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.