Sometimes before a great storm an illusive hush holds sway, a perilous peace falls upon the face of nature. With it, a mysterious light irradiates the sky; a solemn sunshine, prophetic of after rains, the forerunner of tempest—a luminous warning of wrath to come. In some such fashion surely the face of the angel shone when he, as the writers of tales tell us, drove our parents out of Paradise.
It was this illusory illumination that gilded the lives of Judith Moore and Andrew Cutler at this time. How few of us read the rain behind the radiance!
They were both happy. As a parched plant vibrates in all its leaves, stirs and quickens when given water that means life to it, so Judith Moore's whole being trembled beneath its baptism of love. For she seems to have had no doubt that her manager—her "master," as she lovingly called him—would grant her request. Already her past life, with all its work, and waiting, and triumph, seemed but a dim dream, her present hope the only reality. She ran about the Morris house so lightly that it seemed to Mrs. Morris she heard the patter of children's feet, the sweetest sound that ever wove itself into this simple woman's dreams.
Judith's heart was ever across the fields with her lover, and she "sang his name instead of a song," and found it surpassing sweet. And Andrew's heart and head were both busy with loving plans for Judith.
The Muskoka woods might go, and their green mosses be torn for minerals! No more long, lonely hunts for him! He must reap golden harvests wherever he might for Judith, now. He knew all her insufficiencies as a housewife, which poor Judith felt very humble in confessing; and it gave Andrew great joy, in a modest way, that he would be able to let her be quite free of them.
And he had higher dreams. Politics offers a wide arena for ambition. Its sands may have been soiled by the blood of victims, trodden by the feet of hirelings, defiled by the struggles of mercenaries; but there are yet some godlike gladiators left, who war for right; there are yet noble strifes, and few to fight them; and Andrew, in whose heart patriotism was as a flaming fire, resolved to dedicate himself for the fray. To win glory for Judith, to do something to savour his life that it might be worthy of her acceptance, that it might leave some fragrance upon the tender hands that held it—that was his aim, and he felt he would not fail.
No inherent force can be very great and not give its possessor a thrill of power. Andrew felt within him that which meant mastery of men. And in spite of difficulties and obstacles, Andrew at last won the wreath to which he had aspired in the first flush of his hope and joy.
But that was after.
* * * * * *
One day, a week after Judith had sent the letter, a group of Ovidians were in Hiram Green's store. There was old Sam Symmons, Jack Mackinnon, Oscar Randall (who, together with his hopes of political preferment, aspired to the hand of Sam Symmons' Suse), and Bill Aikins. The latter would "catch it," as he well knew, when he got home, for loitering in the store, and therefore, with some vague thought of palliating his offence, forbore to make himself comfortable, but stood uneasily by the door, jostled by each person who came in, pushed by each who went out.