for
his comfort, in the little, brightly-lighted, barren
room. There was an open fire-place, and a log of
light-wood burning in it. She stirred through the
resinous, red air, in her gray dress and soft lace :
she had not put on mourning for her boy. She knew
that her husband was watching her ; but she did not
know what a sweet shyness was upon herself, upon
her averted figure and unresponsive eyes.

She came and sat down by him presently; the
light- wood faded quietly on the hearth. Their neigh-
bor, the sick woman from the boat, was fretting
faintly in the adjoining room. It seemed very still
with them, and sheltered.

" Are you resting, Philip? "

" Quite rested. And you — are you content? Are
you glad we came — this long distance — by our-
selves? "

" When we have heard from the baby, we shall
be quite content, Philip. There will be letters to-
morrow, perhaps."

' How strange it is, Avis — being together so —

THE STORY OF AVIS. 403

without the children. We have never travelled alone
before, like this, at least, since our wedding-journey.
Had you thought of that? "

" Yes, Philip," after a pause.

"It is so pleasant — to me. Do you like it,
Avis ? Sha'n't you find it a terrible drag, shut up
with a whimsical sick fellow for so many months? "

She lifted her face to check him for the idle ques-
tion, and with it her strong, warm hand. He bowed
his head reverently, laying his pale cheek upon it.
Her own flushed like a girl's ; but she said nothing.
Thus, still clinging to her, the sick man slept.

Avis's hand grew numb : she did not move it.
She sat on in the dark, for the fire died. The poor
woman slept, too, in the next room. She heard the
sounds of summer through the open window in the
strange December air. In her married life she
turned a noiseless leaf.

Ostrander was not without his full share of the
prejudices common to men who have received, at
whatever remote period in a life which has run
counter to it, the education of the medical school.
He had an array of opinions upon the sanitary effects
and prospects of the State of Florida, with which
he treated his wife, boyishly enough perhaps, as the
wisdom of his selection seemed to make itself mani-
fest in his own case. Avis heard him with relaxing
eyes. As he gained in strength, the tension of care
loosened a little in herself. Nerve by nerve, and

404 THE STORY OF AVIS.

muscle by muscle, it seemed, her watchful body
yielded to the absence of demand upon its resist-
ance in the unassertant air.

The poor girl was almost in as much need as he
of the atmosphere in which sorrow seems an in-
fringement of a newly discovered law, and care a
crime against an hitherto unguessed, but here un-
guarded and undiverted love.

They settled themselves in a yellow, old coquina
house : there were orange-trees about it, kneeling
with their amber lamps ; the windows of their room
looked to the warm brown water; strange birds
swayed by in the flushed air. Ostrander was ex-
cited by every thing : he ran in and out like a child.
He kept coming up to her, and saying, —

" Ayis, don't you think we shall like it? "

When they had been there a day or two, he told
her those people from the boat were of their fellow-
boarders. Avis idly asked if he knew their names.

"0>h, yes!" he said, " it's a French name, —
Smith." Then, when they both laughed merrily, she
wondered at the lifting of her heart. It reminded
her of how it was on their wedding-journey, when
they found each other so amusing, and laughter
leaped so lightly to their happy lips.

One day he drooped a little with a cold, or some
of the slight hinderances which stay the motion of
the spheres for the invalid and those who minister to
him ; and then he began to worry about the pros-
pects of the family if he should fail, after all, to get
up again.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 405

"I should be surprised," said his wife in her
quiet way, " if I could not support this family,
whatever happened. If you fret yourself sick, I
shall certainly have to do it."

" Do you really think you could ? " he urged anx-
iously. " It would be such a relief to think — to
know! — You could, if any woman could. It
would be so different if you made it a point, if every
thing bent to it. Once you might have done any
thing you would. What a future you had, Avis,
when I came in your way ! I don't know how to
make you believe — that I didn't mean to blight it
all."

" I know, I know, Philip." But her breath be-
gan to shorten.

u It's a pretty hard thing, after all, when a man
and woman have actually married, not to let things
go like the rest of the world," he said, looking up
rather helplessly. "But perhaps, if I had helped
you more — cared and planned — I don't see how
it all came about. We didn't mean it to be so when
we married, did we, Avis? "

She did not answer. Her thoughts rushed back
through the veins of all those years, like driven
blood. She put her hand to her throat. She felt
choked, as if with a physical congestion. A passion
is a passion, be it of the intellect or of the heart ;
and a denied aspiration dies, perhaps, more dumbly,
but never less drearily, than a denied love.

"Avis! Have you minded so much? And I

406 THE STORY OF AVIS.

have been so absorbed — and did not see. Why,
my poor girl ! Why, Avis ! "

For Avis, taken unawares by his tenderness, hat-
ing herself for the weakness to which, in all their
married life, her husband had never seen her yield
before, burst into a paroxysm of the terrible tears
which lie in wait to avenge themselves upon all
opulent self-control.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 407

CHAPTER XXHI.

" I ride from land to land,
I sail from sea to sea,
Some day more kind I fate may find,
Some night kiss thee. "—SPANISH BALLAD.

THE escaped, longer than the uncaptured emotion
stands at bay. Ostrander was conscious that it
required very different elements of the nature to woo
the bruised affection of the wife from those which
had won the hard surrender of the maiden's love :
the one thing might be done by the complexity,
the other only by the force, of character. With the
unappeasable self-regret born of the self-knowledge
which only the nearest relations of life can create in
us, he thought of that drooping calyx of reverence
in his wife's heart, which all time might not now be
long enough for the dew of his gathered and gather-
ing fealty of feeling to refill. In his stronger mo-
ments he kneeled before his lost ideal of himself, as
the select three kneeled upon the Mount of Trans-
figuration before a vanished God : in his weaker ones
he tried to forget it. In the first he despaired of
her ; in the other he yearned for her. Her allegi-
ance without her respect taunted him ; her tender-
ness without her trust shamed him. Ostrander's
love for his wife had been the supreme fact of his life.

408 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

In his expressive medical phrase, he recognized it
as one of the proximate principles of his soul. No
other woman, or so he believed, could have com-
manded so long, or reclaimed so autocratically, the
tissue of his elastic fancy. He was at a loss how
to approach her gentle and devoted calm. He
mourned his own crippled power to command in
her that idealization which is the essential condi-
tion of the love that woman bears to man.

Regret, which had been sentiment at home, was
sentience in Florida. The sunlight fell in golden
showers, through which they trod athirst. All the
colors of life deepened in this prismatic land. They
walked with joined hands, but averted faces. The
splendor slept upon the warm, strange water, upon
the mosaic of shell-strewn sand, the green pulses of
the orange-leaves,. the veiled crimson heart of the
banana-blossom, the bursting mood of the pome-
granate ; but neither saw that upon the cheek of the
other the same glow lay.

One day he said something, carelessly enough,
about a beautiful Parisian whom he met at this time
last year ; and then, turning, he surprised the slow
color climbing his wife's face. He came close to her
at once, and said with a certain gentle authority, —

"Avis, look at me, please. So; that will do.
Now listen. Once before, when I spoke of people
I had met, you looked like that. It was the night I
came back, sitting by the fire at home ; even then,
— that night. Grant me at least the justice of re-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 409

membering that a man doesn't make a fool of him-
self— in such a way — more than once ; and believe
that I had the brains to profit by a bitter lesson,
if you cannot give me credit for the heart. Even
if you cannot see — that other women, — if you do
not know ' ' —

He turned (they were strolling on the beach),
and impetuously began to walk the other way. After
a moment's hesitation she followed, and overtook
him.

" You forget, Philip," she said, " how long a scar
throbs in a woman's flesh. But indeed I've never
meant to remind — or taunt you about any thing."

4 ' I wish you would ! " he cried hotly. ; ' I wish you
had ! I think I should feel better if you would out
with it, and tell me what a contemptibly weak fellow
you thought me — if you would say the very worst."

" Oh, hush ! " said Avis in her rich maternal voice.
She did not say there was no worst. That was not
true. She only put her hand upon his arm, and
spared him with strong silence.

When he came to think it over, he blessed her for
it with all his heart. He felt that he could not have
borne to hear his wife say what he knew she had
thought of him. On the other hand, he would have
shrunk from a superficial tenderness — ignoring facts
too keenly present in the minds of both — as from
a kind of gruel adapted to invalids and children.
Silence, more kindly and more intricately than any
speech, he began to hope, would now interpret them

410 THE STORY OF AVIS.

to each other. He would strive to make himself wor-
thy to use the deaf-mute alphabet of fine souls. He
fancied that she leaned a little upon his arm in walk-
ing home that day : it was a bright day, and he had
felt quite strong.

They walked on the narrow sea-wall, where two
only can tread abreast. She looked very young and
girlish that day, in her palmetto hat and white linen
dress.

"When they came in, the boarding-house dinner-
bell was ringing, and the people in their light clothes
collecting merrily ; the little boy who looked like
Van ran up with orange-buds for Philip ; the noon
surged in across the veranda in a tide of light and
heat ; unfamiliar tropical perfumes were in the air ;
and the December roses nodded at the windows.
Avis had a confused festal feeling, as if the people
and the roses, and the light and the child, had waited
for her and Philip to come in.

She bade him go on without her, that he need not
spend his strength to climb the stairs ; and herself
ran up lightly. She tossed the ribbons about in her
drawer to choose a fresh one, a golden one, as near
the shade of the sunlight as she could find. She held
it against the shimmer on the wall, laughing, to try
the match. She plunged her hands and face into the
cool water ; her own eyes looked back to her from
the glass, dewy and sweet, as she brushed the damp
rings of her hair.

" Do I look still so young?" she thought. In

THE STORY OF AVIS. 411

the next room she could hear their neighbors with
the French name. The sick woman was berating her
husband bitterly — it was something about the soup.
Avis turned round, standing alone there, and stretched
her arms out solemnly as if she would yearn through
the solid wall to gather the poor creature in. Her
heart cried out to those strange people,

"You — it is not too late for you — save your
love ! Oh, save your married love ! "

That was Christmas week. She and Philip went
out and ransacked the little curiosity shops together,
to find something for the baby. There were three
letters from aunt Chloe that week — and the child
was well. Their hearts lightened, and the stress
of anxiety to which the happiest earthly parentage
must bow an aching shoulder yielded kindly for
them. Bereavement^ and sickness, peril and sepa-
ration, slipped by them in the golden weather, with
a suggestion of the solemn sweetness with which
care may seem to elude rather than escape us in
Heaven.

Ostrander said, —

" I believe I am going to get well."

On Christmas Eve they started out to the little
churchyard beyond the city gates, whose impres-
sive ruin, cut against the setting sun, said to both
that of which neither spoke. They sat down by
one of the graves, — a child's grave, nameless and
deserted.

412 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" See, Philip ! " said Avis in a low voice, " the
mounds here are strewn with shells, instead of the
flowers that one sees elsewhere : but this poor little
fellow has none ; I will go and find some." She
wandered off alone, while he sat and watched her
from his solitary place. The light fell fast; the
massive face of Fort Marion darkened down upon
the little beach where she strolled in sweet, search-
ing attitudes, that lent so much gentleness to the
courageous contours of her figure. It was almost
dark when she came back to say, —

" I could only find a few poor little dull things ;
but they will do."

She stooped, and laid the shells in the form of a
cross, according to the custom of the quiet place,
upon the grave. " I am sure it was a little boy,"
she said.

Then, for it darkened steadily., they went in silence
home. Just before they reached the house, Ostran-
der said abruptly, —

" Avis, all the time you were on that beach, I saw
the boy."

"The child from the churchyard?" asked Avis,
smiling, to humor a sick man's fancy, but wishing
that she had not left him so long in that malarial
place.

" No — Van. I didn't mean to tell you; but I
think I had better. I saw Van quite distinctly."

"Are you sick, Philip?" asked Avis, stopping
short.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 413

" Perfectly well. Not so well this winter, and I
never had one of these optical illusions before in all
my life. My mother used to have them, and they
tell some amazing stories about my grandfather's
last sickness. I have often wanted to experience a
touch of the thing, to see what it is like. It is very
strange/'

" What was it like? " asked Avis a little uneasily,
but walking -on. She drew her hand a trifle closer
through his arm, and joined her fingers upon it : she
used to walls with him in that way, now long since.

" He came out of the water," said Ostrander,
u and ran along the beach. He had his little Christ-
mas stocking in his hand. You did not see him, and
he pulled at your dress."

Involuntarily Avis cried out : there was a certain
terrible realism in her husband's quiet words and
the curious, scientific interest of his tone.

" Then you turned round, and he took hold of
your hand. I saw him put one of the shells in his
stocking. He had on that little blue sack aunt
Chloe gave him, with white buttons. Then he ran
along again, and waded into the water. I saw him
quite plainly. He " —

"What did he do, Philip?" asked Avis in a
voice of awe ; for Philip paused.

" He beckoned to me. He beckoned to me twice.
Then you came up the slope, and, when I looked
again, he was gone. Positively, for the moment my
breath came hard, and I was a little faint and sick
when you found me.

414 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" There is some nervous inaction of the retina. I
had one such case in the hospital before I graduated.
I believe I'll read up a little on it to-night. Avis,
do you know I haven't coughed once for three whole
days?"

It was on Christmas that he said abruptly, coming
out from mass in the gray cathedral into which they
had wandered, "If I die before you do, don't ex-
pect me to chatter about what I'm thinking, — on
my death-bed, I mean. It won't be my way. I
know what I believe, and you know, and I don't
believe any thing quite so thoroughly as that, if I get
into the other life on any grounds, I shall take some-
how a pretty fresh start, — I need it, God knows ! —
more of a start than I'm likely to get here now.
Sometimes I wonder if He'll take the trouble to
make over such a half-moulded fellow. I don't know
whether I'm worth it, upon my soul! Now," he
added, "I couldn't have said that a month ago,
when I really thought I was going to die. How
amazingly natural good luck is ! I am as used to
getting well as if I had never been sick."

But, when they had come home, he turned to her
rather sadly, —

" An ailing man talks so much about himself! —
as if people could care."

His wife did not answer for the moment ; then she
crept up, and put her hand upon his hair, passing it
to and fro. He remembered the first time she ever
did this, — one winter-day before they were married,

THE STORY OF AVIS. 415

when his head was reeling with pain ; and how aunt
Chloe came in, and just how Avis looked, standing
over him, shamed and sweet. He wondered if she
remembered too. He thought what a subtle bond is
the bare community of memory given to those who
pass their lives together ; how eternal is the vicinity
we give to the soul that we suffer to share our memo-
rable joy or grief or peril.

Impulsively he put his hand out, and drew his wife
down upon the arm of the chair ; but he felt her
tremble, and so released her. She stood for a minute
uncertain : he did not touch her again, and neither
spoke. All the brilliant ingenuity of Ostrander's na-
ture drooped before the task of wooing an estranged
wife. He got up awkwardly, and said that Smith
baby was crying again ; and then he and Avis sat
down at separate windows, with their faces to the
sultry Christmas night.

But after this he fell into a low, discouraged state.
He suffered a brief attack of pleurisy, and complained
of the shortness of his breath. He maintained that
the air disagreed with him, and that they should move
at once.

Mr. Smith expressed a desire to join them, on the
ground that Mrs. Smith found her hands cold in
Augustine. The little part}' wandered up and down
the river, as Florida parties will, subject only to the
caprices of its invalids, touching here and there for
a day or so, at hotels or sanitariums, as the restless
fancy took them, and absorbed in the exhaustive and

416 THE STORY OF AVIS.

enlivening discussion of fogs and fever. After a
week or more of this, Avis induced her husband, who
was growing scarcely paler than herself, to bring it
to an end.

"You're right," he said faintly. "It is killing
us both. We will spend the winter at the next
landing. ' '

This happened to be Pilatka. Here, therefore,
they yielded their search for the impossible, and b}^
windows that scanned the great river, drew breath,
and missed the sea.

Mr. Smith drew breath and halted too. Mrs.
Smith was sensitive to the alligators, and was of opin-
ion that another night on board boat would strike to
the pneumo-gastric nerve.

Here Ostrander fell first into calm, then lethargy,
then energy.

The new year blossomed unguardedly. He sub-
mitted himself to the regal weather. In the fine
quality of the cooler season he gained daily. He
ceased to cough. He chatted with the other recu-
perating invalids about the hotels and shore, bringing
home magic tales of the healing genii in the flower-
burdened air. He found a Massachusetts college-
boy with a bronchial cough, sick with grief at drop-
ping behind his class. He began to tutor him a
little in his Greek. Avis saw that he colored with
pleasure when the hour came for the lesson. The
poor fellow was overwhelmed with a pathetic joy to
be doing a man's work again.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 417

When the professor wrote from Harmouth, one
day, that he had heard of an opening in a Western
college, which his son-in-law's complete recovery
might throw in his way, he said excitedly, —

" Father is very good. But really, Avis, I don't
know but we can do better than that. We might
start a boarding-school in Florida — or, if that,
wouldn't work, the sanitarium would."

Avis, painting orange-blossoms for aunt Chloe,
said only, —

" We will see, Philip.

She could no more have quarrelled just then with
the characteristic effervescence of his returning
strength, than she could have revised and annotated
her little boy's prayers. She had so long stood,
strained, staring death out of countenance for
Philip's sake, that his very weaknesses had grown
sacred to her ; as the faults of Lazarus may have be-
come to the tender eyes of Mary. With that super-
lative vagueness through which we see the excep-
tions taken by another to our own force of character,
Ostrander was perhaps conscious of this.

One night in January, there befell a warm and
wonderful moon, which impelled all the unresting
stream of tourist life into the open air. Ostrander
was especially stimulated by the stir, the chatter, the
scented wind, the Southern sky. He begged Avis
to go with him — awa}^ he said, from all these peo-
ple — for a row upon the river. He would manage
the boat himself at first. She said nothing : it was

418 THE STORY OF AVIS.

her delicate tact that the limits of his strength
should come as a discovery to the invalid, rather
than a dogma from the nurse. In a few minutes he
yielded the oars to her with a sigh. She took them
in silence, and in silence they rose and fell upon the
bright resistant current.

Avis, as she rowed, turned her face to the forest,
whose peaks of blackness rose on either hand. The
river pierced them like a bright defile, narrowing as
they entered it. She thought how the light lay on
the sea, beating beyond over there at the left, deep
miles across the untrodden tangle, where the long
bar leaned out that makes the entrance to the St.
Augustine Harbor one of the most perilous feats
known to the navigators of the American coast.
She and Philip seemed shut in here, and secure, on
the patient river. Perhaps some poor sailor yonder
on the unseen sea came at that moment, daring his
fate, — the most cruel that the mariner's chart can
know, — the resistance of shifting sand. They were
safe, — they two. She leaned over to look into the
stream : she blessed its passionless, contracted cur-
rent. She had called the St. John's River humdrum
sometimes by daylight, a tame story, nothing to
be done with it but follow it to the tiresome *end ;
now it stretched, transfigured and electric. The
sky seemed to stoop with the undue burden of its
stars. The moon hung high, and the water rose a
little under the warm wind. A few boats only quiv-
ered in sight, — so few as to express rather than

THE STORY OF AVIS. 419

relieve the phantasmal solitude of the place : their
colored skippers cut like ebony carving about the
rigging. Indistinct voices drifted from them, and
sunk again, as Avis and her husband beat up the
narrowing shores alone.

She beached the boat presently. They met no
one, and walked silently upon the coarse white sand,
close to the water's edge. Avis said, —

" This river is like that old book of Carove's,
about the soul. It seems to be a story without an
end."

He sat down after a little while ; for his capricious
strength flagged. Avis wandered up and down,
dim as a nereid upon the shore : he could hear the
grains of sand crackle beneath her feet. There
were now no sails in sight upon the uneasy current.
Between the forest on this hand, and the forest on
that, the river lay desolate. The dead trees upon
its banks wore winding-sheets of moss ; they stretched
their boughs across the separating stream: those
that stood shoulder to shoulder interlocked branches
in a manner in which it was impossible not to see a
pathetic and at the same time grim likeness to hu-
man gestures. In the half-lights, sky and shore and
river alike grew fluent and foreign, till whether
one walked upon the stream, or sailed upon the
sand, or sank upon the clouds, the truant fancy
wondered, with a kind of happy terror, such as that
soul might feel which first escaped the body on a
moonlit night.

420 THE STORY OF AVIS.

It was a spot to drive the lonely from each other,
and to draw the loving near.

Ostrander's figure, where he sat solitary, melted
and formed in the gray uncertainties of the air. As
his wife stood, turning hither and thither, she was
not sure where she had left him. He seemed to
have vanished from her. She turned back with
beating heart. He watched her coming through the
unreal light.

The moon was full in his face ; with his head
upon his bent, thin wrist, he sat with lifted eyes.
She sat down beside him. They could not see the
lights of the little town. They were quite alone in
the visionary place. Without speech and without
touch, Avis was made aware that the moment had
become a crisis for them both. She dared not look
at her husband.

It seemed to her that one careless breath now
would completely disorder her self-control. Whether
she should go flinging her arms above her head, and
leaping down that unsubstantial shore, resistant of
him ; or whether she should spend herself upon him
with a storm of long-repressed feeling, which she
was scathingly conscious would not facilitate that
intelligent comprehension of one another in which
she believed that their sole hope of future happiness
must lie, — this five-years wife, acquainted with
bereavements, worn with care, and flaj'ed by anxiety,
could not trust herself to guess.

" Avis," said her husband suddenly, " we won't

THE STORY OF AVIS. 421

have any scene or bother about it; but there is
something I want to say to you."

" Very well, Philip," gently.

" I don't know that it's of any use, either, to talk
about it," mused Philip uncertainly. " Most things
are better let alone between people who — I wonder
if you think a man's worst is the real of him, Avis?
There — hush ! Don't try to answer such a question.
It doesn't deserve an answer. But what I want to
say is this, It does seem to me that there must have
been something in me worth loving, or you wouldn't
have cared for me in the first place.

" Things might have been worse," he added, lift-
ing his head a little ; ' ' and all that — these elements
of character that you loved are real : they are not
dead. If you would think of this sometimes ! " he
said rather pitifully.

He looked up across the uncertain shadow that her
tall figure cast between them. His wife had risen,
and stood over him with streaming eyes and choking
speech. That very intelligent comprehension of one
another seemed no nearer to her than ever. Was it
possible, after all, that people might be happy just
to love one another, without understanding any thing
about it?

" I cannot seem to make up my mind to bear it,"
said Philip Ostrander, not without dignity, " that my
wife should not respect me enough to love me."

Then in the unreal light she stooped to him, crying
out pathetically ; but what she said, or if she said any

422 THE STORY OF AVIS.

words, neither lie nor herself could at that moment
tell. He held up his hands. In the unreal light it
seemed to him as if she bent from a great height to
restore to him the married kiss which he had lost.
But he did not, or he dared not, draw her to his level.

The moon waned, and they went home. The river
was deserted. The wind was high ; but the current
bore them powerfully on. Avis rowed sturdily, and
they did not talk. The lights of the little town nod-
ded to welcome them. On either hand the kneel-
ing moon slowly veiled the colossal face of the
wilderness.

They talked a little when they had come home, in
that small surface-mood to which the deepest wedded
romance lies so near, — as to whether she had rowed
too far, and if he had taken cold, and why Mrs.
Smith did not cough to-night, and if the evening
mail had come, and how aunt Chloe had the baby
well asleep by this time, — little lassie ! their babj^,
thirteen hundred miles away, — and how she would
have grown when they got home, and if she would
know them, and what they should take her. But
Ostrander watched his wife with restless eyes. How
resolute her rich motions about the half-lit room !
He was growing half impatient with this motherly
kind of affection she gave him. It was no com-
fort to him that he knew it was the best that
he deserved. Beside her quarried loyalty his own
frailer instincts had never seemed to him smaller and
sadder than they did that night. Never before had

THE STORY OF AVIS. 423

he perceived the spiritual dignity of constancy ; per-
haps — since it is precisely in proportion to the lofti-
ness of a truth that personal humility is requisite to
its apprehension — he had never before distrusted
himself sufficiently to perceive it. Her love, he
thought, like the statues of Angelo, had been struck
out at the beginning from the holy marble ; his, like
the work of lesser sculptors, from the experimental
clay.

" Shall I light the lamps? " she said at last.

"Don't you like it better as it is?" he asked
doubtfully.

"Perhaps so — yes. Do you want any thing,
Philip ? Is it time for your medicine ? There ! I
have not rung for your glass of milk . Let me call
Jeff."

" Please not ring — now. Can't you sit and rest
a little ? You must be very tired."

" Just as you like, Philip."

She stood in the centre of the dim room, uncer-
tain for that moment. The light from the unlatched
door fell in. The halls were deserted and still.
Outside, in the peculiarly dense and appalling
shadows that follow the foliage of orange-trees upon
a moonlit night, the white flowers hung wearily.

" I have been such a care," he said tremulously
through the dark, " for so long ! You have borne so
much, Avis, and so patiently ! Now I'm getting
well, don't you think I'm fit to take my share of
things? Oh, come here, and let us talk about it!

424 THE STORY OF AVIS.

Come, my poor girl, poor girl ! Don't you "know how
tired you are?"

Perhaps it was the words ; perhaps it was the tone.
Change and sickness had not jarred the quality of
Ostrander's rare voice. It affected his wife just then
like those strains of music which a heavy heart is
more hurt than healed to hear.

A torrent of memory overtook her. Bound emo-
tions began to struggle in it. All the repressed
suffering of a woman to whom it has been given to
carry her husband's nature, as she has lifted that of
her children, through a lonely and laborious married
life, seemed to come sweeping over her, wave upon
wave, in a tide to which she could see no end.

He expected that she would come up and take his
face between her hands ; call him her poor boy per-
haps, in that maternal way of hers from which he
knew at that moment his manhood would revolt ;
and what would happen next he could not possibly
foretell.

But, like a fascinated girl to her lover, Avis, in the
dim room, turned and crept to him. His starved
arms shook as they closed about her. He prayed
that only his ideal of himself might touch his wife
at that moment. She put up her hand to his cheek
in her old way.

' ' Oh, I am so tired ! — tired out, tired out. Don't
tall? to me — oh ! there is nothing to say. It was a
good while — pulling along alone — and I thought
you did not care."

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 425

CHAPTER XXIV.

" 'Tis most true, two souls
. . . Let them suffer

The gall of hazard, so they grow together,
Will never sink." — JOHN FLETCHEB.

" Discords quenched by meeting harmonies
Die in the large and charitable air ;
And all our rarer, truer, better self —
That better self — shall live." — GEORGE ELIOT.

THEY seemed to themselves now to have become
the discoverers of the State of Florida. Above
them widened new heavens ; below them a new earth
leaped. Lonely and awed as lovers, they wandered
about the forests and the shore. He was boyish
about having her with him. She shared his walks,
his drives, his sails. He drooped if they were parted
for an hour. His breath and color deepened ; his
recovery presented itself to them as a foregone con-
clusion.

He talked a good deal, — more often of their
future, sometimes of all that they had put behind
them. He would come up excitedly and say, —

" If we don't make it work at the "West, Avis, what
then ? Shall you be contented to come back here ?
You and I could be happy here forever ; couldn't we ?
And we could educate the girl ourselves." Then she
would listen, smiling, and put up her hand, and say

426 THE STORY OF AVIS.

nothing: she liked better to let him talk and go
dreaming. And he, reverently turning his cheek, still
hollow as it was, upon her palm, would slide intently
ofl.

If his health gave way again at the West — but of
course he meant to try it faithfully ; that was under-
stood. If the climate proved too irritating, or the
class-room drudgery — but he thought he should
know better how to manage that another time.
Still it was a comfort to know, that, if worst came
to worst, they could return, and start the sanitarium
or the boarding-school. It would be quite practica-
ble to find a suitable housekeeper : Avis should not
be exhausted by that. Or, if that failed, there was
the orange-business. He was convinced that there
was room for a large orange-grove even here ; and,
farther up the river, a little Northern pluck would
work a miracle any day. They might do worse than
to take to orange-culture ; though he preferred his
profession in itself considered : he thought, too, it
would be a pleasanter life for her ; he wanted, above
all, to make it a little easier for her now. Ostrander
did not notice how scanty were his wife's answers
to all this, her smile was so rich, her surrendered
hand so voluble.

As for Avis, she heard him without annoyance or
dispute. She would have been uneasy if Philip had
undergone a transfiguration, like a hero in a novel,
in which his weaknesses were sublimated, and his
faults idealized beyond her recognition. She would

THE STORY OF AVIS. 427

have distrusted a grand metamorphosis as in itself
but another form of a capricious and curious self-
delusion.

It seemed to her the great triumph of her life
that she could love her husband just as God had
made him. And that Philip, being Philip, could
come leaning in this pathetic way upon her love, —
the sure, strained love of five married years, — this
seemed to her just then more a prophecy than a
fulfilment of hope. After all, what was this one
world, to souls which had been joined together by
any tissues too firm for the attrition of time to tear ?
At best a root beneath a forest of experience. Per-
haps (she thought) those married men and women
were better fitted than they knew for the permanent
character of a spiritual form of society, who, at the
end of one life passed together, could intelligently
desire to renew the relation in a second.

When he talked of herself and her work, her re-
serve deepened. He spoke much of both. It was, —

"Avis, when you get to painting; " or, " Avis,
one thing I mean to make sure of, that you shall be
hampered no longer in your own plans ; " or,
" Why have you done nothing new this winter,
Avis? " or, " Now all goes well with us, dear, we
shall see you famous."

She said, —

"Yes, Philip." Why argue the matter? She
knew how that would be. And she could not have
said she did not care. She did not cheat her clear

428 THE STORY OF AVIS.

nature by telling herself or him that she found in
her married lot vicarious atonement for what she
had missed. A human gift is a rebellious prisoner,
and she was made human before she was made
woman.

But she thought it mattered less to her than it
did once, — all this lost and unquelled life. They
had saved the life of life, they had saved their wed-
ded love : the rest could be borne.

One day she could not ride with him, there- being
a burden of home-letters and little accumulating
feminine tasks, which she performed less nervously
alone. It was the morning, too, for a spelling-les-
son that she gave their- waiter in the boarding-house
(a handsome mulatto boy, to whom both had taken
a fancy), whenever the state of Jeff's intellect or
dining-room permitted. They compromised (for she
did not h'ke Philip to go alone) upon the company
of their neighbor Smith. Smith was down on the
wharf; and he would find him, if she wished, and
they would ride a little towards the swamps, and
return when they were hungry. He held her hand,
and chatted a good deal about it. He had taken a
slight cold for a day or two past, and clung to her,
quickly depressed, with more than usual dependence.
It was, "Avis, don't stay long down stairs."
"Coming back soon, Avis?" "Would you just
as lief sit here? " "I can't see you, there by the
window."

This morning, when he had gone as far as the

THE STORY OF AVIS. 429

gate, he came back. She was standing on the
veranda, as it happened, quite alone, in her light
dress, and the low, dark outline of her* hair: he
came back, and kissed her again, and said she must
not miss him. She watched him walking down the
naiTow road, — the road like a "river of sand."
He turned, and nodded to her : the wind struck his
bright hair. He looked flashing and fresh to her,
as if she saw him for the first time in her life. He
drew her with that subtle fascination which Nature
takes a fitful delight in bestowing upon some crea-
tures as a substitute for strength, perhaps, — shall
we say ? — as an index of undeveloped strength.
Avis followed him with a girl's blush and a wife's
eyes. Her heart went to meet that Indian summer
of married life, which, after the rain, settles down
upon the purple air.

It was towards noon, that, having put her morn-
ing's work well behind her, she went down stairs to
find the boy Jeff. On the landing she met — with his
baby in his arms, and his boy at his coat-tails, and
his wife calling to him to come back and shut the
door — the patient form of Mr. Smith. She stopped
to say,—

4 ' Did you not meet my husband this morning ? ' '
with an unconscious change of color.

" Oh, yes ! " said Mr. Smith ; " and I wanted to
go with him : he had a pretty marsh-pony. He's a
fine rider, your husband. But you see, Mrs. Smith
has had a bad night. She says it's the worst she's

430 THE STORY OF AVIS.

had. And the baby's got the colic ; and the girl eat
too much breakfast ; and the boy — let me see, what
is the malter with the boy ? Oh, yes ! the boy chopped
off the end of his finger with a hatchet. But maybe,
if the nurse hadn't had the sick-headache, I might
have brought it about," added Mr. Smith, with a
pensive and powerful effort of the imagination.

Mrs. Ostrander went on, and gave Jeff his lesson.
Philip would be in to dinner, she hoped, since he had
gone alone ; or he might have easily found company
among the sporting-men about the hotel. He did not
come home to dinner; but this was not unusual.
Often they had ridden till late in the afternoon, re-
turning with the breeze which set in from the river,
he saying, as they jogged along in the happy weather,
" How glad I am you came ! "

She settled herself restlessly to some long-neglected
sketches : it was difficult to remember when she had
passed an afternoon alone before; she sat in the
strange silence, with flushed cheeks. Mrs. Smith,
in the next room, had brightened a little ; and her
husband could be heard gallantly telling her how
well she looked. The people began to collect in the
parlor and on the verandas. Jeff came up to ask
if Mr. Ostrander 's dinner should be kept hot any
longer, his main argument being, that, as they wanted
the oven for the supper, Mr. Ostrander must have
dined with a gentleman. The shaded room began
to cool about her ; it was time to open the blinds to
the breeze from the bay ; it was time for the sensi-

THE STORY OF AVIS. 431

tive shadow of the jasmine to deepen across the tea-
rose-tree, and the sharp edges of the orange-leaves
to grow blunt to the eye that was strained with
peering across them to the empty road — it was time
for Philip Ostrander to come home.

Steps upon the sand ; manly steps enough, im-
petuous and ringing, as of one who hurried up to
say, i ' Did I frighten you getting back so late ? ' '
— The jaunty hotel waiter looks up as he goes by ; the
light flares on the big seal-ring he wears ; he has a
red sea-bean upon his watch-guard ; he lifts his hat
to the quadroon cook, who is opening oysters in the
orange-grove below.

Steps upon the sand. He will be sure to watch
the windows through the opening in the clump of fig-
trees. By leaning out across the ledge a trifle, — •
not too far, because the guava bough sweeps up, — •
one can see him turning. How poetic is this Southern
light upon long Saxon hair ! and in a man, a smile
is rare, like this for which a woman waits, with color
spent, and breath in leash, and head bent low to
listen, her cheek upon her two hands stretched palm
to palm. — Why will the tourists go to walk upon this
street? It is the hour for the veranda and the
shore, the forest and the yacht. Impossible to
understand why anybody should want to wade across
this sand. She leans upon his arm with a pretty
color, — a superficial thing, over-dressed and sim-
pering. How can a woman love a man who carries
his cane like that ? His gloves are too light. There

432 THE STORY OF AVIS.

is a blue heron's wing upon her bonnet. They whis-
per together. They laugh and nod. The orange-
tree casts a long shadow over the fence, through
which they pass, leaning and still. They do not note
the length of the shadow. They do not care if it
grows late.

Steps upon the sand. It yields slowly to a weary
foot, overtasked perhaps, in wandering about the
marshes, or a trifle lamed upon these awkward stir-
rups ; he will limp up to the gate ; it will be a min-
ute's work to bound from the window, to clear the
stairs, the veranda, the yard, to stand panting and
strong ; he will lean upon her shoulder as he did in
the meadow once at home on a September noon ; he
will stoop and say, " Was I gone too long? " — The
old woman was a slave. She cringes as she walks.
Her head is bent well-nigh at right angles from her
shoulders. Her turban is made of the MacGregor
plaid. Her fingers are yellow ; the third knuckle
on the left hand is mutilated. It is a sickly sight.
The child with her is an octoroon. She has blue
eyes, and ties her hair with a lavender ribbon. The
child says it is supper-time. One must be very
strong and happy to watch these people.

Steps upon the sand. Ah, there ! How dull is
fear ! what a dotard is anxiety ! Of course he would
ride the pony home. They are short clean steps,
very clear and pleasant for a marsh-tackey's foot.
It is not wise to look any longer through the rift be-
tween the fig-tree and the guava. To wait a little

THE STORY OF AVIS. 433

for a relief from over-pressure were the gentler and
the gladder way. The pony will come shying to the
gate, a little obstinate, wanting to get to the stable,
bruising the rider's leaping foot gently against the
fence. She will wait and meet him at the landing —
there are so many people down below. As he
stoops, he will laugh a little, touching her beneath
the chin. Her lips, already stirring, say, " You
shall never go alone again."

The sportsman rides well. The young fellow is
fitted with white gloves. He is fresh from a hunt-
ing-trip up the Oclawaha or the lakes. He is in a
hurry for a civilized supper. His horse is white too,
and he rides fast. There is a shower behind them.
Horse and rider bound before it. Children, un-
seen behind the guava-trees, cry that it is thunder-
ing. The air blackens down upon the river ; the
little yachts take in their sails ; the surf stretches
out its arms ; the wind gets him to his solemn feet ;
the orange-blossoms break and blow in, beating
about the darkening room. In the confusion the
supper-bell rings shrilly, and the people on the
veranda scatter, laughing, from the rain.

" Better let her go," said Mr. Smith.

" You couldn't petrify her to stay at home, sar,"
said Jeff. Jeff had learned that word in the spell-
ing-lesson that morning : he had not had an oppor-
tunity to use it in good society before. Jeff was
very fond of Mrs. Ostrander. He felt that it would

434 THE STORY OF AVIS.

be a comfort to her, under these anxious circum-
stances, that he should acquaint the other boarders
with some evidence of his proficiency under her edu-
cational attentions. For similar reasons he stopped,
and said distinctly, —

"Mis' Ostrander, I don't wish to be personal;
but have you got a postage-stamp? "

By that time all the boarders were upon the veran-
da to see them start. Jeff felt a little jealous of
Mr. Smith. One driver — at least a driver who
could spell petrify — was enough for any lady ; and
that they should meet Mr. Ostrander directty, every
boarder in the house was well agreed. It was agreed,
however, that Mrs. Ostrander would feel relieved to
start and find herself well upon the way towards her
husband, who was later than an invalid had better
be upon a stormy night.

It was still raining lightly ; but the restless clouds
gave promise of a moon, whenever they should yield
the wild field to which Avis uplifted her young face.
The scant lamps of the town dwindled, nodding like
old acquaintances to the passer ; knots of brightly-
dressed tourists flashed by ; the faces of the great
hotels and little shops turned their blazing brows
away.

Avis was perfectly familiar with her husband's
usual haunts, and she directed her course at once
towards the heart of the swamp. She sat quite still :
the two men talked in low tones, as if in the pres-
ence of a sick person. Once Jeff tried to draw her
into conversation. He said, —

THE STORY OF AVIS. 435

"Mis' Ostrander, what I want to know is, how
you done go spell Aggymemnon." Jeff thought
this would be a comfort to her : he prided himself
upon the delicacy of his comprehension of Mrs. Os-
trander. He did not know a boy in the hotels who
had so handsome a lady ; and he knew a good many
boys who had eight at a table the winter through.
In his heart Jeff was much out of patience with Mr.
Ostrander ; he expected to find that he had taken too
much; that and consumption were the only things
which ever happened to Northern gentlemen in Pi-
latka.

" Don't you think," suggested Mr. Smith, hesitat-
ing, " that I had better first take out the horse and
reconnoitre a little ? Jeff will stay and take care of
you."

Avis turned her face towards him in the faint,
perturbed light : she did not speak.

" Drive on, Jeff," said Mr. Smith, with a sigh.

It was now between eight and nine o'clock. The
moon, as they entered the nave of the forest, came
climbing into sight uncertainly, like a woman trip-
ping on her robe. The beaten clouds sank towards
the river, which it was no longer possible to see.
Faintly as a spent breath, as they rode in between
the pines, Avis fancied that she heard the invisible
waves upon the invisible shore.

It seemed at first supernaturally dark within the
woods. Optical illusions flared for a few moments
before her eyes ; she saw words stamp themselves

436 THE STORY OF AVIS.

and melt upon the air, and when she would read
them, they were the words which Dante saw upon
the lips of hell. This excitement subsided as soon
as she had accustomed her eyes to the shadow.
She had been there once before — with Philip — upon
a brighter night ; but they had not ventured far :
he feared the malaria from the swamps. Her cour-
age grew more rational as the great beauty of the
wilderness closed in about them. The moon was
now clear, and the light leaned in, sweet and sane,
upon the gently resistant shadow.

As they advanced, sickening odors stole up ;
beyond the patrol of cedars the swamp lay skulking.
It would soon be necessary to conduct their search
on foot. As they stood calling, the mocking-birds
began to answer them.

Jeff wished he could see her face. He came up,
and touched her on the sleeve. He felt that Mr.
Smith could not be expected to understand the
necessities of the occasion. Mr. Smith had not put
the chair up to the table three times a day for those
two. The mulatto's yellow jaws began to work.

" Oh, Mis' Ostrander, I got him now ! I done got
him on the way before we tie the horse. I got Aga-
memnon right easy in my mind at last. H-a-g, Ag,

g-y»gy» Aggy" —

But Agamemnon was too much for poor Jeff, and
choked him mercilessly in the swallowing. Jeff
shrunk back. He thought she would have been so
pleased. He might as well let Mr. Smith comfort
her now.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 437

But Mr. Smith feU back a little too. Mrs. Os-
trander gently pushed him by, and took the lead in
silence, beating down the Spanish bayonet which
tore her feet. In the moonlit opening the purple
poison from the swamp had a clean color, like blown
snow. Her slight figure seemed to wrestle with the
dumb, unwilling darkness as she bent into it.

Dawn comes with the reverent and delicate touch
of a lover to the Florida waste. That night his arm
stole with what seemed especial gentleness about
her heart. It had been such a peaceful and wo-
manly night ! There had been no wind or rain, no
blindness, and no horror. It was quite warm too :
even a sick man might breathe the air in safety.
Avis had not tottered for an instant in her resolute
hope. She should find him. God was merciful.

As the moon dipped, a strange shrill bird awoke
and chirped, and slept again. Gliding creatures
began to stir, and skulk away, like evil thoughts
before clean eyes, or terror before joy. The lamp-
black of the distant shadows leaned to purple ; the
nearer undergrowth grew gray. Looking to the
sky, one saw that it changed color like a cheek.
Suddenly then, the tops of the pines yielded, and
each green needle fired. The fine outline of the ce-
dars revealed itself sinuously, like Etruscan screens
of old gold wire. The loath moss stirred, and
showed bluish white. The wild oranges seemed to
tremble, like conscious creatures to whom the sun

438 THE STORY OF AVIS.

was plighted first. The rose-curlews moved, tall,
slender, and haughty: they looked less like birds
than breathing roses. Avis, looking up, saw one
rise, glad as a departing soul, and hover, burning to
be gone, upon the air. Below him the light stole
but slowly to the level where a human face might lie
expectant of it.

She pushed her way into the thicket, spreading
her hands out, it was still so dark there. As she
did so, she was conscious of being confronted by a
close pair of gentle, puzzled eyes. She stopped
short, and flung her hands before her face.

" Jeff! " she cried, " it is the marsh-pony ! "

The light was now deepening fast, and the two
men instinctively and authoritatively drew the woman
back.

From the moment of finding the horse, she had
begun to tremble, and when they spoke to her she
obeyed.

As they beat about the opening, Jeff looked back
over his shoulder. The mists of the damp place
were turned red and rich, and through them he saw
that she had fallen on her knees. She looked like
one bathed in a scarlet flood.

Then the live-oak bough swept in between them,
and Jeff, for he could not see, went stumbling on. ...
The white man and the mulatto looked at each other.

" Sir," said Jeff, lifting his head after a silence,
" I've set the chair for 'em for most two months ;
and there was the writin' and the spellin' as she was

THE STORY OF AVIS. 439

so good. She would suspect me to be the man of us
two to tell her. It ain't your fault, sir, that you
can't be looked to understand her feelin', sir, so well."

She had risen from her knees when he met her.
She made no sound, but staggered : she still had her
hands before her eyes. Jeff came up ; he touched
her, cringing, on the sleeve.

" O Mis' Ostrander dear ! he didn't take too
much — he only took a bleeding. And he says we
was to break it to you easy, and that he's glad to
see you, ma'am, and has been done expectin' you,
and that you're not to mind — and 0 Mis' Ostran-
der ! now I think if you was to stop a minute — just
easy where you stand — and spell a little — it would
clar your mind out. He don't look so bad as some
doos — but if you was just to stop — before 3~ou sees
him — it's only jest behind the live-oak yonder — Mis'
Ostrander dear" —

The daybreak sought them out gently. In the
pathless forest whose solemn purpose no man knew,
they clung to one another, and thanked God. He
had been merciful. Care and change had done their
worst. Beaten life had given challenge to their love.
They could bear the incident of death. In that hour
they were less grieved because they must be parted,
than blessed because they loved each other.

She had found him lying quite peacefully, expect-
ing her.

440 THE STORY OF AVIS.

As she knelt, gathering his head upon her breast,
the sun arose upon the wilderness. In the splendor
he looked young to her, and a future in his face
returned her gaze. He felt her arm and her warm
breath, and smiled boyishly. "It is hard to believe
— that a man can die — here," he said. He turned
his cheek, and hers touched it. He asked her not
to move.

He had not suffered much, he said, nor long.
And he felt sure she would come ; he had not doubted
for a moment — it was a pretty long night ; but he
knew she was not far. Once he thought he heard
her. And the pony wandered off — it was more
lonely after the pony went. But she must not mind.
It had been warm and bright ; and it had not been
hard. Nothing had been hard — but the chance — if
she had been too late, that would have been pretty
hard. But he knew that she would come.

Then he asked her to lift him a little more upon
her arm, and if he tired her too much. After that
he seemed to sleep lightly : he upheld his face as if
he drank her abundant breath. When he awoke, he
said, —

" Avis, do you remember — once — how you said
that you would like to die ? ' '

" Hush, my darling ! — yes."

" Love, if I ask it, will you kiss my breath away?
When I speak again, will you kiss me on the lips? "

" Oh, my darling ! oh, my darling ! Yes."

THE STORY OF AVIS. 441

"Aviat"

When she lifted her face, the rose-curlew hung
overhead, palpitating with joy.

The two men had long since withdrawn into the
forest.

442 THE STOKY OF AVIS.

CHAPTER XXV.

" A dream of man and woman,
Diviner still, but human;
Solving the riddle old,
Shaping the age of gold." — WHITTIEB.

UPON the shores of the river as she went home,
the young fine fronds were thrusting aside the
unfaded leaves. The forest stood in a pale and
tender fog of green, as if an unseen artist had
blurred it with a blender, perhaps to deceive an
over-wary eye as to his real intent in touching it at
all. There was something at once unutterably deli-
cate and urgent in the advance of the deathless
spring upon the deathless summer. The eye leaned
upon it with the relief which it finds in sunset, sun-
rise, zenith, fire, or sea ; in those things only which
bring the thought face to face with what is unfath-
omable. The heart bowed before it, quickened to
ask, " Where shall I find eternity without resurrec-
tion?"

She travelled alone, tearless and excited. She
felt strong and strained. As yet she was filled less
with a sense of loss than love. Philip seemed quite
near, — nearer than when it had been possible to be
conscious of «any imperfection in himself or in their
union. Only his ideal visited her heart. She was

THE STORY OF AVIS. 443

not without a strange, exultant sense that now she
never could see a weakness or a flaw in him again.
Life might try her cruelest, she could not fret them
now. She thought of him with something of the
proud and peculiar triumph of the widowed girl,
'who kneels to the vision of the man whose wife she
never was, to learn to reverence him by one blind
thrill the less.

Unheard, he seemed to her tense mood to speak
to her as she rode solitary ; and his voice had the
tone of the wooing and the bridal time. Unseen to
her soul's eyes, he journeyed with her ; and his face
had the look of its first youth and the beauty of its
noblest hour. Their relation seemed to her to run
on quite uninterrupted. He leaned over her shoul-
der to read their undivided life. He had but turned
a leaf before her in the story without an end.

Aunt Chloe was sitting in the twilight with the
little girl asleep across her generous arms. The
geraniums in the windows were all pink that year.
Aunt Chloe watched them while she hushed the
child.

The professor walked rather feebly up and down
the silent study. He had been saying to his sister
that he was growing old, he thought, and that the
house seemed lonely. He stopped to right the
picture of Sir William, whose fresh gray cord had
twisted on its polished hook, and wondered who had
taken Locke's Understanding from the left elbow of

444 THE STORY OF AVIS.

the mahogany sofa, and if Professor Brown would
call again to see about that pet chemist of his who
was marked so low on intuition, and how long it
was since they had heard from Avis, and what it
meant that we were having such a merciful spring,
and said how green the grass was, even now, upon
the yard. And then aunt Chloe heard the gate
click ; and, when they both looked out across the
pink geraniums, Avis, in her widow's dress, alone,
was walking up between the blades of grass.

Aunt Chloe went out and led her in, asking no
questions, and saying no word. She led her into
the study, to her father, and put her baby into her
arms, and went out and shut the door. And then
Avis drew in her breath, and shook suddenly, and
so began to cry.

No solitude is so solitary as that of inharmonious
companionship ; and, beside certain other phases of
her life, her present one seemed at first to Avis to
lack the essential qualities of loneliness.

It was with that vivid belief (which has the char-
acter of consciousness to imaginative minds) in
Philip's watchful and intelligent sympathy, that she
directed her energies to the object which her mar-
riage and its consequences had interrupted.

She opened the garden-studio while the apples
budded, and there she staid patiently for a year.
They questioned her little or none ; and she worked
in an absolute taciturnity, not characteristic of her

THE STORY OF AVIS. 445

sweet and kindly temper, which was quick to sac-
rifice an instinct of reticence to one of considera-
tion for the feelings of a friend. Aunt Chloe knew
there was a portrait of little Jack Rose, and suspect-
ed a picture for the exhibition, and tried to remem-
ber that it showed a lack of acquaintance with life
to be hurt by the conduct of the afflicted.

When the year was out, Avis one day locked the
studio, took her little girl, and went to find her father.
She crossed her hands, and stood before him, much
in the attitude in which she stood on that June morn-
ing when she read ''Aurora Leigh." Only now be-
tween her folded palms she held the fingers of the
child. She said, —

"Next week, father, I shall go into the Art
School, and teach, and I think I can get a private
class besides.'*

" Do you suppose," asked the professor after a sad
silence, " that your mother would think this to be
best, my dear?"

More largely, perhaps, than a smaller man, the
professor's s}Tnpathy jdelded what his intellect
grudged. He felt that he had made one of the con-
cessions of his life in intimating to his daughter
her mother's possible approval of her personal ambi-
tions, or regret at their obstruction j- since, of course,
when his daughter had married, it was to be assumed
that she yielded the tastes and occupations of her
maidenhood, like other women — like her mother be-
fore her. But the professor could not argue with

446 THE STOEY OF AVIS.

the eccentricities of an afflicted child. His daugh-
ter's frosted future chilled Mm like some novel defect
in the laws of nature ; as if the sun should elect
upon whose roof it should shine, or the rain pass him
by to visit his neighbor's field.

. " It is of no use," said Avis wearily, " my pictures
come back upon my hands. Nobody wants them —
now. They tell me that my style is gone. Goupil
says I work as if I had a rheumatic hand — as if
my fingers were stiff. It is true my hand has been a
little clumsy since — Van — But the stiffness runs
deeper than the fingers, father. Never mind ; don't
mind. We've given it up — Wait and I ; haven't
we, Wait?"

" I don't understand you," said the little girl dis-
tinctly. Avis' s daughter was a logical little body,
clear-headed, speaking only when she had something
to say. Wait did not understand what it was that
had been given ; did not see that any thing had been
given to anybody (it certainly was not grandpa's
hour for the cough-lozenge), and preferred not to
allow herself to be compromised on any matter on
which she was not perfectly clear.

Her mother stood looking blindly down. Wait
pulled at her dress unnoticed.

" Your little daughter speaks," said the professor.
Wait stood patiently — a sturdy lassie, with straight-
forward e}^es and a healthy temper of her own — aware
that she was not of much importance to her mother
just then, but perfectly able to bide her time. Avis

THE STORY OF AVIS. 447

continued to look down with her ej'elids half closed ;
it did not seem as if she saw her. Something as
elemental in Philip Ostrander's wife as the love of
their child, required her attention at that moment.
She wondered how it would have been if she had
cared for him in some other way, — like some other
women ; if she had been made of tougher tissue ; if
her feeling for that one man, her husband, had not
eaten into and eaten out the core of her life, left
her a riddled, withered thing, spent and rent,
wasted by the autocracy of a love as imperious as
her own nature, and as deathless as her own soul.
But she would do it all over again, — all, all ! She
would never love him by one throe the less. Avis
stretched out her arms into the empt}^ air. She did
not know how to express distinctly, even to her
own consciousness, her conviction that she might
have painted better pictures — not worse — for lov-
ing Philip and the children ; that this was what God
meant for her, for all of them, once, long ago. She
had not done it. It was too late now. And Wait
was watching her with resolute, critical eyes, tug-
ging at her hands now, with lip put up ; would have
cried, if she had been a bab}r like Ave Rose.

Avis turned with a supple motion, and snatched
the little girl.

" 1 have my child ! " she cried.

She thought of this more often after that : ah1 was
not over, the child had her life to live. The pa-
rental resurrection came to Avis, as other forms of

448 THE STORY OF AVIS.

tenderness had done, slowly, but with passionate
intelligence: she seemed to herself to be the first
woman in the world who had said, —

" My child shall not repeat my blunders ; " or, —

" What does it all matter, if my child may be
spared my sorrows ? ' '

Wait developed with the rapidity of most solitary
children, quite in her own fashion.

When she was four years old, her mother came to
aunt Chloe one day, rigid with dismay.

Aunt Chloe sprang, dropping the cotton-flannel
for the beneficiaries. " Is it her fingers? or her
throat? Oh ! did I leave the oxalic acid out? "

"I asked her if her doll was asleep," gasped
Avis, " and she said, « Hush, mamma! It has been
the object of my life that she should not know she was
a doll."

"Her forehead is too full," said the doctor; ex-
actly as if he had not said it to every other mother
on his list that morning. " Keep her out of school
till you are convinced she is a dunce. Turn her out
of doors with no more restriction than a cricket."
One mother on the list at least obeyed him, and
one elected lassie was let loose upon the wide Har-
mouth fields and shore. Before she could read a
line, Avis's daughter was a splendid little animal.

At this point the mother's heart withdrew, and
took counsel of itself.

It must be clearly remembered that Avis had been
reared in social and intellectual conditions whose

THE STOKY OF AVIS. 449

tendency is strictly to the depression of novelty in
conduct or opinion. There are always phases of
progress vital enough, perhaps, to their little coteries
of prophets or disciples, competent, even, (Heaven
forbid that one be dull of imagination about any
remote forms of humanity !) to their own organisms,
circulation, heart-throbs, possibly, which the life of
a university town can hardly be supposed to enter
upon its curriculum of interests. Religion, sex, race,
class, or whatever, looks for no recognition of its
discrowned state from the centres of scholastic cul-
ture. The moral evolution comes slowly to the
intellectual specialist, as faith to the physicist, or
doubt to the poet, or geometry to the artist. Phases
of thought quite familiar to most thoughtful people
to-day, forms of advance pressing silently against
thoughtful and thoughtless, now alike, Avis had
been trained to regard with the calm curiosity with
which a free-thinker tries to regard a Christian, — a
being, in the nature of things, of inferior culture,
because cherishing a superstition which is, in the
nature of things, barbaric.

As free from the compression of any agitating in-
fluence or upheaval as if she and Wait had been
sitting sheltered on a summer-day in a convent-
garden, side by side among the sultry flowers, while
the music from the altar sounded on, and the sweet
veiled women passed with holy feet, Avis, with her
earnest eyes, and tender mouth, and tired brows,
found herself face to face with the future of her
child.

450 THE STORY OF AVIS;

She found herself in the sensitive state of one
who has made a gradual but radical change of cli-
mate. Horizons with which her own youth was
unacquainted, beckoned before her ; the hills looked
at her with a foreign face ; the wind told her that
which she had not heard ; in the air strange melodies
rang out; uninterpreted colors gathered about the
rising of the sun: her own chastised aspiration
looked humbly out upon the day whose story she
should never read.

We have been told that it takes three generations
to make a gentleman : we may believe that it will
take as much, or more, to make A WOMAN. A being
of radiant physique ; the heiress of ancestral health
on the maternal side ; a creature forever more of
nerve than of muscle, and therefore trained to the
energy of the muscle and the repose of the nerve ;
physically educated by mothers of her own fibre and
by physicians of her own sex, — such a woman
alone is fitted to acquire the drilled brain, the calmed
imagination, and sustained aim, which constitute
intellectual command.

A creature capable of this command, in whom
emotion intensifies reflection, and passion strength-
ens purposes, and self-poise is substituted for self-
extravagance, — such a creature only is competent
to the terrible task of adjusting the sacred individ-
uality of her life to her supreme capacity of love
and the supreme burden and perils which it imposes
upon her.

THE STORY OF AVIS. 451

A man in whom the sources of feeling are as deep
as they are delicate, as perennial as they are pure ;
whose affection becomes a burning ambition not to
be outvied by hers, whose daily soul is large enough
to guard her, even though it were at the cost of
sharing it, from the tyranny of small corrosive care
which gnaws and gangrenes hers, '— such a man
alone can either comprehend or apprehend the love
of such a woman.

No man conceives what a woman will do or dare
for him, until he has surprised her nature by the
largest abnegation of which his own is capable.
Let him but venture the experiment, if he will find
himself vanquished by her in generosity to the end
of the sweet warfare. Then first he knows what he
has won ; for then onty does she suffer him to know.
It is not till then, that reverence and surrender radi-
cally begin their life in her. Nay, then, he is the
man, he only among men, who understands what a
woman's tenderness is. With her, he is a crowned
creature ; but with him she is a free one.

Avis was a careworn woman ; and, like most peo-
ple with whom life has dealt intensely and intro-
spectively, the pressure of the advancing upon the
retreating generation touched her personality more
than her philanthropy or philosophy. Were there
subtle readings of the eternal riddle astir upon the
desert ? Had the stone lips of the sphinx begun to
mutter? God knew; and the desert knew — and
the dumb mouth.

452 THE STORY OF AVIS.

For her, she had her child. It would be easier
for her daughter to be alive, and be a woman, than
it had been for her : so much as this, she understood ;
more than this she felt herself too spent to question.
She folded her arms about the little girl, and laid
her cheek upon her hair, and closed her eyes. She
had the child, she had the child !

Once, sitting with Coy in the parsonage-parlor,
the two women fell to talking of matters of which
they did not often speak. Coy had the immense
power of incommunicativeness sometimes found in
simple and even impulsive women in whom a kind
heart supph'es the place of a deep imagination. For
years now, with Avis, Coy's instinct had kept her
close to the surface of the immediate. She felt it to
be natural, that there was always something not to
be talked about in Avis's life : it was the way with
women like Avis, to whom things happened. Noth-
ing had ever happened to Coy — except John and
the children.

Coy had three children : they were not kept out
of the parsonage-parlor any more than the sun or
the air. Coy's children did not tire her : she looked
radiantly at Avis across the brisk Babel in which
they sat. Coy wore a morning-cap with purple rib-
bons. She had some pink ones, but took them out
for the baby : she wondered how it was that people
minded growing old. They talked a little that
morning about the geological professor and his new
book. Avis spoke calmly of the great gratification

THE STORY OF AVIS. 453

which the trustees found in his success. They
spoke of the people who rented the house in High
Street, and how they had built an L, and cut down
the elm-tree, and altered the porch. Then Coy
spoke of Chatty Hogarth's Odyssey Club, and of
the poem Mrs. Hogarth had written for the Denom-
inational Weekly.

" She asked me how my babe was yesterday,"
said Coy. "I never want to know another thing
about a woman than that she calls a baby a babe.
I hope she won't suffocate the Odyssey Club. But
they say there are some fine law-students in it —
rather young, though, I should think. And the
girls that are coming along, study Greek, and are
really very pretty, Avis, — that stratum just below
us, you know, that were flirting with freshmen when
we were engaged. Look out, Avis ! Wait will cut
herself putting Jack's screwdriver into the baby's
dimple." Then they talked a little about Wait,
and a little about John and the children, and then
they spoke of Stratford Allen's housekeeper ; and
when Coy had told her how comfortable she made
him since Barbara went, and how glad everybody
was that Stratford was so well cared for, and how
much good he did with all his money, and how many
fine pictures he had in his house, she said she sup-
posed Avis knew that the woman's name was Jessup,
and that she came from Texas, where her husband
had got shot.

"And of course, you've heard," said Coy absently,

454 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" that Stratford bought your sphinx last winter?"
Coy spoke lightly ; but her own voice sounded to her
as if she had said, uHe bought your soul." She
rather wished she had said nothing about the sphinx.
She hurried on to speak of Barbara, who had not
married her minister, but only a New- York business-
man : it was a trial for a Harmouth girl, but Barbara
bore it well.

Then she talked a little of John and the children,
and after that she spoke of the last alumni meeting,
and said that John said the wish to put up the monu-
ment in Florida originated with the members of
Professor Ostrander's first class, — the men who were
under him in his opening year at college; clever
men, John said, and that they spoke of Philip with
emotion.

And then, by way of variety, she talked of John
and the children a little more.

" You seem to keep pretty well," said Avis, after
a silence, " with all your care, Coy."

The words sounded superficial enough. Coy felt
that Avis would rather be taken on her own level,
and answered carelessly, —

"Pretty well, Avis. There's about so much bother
in everybody's life, I suppose. Some people take it
in high tragedy. I take mine out in the mumps.
I own my married life would have been happier if
they hadn't all had the mumps while John was in
Philadelphia, and Sarah laid up with her broken ankle,
and Deacon Bobley out on a heresy-hunt, and the

THE STORY OF AVIS. 455

American Board — as nearly as I understand it —
destined to become bankrupt, unless it could pay off
its debt out of our church. I own so much, Avis.
And besides I'll tell you — I never told it before (Ave,
run away with Jack and Wait, a minute) , there is
one thing I must admit : I do not like to ask John
for money. There ! But that is all, Avis."

Was it all, indeed? It was a peaceful, pleasant
story. As the children shut the door, it seemed
very still suddenly in the parsonage-parlor: the
sun was upon the worn carpet and the playthings,
Coy's sewing- chair, and little garments lying half-
made, and purple ribbons, and upon the baby in her
lap.

Coy looked up from her sewing, and saw Avis sit-
ting there, and watching her ; as the country, wasted
by civil war, pauses to look off upon the little neu-
tral state.

A spark sprang into Coy's incurious, gentle face.

"It is nature!" she cried. " Explain it how
you will."

"But I," said Avis in a low voice, after an ex-
pressive pause, — " I am nature, too. Explain me,
Coy."

Coy did not answer. It was to be expected that
Avis should be more or less unintelligible. But,
when Avis turned presently to go, she kissed her,
looking up with puzzled, affectionate eyes. Then
she lifted the baby a little higher on her neck, and
went into the study to talk to John.

456 THE STORY OF AVIS.

" Somehow," said Coy, " I am always more sorry
for Avis when I go away and think about her than
I am when I sit and talk with her."

" Poor girl ! " said John Rose.

As they stood in the window, leaning together,
Avis, in her widow's dress, in the color of the morn-
ing, passed by, leading her little daughter by the
hand.

When they were at home that day, more silently,
perhaps, than usual, Wait in the corner, with her
picture-books, and her mother sitting with crossed
hands and vague eyes, the child came up, and said
in her distinct, impressive fashion, —

" Mamma, I cannot read this story till I am old
enough ; but it is a pretty story, and I want to hear
it. The man has a yellow saddle, and his horse is
red. Read me what he had a red horse for, and
where he went to ; read me why the saddle was yel-
low ; read me — read me — read me till there is no
more to read."

Wait stood leaning a little, and stroking the back
of her mother's hand with the palm of her own. If
anybody had noticed this, she would have stopped ;
but mamma understood about such things. She did
not talk and make a fuss.

Avis took the book, and read. She sat with her
profile towards the child.

" Sir Launcelot rode overthwart and endlong in a
wide forest, and held no path but as wild adventure
led him. Then Sir Launcelot looked round, and

THE STORY OF AVIS. 457

saw an old chapel, but could find no place where
he might enter. And as he lay, half waking and
half sleeping ... he saw . . . the holy vessel
of the Sangreal pass him by. So thus he sorrowed
till it was day, and heard the fowls of the air
sing. . . .

" Then the hermit led the young knight to the
Perilous Seat ; and he lifted up the cloth, and found
there letters that said, 4 This is the seat of Sir Gala-
had the good knight.' This is he by whom the
Sangreal shall be achieved. . . .

" Now, the name of the young knight was Sir
Galahad, and he was the son of Sir Launcelot du
Lac."

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The story of Avis.

1_ I BR ARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
D AVIS