er physical functions, and laid its
interdict upon her tongue. Three times she strove to throw off the
incubus, to speak, but in vain. Great drops were on her forehead;
she was deadly pale, and her eyes were wild and staring; her features
twitched as in a spasm, while she stood there struggling with the
invisible power that sealed her lips. There was a sudden movement among
the spectators; they were whispering together. They saw that something
was wrong. "Do you thus promise?" repeated the minister, after a pause.
"Nod, if you can't speak," murmured the bridegroom. His words were the
hiss of a serpent in her ears. Her will resisted no longer; her soul
was wholly possessed by unreasoning terror of the man and horror of the
marriage. "No! no! no!" she screamed in piercing tones, and snatching
her hand from the bridegroom, she threw herself upon the breast of the
astonished minister, sobbing wildly as she clung to him, "Save me, save
me! Take me away! I can't marry him,--I can't! Oh, I can't!"

The wedding broke up in confusion, and that is the way, if you choose
to think so, that John Lansing, one thousand miles away, saved his wife
from marrying another man.

"If you choose to think so," I say, for it is perfectly competent to
argue that the influence to which Mary Lansing yielded was merely an
hysterical attack, not wholly strange at such a moment in the case of a
woman devoted to her first husband, and reluctantly consenting to second
nuptials. On this theory, Lansing's simultaneous agony at Pinners
ranch in Colorado was merely a coincidence; interesting, perhaps, but
unnecessary to account for his wife's behavior. That John and Mary
Lansing should reject with indignation this simple method of accounting
for their great deliverance is not at all surprising in view of the
common proclivity of people to be impressed with the extraordinary side
of circumstances which affect themselves; nor is there any reason why
their opinion of the true explanation of the facts should be given more
weight than another's. The writer, who has merely endeavored to put
this story into narrative form, has formed no opinion on it which is
satisfactory to himself, and therefore abstains from any effort to
influence the reader's judgment.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of At Pinney's Ranch, by Edward Bellamy

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