The reply was left to me. I said gravely: “Let us be thankful that both doctor and clergyman are called upon to use their functions; it might easily have been only the latter.”
“Oh, do not be funereal!” she replied. “I knew that we were not to drown at the Devil’s Slide. The drama is not ended yet, and the chief actors cannot go until ‘the curtain.’—Though I am afraid that is not quite orthodox, is it, Mr. Roscoe?”
Roscoe looked at her gravely. “It may not be orthodox as it is said, but it is orthodox, I fancy, if we exchange God for fate, and Providence for chance.... Good-night.”
He said this wearily. She looked up at him with an ironical look, then held out her hand, and quickly bade him good-night. Partings all round were made, and, after some injunctions to Mrs. Falchion and Justine Caron from myself as to preventives against illness, the rest of us started for Sunburst.
As we went, I could not help but contrast Ruth and Amy Devlin, these two gentle yet strong mountain girls, with the woman we had left. Their lives were far from that dolorous tide which, sweeping through a selfish world, leaves behind it the stain of corroding passions; of cruelties, ingratitude, hate, and catastrophe. We are all ambitious, in one way or another. We climb mountains over scoria that frays and lava that burns. We try to call down the stars, and when, now and then, our conjuring succeeds, we find that our stars are only blasting meteors. One moral mishap lames character for ever. A false start robs us of our natural strength, and a misplaced or unrighteous love deadens the soul and shipwrecks just conceptions of life.
A man may be forgiven for a sin, but the effect remains; it has found its place in his constitution, and it cannot be displaced by mere penitence, nor yet forgiveness. A man errs, and he must suffer; his father erred, and he must endure; or some one sinned against the man, and he hid the sin—But here a hand touched my shoulder! I was startled, for my thoughts had been far away. Roscoe’s voice spoke in my ear: “It is as she said; the actors come together for ‘the curtain.’”
Then his eyes met those of Ruth Devlin turned to him earnestly and inquiringly. And I felt for a moment hard against Roscoe, that he should even indirectly and involuntarily, bring suffering into her life. In youth, in early manhood, we do wrong. At the time we seem to be injuring no one but ourselves; but, as we live on, we find that we were wronging whomsoever should come into our lives in the future. At the instant I said angrily to myself: “What right has he to love a girl like that, when he has anything in his life that might make her unhappy, or endanger her in ever so little!”
But I bit my tongue, for it seemed to me that I was pharisaical; and I wondered rather scornfully if I should have been so indignant were the girl not so beautiful, young, and ingenuous. I tried not to think further of the matter, and talked much to Ruth,—Gait Roscoe walked with Mrs. Revel and Amy Devlin,—but I found I could not drive it from my mind. This was not unnatural, for was not I the “chorus to the play”?