An honorable surrender

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I

" In the spring When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing."

Shakspeare.

Around the village of Unity, lie low and swampy meadow-lands, crossed and recrossed by the many arms of a shallow river that winds its silver threads over their broad surface.

Meadows are like some examples of human worth, — they keep their loveliness for their lovers only. Why should the sight of a stretch of marshes fill and satisfy a beauty-loving soul ? Yet he who has seen these lowlands in their fresh green robes, light and shadow under masses of cloud in a spring sky, who has felt the warm sun and cool wind of the May day, and has seen its joy of life visible in every rush and grass of the meadow, and every ripple of the stream, may have drawn from these tranquil sources a keen and delicate pleasure that retains a singular freshness in the recollection.

It was on such a morning as this that Kenneth Lawrence, standing on the level shore of Unity River, saw a boat, rowed by a girl, slide from under the bridge, and disappear in the upper windings of the stream. When he left the riverside, he took with him a picture of blue sky above, blue water below, and between them the boat, and the young figure bending to its oars. The impression that the meadows made upon Lawrence was that of a great stillness, a pause. He reflected that he had arrived at a pause in his own life.

He was not a remarkable-looking man. He was thirty years old, was obviously a gentleman, was tall and rather lightly built, and had a trick of carrying his head a trifle bent, which, though not a physical grace, saved him from any apparent awkward consciousness of his inches.

He was a " writer of books," and among books of those called novels. He had contrived to astonish that portion of the public whose department in literature was observation and criticism, and who were more or less actively occupied in looking for the coming American novel, when Mr. Lawrence appeared on the scene with a fine, crisp, delicate style, a subtle, underlying vein of satire, an entire absence of plot, and a cool, direct, minute analysis of character.

In his sketches the incidents were few, the motives of action often insufficient and commonplace rather than heroic, and the atmosphere was not that of romance, but was clear, gray, and reasonable, without being actually realistic. All subjects that he handled were made charming by his deft, accurate touch. In a word, Mr. Lawrence had discovered a vein, and cultivated tastes soon discovered Mr. Lawrence. Critics turned his delicate, highly finished studies over again and again without materially harming them, while the appreciative portion of the public hailed the novel, unhackneyed productions ; and when a distinguished English review committed a distinguished blunder, in confounding Mr. Lawrence with a gentleman whose name differed from his as to a vowel in spelling, and, on being corrected, presented its apologies, the American's success was declared complete.

Not that he became popular : that is doubtless a vulgar distinction, and his more fastidious admirers would have been somewhat disgusted had popularity fallen to his share. Yet at times he might have found its attendant prosperity convenient, and an increased income worth the praises of all the critical circle. For in earlier life he had also astonished his family ; and, in this case, the result was not agreeable. The Lawrences were not accustomed to having genius among them. There were Lawrences who were merchants, lawyers, and clergymen. They were eminently respectable, creditable, and successful in whatever they undertook ; but they were not usually brilliant, and they had a natural aversion to brilliancy of any sort, holding that it was specious and shallow. Kenneth's father had been an anomaly, — an unsuccessful Lawrence. In his forty years of life nothing went well with him. He never played a game but he lost it, and never found a path that had not misfortunes at every step. This being John Lawrence's fate, at his death he left to a successful brother his sole legacy, — Kenneth, a little lad of ten.

The brother was a very favorable specimen of the accepted and approved type of the race, Henry Lawrence of Lawrence & Co., Farborough Iron-works. He was middle-aged, clear-headed, of the honest, obstinate Lawrence temper, with plenty of sturdy, matter-of-fact kindness in his nature, whenever that nature was called upon in language that it understood. He had no sons, a matter of keenest regret to him ; and he took his brother's orphan the more willingly because of this, and, because of this, was the more resolved to make Kenneth all that a Lawrence usually was and always should be. It was long before he discovered that he was vainly trying to force a living, resisting nature into a straitened mould wholly unsuited to it ; and, when he did make the discovery, his surprise was somewhat pathetic, — supposing pathos to be a possible element in the life of a middle-aged and successful capitalist.

For Kenneth was not, and never could be, a conventional Lawrence.

At fifteen he developed a talent for writing bad verses and ambitious romances, — a talent not adapted to any of his uncle's requirements.

^ can make nothing of him," said Henry LawlO A A' HONORABLE SURRENDER.

rence ; and he was right enough, for, worse or better, the nature was ah-eady formed.

Kenneth, on his part, found the process of moulding severe ; and the years were perhaps as trying to him as they were unsatisfactory to his uncle. A climax was inevitable, but it came in no dramatic form. There was not even an open quarrel ; and when he left his uncle's house, it was with the civillest hand-shake, and with mutual expressions of good-will. Nevertheless he was in no hurry to come back again.

When he was twenty-five he no longer indulged in the verses and romances. He had found his level, and was already writing analytical sketches and studies. Upon this followed five years of such success as has been noted : then came a slight check.

Lawrence made an innovation upon his usual style, and fell under the disapproval of his critics. He was not very seriously disturbed. He had never claimed to be a genius, his conceit not being of the vulgar, grandiloquent sort ; but the change was certainly not agreeable. It was the more awkward for coming in a time of enforcec^ idleness, overtasked eyes precluding work of ^/ sort ; and it was too early in the season to visit the mountains in which he was in the habit of spending his holidays.

The event that broke this dead calm was the death of Henry Lawrence.

Kenneth made no particular pretence of sorrow ; but he went down to Farborough with a soft kindliness of feeling for the ugly, substantial house, the plain, sensible mistress and her daughters, and all the old, homely prosperity. And he was not ashamed of the odd, unusual tenderness, as he might have been ashamed ten years before. He had outlived the stoicism he had affected at twenty.

Then there was the reading of the will ; and it was found that Henry Lawrence, who in his whole staid life had astonished no one, was yet capable of surprising his heirs with the maddest of eccentric wills. At least, that was what Kenneth said of it, telling the story in his own way to Davis Baxter, friend and critic to Lawrence, critic in his public capacity as well.

Kenneth was considered the fortunate person. To him had fallen the generous and unexpected legacy. It was, however, a legacy weighted by conditions, and the terms were certainly very embarrassing to Kenneth.

*'I don't at all miderstand what I am to do with the active management of Farborough Iron-works," he said ruefully. "That is the express condition : there never was a more preposterous one."

The friend removed his cigar, and came up to the perpendicular attitude. " Lawrence," he remarked, "you know as much of iron-works as I do of Sanscrit."

" Exactly," said Lawrence. " Otherwise I should not call my uncle insane."

" You are all right, I dare say. Your management need not be personal. You can be nominally Lawrence of Farborough, actually any thing you like."

" I suppose you know very well I will be nothing of the sort. The case is simple enough. My uncle had no sons, but the iron-works must continue in the Lawrence name. I am a novelist, not a machinist : still, the iron-works. He made a sort of fetich of them, and he proposes that I continue the devotions. It is absurd, if you like. Most things are, from a certain point of view ; but that is no argument. To my mind, it is plain enough. Either I assume the trust as punctiliously as it was intended ; or I decline the obligations, and the legacy, and walk off in the opposite direction. I don't wish to talk like a prig," he concluded with a slight laugh ; *' but it is — a point of honor."

''And so a matter of good taste with you,'* said the other sardonically.

" Oh ! very well," said Lawrence with creditable good-humor. " That is not the point under discussion. The objection to all this is, that I have a fetich of my own."

** Precisely. I deny having any exalted opinion of the fellow ; but, on the other hand, I don't deny having a great regard for him. And I am not equal to the task of managing the machinery of Farborough Iron-works and the machinery of a novel at the same time. Happily, I am aware of the fact, and am not likely to attempt impossibilities."

Here Lawrence took up a pen, and twirled the handle slowly between his fingers.

" I don't like giving up my familiar," he said thoughtfully.

" I think I could resign my ' familiar ' very cheerfully, in favor of a substantial equivalent."

" So I should have said a week ago. I believe I know most of the discomforts of the trade. Why, Baxter, there is a notch in the edge of my desk that I cannot look at without recalling uncomfortably the hours I have sat staring at it half-frenzied, half-stupefied, hunting a phrase, or grasping at a nebulous idea. Yet here is the substantial equivalent, and still I come back to the notch in my desk."

*' You can't take both } "

" Impossible. I should either land Lawrence & Co. in an inextricable muddle, or deteriorate in a literary sense, take to telling situations and popular fiction generally. The combination is absurd."

'' I don't see that."

"Ah ! but I do," said Lawrence moodily.

"But what are you going to do about it ? " urged Baxter.

" Happily, I am not required to do any thing at once," said Lawrence, rising. " I have four months for decision. In the mean time I am going out of town for six weeks to a place called

Unity. Puritanic, colonial sort of name, isn't it ? I doubt if it has other attractions ; but it will do, I dare say. I remember going there once with my father. He had friends there too, but I have forgotten who they were. I am going out to grass, like Nebuchadnezzar.'*

"Bring back your wits."

" Or my legacy," laughed Kenneth.

They shook hands on it. Lawrence took an afternoon train out of town, and the next morning stood on the banks of the river, and saw the green meadows in the sun, and the blue of the spring sky.

He was not at all in a mood to appreciate the finer beauties of the spring day, but its influences were not wholly lost upon him ; and the following day he came back over the white road, winding down from the village to the bridge, — a staid and sober structure that spanned the main channel of Unity River.

Upon the sides of the bridge little recesses, with peaked, rustic roofs, hung over the stream ; and, sitting in one of these, a girl leaned forward upon the rail, and looked up the river. At first sight, it seemed a wonder that she could remain

SO motionless in the piercing air. This was a gray day, with purple clouds in the cold sky, and a keen wind that swept the meadows, and cut the dark surface of the water into gleaming, steely furrows.

Then it became a matter of regret that fair possibilities, suggested by a girlish shape, and brown hair coiled low upon her neck, should be turned only upon the unobservant meadows and the chilling wind.

In a second glance, Lawrence saw that the rail upon which she leaned was split, and bent sharply where it joined the upright support, and was likely, at any moment, to precipitate its burden into the water.

He hesitated, but finally said, in his neat, crisp tones, " Pardon me, but you should not lean upon that rail. It is unsafe."

At first she did not reply ; and when the answer came it was in a dull tone, and unaccompanied by any movement.

** Thank you. I am not afraid."

" Still I advise you to move," he urged. " You are likely to fall into the river at any moment." At this she moved slightly backward, but without speaking, or giving her adviser a glimpse of her face ; and Lawrence walked on with an agreeable sense of having been remarkably officious. If he had looked back, he might have seen that she had made her position a degree more dangerous than before ; resting her head on her crossed arms, and leaning more heavily upon the treacherous support.

He had gone but a few yards when a sharp crash, followed by a cry, brought him back on a run. And this was what had happened : the rail of a sudden snapped smartly, and the obstinate person who leaned on it fell forward, but not into the river.

She had caught one of the upright supports, and clung desperately, hanging over the dark, gleaming water.

Well-grown young women are not featherweights ; but Lawrence was strong, and the girl not more helpless than her position obliged her to be. '* Put your foot in that niche," he said briefly. " Now spring a little," grasping her firmly.

In a moment she was standing on the planks of the bridge.

" You are not hurt, I hope ? " he said rather breathlessly.

"Thank you, no : I am not hurt."

But she sat down hastily upon the rustic bench, and leaned her elbow on the rail, and her cheek upon her hand.

Lawrence was not aware that he noticed the pure outlines of wrist and throat, the brown mass of hair upon her neck ; but he remembered them afterwards.

She was trembling visibly.

"You must not be too much frightened," he said kindly. " There was no great danger."

" Not if it had broken a little sooner, or later t Not if you had not come at all } " looking at him with dilated eyes. They were large eyes, and their long lashes curled upward.

^^ If is an ugly word, why use it.?" He was not aware of talking as if to a child. " Actually, there was no harm done. And the river is not deep, I think."

"Six feet under the bridge," said the girl. "And six inches of water above one's head is enough."

She shuddered, and closed her eyes. Her face was absolutely without color.

Lawrence discreetly walked over to the gap, and examined the broken rail.

It was not necessary, for she was not noticing him. Presently he came back again. " You are badly frightened, I'm afraid," he said at last. Pause. " Will you allow me to walk back to the village with you .? "

*'No, I thank you," she said simply, without moving. Lawrence took another uncomfortable turn, and came back again. " The fact is, I don't at all like leaving you," he said bluntly.

She opened her eyes, and looked at him with a faint gleam of amusement in them. A dimple showed in one smooth cheek.

"I won't jump through the gap," she said, "or break down the rail on the other side."

After a moment she rose to her feet, and inclined her head with a slight, graceful movement. "Good-morning," she said distinctly. There was nothing for Lawrence to do but raise his hat, and walk off in the opposite direction.

" She had a singular manner," he mused, as he went. "Quiet enough, but quiet with an effort; controlled, rather. Not that she was not selfpossessed : she was, remarkably so. And there never was any thing more delicious than her dis' missal of me, both the act, and the manner of it. She never entertained the idea of accepting my offer, yet she was too clever to set it down as an impertinence. A strange creature on Unity Bridge."

The unexpected had given a welcome impulse to his colorless day and mood ; but, all the same, he was conscious of an unreasonable tingle of annoyance.

He followed the road where it plunged into a belt of willows, whose interlacing shadows, on brighter days, wavered on the white road in dancing shapes of sun and shade ; and was nearly through them, when a light, uneven patter of steps, close behind, caused him to turn quickly, and see his late companion, somewhat flushed and breathless after a race that would not have disgraced a schoolboy. Lawrence was profoundly astonished, not to say scandalized ; for, in his experience, well-bred young women did not run after strangers.

" I could not help it," she gasped. '* I must speak to you. I " —

"Pray don't try to speak yet," he remonstrated, raising one hand with a deprecating movement.

She stood panting, a transparent color reaching the roots of her hair. *' I am behaving very strangely," she said hurriedly; "but I felt that I must tell you I did not intend it. You did not think I intended to fall off the bridge .'' "

*' Surely not," said Lawrence. *'I should never have thought of any thing so unlikely." He was struggling with an inward desire to laugh, and the effort he made after self-control made him look detestably solemn and conscious.

" It is unlikely," she said with dignity. *' Still you might have thought ^t, but you would have been mistaken. I only wished to have my way. I don't know why I should have been so unreasonable ; but I never intended to fall off the bridge, you must not think it," insistently. '' I suppose you will think me insane, at least : I have given you every right to think so."

"Not at all," said Lawrence stoutly. He was very far from being sure of what he ought to say ; but he added, " Believe me, I am not thinking any thing you would dislike."

She seemed to resent the attempted consolation.

*'You must think me very undignified," she said hastily. " I am aware of it, but it could not be helped. I felt that I must speak, or it would always trouble me. Not that I have made any thing better by speaking. And you do not understand : I cannot expect that you should."

" Perhaps I understand better than you suppose," ventured Lawrence.

She did not reply, but repeated the httle stately movement of her head, and turned back between the rows of yellow-green willows. Lawrence had the grace not to laugh for full five minutes.

When he came back over the bridge an hour later, he made a small discovery. It was a paperbound book lying close up to the railing of the bridge. Lawrence decided that it must belong to the young lady who had astonished and amused him earlier in the day. When he took it up, and looked at the title, he raised his eyebrows in some surprise, and said, *' Curious ! " and then he brought them down again, and scowled, and reflected. " I don't know that it is curious. You can't count on a dead level of rustic simplicity in any of our villages now ; and I doubt if there is a middle link between the primitive being and the young woman who knocks you down with some sort of high-school knowledge. On the whole, I don't know why she shouldn't take to literature of this sort instead of mathematics."

Lawrence was just then forbidden to read, on account of his eyes ; and the printed lines were all the more attractive because of this. Besides, the book was familiar to him. He continued to shift the pages, and presently came upon some lines enclosed in pencil that caused him to repeat his muscular exclamations.

" I suppose she fancies that applies to herself. Otherwise she wouldn't enclose it. And so she has ideas about herself, — analytical ideas. Ah ! we all have them now, and we are all more or less mistaken. I should prefer her without them, though. Now, I ought to take myself down by suggesting that I am not required to prefer her at all."

By and by he opened the book at the titlepage.

Written diagonally across one of the lower corners was the word " Fairfields," and above it the initials "A. D."

II

" He would have passed a pleasant life of it in despite of the

Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a

being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts,

goblins, and the whole race of witches put together ; and that was

— a woman."

Washington Irving.

Three white church-spires guarded Unity, and from one of them fell the five solemn strokes that woke Kenneth next morning.

The bell had a peculiarly grave and sober tone. It seemed fitted to be the voice of a seriousminded community.

Lawrence roused himself lazily, and decided that he could not go to sleep again.

He remembered that he had neglected to ask the breakfast hour, and wondered if it would turn out to be six or seven. On the whole, he felt bored.

When he had dressed, and was wide awake, he felt less so. Finally he went out for a walk.

Unity had not much to offer in point of distinct picturesqueness. Kenneth thought the village looked fairly prosperous, but he also thought that he was not accustomed to judge of the prosperity of villages. Possibly he was deluded by the square whiteness of most of the houses, and the ambitious roofs and gables of others.

The front-yards were neatly fenced in, and the fences were very white. The grass inside was of the fresh spring color. The fruit-trees were at the final stage of budding. The vegetable-gardens between the houses showed a great deal of brown earth, dotted and streaked with different shades and shapes of green, in various stages of immaturity.

Kenneth followed one of the streets out of the village limits. There the road wound down a hill into a valley, and, by way of the valley, plunged directly into the outlying meadows. He did not go very far, and turned back without receiving a much more distinct impression than he had been able to get from the square houses and the neat fences. A scene like this relies for its effect upon a sense of familiarity, or of practical use, or upon an unexacting love of nature.

It had no associations for Lawrence. He was entirely ignorant as to what was growing in the vegetable-gardens ; and, though he could rejoice in a clean beach and a bright sea, or a noble outlook from a mountain, he knew nothing about loving a field simply because it was a field.

When he came in he found he had still half an hour to wait for breakfast. He went up to his room, and looked at the book he had found on the bridge. He decided to ask Mrs. Hardy about "Fairfields." Mrs. Hardy was his landlady.

When he went down to breakfast, she was already at the table, clicking the cups together in her thin, nervous hands. She was a small woman, young enough to have a light, girlish figure, and old enough to have some careworn lines in her shrewd, not unpleasing, face. She was not a native of Unity, and seemed to have a lively dislike for place and people, that rather amused Lawrence. She considered that her boarders required to be entertained, especially male boarders. She entertained Lawrence so vigorously that he was rather afraid of her.

He decided not to ask her about " Fairfields ; ** but it was a long morning, and by dinner-time he was glad to fall back upon the slight interest of his question. ^

He learned that '' Fairfields " was on the road leading east from Unity ; that it was a white farmhouse, shaded by two great elms at the gate, and standing where the road grew level for a space before plunging into the lowlands and across the causeway.

He also heard something of a story connected with the place, and with the girl he had seen on the bridge.

Some twenty-five years ago, a gay Irishman, Cornelius Dinsmore, arrived in Boston from England, bringing with him a number of pretty talents which had never been of conspicuous use to him, and a collection of pleasant vices which had placed him in various embarrassments. He was a good-looking, pleasant fellow ; and there was a kind of magnificence about him that connected his dissipations with the idea of brilliant society and the names of noted European cities, and his ambiguous cleverness with the idea of great latent ability. And then he had the gift of believing in himself, without appearing to take himself seriously.

He was a clever half-amateur in a certain branch of journalism. His regular-correspondent talent was the most notable gift he had ; and, for a year or two after his arrival, he worked harder and better than he ever had in his life, and managed to thrive very well.

The second year he went out of town in June ; and one evening he got down from the top of a lumbering stage into Unity Main Street, in front of the post-ofBce.

He meant to stay in the village over night. As he walked up the street, the scent of the hay, and of the flowers in the gardens, was sweet in the air, and the long shadows stretched across the road. He met a pretty girl in a blue dress.

He decided to stay a little longer than he had thought at first. He finally staid six weeks, without deciding upon it at all.

He had a pastoral ta^^ ; and he liked the haymaking, and th©-wild roses and elder-flowers, and the June weather.

He adapted himself to simple country-life with a good deal of adroitness, — a faculty he always liked to exercise. He was so comfortable that he began to feel virtuous ; and he was so disgusted with the results of his wild, careless life, that he thought he was sorry for their causes.

And then he fell in love with the girl in the blue dress.

Her name was Ruth Fairfield. She was pretty, and she was twenty years old ; but she was the most innocent and undeveloped girl of twenty that Dinsmore had ever seen, and he knew how to appreciate innocence.

There was, however, a serious obstacle to his love-making. Ruth had parents who objected to Dinsmore, not from any great acuteness in judging him, but from a kind of habitual prejudice that was none the more rational for hitting its mark so squarely in this particular case.

Dinsmore felt that it was very irrational, and that he was an injured man, that if such a saving influence as Ruth's had been earlier in his life — Ah ! well, it is an old story. He made an effective bit of pathos of his hard case, and was profoundly touched and impressed by it himself. He was quite as sentimental as he was cynical.

And all this time he was meeting Ruth evening and mornings along the quiet meadow-road. He dazzled her not less with his past wickedness than with his present goodness, and, most of all, with his repentance, and the power of her influence.

The end was what any one might have foreseen.

Ruth slipped out of the front-door one night, and went down the gravel-path to meet her lover at the gate.

There were rows of sweet, old-fashioned flowers growing beside the path. They may have caught at her skirts as she passed, as if they begged her to stay ; but she never stopped. She met her lover at the gate, and went away with him ; and she came back no more.

After her marriage, very little was known of Ruth in Unity. There were a few who held that she was a fortunate woman, leading a gay life ; and there were others who hinted that she was unhappy, and neglected by her husband : but she never came back to confirm either report.