The Mystery of the Locks

by E. W. Howe

They both looked out the window in silence again. A misty morning, threatening rain, and the river before them like a sea.

"I must do something to help those who are imprisoned in their homes by the flood," Allan Dorris said, as if a sight of the river had suggested it to him. "I will go down where boats are to be had presently, and row over into the timber. Do you see that line of trees?"

Below the town, in the river bend, a long line of trees made out into the channel, which were on dry land in ordinary times, but the point was covered now, for the flood occupied the bottom from bluff to bluff. He pointed this out, and when his wife saw the place he referred to, she nodded her head.

"My boat will be carried down the stream by the strong current, and I will probably enter the timber there. I will wave my good-by to you from that point."

He went out soon after to prepare for the trip, and during his absence his wife hurriedly prepared his breakfast; and when he came back he wore coat and boots of rubber.

"What a wonderful housekeeper you are," he said, as he sat down to the table. "No difference what I crave, you supply it before I have time to worry because of the lack of it. But it is so in everything; I never want to do a thing but that I find you are of the same mind. It is very easy to spoil a boy, but I think the girls are naturally so good that they turn out well without much attention. You had no mother to teach you, but you took charge of my house with as much good grace and ease as though you had been driven to it all your life. I think a great deal more of your sex because of my acquaintance with you. If my wife is not the most wonderful woman in the world, I shall never know it."

"I am almost ashamed to say it after your kind remark," his wife replied, "but I am afraid I do not want you to go over into the bottoms. The thought of it fills me with dread, though I know you ought to go."

"And why not?" he said cheerfully. "I may be able to rescue some unfortunate over there, and there is nothing dangerous in the journey. I shall return before the night comes on,—no fear of that; but before I go I want to tell you again how much my marriage with you has done for me. I want you to keep it in your mind while I am away, that you may understand why I am glad to return. Until I came here and met you, I was as discontented as a man could possibly be, and I am very grateful to you. A life of toil and misery was my lot until you came to my rescue, and I thank you for your kindness to me. It occurred to me while I was out of the room just now, that the shadow under the trees is very much like the shadow I intended to penetrate when you came to me that dark night and blessed me. Once you came into the room where I was lying down, after returning from the country, though I was not asleep as you supposed. The gentle manner in which you touched my forehead with your lips; that was love—I have thought about it a thousand times since, and been thankful. The human body I despise, because of my familiarity with it; but such a love as yours is divine. I only regret that it is not more general. Love is the only thing in life worth having; if a man who lacks it is not discontented, he is like an idiot who is always laughing, not realizing his condition. Some people I have known suggested depravity by their general appearance; you think of your own faults from looking at them, and feel ashamed; but it makes me ambitious to look at you, and every day since I have known you I have been a better man than I was the day before."

He had finished his repast by this time, and they walked out to the front door together, arm in arm, like lovers.

"I have heard it said," he continued, as he tied up his rubber boots and made final preparations for starting, "that if a wife is too good to her husband, he will finally come to dislike her. You are too good to me, I suppose, but it never occurs to me to dislike you for it; on the contrary, it causes me to resolve to be worthy of your thoughtfulness. It will do me good to go into the shadow for a day; I will appreciate the sunshine all the more when I return. But if I should not return—if an accident should happen to me, which is always possible anywhere—my last thought would be thankfulness for the happiness of the past three months."