At Pinney's Ranch, Edward Bellamy [story books to read .txt] 📗

then?"

"No, she is well."

"It's the children, then?"

"No," answered Pinney. "They are all right."

"Then, in God's name, what is it?" demanded Lansing, unable to conceive what serious evil could have happened to him, if nothing had befallen his wife and babies.

"We can't keep it from him now," said Pinney to his wife. "You 'll have to give him her letter."

"Can't you tell me what it is? Why do you keep me in suspense?" asked Lansing, in a voice husky with a dread he knew not of what.

"I can't, man. Don't ask me!" groaned Finney. "It's better that you should read it."

Mrs. Finney's face expressed an agony of compassion as, still half clutching it, she held out a letter to Lansing. "John, oh, John," she sobbed; "remember, she's not to blame! She doesn't know."

The letter, was in his wife's handwriting, addressed to Mrs. Pinney, and read as follows:--

You will be surprised by what I am going to tell you. You,
who know how I loved John, must have taken it for granted
that I would never marry again. Not that it could matter to
him. Too well I feel the gulf between the dead and living to
fancy that his peace could be troubled by any of the
weaknesses of mortal hearts. Indeed, he often used to tell
me that, if he died, he wanted me to marry again, if ever I
felt like doing so; but in those happy days I was always
sure that I should be taken first. It was he who was to go
first, though, and now it is for the sake of his children
that I am going to do what I never thought I could. I am
going to marry again. As they grow older and need more, I
find it impossible for me to support them, though I do not
mind how hard I work, and would wear my fingers to the bone
rather than take any other man's name after being John's
wife. But I cannot care for them as they should be cared
for. Johnny is now six, and ought to go to school, but I
cannot dress him decently enough to send him. Mary has
outgrown all her clothes, and I cannot get her more. Her
feet are too tender to go bare, and I cannot buy her shoes.
I get less and less sewing since the new dressmaker came to
the village, and soon shall have none. We live, oh so
plainly! For myself I should not care, but the children are
growing and need better food. They are John's children, and
for their sake I have brought myself to do what I never
could have done but for them. I have promised to marry Mr.
Whitcomb. I have not deceived him as to why alone I marry
him. He has promised to care for the children as his own,
and to send Johnny to college, for I know his father would
have wanted him to go. It will be a very quiet wedding, of
course. Mr. Whitcomb has had some cards printed to send to a
few friends, and I inclose one to you. I cannot say that I
wish you could be present, for it will be anything but a
joyful day to me. But when I meet John in heaven, he will
hold me to account for the children he left me, and this is
the only way by which I can provide for them. So long as it
is well with them, I ought not to care for myself.

Your sister,

Maky Lansing.

The card announced that the wedding would take place at the home of the bride, at six o'clock on the afternoon of the 27th of June.

It was June 27 that day, and it was nearly five o'clock. "The Lord help you!" ejaculated Pinney, as he saw, by the ashen hue which overspread Lansing's face, that the full realization of his situation had come home to him. "We meant to keep it from you till to-morrow. It might be a little easier not to know it till it was over than now, when it is going on, and you not able to lift a finger to stop it."

"Oh, John," cried Mrs. Pinney once more; "remember, she does n't know!" and, sobbing hysterically, she fled from the room, unable to endure the sight of Lansing's face.

He had fallen into a chair, and was motionless, save for the slow and labored breathing which shook his body. As he sat there in Pinney's ranch this pleasant afternoon, the wife whom he worshiped never so passionately as now, at their home one thousand miles away, was holding another man by the hand, and promising to be his wife.

It was five minutes to five by the clock on the wall before him. It therefore wanted but five minutes of six, the hour of the wedding, at home, the difference in time being just an hour. In the years of his exile, by way of enhancing the vividness of his dreams of home, he had calculated exactly the difference in time from various points in Colorado, so that he could say to himself, "Now Mary is putting the babies to bed;" "Now it is her own bedtime;" "Now she is waking up;" or "Now the church-bells are ringing, and she is walking to church." He was accustomed to carry these two standards of time always in his head, reading one by the other, and it was this habit, bred of doting fondness, which now would compel him to follow, as if he were a spectator, minute by minute, each step of the scene being enacted so far away.

People were prompt at weddings. No doubt already the few guests were arriving, stared at by the neighbors from their windows. The complacent bridegroom was by this time on his way to the home of the bride, or perhaps knocking at the door. Lansing knew him well, an elderly, well-to-do furniture-maker, who had been used to express a fatherly admiration for Mary. The bride was upstairs in her chamber, putting the finishing touches to her toilet; or, at this very moment, it might be, was descending the stairs to take the bridegroom's arm and go in to be married.

Lansing gasped. The mountain wind was blowing through the room, but he was suffocating.

Pinney's voice, seeming to come from very far away, was in his ears. "Rouse yourself, for God's sake! Don't give it all up that way. I believe there's a chance yet. Remember the mind-reading you used to do with her. You could put almost anything into her mind by just willing it there. That's what I mean. Will her to stop what she is doing now. Perhaps you may save her yet. There's a chance you may do it. I don't say there's more than a chance, but there 's that There's a bare chance. That's better than giving up. I 've heard of such things being done. I 've read of them. Try it, for God's sake I Don't give up."

At any previous moment of his life the suggestion that he could, by mere will power, move the mind of a person a thousand miles away, so as to reverse a deliberate decision, would have appeared to Lansing as wholly preposterous as no doubt it does to any who read these lines. But a man, however logical he may be on land, will grasp at a straw when drowning, as if it were a log. Pinney had no need to use arguments or adjurations to induce Lansing to adopt his suggestion. The man before him was in no mood to balance probabilities against improbabilities. It was enough that the project offered a chance of success, albeit infinitesimal; for on the other hand there was nothing but an intolerable despair, and a fate that truly seemed more than flesh and blood could bear.

Lansing had sprung to his feet while Pinney was speaking. "I 'm going to try it, and may God Almighty help me!" he cried, in a terrible voice.

"Amen!" echoed Pinney.

Lansing sank into his chair again, and sat leaning slightly forward, in a rigid attitude. The expression of his eyes at once became fixed. His features grew tense, and the muscles of his face stood out. As if to steady the mental strain by a physical one, he had taken from the table a horseshoe which had lain there, and held it in a convulsive grip.

Pinney had made this extraordinary suggestion in the hope of diverting Lansing's mind for a moment from his terrible situation, and with not so much faith even as he feigned that it would be of any practical avail. But now, as he looked upon the ghastly face before him, and realized the tremendous concentration of purpose, the agony of will, which it expressed, he was impressed that it would not be marvelous if some marvel should be the issue. Certainly, if the will really had any such power as Lansing was trying to exert, as so many theorists maintained, there could never arise circumstances better calculated than these to call forth a supreme assertion of the faculty. He went out of the room on tiptoe, and left his friend alone to fight this strange and terrible battle with the powers of the air for the honor of his wife and his own.

There was little enough need of any preliminary effort on Lansing's part to fix his thoughts upon Mary. It was only requisite that to the intensity of the mental vision, with which he had before imagined her, should be added the activity of the will, turning the former mood of despair into one of resistance. He knew in what room of their house the wedding party must now be gathered, and was able to represent to himself the scene there as vividly as if he had been present. He saw the relatives assembled; he saw Mr. Davenport, the minister, and, facing him, the bridal couple, in the only spot where they could well stand, before the fireplace. But from all the others, from the guests, from the minister, from the bridegroom, he turned his thoughts, to fix them on the bride alone. He saw her as if through the small end of an immensely long telescope, distinctly, but at an immeasurable distance. On this face his mental gaze was riveted, as by conclusive efforts his will strove to reach and move hers against the thing that she was doing. Although his former experiments in mental phenomena had in a measure familiarized him with the mode of addressing his powers to such an undertaking as this, yet the present effort was on a scale so much vaster that his will for a time seemed appalled, and refused to go out from him, as a bird put forth from a ship at sea returns again and again before daring to essay the distant flight to land. He felt that he was gaining nothing. He was as one who beats the air. It was all he could do to struggle against the influences that tended to deflect and dissipate his thoughts. Again and again a conviction of the uselessness