"As I sat weeping with pain and an impotent resentment, a clear sweet voice spoke to me out of the dusky twilight of the woods. 'Don't cry so much!' it said. Astonishment dried my tears instantly. I looked about me, but no one was near; nor any sound to be heard, but the peculiar cry of a bird that makes itself heard in the Oregon woods at twilight only. A calm that I cannot explain came over my perturbed spirit. It was like the heavenly voices heard upon the earth thousands of years ago, in its power to move the heart. It may make you smile for me to say so; but from that hour I regained a degree of cheerfulness that I had not felt since the day of my marriage to Mr. Seabrook. I did not go to Mrs. ——'s that evening, but returned home and went to my bed without putting on clothes to be buried in!"
We talked for a little of well attested instances of similar incidents of the seeming supernatural. Then I said:
"And how did your investment turn out?"
"As might have been expected by a more worldly-wise person. After succeeding, almost, I was defeated by the selfishness and indifference of the man I had trusted to help me through with it. He sold out his property, including that bonded to me, when nearly the whole indebtedness was paid, without mentioning his design, or giving me an opportunity to complete the purchase. The new proprietor went immediately to Mr. Seabrook, who, delighted with this unexpected piece of fortune, borrowed the small amount remaining to be paid, and had the property deeded to himself. A short time after he sold it at a handsome advance on the price I paid for it, and I had never one dollar of the money. The entire savings of the whole time I had been in a really profitable business, went with that unlucky venture."
"You were just as far from getting to California as ever? O, what outrageous abuse of the power society gives men over women!" I exclaimed with vehemence.
"You may imagine I was bitterly disappointed. The lesson was a hard one, but salutary. I took no more disinterested advice; I bought no more property. There are too many agents between a woman and the thing she aims at, for her ever to attain it without danger of discomfiture. The experience, as you may guess, put me in no amicable mood towards Mr. Seabrook. Just think of it! There were three years I had supported, by my labor, a large family of men, for that is what it amounted to. My money purchased the food they all ate, and I had really received nothing for it except my board and the clothes I worked in. The fault was not theirs; it was Mr. Seabrook's and society's."
"I will tell you what you remind me of," I said: "You are like Penelope, and her train of ravenous suitors, in the Odyssey of Homer."
"In my busy life, I have not had time to read Homer," Mrs. Greyfield replied; "but if any other woman has been so eaten out of house and home, as I was, I am sorry for her."
"Homer's Penelope, if we may believe the poet, was in much better circumstances to bear the ravages of her riotous boarders, than you were to feed yours gratuitously."
"Talking about suitors," said Mrs. Greyfield, "I was not without those entirely, either. No young mismated woman can escape them perhaps. The universal opinion among men seems to be that, if you do not like the man you have, you must like some other one; and each one thinks it is himself."