Part 4

In her vivid and graphic picture of a fruitful theme (a theme learned from books and stories), she dwelt on the part that mothers had borne, and brothers were bearing, in this tide of prosperity and improvement, till tear-drops came fast to the earnest eyes of the old gray-haired professors, who were judges, and many a mother’s heart leaped with joyous pride at the mention of brave sons battling with the Western wilderness, for their sons were among them.

Caroline Crofton could feel the hush of silence, always such applause as is irresistible; she could feel the emotion, and conveyed that emotion to her audience; she forgot herself, forgot her hearers, and read with a girlish animation born of deep-seated belief in the grandeur of the theme she advocated. Round after round of applause greeted her conclusion, and she staggered to her seat literally overcome by the brilliant effort which resulted in a handsomely inscribed medal as first of her class of Vassar.

Whether the influence of that essay on the mind of Caroline, or its greater influence on Cyrus Arthur (a newly arrived resident of Vassar) was the most potent means of a quick acquaintance between them, is not well known to the writers; certain it is that an early friendship soon refined into affection, and meagre inquiries into his character being satisfactory to Caroline, he was promptly admitted as a suitor at the dignified household of Judge Crofton, on the banks of the beautiful St. Lawrence. The Judge was led to believe that a long acquaintance had ripened between schoolmates, when in fact it was a love at first sight affair, and on very little consideration.

That these young and ambitious lovers enjoyed all that is allotted to their class is forever a secret, for their after-life reveals but little of its mystery. Their after-life was a struggle for bread first, and position soon after. They really put off living, very foolishly.

Cyrus Arthur was a large, strongly built, dark-haired, handsome fellow, of considerable assurance in the social gatherings, and generally managed to lead off with the dances and parties from his size and commanding way more than from any merit of talent or real goodness in himself; one of the village leaders who gained favor by fine looks and outward appearance; one of the petted class of forenoon brilliants whose afternoons are often more shaded.

There was a smile of serene contentment and half-satisfaction on the haughty face of young Arthur as he offered himself to the Judge’s daughter in that manner assumed by generals in battle. He obtained his prize, and she obtained her ambition. He married beauty, she married a leader. Her highly colored future was a life of intellectual greatness; his first pride was of conquest, then of distinction.

A large man in a small place may be a little man in a large city.

In good season they were married, of course; and of their courtship little need be said, for it was all unromantic.

Arthur’s father was a merchant of limited means, and the younger having high notions of going West to grow up with the country, early settled in a lumber-making city of North Michigan, where he took his fair young companion, who soon realized that her rose-colored romance of brave pioneers was not a living reality.

Dreams are one thing, real life is another; work was scarce in the big overgrown city, but plentiful in the pineries; and after the first day of married life wore into weeks, and living expense came around with painful regularity, the new couple were forced to economize, then look for employment, which they first found in tending store and camp, cooking for a large lumber-ranch; certainly far less refining than the vision of a Vassar schoolgirl’s essay had pictured.

But they prospered, and by dint of close saving, always coming from the wise counsel of the weaker one, they became managers, then owners, of a portable saw-mill and a ranch, and gradually a store building partly paid for.

From the letters home, showing their thrift and economy, gradually came small sums lent to the far-away idol of the staid old Judge’s household. Cyrus was surprised and delighted one day to find a large bill of goods sent on to fill up their store and give them a start in their hard beginning.

It was the work and influence of that little brainy wife, whose tender hands had grown harder by cooking, mending, and working for forty or more robust workmen, and the reward it brought and the encouragement to both. With a well-stocked grocery and comfortable surroundings, Cyrus began to look the world in the face quite complacently, and take matters easier. Meanwhile, the silent ambition of Caroline determined, if growing up with the country meant anything, she would fathom its mystery, and she continued to delve and save, and plan and execute, and encourage her husband in his extensive contracts.

Here was a profit on forty laborers, a margin on their payment in goods, a rise in lumber, and a golden opportunity to buy vast tracts of pine timber at very low figures in cash payments. Drawing on her savings the little wife advised wise investments.

II.

Fifty-seven, eight, and nine were the three trying years in Northern Michigan. Many a man would cheerfully trade a load of shingles for a bag of corn, and a thousand feet of timber for a single ham. New England thrift was in the market, and the little daughter of a discreet judge balanced the chances and made hay in sunshine most effectually.

Four years passed by, and a rapid rise in prices gradually increased the value of timber, then lumber, then shingles, then lands, and long before the war ended, Arthur and his once timid wife were among the wealthy citizens of the Rapids.

A large, strong frame, and but little anxiety; a dark, swarthy complexion, with a heavy black beard; the face of such a man at thirty-eight showed less signs of wear than his little fair-faced companion at six years younger.

Age, climate, work, and care were telling on the slender build of Caroline. The rapid birth of three children in ten years told also their story of a mother’s anxiety, written in shading lines on her once delicate features.

Absorbed in her duties as a wife, she had little room for society, while he, a man relieved by riches from hard labor, was approaching that prime of maturity when the world looks complacently upward to one who has prospered, not even asking how, or why, or any reason.

Long trips to large cities, absence from home, mingling often with wealthy lumbermen, and assuming that position that wealth ever commands in society, were doing for Cyrus Arthur what they will do for many in like situations.

He craved a larger field for usefulness, he moved and settled in a large city; he craved society, he was a favorite with women; he developed a fondness for the more forward class. He fell; he fell often.

If he had ever loved his devoted wife, the author of all his success and prosperity, he now grew unloving, haunted by the caresses of more passionate women. Driven by appetite to seek the companionship of the brazen and deceitful, he lost his self-respect, his love of home, and grew madly in love with a most bewitching character, lately divorced from her husband.

A spell came over him; “the trail of the serpent is over them all,”--the “twelfth temptation,” as shown in the powerful drama of its name, that takes a farmer-boy in innocence, carries him safely through the perils of a great city, saves him from saloons and wine, and larceny and dishonesty, and at last when weakened by tampering with sin, brings him face to face with such dazzling beauty that his fall before it seems as natural as his ruin later is effectual.

The trail of the serpent had crossed by the path of Arthur. The coil wound around him, for he loved the bold siren who enchanted him, and yielded to the twelfth temptation.

III.

“For a woman can do with a man what she will;” yet a man who knows a woman thoroughly and loves her truly--and there are women who may be so known and loved--will find, after a few years, that his relish for the grosser pleasures is lessened, and that he has grown into a fondness for the intellectual and refined amusements without an effort, and almost unawares.

Fettered and controlled by the witchery of his evil genius, Cyrus Arthur lost all power but that borrowed of his seducer. Her counsel replaced the once wise confidence of a better companion. Her influence was as a loadstone in a compass,--it carried him in dumb obedience to her will. He was absorbed, confused, bewitched, stranded, lost!

As often as they met in their evil way, she demanded a divorce and insisted on early proceedings.

“But the cause?” he would say. “Cause?” she would answer; “make a cause!” “Not so easily done,” replied her willing admirer.

“Money will do anything,” was her ready answer.

“Money will do anything,” repeated the fond lumberman; “true, money will do everything.”

But how? When, and where?

These questions were all puzzling.

IV.

There was a dark-faced inspector, a man-of-all-work in lumber camp, called Roland, who had often called at Arthur’s, and who occasionally partook a little too freely of Northern fire-water, as the Indians term it, and whose poverty at such times would consent to almost anything, on one pretence and another.

Young Roland was sent to inquire if Mr. Arthur was in, or if Mrs. Arthur needed shopping done, or errands attended to, with instructions to hint that his employer was seen riding out with the enchantress in a cutter, seemingly on the way to another village. These little irritations were to be repeated for effect, but no effect seems probable. They did create some inquiry, and at such dates of confidential conferences Mrs. Arthur was alone with the hireling spy and listened to his inferences of her husband’s indiscretions.

Neither by word nor deed nor murmur did Caroline exhibit a sign or symbol of her unhappiness, save by the deeper lines and paler countenance that easily escaped detection to one who barely looked her in the eyes twice a day for months together.

It was a failure; she would never act, he must take the initiative.

Armed with a sworn affidavit of her infidelity with Roland on a recent occasion, together with further papers to complete their separation and settle an alimony of a few thousand dollars as her share of their large property, Cyrus Arthur visited his wife late at night as a robber would call for her jewels, and demanded a complete surrender. Stunned and shocked, and overcome by the intelligence, she wept most bitterly, pleaded, begged, and implored her husband, in the name of Heaven, to spare her and her _children_ from a disgrace so terrible. The sighing of the pines in a Northern forest would have moved him as soon from his purpose. She was between him and an envied object; he must succeed. He was already goaded to desperation. Seizing the part of her plea relating to her little girls, he made the worst of it.

“If you would spare yourself and them from disgrace eternally, make no denial and all shall be secret, and no one the wiser.”

“Can this be true?” asked the distracted mother of the other’s lawyer.

“Yes,” he replied, cases have been heard on default and divorces granted, and not one scrap of bill or answer ever published.

“What is a bill and answer?” questioned the little woman in her tears, for she never dreamed of a divorce between her and her husband till that moment.

“It is the ground and denial for divorce,” replied the attorney.

“Cyrus Arthur,” said his wife, as she looked at the eyes that evaded her earnestness, “do you mean this proceeding, or are you trifling?”

“I am in earnest,” he answered.

“Have you forgotten my home, my surroundings, the shock to my mother, my father, my own feelings, my neighbors, our children? Do you realize how you sin, and wrong me?

“How I have toiled and helped you, planned our success! How I have suffered, gone almost in the grave, in bringing you these children! Are you in earnest?

“If your heart is not iron, speak to me; shall I deny such a foolish slander? Shall I tell you before God, who will one day judge us all, that every one of the charges are infamous lies and perjuries; shall I place my word against his and you deny me?”

“But you cannot swear in court in such cases,” said the ready lawyer.

“Then Heaven will hear me; I am innocent. And may the Almighty end my life right here, if I have ever, by act or look, or word or deed, done aught that a true woman should not do in every day of our married life, from first to last, as God is my witness!”

“But your children?” he pleaded, as if he had heard not a word of her earnest protest.

On and on they argued, later and later grew the hour, till, worn out at midnight they passed her the papers, and eight thousand dollars, with which she was to return to her home in New England, and abandon all defense to the proceeding, including a release of all dower interest in his estate, real and personal.

You may smile at the absurdity, you may question the reason of such haste and compulsion.

“But who, alas! can love and still be wise?”

Ask of the court records in every American city, and you will find stronger cases and stronger instances, more degradation, greater hardship, and equal perjury. Ask of _one_ court and find this case!

No sleep nor rest comes to Caroline Arthur. Early dawn found her surrounded by her weeping children, in alarm at the sudden illness, for she only called it illness.

Twice she started for the City National Bank to deposit her money, and twice relented. Once she determined to consult a neighbor, and later concluded she would bear alone her sorrow.

Hastily filing his bill and securing her appearance, an early demand for a hearing before a commissioner, in less than a _single week_ came a divorce on the ground of infidelity.

Elated by his victory, with his deeds well recorded, and the court’s great seal granting their divorcement, Cyrus Arthur stalked the streets in supreme confidence as a man of victory.

It is said that Roman generals, once victorious ever bore about with them the marks of conquerors; so did our modern general, but for a brief duration.

Once in the newspapers, and the busy streets were vocal with open denunciation. “Eight thousand dollars from a property worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars!” came from bankers. “The wife that made him what he is,” said another. “A shame to our civilization,” said the third. “A fraud, a sham, a pretext,” said another.

And the majority joined in the last anthem,--“a sham, a pretext,” a trick to turn off his worn-out wife and marry that impious trader in unvirtue and immorality.

Press interviews were had, and the dear little lady of clean hands and honest heart, whose soul shone as a diamond in the filth of foul slander around her, utterly and consistently refuted and denied the whole story, and related its history with marvellous circumstantial evidence to convince any reasonable person of her truthfulness.

Indignation knew no bounds; a firm of able lawyers at once filed a cross bill, and a prayer to set aside the fraudulent bill and another to annul all conveyances to Arthur; and within almost as brief a limit as he had secured his decree she had been restored to her rights with a divorce from Arthur and a thirty-thousand-dollar settlement.

He was driven from the city in infamy, and she lived on in honor; but the stain on the children was of a nature more permanent.

UNROMANTIC MARRIAGES.

Grace Hartwell graduated at Hillsdale College in 18--, and settled as an assistant teacher in the Union school on College Hill, living with her mother across the narrow river near by, where she would pass the old homestead of Richard Baker, son of a well-to-do farmer adjoining the village, and who early became interested in the fair young teacher.

Grace was a full brunette, of fairer complexion than is common to her school of beauty.

She was beautiful, with well rounded arms, heavy black hair, rosy lips, white hands, eyes of marked expression--eyes that stood out full, and shone in striking contrasts, the black portion and the white being clear and sharply defined.

Grace was no less a beauty than a dreamer, and longed for the kind of change that best suits a girl of her quick, passionate, and impulsive nature--a marriage.

Richard was below the medium size, with very light hair, of slim figure, reticent of speech, shy and bashful, especially so in the presence of Grace, whom he met at parties, donations, and college receptions, so frequent and amusing in their lively village.

Both went too long a distance for their dinner to make the trip agreeable, and both often carried their daily lunches in little baskets for convenience.

On their homeward trips they met occasionally, bowed, passed the time of day, chatted of the last night’s party. It was growing so much of a custom with Richard to meet these road-side appointments, self-made, and well timed to match his lonely companion, that they soon became a matter of each day’s history.

Grace was willing to listen, Richard was anxious to turn aside from his regular pathway and go round a square to bear her company.

They were in love without romance, and against both the belief and expectation of all their associates.

She was the prize of the village; he was neither well-off nor popular, but plain and unhandsome. He was not her only suitor, but the first had taken some pique at her attentions to a stranger in the village, that offended the haughty admirer of her beauty, and each was claimant for her entire devotion.

Miss Hartwell’s father was a tall black-eyed Virginian, warm-blooded, swarthy, and impulsive, and liked not the manner of his daughter’s new friendship.

He put his foot down with emphasis. He insisted on obedience. He wanted position, old family, wealth and social standing, or no marriage.

Grace could not always govern her scholars, but herself she was determined to control.

Herein both father and daughter were much alike.

Time passed; attachment increased by opposition. Such is more often the way of lovers separated; but these were not wholly separated.

At the death of Richard’s stepfather a division of the estate netted a round three thousand to the young farmer, who had done nearly all the farm work lately, and now started on an early Northwestern visit to the wheat-growing regions, resolved on a test of climate, comparison of prices, and general outlook for an investment. He bought early and largely in prairie lands of finest quality. He struggled, prospered, and grew well-to-do as a farmer.

And what became of Grace, the teacher? Letters to and from Dakota, neatly written, choicely worded, and carefully punctuated, from one side; hurried notes, badly composed, from the other. The mind is never quite full of two subjects at once, and the surest cure for heartache is active employment and earnest work.

The increasing cares of farming, the magnitude of the business, the constant desire for money (for the seed-time of farming is in its early stages), were a source of daily anxiety to Richard. “My poor Richard” was not a common name for a heading to Grace’s letters; truly she had found a fit name for her absent lover; a lover of land and of cattle, a lover of acres and of reapers, a lover of fences and shade-trees, and a growing Northwesterner; but poor, indeed, in actual happiness.

They were married; Grace removed to her rude quarters and furnished them by taste, skill, and refinement. She took to her new home all the delicacy of rare machine-work, neat stitching, and tidy ornaments of her Eastern education; the sewing of many odd hours of industry.

It seemed like an endless harvest, a long busy day, a strife and a struggle, in a wilderness of bleak broad fields at great distance from market. They raised vast crops, but sold at low prices.

The panic of ’73, and the cold winter following, made not a very happy honeymoon to both, but they endured it all, risked all in a fond large hope of abundant future riches. In a land of no railroads (it’s changed now; it’s as much more brilliant to-day as an electric light compared with the light of a common candle), Dakota was then rather a dreary country.

Sometimes, it is true, there would come over Grace a feeling of lonesome homesickness. It comes to a far-away settler many times in a lifetime; but she would choke it under, and resolve to be a brave wife and a worthy companion.

Ten years have rolled by, and times are better; both are older, worn a little by climate, larger, changed.

On the way to the National Park I chanced past their village one evening on the great Pacific Railroad, and mentioned “Hillsdale” incidentally.

I saw a woman turn half-way round and look towards me, but went on unmindful of the situation. Suddenly her companion arose and asked me if I said Hillsdale, to which I assented, and then a vacant seat was made and both came back and questioned me. They were strange people, truly.

He a stout-built, long-bearded man, half gray, with buffalo overcoat, fur cap and mittens on; she well wrapped in beaver; both Western-looking in every particular.

“You spoke of Hillsdale, sir,” began the woman; “and we lived there once, and feel curious to know if you would not remain all night with us. We have a farm near by next station. I hope you will consent to spend the night with us;” clearly the woman was the social leader.

There was a pleading in the look, a frank expression that said, Please do, and I consented.

Two miles, a drive by a cold open sleigh-ride--cold is hardly strong enough to mark the term,--and we found a low unpainted farm-house, plastered below, with chamber-floor for ceiling overhead, and rudely formed walls; a house of three rooms, mainly in two; a farm of six thousand acres, five teams, three tenant-houses, wagons and sleighs and farming-tools without stint, but comfort nowhere.

After breakfast the farmer fed his flocks and attended to his general chores, while I stayed in and chatted by a sickly pretence of fire made of bad coal and green kindling-wood. I had seen, each time as he came in, how gently he handled his little pet dogs, that seemed their only children, how deeply absorbed he was in farm and stock, and how anxious he was I should see the ranch, but how little he noticed his superior companion.

“Where are your children?” I ventured to inquire.

“They are all three yonder in the field,” she said, and I knew they all slept in narrow houses there. This seemed to let loose the flood that held her feelings since the night before. “But for my husband,” she added, “I should go home ere this. He promised me to go as soon as the road was built; but then it costs so much, we keep on putting off from year to year. But I am longing so much to go! And when I heard that word Hillsdale last night, it filled me so full of home I could not contain myself. I hope you were not offended; but it seemed if some one would come and talk to me, my life would all be new again! It is so blank, so bleak, so cold and desolate, and I am heart hungry.” The tears came fast, and filled her large dark eyes and softened down her voice to tones of confidence. With eagerness she spoke of care, and work and trouble, sorrow and neglect; for, in his greed of gain, he had forgotten her as year by year rolled on, and both were growing older fast, and he not heeding it,--living on in his farm, reapers, sheep and crops; his heart was full of such, and had no room for her, no room for life.

“And you have been out here for fifteen years?” I said. “How many years in that long time have you really lived?”