In a Mysterious Way

by Anne Warner

THERE never was the human tragedy, comedy, or melodrama, yet, which did not have one or more dispassionate observers. This is strictly true because, even if a man goes off into the wilderness to fight his fight out utterly alone, there are moments when one part of his own spirit will dissever itself from all the rest and, standing forth, tell him of his progress or retrogression with a pitiless, unbiassed truth. The wilderness is advisable for that very reason, but no one makes a greater mistake than when he or she goes to a small far-away village and pleasantly terms it "the wilderness," supposing soul-solitude an integral part thereof. It is very right, proper, and conventional to view life from one's own standpoint, but the real facts of the case are old and trite enough to warrant me in repeating the statement that all doings in this world have their dispassionate observer.

Mrs. Ray was the natural observer for the town of Ledge. The town was not quite aware that added to her keen powers of observation she was also the Voice of the community. People never expressed themselves fully, without first knowing what she said. Public opinion simmered all over the township, so to speak, and then finally boiled over in Mrs. Ray.

It will be quite impossible to impress upon the ordinary reader the importance of such Public Opinion, unless a few paragraphs are devoted to the town of Ledge and its history. If one fails to properly appreciate the town of Ledge, the tale might just as well have been located in North Ledge, South Ledge, Ledgeville, Ledge Centre, or any of the other Ledges.

Therefore on behalf of the lovely little hamlet of Ledge itself, I will state in as few words as possible that it lies upon a hill overlooking one of the most beautiful and picturesque scenes in all Northeastern America; that it took its name and being from a great and noble-hearted man, who, passing that way by chance, half a century since, paused near its site to sadly contemplate the denuded banks of the little river winding its way amidst the débris and desolation left by the lumber barons of the period. Time was when the same banks had been smiling terraces covered thick with primeval pines, but "civilization" had demanded their downfall and they fell. Fell without warning, and also without discretion. Fell forever, flinging the riches of all the future aside for the plenty of one man's day. Blackened stumps, great beds of unsightly chips, waste which would never have been called waste in any other land, ruthless destruction,—all this disfigured the landscape that stretched before that visitor of fifty years ago. His heart was heavy, for he was one who loved everything good, and trees and beauty are two of man's best gifts from above; but while he gazed over what to him and many others was almost as much desecration as desolation, he saw, forever flowing—however choked—the little river below. Like the thread of idealism which illuminates the most despairing situation, so flowed the silvery stream down through the scene before him. Its bed was clogged with drift, its banks covered with rotting rubbish, yet the promise of its beauty remained; and then and there the traveller formulated a plan for its redemption to the end that unborn generations might revel in the realization of that of which he alone seemed then conscious.

The town of Ledge was a part of what resulted. There had to be a town, and Ledge came into existence. Where there is work to be done, come the workers, and with them come towns. Ledge came and grew. To the call of prosperity many other Ledges gathered a little later; but they never enjoyed the dignity of the one and original. The first Ledge was tenacious of its priority. It held to its privileges as rigidly as any medieval knight held to his. Castled upon the hill above, it simulated power in more ways than one. For many years all the others had to go to Ledge for their mail. Ledge also owned the sheriff, the blacksmith, and the lawyer, and kept a monopoly on the summer excursionist; the express office was its natural perquisite; a bend of the canal took it in, and when the canal went the railroad came to console the losers. Mr. Ledge's plans, which had turned his private estate into a public park for the gently disposed, also held Ledge in high honor. To visit Ledge Park from any of the other Ledges was rendered well-nigh impossible. The little town stood like a sentinel at the end of the Long Bridge, and at the top of the First Fall. Every picnicker had to go through it, had to check such articles as could not conveniently be carried all day, in its hotel; had to get whatever he might feel disposed to drink in the same place. During the summer, visitors were so plenteous that it became the fashion in Ledge to despise them, and that right heartily, too. The people who brought the town most of its means of livelihood received much that species of sentiment with which an irritating husband and father is frequently viewed. It was the fashion in Ledge to despise city people and their ways in all things; even their coming to see the Falls was referred to as special proof of their singularly feeble minds, while the way in which the visitors climbed and walked was the favorite topic of mirthful criticism, all summer long. Criticism is a strange habit. It is contagious, thrives in any soil or no soil at all, and is far more destructive to him or her who gives it birth than it can possibly be to any other person. Not that it really is destructive, but that the weight of criticism rarely falls where it is supposed to be most needed.

The summer visitors evoked so much comment between May and November that a great longing to have something to talk about between November and May followed. It therefore became the fashion in Ledge to talk of everything and everybody, and as the summer visitors were rated low, the rest of the world was pretty freely given over to the same cataloguing. It was usual to rate Ledgeville and all the other Ledges particularly low, and this opinion held firm, until a biting edge was given it by a second railroad which came down the valley's bottom to the unspeakable wrath of the hills on either side and of Ledge in special. It took several years to assimilate the second railroad, and resume the even tenor of life. But the adjustment was finally made, and at the date of this story Ledge was a wee country idyll set like a pearl amidst the beautiful environment of that fairest of country counties. He who was responsible for town and environment lived on his own estate near by, and came in for his share of consideration from the tongues of his namesake. The great philanthropist was busily engaged in his battle to preserve intact, for the good of the many to come, that matchless picture with its open Bible of Nature's Own History. Of the picture and its practical value, Ledge had its own opinion. It had its own opinion of the dam, too. It had its own opinion of Alva. And of Lassie. And of Ingram. And all these opinions flowed freely forth through the medium of Mrs. Ray. As that lady herself put it: "Whether I'm picking chickens or digging fence-posts, or carting the United States mail down to the train in the wheelbarrow that I had to buy and the United States Government won't pay for,—I never am idle; I'm always taking in something."

And it was quite true. Whatever Mrs. Ray was working at, her brain was never idle; it was always absorbing something. It was not uncommon to see a neighbor walking with her while she ploughed, conversation going briskly on meanwhile. She swept the church with company, and she almost never sat alone between mail times. It was a full, busy life, and an interesting one. It was full of importance and responsibility, too. Mrs. Ray liked to be responsible and was naturally important. Her opinions were in the main correct, but sometimes she did draw wrong conclusions. For instance, when she looked down the road the morning after Lassie's arrival, and saw the two friends departing over the Long Bridge.

"Oh, dear," she said to whoever was near by at the minute, "I smell trouble for that oldest one if she's planning to keep that pretty girl here long. That man is going to fall in love with that pretty girl. He never has cared much for her, anyway. He don't even seem to like to go over to their house with her; she goes alone mostly. Yes, indeed."

The somebody sitting near by at the minute was Mrs. Dunstall. And Pinkie, of course. They had dropped in to see if they had any mail, and had found Mrs. Ray cutting the hair of the three youngest children left her, first by her predecessor and then by Mr. Ray himself.

"Sit down," she had said cordially; "the second train isn't in yet, and it's got to come in and go out and let the mail-train come in, even if the mail ain't late, on account of the wreck."